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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

#71

Post by intotheabyss »

xhkkffbf wrote: post #46
toyg wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

mrandish's point is that the amount of effort spent on Dotcom by authorities was disproportionate to the size and importance of the crime, and abusive of the legal system. This might well be true at the same time as the fact that Dotcom was a criminal. I would tend to agree with mrandish, for the simple fact that they don't do that sort of raid even for people who owe the taxman several multiples of the profits Dotco…

Let me say as an artist who has watched his hard work being openly pirated, I disagree. Piracy destroys jobs, opportunity and initiative. If these cretins want to distribute art for free, they can get off their butts and make their own. No one is stopping them. The world needs more voices, but piracy encourages these loafers to do nothing.

Anyone pirating content was never going to pay for it in the first place, so you haven't really lost anything. If anything, having your shit pirated gives you more exposure, so I'd say it's a net positive overall.

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

#72

Post by KONAir »

holidayacct wrote: post #56
curryst wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't say it's out of the realm of possibility. Iran-Contra seems like a much bigger issue in terms of the CIA and finding. I haven't seen any evidence, though, and OP doesn't seem to be forthcoming with any.

There is plenty of evidence, look at the lives of nearly anyone who has been suspected of online piracy. You're going to see a very strange pattern where something catastrophic happens to them and their lives fall apart in a nearly impossible series of events. I personally know dozens of people this has happened to, there was an entire floor of RIT engineering students who were running piracy servers out of their dor…

Anything to read up that?

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

#73

Post by rbanffy »

tzs wrote: post #36
mrandish wrote: post #23

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…

Dotcom's company's whole purpose was to make money facilitating movie piracy, under the guise of being an innocent file storage and sharing company. Their internal processes and procedures were designed to make it appear that they took down pirated material when informed of its existence while actually making sure it was still there and accessible via other links that the copyright owner had not yet discovered. They…

> Dotcom's company's whole purpose was to make money facilitating movie piracy, under the guise of being an innocent file storage and sharing company

Can you claim that against any file storage and sharing company that won't look into the content to detect possible copyright violations?

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

#74

Post by breakfastduck »

xhkkffbf wrote: post #46
toyg wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

mrandish's point is that the amount of effort spent on Dotcom by authorities was disproportionate to the size and importance of the crime, and abusive of the legal system. This might well be true at the same time as the fact that Dotcom was a criminal. I would tend to agree with mrandish, for the simple fact that they don't do that sort of raid even for people who owe the taxman several multiples of the profits Dotco…

Let me say as an artist who has watched his hard work being openly pirated, I disagree. Piracy destroys jobs, opportunity and initiative. If these cretins want to distribute art for free, they can get off their butts and make their own. No one is stopping them. The world needs more voices, but piracy encourages these loafers to do nothing.

I'm not sure this is true on a grand scale.

It's been widely recognized that the majority of piracy is committed by people who would not spend the money on the item anyway, or in cases where it is actually difficult to buy the item.

There's a reason cheap & easy access to media (streaming) has reduced piracy.

People are willing to pay for something if it has value, is offered at a reasonable price and is easy to purchase and own.

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

#75

Post by rolph »

throwaway77384 wrote: post #35

"Bridi, 50, was arrested on Sunday in Cyprus on an INTERPOL Red Notice. Correa, 36, was arrested yesterday in Olathe, Kansas, where he will appear in federal court. Ahmad, 39, was not arrested and is still at large." An INTERPOL Red Notice! You'd think these are terrorists, human traffickers or drug lords. Nope, they share films before the films are supposed to come out. I understand that one should not try to profit…

at least wait until the material is being sold on disk, at that point any number of people can watch a single disk and the theatre has made its payday on screen

when you copy theatre screeners or cam the movie thats poking a stick right in a sleeping bears eye

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

#76

Post by rbanffy »

xhkkffbf wrote: post #46
toyg wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

mrandish's point is that the amount of effort spent on Dotcom by authorities was disproportionate to the size and importance of the crime, and abusive of the legal system. This might well be true at the same time as the fact that Dotcom was a criminal. I would tend to agree with mrandish, for the simple fact that they don't do that sort of raid even for people who owe the taxman several multiples of the profits Dotco…

Let me say as an artist who has watched his hard work being openly pirated, I disagree. Piracy destroys jobs, opportunity and initiative. If these cretins want to distribute art for free, they can get off their butts and make their own. No one is stopping them. The world needs more voices, but piracy encourages these loafers to do nothing.

