Pirate Bay Owners = Guilty

[Eric]

http://torrentfreak.com/the-pirate-bay- ... ct-090417/

Just minutes ago the verdict in the case of The Pirate Bay Four was announced. All four defendants were accused of ‘assisting in making copyright content available’. Peter Sunde: Guilty. Fredrik Neij: Guilty. Gottfrid Svartholm: Guilty. Carl Lundström: Guilty. The four receive 1 year in jail each and fines totaling $3,620,000.

[Julius Seeker]

Poor bastards.

[Mental]

The fines seem a little excessive, since (as usual) I doubt these guys have anywhere near that kind of money. Seems like more of the same "let's make an example out of these guys" by the various publishing coalitions of the world, where they try to bankrupt pirate server owners in the hopes that it will dissuade others from doing the same. This never, ever works and just makes people think the publishers are a bunch of dicks, and I still can't understand why they're so committed to revenge instead of a more practical policy of filing more lawsuits that are less headline-grabbing. Stupidity and anger, probably

At the same time, I can't conclude that the verdict aside from that is particularly unfair, especially given that I work in an industry that gets regularly blitzed by piracy. That site was pretty flagrant, and these guys had plenty of chances to stop. I have to say I agree with the jail sentences mostly even if I think the fines are retarded.

[Zeus]

The MPAA and RIAA finally bought themselves a verdict, huh?

[Chris]

The MPAA and RIAA finally bought themselves a verdict, huh?

Yes because stealing shit is completely legal and the only way to have won is to buy off judges and governments. because we all know that being theives is completely legal. oh but it's bittorrent. they don't actually have the files they just give you access to em.....driving the getaway car is still being a thief

[Julius Seeker]

Many don't consider it theft because it's easy.

[Don]

The amount they have to pay is like 1/3 of what the record companies sought.

At any rate it seems to me The Pirate Bay is just a bunch of armchair lawyers who thought they knew the law. Their existence is always based on some technicality since Sweden seems to have slightly different copyright laws compared to rest of the world, but apparently not so different that you can just get away with the scale of stuff they're doing.

Even Chinese piracy sites at least took some measures to pretend they're legit. You're talking about sites that operate in a country that is definitely even more lenient on copyright compared to Sweden and has a piracy rate of 95% (down from 99% 5 years ago). Even there the guys at least put some bogus stuff like 'totally for educational purposes only' and 'totally will remove any infringing stuff if you tell us about it.' Not that this will actually have any meaning in the court of law, but even the guys in China don't put a sign that says 'get pirated stuff here!' and they're in a far safer environment compared to TPB.

[Chris]

Many don't consider it theft because it's easy.

it's fucking theft. you are theives. it's a product that isn't supposed to be free you are taking for free. that is fucking theft.

[Don]

Many don't consider it theft because it's easy.

it's fucking theft. you are theives. it's a product that isn't supposed to be free you are taking for free. that is fucking theft.

It's technically copyright infringement, but of course copyright infringement actually carries harsher penalties than stealing as in say, shoplifting. But people don't like to be called thieves, so I guess calling it calling it copyright infringement is supposed to make you feel better about what you're doing.

[Mental]

Many don't consider it theft because it's easy.

Many don't consider it theft because there are NO PHYSICAL GOODS present. They've done studies on this, it's not the fact that it's easy, it's the fact that it's virtual. People who would be utterly ashamed to jack a comic or CD out of a store have no problem downloading it online. People associate the paper or the plastic associated with making the good to be what's valuable about it, which is kind of a shame because as just about everyone on here knows, what's actually expensive about all this IP that gets pirated are development costs. The physical costs of reproduction are usually next to nothing, kind of like the fact that a Coke syrup and cup at the movies cost six cents or so even though it retails for two or three bucks.

[Zeus]

The MPAA and RIAA finally bought themselves a verdict, huh?

Yes because stealing shit is completely legal and the only way to have won is to buy off judges and governments. because we all know that being theives is completely legal. oh but it's bittorrent. they don't actually have the files they just give you access to em.....driving the getaway car is still being a thief

There are many times when legal technicalities lead to "stupid" rulings. Such as with torrents where they're not actually in possession of said virtual asset, they link to it. In this case, they paid enough to change the legal wording to get their results. That's what I was referring to.

