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US indictments of piracy group members throw top-tier piracy world into chaos

torrentfreak.com

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Re: US indictments of piracy group members throw top-tier piracy world into chaos

#11

Post by ChrisLomont »

hogFeast wrote: post #9
bserge wrote: post #4

Wow, that's a whole lot of work put into this, and I don't understand why... What do these scene members have to gain? If anything, they're doing the media companies a service, free viral campaigns. Without pirated content, a lot of people would never hear or care about their movies, TV shows, music. If they can't afford it, they won't buy it anyway. Microsoft and Adobe seem to have realized this, and now they're mak…

Yep, the loss to these companies is not the price of the movie. It is not the tens of millions of dollars quoted. If you pirate a movie, the person buying it is rarely someone who would pay full price. I would be surprised if the actual loss was anywhere near the amount it cost to run the investigation. Also, there really isn't a massive amount of sophistication when it comes to distribution. Most of the media busine…

>I would be surprised if the actual loss was anywhere near the amount it cost to run the investigation.

That is true of lots of crimes, but it's not reasonable to then conclude we should not prosecute those crimes. Prosecution does have a deterrent effect. See [1] for a good overview of the field.

[1] https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/pdf/10.1086/449268

Re: US indictments of piracy group members throw top-tier piracy world into chaos

#12

Post by branon »

SAPRKS is a huge loss. All of the groups that were named were quite prolific and released exceptionally high-quality files, but SPARKS especially.

Just goes to show how utterly broken and cross-contaminated the copyright and justice systems are. These groups should be lauded as heroes, not hunted down like criminals.

Re: US indictments of piracy group members throw top-tier piracy world into chaos

#13

Post by bluejekyll »

bserge wrote: post #4

Wow, that's a whole lot of work put into this, and I don't understand why... What do these scene members have to gain? If anything, they're doing the media companies a service, free viral campaigns. Without pirated content, a lot of people would never hear or care about their movies, TV shows, music. If they can't afford it, they won't buy it anyway. Microsoft and Adobe seem to have realized this, and now they're mak…

> Microsoft and Adobe seem to have realized this, and now they're making things accessible to most people, so many ex-pirates used to their products are buying them. Not so for the media companies. Why does Netflix USA/UK/etc have different content? Why do games have region locks and ridiculous DRM?

The thing here seems to be ease of access. Adobe products were at one point more easily gotten in pirated fashion than legitimate. The same was even true for MS products.

Once both companies adopted new distribution models, the pirated software was no longer the easiest option. Additionally, while costly to some, the ease of upgrades and getting patches became easier by using the legitimate channel. This is important for professionals.

The media companies appear to recognize this at this point, but they fear losing control of the distribution model. They don’t want to cede that all to Netflix, but this seems like it might be a losing option for all but the biggest media companies (like Disney). It will be interesting to see how this all plays out, since most people are not going to want to purchase single media channels, and will generally want a single source like Netflix. Until this becomes simpler for consumers, pirating for some is the simplest means of getting access to the content.

Re: US indictments of piracy group members throw top-tier piracy world into chaos

#14

Post by thefounder »

ChrisLomont wrote: post #11
hogFeast wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, the loss to these companies is not the price of the movie. It is not the tens of millions of dollars quoted. If you pirate a movie, the person buying it is rarely someone who would pay full price. I would be surprised if the actual loss was anywhere near the amount it cost to run the investigation. Also, there really isn't a massive amount of sophistication when it comes to distribution. Most of the media busine…

>I would be surprised if the actual loss was anywhere near the amount it cost to run the investigation. That is true of lots of crimes, but it's not reasonable to then conclude we should not prosecute those crimes. Prosecution does have a deterrent effect. See [1] for a good overview of the field. [1] https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/pdf/10.1086/449268

Yeah putting people in jail for pirating movies will definitely make them and the world better.

Re: US indictments of piracy group members throw top-tier piracy world into chaos

#15

Post by non-entity »

thefounder wrote: post #14
ChrisLomont wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I would be surprised if the actual loss was anywhere near the amount it cost to run the investigation. That is true of lots of crimes, but it's not reasonable to then conclude we should not prosecute those crimes. Prosecution does have a deterrent effect. See [1] for a good overview of the field. [1] https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/pdf/10.1086/449268

Yeah putting people in jail for pirating movies will definitely make them and the world better.

You wouldn't steal a car...

Re: US indictments of piracy group members throw top-tier piracy world into chaos

#17

Post by Semaphor »

devwastaken wrote: post #16

Are these scandinavian countries cooperating with the U.S. media mafia on this? How did they get names and locations?

Most certainly. As would probably every other country in Europe. You should know that media piracy is on the same level as terrorism.

Re: US indictments of piracy group members throw top-tier piracy world into chaos

#18

Post by lima »

devwastaken wrote: post #16

Are these scandinavian countries cooperating with the U.S. media mafia on this? How did they get names and locations?

It probably violates the laws of these countries as well, and international cooperation on such cases is common.

Re: US indictments of piracy group members throw top-tier piracy world into chaos

#19

Post by londons_explore »

Nightshaxx wrote: post #3

Thank you torrent freak for putting the legal documents directly linked at the bottom. I'm not sure why some news outlets don't do this.

I would really like all news sources to link their sources at the bottom of the article.

For anonymous sources, make a document detailing the source and publish a hash at least, and promise to reveal the source in 1/5/10/50/100 years.

Re: US indictments of piracy group members throw top-tier piracy world into chaos

#20

Post by Semaphor »

thefounder wrote: post #14
ChrisLomont wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I would be surprised if the actual loss was anywhere near the amount it cost to run the investigation. That is true of lots of crimes, but it's not reasonable to then conclude we should not prosecute those crimes. Prosecution does have a deterrent effect. See [1] for a good overview of the field. [1] https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/pdf/10.1086/449268

Yeah putting people in jail for pirating movies will definitely make them and the world better.

I’d think from what they quoted, that they were speaking for the general case. I’d have made the same argument and I think that the whole MAFIAA is toxic and a stain.
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