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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.
Ironic that a site called 'Torrentfreak' is more reliable than most news sources.
Mis-using international racketeering laws and cooperation agreements between agencies to pursue online software pirates is not what these systems were created for. Another example is Kim Dotcom. He may indeed be liable for significant damages (I don't know) but the MPAA designed their attack knowing that the prosecution itself would inflict massive punishment (ending the company, incarcerating or confining the execs) before it ever got to court. It's a clear abuse of the global justice system and a waste of its resources.
And all of that is before we even get to the moral and ethical debate about the true damages from purely electronic, not-for-profit media piracy clubs. Studies have shown that frequent pirated media downloaders are among the relevant industry's best, highest-spending customers. And it's also been shown that the majority of users will pay reasonable prices for convenient media access via subscription or purchase (Netflix, Spotify, ITunes, etc). Despite "crying poor", the music industry is now back to making more than it ever did in the era of $18 CDs, with more (and happier) customers.
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…
Only because our system allowed purchase of Fox. And content/distribution conglomeration. A mistake.
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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…
Yeah, you are basically forced to pirate movies if you want it in good streaming quality. Most of the 4K HDR movies on Netflix are just available as 1080p SDR even with a 4K subscription, to get 4K HDR Atmos quality streaming you gotta pirate them. It's so damn dumb.
The people in the article were not ripping streaming services they were ripping unreleased DVDs and Blu-Rays.
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…
That's what I was wondering. Do they monetize the activity with ad revenue? Other than that I cant think of any motivation other than some kind of status seeking.
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Yeah putting people in jail for pirating movies will definitely make them and the world better.
You wouldn't steal a car...
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Yeah, you are basically forced to pirate movies if you want it in good streaming quality. Most of the 4K HDR movies on Netflix are just available as 1080p SDR even with a 4K subscription, to get 4K HDR Atmos quality streaming you gotta pirate them. It's so damn dumb.
Not against pirating in the least bit but you can’t say you have to pirate to get the best 4K it’s just easier and cheaper. Disregarding the not available in my region argument. The Blu-Ray is still available for purchase in most regions. The people in the article were not ripping streaming services they were ripping unreleased DVDs and Blu-Rays.
I'm concerned our justice systems is expending enormous resources investigating and prosecuting these cases as felony crimes on behalf of the MPAA and RIAA lobbies (which have a revolving door of former fed prosecutors as employees/lobbyists). The cases are more properly pursued in civil court where the pirates should be sued for the damages they cause (not agreeing with MPAA's damage assessment, that's for the judge…
Would be interesting if our justice system spent as much effort on white collar crime, insider trading, financial misengineering, price fixing, etc.