> Piracy destroys jobs, opportunity and initiative.

It's hard to find an accurate value for lost sales. In the case of this group, they published content that wasn't commercially available.

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

#77

Post by rbanffy »

f00zz wrote: post #70
matheusmoreira wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Piracy destroys jobs, opportunity and initiative. So what? Let them be destroyed. I'd rather sacrifice some jobs than watch gigantic media conglomerates take over the computing industry and destroy our computing freedom with their DRM. There is no other way for them to enforce copyright in the 21st century so that's exactly what they'll try to do. They won't rest until every computer available to the public is lock…

Eh, artists have bills to pay. I try to buy e-books to support my favorite sci-fi authors, but it feels a bit silly that downloading the epub from libgen is literally less hassle than buying it on Google Play.

And this is one of the key selling points of piracy - having the product you want easily available while the other options (physical disk, download) may not be available in your region.

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

#78

Post by 52-6F-62 »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #67
xhkkffbf wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me say as an artist who has watched his hard work being openly pirated, I disagree. Piracy destroys jobs, opportunity and initiative. If these cretins want to distribute art for free, they can get off their butts and make their own. No one is stopping them. The world needs more voices, but piracy encourages these loafers to do nothing.

> Piracy destroys jobs, opportunity and initiative. So what? Let them be destroyed. I'd rather sacrifice some jobs than watch gigantic media conglomerates take over the computing industry and destroy our computing freedom with their DRM. There is no other way for them to enforce copyright in the 21st century so that's exactly what they'll try to do. They won't rest until every computer available to the public is lock…

I think in the pursuit of fairness, it's easy to say that when you only stand to gain and your livelihood is not the one at risk.

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

#79

Post by ChrisLomont »

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.

Your sarcastic comment implies there is no pirate whose imprisonment would add value to society.

Some groups pirate for profit. Is that still ok in your view?

Some groups use the profits to fund terrorist and drug activity. Is that ok?

Some use it along with human smuggling, racketeering, loan-sharking, prostitution, contract killing, and more (see [1]). Are these ok?

So is it possible there exists a pirate whose jail sentence may make the world a better place?

( I know the pop hacker belief is this doesn't happen, but I've yet to meet a hacker that has reviewed the peer reviewed literature on it, so don't retort without checking empirical evidence. I'll post but one paper below).

The reason various mob like groups turn to piracy is that pirated products have value and have very often have high profit margins, so piracy becomes a very profitable business. A group willing to do this illegally is often willing to do other high-profit risky and illegal activity.

[1] https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_briefs/RB9417.html

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

#80

Post by matheusmoreira »

f00zz wrote: post #70
matheusmoreira wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Piracy destroys jobs, opportunity and initiative. So what? Let them be destroyed. I'd rather sacrifice some jobs than watch gigantic media conglomerates take over the computing industry and destroy our computing freedom with their DRM. There is no other way for them to enforce copyright in the 21st century so that's exactly what they'll try to do. They won't rest until every computer available to the public is lock…

Eh, artists have bills to pay. I try to buy e-books to support my favorite sci-fi authors, but it feels a bit silly that downloading the epub from libgen is literally less hassle than buying it on Google Play.

> Eh, artists have bills to pay.

So? That doesn't change anything. The needs of creators cannot override our need for computing freedom. Enabling creators to pay their bills by charging money for data will have serious consequences for society in the long term. If they have bills to pay, they can find something else to do. Ideally, they should get paid for the act of creating rather than the final result.

> it feels a bit silly that downloading the epub from libgen is literally less hassle than buying it on Google Play.

"Piracy" is actually the superior service. It's how everything should work. The copyright industry simply cannot compete and will never be able to compete. The only way they can win is by making the competition illegal.

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