[Don]

The MPAA and RIAA finally bought themselves a verdict, huh?

Yes because stealing shit is completely legal and the only way to have won is to buy off judges and governments. because we all know that being theives is completely legal. oh but it's bittorrent. they don't actually have the files they just give you access to em.....driving the getaway car is still being a thief

There are many times when legal technicalities lead to "stupid" rulings. Such as with torrents where they're not actually in possession of said virtual asset, they link to it. In this case, they paid enough to change the legal wording to get their results. That's what I was referring to.

I hate to break the news to it but 'helping to infringe' has always been illegal. What is not clear is what is 'helping to infringe' but if you think a site named The Pirate Bay is supposed to be used to help you find Linux ISO torrents you're pretty naive.

The fact that TPB has a commercial drive doesn't help the cause.

[Chris]

The MPAA and RIAA finally bought themselves a verdict, huh?

Yes because stealing shit is completely legal and the only way to have won is to buy off judges and governments. because we all know that being theives is completely legal. oh but it's bittorrent. they don't actually have the files they just give you access to em.....driving the getaway car is still being a thief

There are many times when legal technicalities lead to "stupid" rulings. Such as with torrents where they're not actually in possession of said virtual asset, they link to it. In this case, they paid enough to change the legal wording to get their results. That's what I was referring to.

yes. they don't have it on thm. they just link to it. not illegal at all. Just like when I leave the door unlocked after I leave work so my friends can just come on in and steal shit. I didn't steal anything. I just left the door unlocked.

[Don]

Many don't consider it theft because it's easy.

Many don't consider it theft because there are NO PHYSICAL GOODS present. They've done studies on this, it's not the fact that it's easy, it's the fact that it's virtual. People who would be utterly ashamed to jack a comic or CD out of a store have no problem downloading it online. People associate the paper or the plastic associated with making the good to be what's valuable about it, which is kind of a shame because as just about everyone on here knows, what's actually expensive about all this IP that gets pirated are development costs. The physical costs of reproduction are usually next to nothing, kind of like the fact that a Coke syrup and cup at the movies cost six cents or so even though it retails for two or three bucks.

If I recall the cost to press a CD is something stupidly low like 1 cent. The most expensive part of a packaged game is probably the box (especially if it's those big ones that hold multiple CDs back in PSX days), followed by the manual (especially if it's in color). Yet I bet if you just have a stack of CDs sitting at a store, people wouldn't think it's okay to steal them even though it costs 1 cent to press the said CDs.

[Mental]

Yup, Don, exactly.

Zeus, you've got an uphill battle going here, given that there are at least two of us on these boards whose financial livelihoods could be easily threatened by one form of piracy or another.

[Don]

Well, I do think piracy sometimes illustrates the underlying system of distribution is flawed. But having a flawed system is not a justification for piracy.

For example buying an album with 20 songs when only 2 is good is a dumb system. That means a better model where you can buy just the songs you care about (iTunes for example) should emerge. It's not an excuse to pirate the album. Now if you do it that doesn't necessarily mean you're a scourge to society or whatever, but you're certainly not help anybody except yourself.

Another good example is the Japanese dojin games are always pirated, because unless you found the ninja at block A3 during the 3rd Wednesday of October in ComicCon 75, they don't even want to sell the game to you for ANY price. Before Typemoon was Typemoon, a copy of Tsukihime went for $1000 on EBay. You can literally find the guy who made the game, slap them with a $100 bill and they still won't sell you a copy of Tsukihime because they have no intention to print more copies of it. So of course these games gets pirated like crazy, since you can't even buy it if you wanted to. Again that's not a justification for piracy, but it illustrates that if you've a model where you make it hard for people to pay you money, it's a bad model and should be changed. Note that Typemoon eventually become a normal gaming company and their games can now be bought in normal channels that doesn't require finding a ninja at ComicCons.

A lot of us obviously pirate manga/anime. Obviously most probably do it because it's convenient, but even if you have the money, you're not going to see certain stuff until they're 3 years out of date if you waited for the legitmate channels. So maybe there should be some way to access the latest stuff from Japan that takes less than 3 years when 5 random guys on the Net can put a halfway decent translation in 3 days, and perhaps if that's available people might actually pay for it instead of pirating it.

