291–300 of 356 posts
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am i the only one to walk away from this story thinking there must be a better way to handle large transactions than banks and cryptocurrencies.
Gold and diamonds?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-gold
outside of the US. seems plausible.
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Government in general a profitable venture for those in government. You have to produce nothing, please no one and you get to decide how much money is your fair share of what others have worked hard to earn.
So did you make the roads you drove on to work? Impressive. How about the fire, police, schools, environmental protections, consumer protections, and court system? How big is the military defending your patch of land? I admit there are problems, but I'm always amazed when people say the government doesn't do anything, then take a car to work on public roads, listen to the radio (FCC), eat food (FDA), etc.
he did make those roads... he paid taxes in gas, insurance, purchase of a car tax, license plate tax... all that do indeed sponsor roads he drives on!
as of military defending his patch of land, hard to argue. Africa is much bigger than USA -- how much they spent as a continent on defense? Bet 1000th of what US does. Other than that, he might choose to protect his own land with the second Amendment and keep military out of it, no?
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Whip out that credit card and start buying stuff instead? Who cares if you don't use it much, it's all relative. I like buying CDs and Bluray, then I rip them for everyday use. But its nice to have something tangible to back it up. Plus its all legal and protected, since I don't rebroadcast any of the content, just private enjoyment.
There's is no legal way to watch the latest season of Game of Thrones etc. in my country. Even if it was, I'm sure it would be overpriced compared to local economy. Same for computer games, they cost 40-50 Eur in a country where the average wage is less than 600 Eur/month.
I don’t intend to throw the first rock here – I’m battling with this issue myself. I have a low wage, can afford some things but not others, and, of course, I pirate more than I acquire legally.
But why do I? Do I really lack an alternative? There are libraries hosting cultural items of immense worth, certainly more worth than some of the contemporary items I consume, either legally or not. I could spend my whole days if I could reading, watching movies, even playing (somewhat outdated) games, all of great value, and all of this without ever spending a cent, except for maybe taking the subway to the nearest library.
Yet, I don’t do this. I crave for contemporary productions, even if they are mere distractions, not culturally enriching in any way. What’s the reason behind this? Is it societal pressure, that I want to stay in the loop? Do contemporary productions really hold this much power over me, over some of us?
There’s a way to answer to these attacks on piracy. Stop pirating. Stop trying to get what you cannot afford. Go to the library, or the museum, or the theater. Or the beach, for that matter. Just don’t consume their productions. Listen to Wagner, read some Plato, go to the park and just lie watching the clouds pass by. There’s plenty to do regardless of how much Hollywood and co. want us to pay for their productions. Plenty that, maybe, has more worth than the too-expensive-for-us modern alternatives.
But why don’t we? What’s the appeal in all modern things that leads us to such great efforts on their illicit acquisition? Are they really that valuable? And if they are, shouldn’t we pressure cultural institutions to grant everyone ways of accessing them?
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There's is no legal way to watch the latest season of Game of Thrones etc. in my country. Even if it was, I'm sure it would be overpriced compared to local economy. Same for computer games, they cost 40-50 Eur in a country where the average wage is less than 600 Eur/month.
So don’t buy them? I don’t intend to throw the first rock here – I’m battling with this issue myself. I have a low wage, can afford some things but not others, and, of course, I pirate more than I acquire legally. But why do I? Do I really lack an alternative? There are libraries hosting cultural items of immense worth, certainly more worth than some of the contemporary items I consume, either legally or not. I could…
Because we want to experience finding out if R + L really = J ourselves, rather than just reading about it on the internet, damnit! :)
As an American, I wish we would stop doing this. It isn't effective, and it's a waste of time/resources that could be better spent elsewhere. I'd even argue that its counter-effective to progress. Instead of punishing people for making more efficient systems, we should reward them, and try to integrate.
Indeed, we should. Comrade Page, comrade Brin, I'd like to have the Google software stack. IP rights are an outdated concept and the collective has decided that Google's stack belongs to the people. Besides, everything is just bits! If you represent the whole monorepo as a single integer, denying people access to it would be akin to patenting a natural number!
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The disincentive to start the next pirate website is the fact that the owners/operators of said website are subject to arrest and jail time. If actions like the ones in linked article didn't occur, you would find a large array of piracy websites pop up and operate with impunity. Under such a scenario, each website would individually earn less. Yes, piracy websites will always exist, but the purpose of these shutdowns…
>The disincentive to start the next pirate website is the fact that the owners/operators of said website are subject to arrest and jail time. But it takes only one guy who thinks "they will never get me as I'm smarter" to have your next KAT/Pirate Bay that will (allegedly) cause billions dollars of damage.
And fortunately for us, Eastern Europe is full of the these kinds of people. :)
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So did you make the roads you drove on to work? Impressive. How about the fire, police, schools, environmental protections, consumer protections, and court system? How big is the military defending your patch of land? I admit there are problems, but I'm always amazed when people say the government doesn't do anything, then take a car to work on public roads, listen to the radio (FCC), eat food (FDA), etc.
but whats your point?? he did make those roads... he paid taxes in gas, insurance, purchase of a car tax, license plate tax... all that do indeed sponsor roads he drives on! as of military defending his patch of land, hard to argue. Africa is much bigger than USA -- how much they spent as a continent on defense? Bet 1000th of what US does. Other than that, he might choose to protect his own land with the second Amend…
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Something like: "When I pirate a movie they only lose that single sale, and they wouldn't have had it anyway because I would never have paid to see that movie. But when a commercial company like Zara makes a profit from stealing designs, well, they're scumbags"
I'm not a commercial company, who said I should be held at same level of scrutiny?
Does anyone know if there is data somewhere on how much money has been spent by governments (specifically the USA) on attacking copyright related stuff? My main complaint about this is that I'd rather my tax dollars be spent stopping crime that causes physical harm.
You're free to ask your congressmen to change the copyright laws. Until then, they should be enforced: Having some manager deprioritize certain crimes because he thinks they're too expensive to enforce moves power from the legislative to the executive. You didn't directly make this distinction, but your point about preferring to allocate tax dollars to physical crimes would be a strange way to view changing the law.
So break these laws. Break them as much as is possible. Convince others to do the same.
Civil disobedience is the engine of progress.
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>The disincentive to start the next pirate website is the fact that the owners/operators of said website are subject to arrest and jail time. But it takes only one guy who thinks "they will never get me as I'm smarter" to have your next KAT/Pirate Bay that will (allegedly) cause billions dollars of damage.
> But it takes only one guy who thinks "they will never get me as I'm smarter" And fortunately for us, Eastern Europe is full of the these kinds of people. :)