Now obviously there is also piracy just for the sake of being cheap. But I think a lot of time piracy is a symptom of some bigger problem, even though that in no way justifies piracy.

[Tessian]

Anime/manga is a little different... since there's no copyright holder in the US, and no way to legitimately view it outside of Japan, they kind of fall into a gray area. Fansubbing has been allowed to continue thus far, even after someone's purchased the rights for it in the US, because it actually increases the shows popularity. Some companies are finally taking advantage of it, though, and are making anime airing in Japan available to stream online for free (Naruto I know is doing this now which is why DB stopped subbing for it).

Torrents and piracy had much more a point to it years ago than it does now... no longer are you really fighting against an industry who won't join the 21st century. Music is readily and cheaply available anywhere online, you've got services like Hulu and Netflix for TV/movies, and Steam for video games. Movies are a little harder because ticket prices keep going up, but I'll still have no qualms over downloading something I have no intention of ever purchasing at its current price-- Photoshop, for example. Give me a $80 home user version and we'll talk, but if they think people aren't paying $800 for their software just because it's available online they're delusional.

[Kupek]

I doubt Adobe thinks home users will ever purchase Photoshop. Yes, $800 for a home application is not reasonable. But $800 for a tool for you to get your work done is. For professional photographers and designers, buying Photoshop is like a carpenter buying a table saw.

[Anarky]

I doubt Adobe thinks home users will ever purchase Photoshop. Yes, $800 for a home application is not reasonable. But $800 for a tool for you to get your work done is. For professional photographers and designers, buying Photoshop is like a carpenter buying a table saw.

Very true, adobe does not worry about piracy because companies need their product and they know they'll get paid.

Personally I miss the Macromedia pricing structure. That was fair to home users, unlike Adobes price tag.

[Don]

If the copyright owner hasn't licensed the stuff in other languages that technically means nobody can do anything with it.

It's not so much as a grey area but that it really makes no sense to stop from someone fansubbing stuff on TV that you have no plan to sell eventually anyway. Stuff on TV gets their revenue from ads, so it's possible that the extra exposure means eventually when it comes to US you'd actually have more people see it on TV for more ad revenue. But if you're talking about OAVs that's meant to be sold, they're probably not as willing to have you you fansub it for free. I'd say that for the most part, Anime is too expensive to be bought even for a fairly dedicated guy, and again that represents a problem with the underlying system which content is distributed.

I'm pretty sure Adobe figures that if you're only using the basic features of Photoshop since you're an amateur then it's not really that different from MS Paint so they don't really care you didn't pay them since you'd have just done something similar on MS Paint if you couldn't get Photoshop. I suspect they don't have a 'home' edition for $80 because this tool is supposed to be for professional and they don't want to lose that prestiege. They probably figure if you're not a professional pirating Photoshop then indeed they have not lost anything significant.

[SineSwiper]

I doubt Adobe thinks home users will ever purchase Photoshop. Yes, $800 for a home application is not reasonable. But $800 for a tool for you to get your work done is. For professional photographers and designers, buying Photoshop is like a carpenter buying a table saw.

And then The GIMP was born, and it kicked the shit out of Photoshop. For free.

Does anybody think that jail time for a CIVIL case is a bit unreasonable? Sure, they are fighting it, which will be stuck in legal for a decade, and sure it will affect their web site and file-sharing by 0 percent, but I didn't think you went to jail over civil cases. (We are talking about Sweden, but I figured their laws were more sane than that.)

[Kupek]

Most people who make a living producing images don't use Gimp.

[Mental]

Most people who make a living producing images don't use Gimp.

QFT

[Mental]

Also, Zeus, if you want to see how piracy and warez REALLY hurts my industry:

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_i ... tory=23259

[Tessian]

Don-- while you're technically right, many would argue that a law that isn't enforced isn't really a law. Just like abandonware.

[Kupek]

Don-- while you're technically right, many would argue that a law that isn't enforced isn't really a law. Just like abandonware.

This Slate article makes a more nuanced version of that argument: American Lawbreaking. I found the concept that society's practical laws end up being a compromise of the actual laws on the books, and what the police and prosecutors are willing to enforce interesting:

Why are there dead zones in U.S. law? The answer goes beyond the simple expense of enforcement but betrays a deeper, underlying logic. Tolerated lawbreaking is almost always a response to a political failure—the inability of our political institutions to adapt to social change or reach a rational compromise that reflects the interests of the nation and all concerned parties. That's why the American statutes are full of laws that no one wants to see fully enforced—or even enforced at all.

This political failure can happen for many reasons. Sometimes a law was passed by another generation with different ideas of right and wrong, but the political will necessary to repeal the law does not exist. Sometimes, as we'll see with polygamy or obscenity, the issue is too sensitive to discuss in rational terms. And sometimes the law as written is a symbol of some behavior to which we may aspire, which nevertheless remains wholly out of touch with reality. Whatever the reason, when politics fails, institutional tolerance of lawbreaking takes over.

There will, of course, always be some lawbreaking that goes unpunished simply because law enforcement is expensive—not every shoplifter is caught, and it's not worth expending the resources to catch every kleptomaniac. But the areas we will look at here are different: What's going on here is that the parties all know the law is being broken, accept it, and—while almost never overtly saying so—both the "criminals" and law enforcement concede that everyone likes it better that way. The law in question thus continues to have a formal existence, and, as we shall see, it may become a kind of zoning ordinance, enforced only against very public or flagrant behavior. But few, except sometimes a vocal minority, actually think we'd be better off if the law were fully enforced.

[RentCavalier]

All I know is, my good friend who regularly uses Pirate Bay is gonna be heartbroken.

[Zeus]

Yes because stealing shit is completely legal and the only way to have won is to buy off judges and governments. because we all know that being theives is completely legal. oh but it's bittorrent. they don't actually have the files they just give you access to em.....driving the getaway car is still being a thief

There are many times when legal technicalities lead to "stupid" rulings. Such as with torrents where they're not actually in possession of said virtual asset, they link to it. In this case, they paid enough to change the legal wording to get their results. That's what I was referring to.

yes. they don't have it on thm. they just link to it. not illegal at all. Just like when I leave the door unlocked after I leave work so my friends can just come on in and steal shit. I didn't steal anything. I just left the door unlocked.

From a legal standpoint, that's a big difference. This change in law to prosecute the Pirate By boys is the equivalent to include an accomplice to murder charge.

Again, it's not what we think is right or wrong. I was simply saying that the RIAA and MPAA spent years using their coin for political influence to change a law. Even that article eludes to the fact that the judge was facing enormous political pressure and likely caved.

Kup - the whole lawbreaking shows just how much our legal system needs to be fixed. If it takes so damned long to update our laws to our changing society that the public views many of them with disdain or apathy and this filters its way to our politicians and law enforcement personnel, what it's showing is that our legal system simply doesn't work. A law is nothing if the majority of the public doesn't agree, that's why it's a law to begin with. This is why I am basically forced to drive 20km/h over the speed limit on the 401 and strongly encouraged to go 30. The public refused to accept the speed limit and eventually, the cops said "fuck it, it's actually safer if we up it" (they basically came out and said it a few years ago). I'm not suggesting that we make law changes occur within a matter of days every time but this years to even start the process thing and decades before the law is changed is ridiculous.

Another view on the music and movies thing. The issue is that most people on this continent - even your mother and father - view music, movies, and TV as a part of the public domain. Most people do not agree with the extent that the IP laws are in now or are trying to go. The way the majority of the public figures it, once something has been released, it's fair game. Most people view the release of physical media (DVDs, CDs) as something only the original owners can do. But if it's available for a free viewing? Why not? It's gonna hit TV again soon anyways and that's "free". Yes, it's a function of the virtual vs physical goods argument but at the end of the day, if most of the public don't see it as an issue, is it even possible to be properly enforced?

[Zeus]

All I know is, my good friend who regularly uses Pirate Bay is gonna be heartbroken.

Everyone cried a river when Supernova went down but Pirate Bay became much bigger. Put one down and there's 50 waiting in the wings to take over. Demonoid will still be around, they survived their court case (so far). All this means is that Mininova will just have to point to somewhere else for its links

[Kupek]

Zeus, one of the ideas presented in that article is that the laws on the books will never represent the true laws of society. Instead, society's actual laws end up being a compromise between the laws on the book's, what police and prosecutor's are willing to pursue, and what the rest of the public cares about.

[Mental]

Another view on the music and movies thing. The issue is that most people on this continent - even your mother and father - view music, movies, and TV as a part of the public domain.

I'm sorry, but if you try to put the game I'm working on in the public domain - which I have now gone broke for, cried over, nearly been suicidal about, put years of my life into, and generally sacrificed nearly everything I have for on the hope that I will be able to found a successful game company based on the revenues or technology - I will break into your house and appropriate everything you own into the public domain as a response. I will put your TV and couch and bed and possibly your wife (joking here, but it might get across my point about how those of us who CREATE IP face having the things we love abused by any random person in the world) out in the street with a big sign saying "FREE! Please use me any way that you like."

Zeus, I usually respect you, but that is the DUMBEST thing I have ever heard with regard to IP. The dumbest. Companies - and INDIVIDUALS, particularly in the case of music - put thousands or MILLIONS of dollars into creating these pieces of IP, both in the sense of trying to create works of art.

You want it both ways. You want the quality of a professionally produced piece of intellectual property and then you want it to never be sold for any amount of money, ever. I don't see how you can't understand that that's not even a remotely workable paradigm. If IP creators can't recoup revenue, they will stop spending money on IP development. If what you're proposing had gone into effect ten years ago, your much-prized remake of Battlestar Galactica would not exist. Nearly nothing on TV would exist.

I have damn near BLED for this shit. I'm not going to go "how dare you", but you are not just talking about taking bread out of my mouth here, you are talking about literally consigning me to poverty for the rest of my life. (And no, videogames aren't any different than the rest of IP here, so don't try that tack as a response.) We usually get along and have a pretty convival acquaintanceship here, so I'm hoping you will not attempt to claim that my work is communal property, and thus we will not have a problem.

[Mental]

I mean, I'm not trying to be harsh, but being on TV doesn't make something "free". No, it is not okay to give just about anybody the right to make copies of something from broadcast and spread them around the world. Companies SURVIVE on ancillary revenues from commercials on TV, renting their IP to airline flights, having the RIGHT to sell their own DVDs, and a thousand other streams of revenue that you are not familiar with.

If you prepare a tax return, I don't know that you would like me to take it and go, "Ha! Thank you. That return and the work involved in it are public domain now. I would like to take your client and offer to send in the return for him for ten dollars instead of your usual rate, and I also claim the hours of research you put in as in the public domain. Ooooh! These are nice exemptions. How much time did you put into researching this? Well, it doesn't matter, because it's in the public domain now, and I'm going to throw up my hands and shrug when you lose your house and can't buy food because I just pirated your business out of existence. Brave new world!"

[Tessian]

I don't think anyone's stupid enough to think that stuff is free and part of public domain, everyone just has their own rationalization for doing it. Some just don't care, others can't or won't spend the money so they don't believe taking something they wouldn't have paid for anyway isn't stealing (a more extreme case of Photoshop above) and more still have their own twisted versions of it. Nobody thinks that you SHOULDN'T be paid for making movies, music, etc. Copyright laws are horribly written thanks to Disney and the like, but that's not really the issue anyway.

[Don]

I saw a pretty good lecture a long time ago on the price of any good that can be duplicated for essentially nothing and the effect of piracy has. Let's say someone is making a game for Bill Gates. Bill Gates has a ton of money, so for him perhaps $100 million is a good price to pay for a totally awesome game. He certainly can afford it. So as long as you take less than $100 million to develop a game and sell it to Bill Gates for $100 million you don't lose money. But this works only if Bill Gates is the ONLY buyer of this game in the world. This is because when you add a second buyer, who might be willing to pay at most $100 for the same game, you can no longer charge $100 to the 2nd guy and $100 million to Bill Gates, because Bill Gates will realize someone else can get the same game for $100. So Bill Gates will now tell you that he's only willing to pay $100 for this game even though he's actually willing to pay $100 million. So the cost to sell a second copy of this game to me is roughly negative $100 million. If you can actually know for certain about this, the best solution is to simply never sell the game to me and stick with your 1 buyer who is willing to pay $100 million and assure him that absolutely nobody else will be able to get this game.

And when you throw in piracy, which has a cost of $0, people are even more motivated to tell you how much they're willing to pay for a game. The price they tell you won't be exactly $0, because you assume most good people have some respect for copyright and whatnot, but there's no way you'll be willing to pay for the full price of a game when you know someone can get it for free.

The lecture then goes on about how you want to establish a 'truth-telling' price where if you price your good at that amount, everyone who is a reasonably good person will be willing to buy it, and people who won't are guys who totally refuse you to pay anything for your product anyway so there's no point to try to lower your price anymore to get their money. The guy didn't have any method to find this price, but he said that amount must be a lot lower than what stuff currently costs. The current price of most stuff assumes people are all honest and that doesn't work.

That said there's no guaranteed the 'truth-telling' price will get you more money than what the current price is, though it will make it fair so that you don't have a few guys paying to subsidize other people who lies about how much they're willing to pay for something via piracy.

[Mental]

This theory breaks apart under the idea that there is no one in the world willing to pay $100 million for a copy of a single game. The reason Bill Gates has that money is because he doesn't do shit like that.

[Don]

The point is that even if someone was willing to pay you that much for your efforts, you wouldn't be able to get that much money back if you attempted to even sell it to a second person, because for something like a game/music/movie there is no meaningful way you can do price discrimination. You cannot charge one guy $1000 and another guy $50 and get away with that.

Actually this seems to suggest the best way to make money in the age of piracy is to become some kind of commissioned guy that only works for really rich guys. Art was more or less sponsored by the very rich early on since they're the only ones that can afford it. Of course, that model would really suck for the masses.

[Zeus]

Zeus, one of the ideas presented in that article is that the laws on the books will never represent the true laws of society. Instead, society's actual laws end up being a compromise between the laws on the book's, what police and prosecutor's are willing to pursue, and what the rest of the public cares about.

But that's a shitty position to be in. Then no one knows the law yet they can get prosecuted on it. That makes it an even bigger problem

[Zeus]

Another view on the music and movies thing. The issue is that most people on this continent - even your mother and father - view music, movies, and TV as a part of the public domain.

I'm sorry, but if you try to put the game I'm working on in the public domain - which I have now gone broke for, cried over, nearly been suicidal about, put years of my life into, and generally sacrificed nearly everything I have for on the hope that I will be able to found a successful game company based on the revenues or technology - I will break into your house and appropriate everything you own into the public domain as a response. I will put your TV and couch and bed and possibly your wife (joking here, but it might get across my point about how those of us who CREATE IP face having the things we love abused by any random person in the world) out in the street with a big sign saying "FREE! Please use me any way that you like."

Zeus, I usually respect you, but that is the DUMBEST thing I have ever heard with regard to IP. The dumbest. Companies - and INDIVIDUALS, particularly in the case of music - put thousands or MILLIONS of dollars into creating these pieces of IP, both in the sense of trying to create works of art.

You want it both ways. You want the quality of a professionally produced piece of intellectual property and then you want it to never be sold for any amount of money, ever. I don't see how you can't understand that that's not even a remotely workable paradigm. If IP creators can't recoup revenue, they will stop spending money on IP development. If what you're proposing had gone into effect ten years ago, your much-prized remake of Battlestar Galactica would not exist. Nearly nothing on TV would exist.

I have damn near BLED for this shit. I'm not going to go "how dare you", but you are not just talking about taking bread out of my mouth here, you are talking about literally consigning me to poverty for the rest of my life. (And no, videogames aren't any different than the rest of IP here, so don't try that tack as a response.) We usually get along and have a pretty convival acquaintanceship here, so I'm hoping you will not attempt to claim that my work is communal property, and thus we will not have a problem.

Mental, I was simply telling you how things are not what my opinion is. I may download a shitload but I also pay for far more than most. I don't believe in that point of view but the masses do. That's the problem.

And I think most companies have understood that piracy is going to be around and there's nothing you can really do about it. But what has also been proven is that people are willing to pay for quality even if it's available for free. There's still insane DVD sales even with Pirate Bay around. That's because many people, like myself, prefer to have a nice, packaged, authored DVD. Make a shit movie or something that doesn't look particularly appealing and it gets downloaded (such as anything made by Michael Bay or JJ Abrahms until they prove they can direct their way out of paper bag).

To me, it's almost a good thing with all this piracy around as it gets rid of the shit and increases the quality of what's released to try and combat against the competition of free. Let's see how the Wolverine movie performs and use that as a bit of a test case.

[Don]

Just because there are 'insane sales' doesn't mean it's okay for people to subsidize those who are too cheap to buy this stuff. Besides people can also tell you stuff like games and movies also cost an equally insane amount of money to make.

It is entirely possible that the budget for a lot of stuff is getting out of whack but you don't get to decide to 'solve' this problem by make sure people go bankrupt faster.

[Mental]

Well done, Zeus. My desire to remove your trachea has completely subsided.

[Chris]

Another view on the music and movies thing. The issue is that most people on this continent - even your mother and father - view music, movies, and TV as a part of the public domain.

I'm sorry, but if you try to put the game I'm working on in the public domain - which I have now gone broke for, cried over, nearly been suicidal about, put years of my life into, and generally sacrificed nearly everything I have for on the hope that I will be able to found a successful game company based on the revenues or technology - I will break into your house and appropriate everything you own into the public domain as a response. I will put your TV and couch and bed and possibly your wife (joking here, but it might get across my point about how those of us who CREATE IP face having the things we love abused by any random person in the world) out in the street with a big sign saying "FREE! Please use me any way that you like."

Zeus, I usually respect you, but that is the DUMBEST thing I have ever heard with regard to IP. The dumbest. Companies - and INDIVIDUALS, particularly in the case of music - put thousands or MILLIONS of dollars into creating these pieces of IP, both in the sense of trying to create works of art.

You want it both ways. You want the quality of a professionally produced piece of intellectual property and then you want it to never be sold for any amount of money, ever. I don't see how you can't understand that that's not even a remotely workable paradigm. If IP creators can't recoup revenue, they will stop spending money on IP development. If what you're proposing had gone into effect ten years ago, your much-prized remake of Battlestar Galactica would not exist. Nearly nothing on TV would exist.

I have damn near BLED for this shit. I'm not going to go "how dare you", but you are not just talking about taking bread out of my mouth here, you are talking about literally consigning me to poverty for the rest of my life. (And no, videogames aren't any different than the rest of IP here, so don't try that tack as a response.) We usually get along and have a pretty convival acquaintanceship here, so I'm hoping you will not attempt to claim that my work is communal property, and thus we will not have a problem.

Mental, I was simply telling you how things are not what my opinion is. I may download a shitload but I also pay for far more than most. I don't believe in that point of view but the masses do. That's the problem.

And I think most companies have understood that piracy is going to be around and there's nothing you can really do about it. But what has also been proven is that people are willing to pay for quality even if it's available for free. There's still insane DVD sales even with Pirate Bay around. That's because many people, like myself, prefer to have a nice, packaged, authored DVD. Make a shit movie or something that doesn't look particularly appealing and it gets downloaded (such as anything made by Michael Bay or JJ Abrahms until they prove they can direct their way out of paper bag).

To me, it's almost a good thing with all this piracy around as it gets rid of the shit and increases the quality of what's released to try and combat against the competition of free. Let's see how the Wolverine movie performs and use that as a bit of a test case.

I will say this. Star Trek may change your mind on Abrams. I am the furthest thing from a trek fan and I fucking loved the shit out of it.

[kali o.]

I don't feel like reading all the shit in this thread, so I'll sum up my feelings:

The sharing of data/media will never disappear, it will always exist in one fashion or another (just like alcohol, drugs, sex, etc). Legal or illegal, it's up to the content providers to provide a suitable sustainable business model. If they continue to push out-of-date copyright models and protectionist litigation, all we end up with is people going to jail or bankrupt for downloading Seinfeld episodes.

And is that REALLY what society needs? Is that REALLY what the content providers need?

I think it's a resounding no...so good luck Pirate Bay.

[SineSwiper]

I don't feel like reading all the shit in this thread, so I'll sum up my feelings:

The sharing of data/media will never disappear, it will always exist in one fashion or another (just like alcohol, drugs, sex, etc). Legal or illegal, it's up to the content providers to provide a suitable sustainable business model. If they continue to push out-of-date copyright models and protectionist litigation, all we end up with is people going to jail or bankrupt for downloading Seinfeld episodes.

And is that REALLY what society needs? Is that REALLY what the content providers need?

I think it's a resounding no...so good luck Pirate Bay.

Yeah, that's pretty much the message that nobody gets.

[Mental]

It's a question of how easy it is. Yeah, you could always go put a mic to your speaker and make a bootleg-ass version of an audio recording, and some people did, but for a lot of people it wasn't worth it and it usually came out shitty anyway. Now, you click a few buttons and all of a sudden you have a near-flawless reproduction of a complete album, and just about any complete album at that.

Kali, I see you saying "adapt", but you're not offering ideas as to how. It's easy to say "change" and very hard to figure out what that change should be. There are a lot of very, very bright people working on it and the results have been mixed at best.

And no, I'm not agreeing with the RIAA or the other publishing organizations here, as I said above, I think their tactics are punitive and useless. If they really wanted to change things they'd be firing off a high number of low-profile lawsuits instead of a low number of high-profile lawsuits. They'd also be encouraging bands to work up professional marketing early on.

I believe this is what Dave Matthews Band did with the early days of their own trying to fight pirate efforts, since they have a fantastic live show and had problems with bootlegs from the beginning, and it worked really damn well, at least as far as I can tell. They went after as many bootleggers as they could, very, very quietly, without making a huge "we're going to make an example out of you" mess out of it, and also put out a whole line of really pretty high-quality merch - very creative stuff - that you didn't feel ripped off by buying. And I think they're sitting pretty compared to a lot of bands these days because of it.

[SineSwiper]

It's easy. Start offering unaltered music (in MP3s, OGG, etc.) for 3-5 bucks an album, complete with album covers and lyrics. Or better yet, do it for free (like NIN did), and let the concerts cover the costs.

And stop raping us in the theater with $5 drinks and $8 popcorns for a $12 movie ticket. We don't want to spend $65 just to send a family to the theater.

[Julius Seeker]

Sine - Making products cheaper is not the way. First of all it destroys the profit margins. Second of all, what study shows that cheaper movies/songs are pirated less?


Zeus - I am certain that better and more popular movies are pirated way more than worse and less popular movies.

Anyway, the best way to deal with this is to step up enforcement of the law against people who download and distribute this material.

[Zeus]

Sure popular movies are pirated. Everything is. But in no way shape or form does one download = one lost purchase at full MSRP. And there are tons and tons of people like me who download but still purchase once they find for the right price. So you can never listen to the bullshit that the piracy market is x billion dollars large. That's super overblows, it's likely a 10th of that at most.

Like Kali said, make the business model good enough and the effect of piracy is limited. Piracy is keeping these companies from selling a DVD that costs 50 cents to make (including insert and case) for $23 + tax. Even with piracy, these DVDs still sell used for $15 or less because that's what people are more willing to pay. Now that the movie industry is starting to shy away from the stupid-budget action flicks which don't even make the money of a $400k horror flick (Saw), they're being forced to change in more ways than one. They're just cryin' about it

[Julius Seeker]

For a 100 million dollar budget film, how many DVDs would have to be sold for them to begin seeing a profit? Now add marketing, storage, legal fees, distribution, and royalties; approximately how much will the people responsible for this stuff be paid with DVDs at 50 cents a pop?

I don't think there are tons and tons of people who download AND buy; I haven't seen any reports that indicate that there is, but I have seen plenty suggesting lost revenue for companies.

[Don]

Being too cheap to pay for something has never entitled you to get the item.

[Tessian]

I don't think there are tons and tons of people who download AND buy; I haven't seen any reports that indicate that there is, but I have seen plenty suggesting lost revenue for companies.

Don't tell me you actually believe ANY of that horribly biased propaganda. There has yet to be a single report that draws the conclusion that pirating results in lost sales that wasn't so badly biased and skewed to the point of losing all meaning. The way they get their numbers is so misleading it's almost criminal. They'll equate 1 downloading song = 1 lost CD purchase, for instance. Just like how MADD draws their DUI statistics by assuming anyone who wasn't given a breathalizer test was drunk or the latest issue claiming most of the identified guns taken during drug investigations were from the US (because only ~10% of the guns were identifiable).

And yet with all this are the simple facts that music sales are up and movie sales are up each year... I'm not going to claim that it DOESN'T affect sales, but I'd love for you to show me a report that proves this without fudging the numbers so badly they put willy wonka to shame.