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

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

#111
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…

Do you remember when Dotcom was pushing Russian propaganda? He (along with Assange) said he had evidence that it was Seth Rich and not the GRU that gave the emails to Wikileaks. Of course, he never released that evidence. This is part of a counterintelligence investigation. Why were Dotcom, Assange, Bannon, Manafort, etc carrying water for the GRU? I don’t know, but having an unrelated tax/copyright/fraud charge migh…

This seems like a "conspiracy theory".

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

#112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair question. =) No, it's not. "Copyleft licenses exist within the legal structure of copyrights. Despite what the name implies, copyleft isn't about abolishing copyrights. Rather, copyleft licenses are a subset of copyright licenses, and the goal is to restore freedom to users." https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/copyleft-copyright-key-concept...

You are right, thanks for clarifying. I asked that question as the GP made the case that breaking GPL is equivalent to pirating (breaking any other copyright). But GPL ensures a resource is always shareable and anyone who tries to break it would be limiting shareability of the resource, essentially it would be opposite of piracy.

If you use GPL software in non GPL code, you are still “pirating” the code and using it in a way that the person/group didn’t give you permission to use the license. This is no different than sharing any other copyrighted content. The copyright holder controls how the content is shared.

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

#113
post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd rather sacrifice someone else's jobs for your ideals? What a fair, well considered trade. The freedom you see to seem to be looking for here is freedom from consequences, not actual freedom. As always with the products other people are making, you have the choice to not buy them. That is actual freedom. Be careful making other's choices for them, it is closer to the governmental overreach you are against.

> As always with the products other people are making, you have the choice to not buy them. That's how it works in the material world. Data works differently. Data is infinite. You can have as much as you want. Why would anyone buy copies when making new ones is as easy as copy and paste? Only the original copy must be paid for. So there is in fact a third choice to buying or not buying data: obtain a copy from someo…

> Only the original copy must be paid for.

We are only paying for the original copy, but distributing that payment over many people and over time so it doesn't hurt as much - which single person is going to pay $10K or $1M or $50M for a song or movie?

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

#114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I downvoted you, but let me try to understand your worldview a bit here, tell me if you are in disagreement with these ideas I'm attributing to you based on what I'm reading: 1.) If it can be pirated, it should be pirate-able. Taken to the extreme, does this extend to the realm of people's appearance? With deepfakes I can 'pirate' someone's face and voice to be used for things they would never agree to. 2.) All distr…

> 1.) If it can be pirated, it should be pirate-able.

If it's data, it can be freely copied and processed. There's little anyone can do in order to stop it even if it's not supposed to be happening.

> Taken to the extreme, does this extend to the realm of people's appearance? With deepfakes I can 'pirate' someone's face and voice to be used for things they would never agree to.

I'm not sure about this. I feel that the real damage is the defamation of a real person's character by the fabrication, not the act of modifying an image or video of the person.

2.) All distribution mediums are middle-men between a creator and a consumer. Whoever is making money as a middle-man is in the wrong. The person making the least money as a middle-man is the least-wrong.

I generally agree with this. For example, when people buy music CDs most of the money goes to the record company while relatively little goes to the actual musicians. I think that's screwed up.

I also think it's extremely offensive when "pirate" sites try to monetize their sites in any way.

> Piracy services only make money on selling ads and file-download/storage subscriptions, and not on a per-consumption basis. They make the least profit from the middle-manning, so pirating services are the least wrong middle-men.

None of this is necessary. There is absolutely no need for centralized and costly streaming platforms or hidden "pirate" servers. All of these are solutions to problems created by copyright.

Were it not for copyright, we'd be able to share all kinds of data over peer-to-peer technologies like napster, torrents, IPFS. It's a solved problem. The solutions are so good they'd kill the content distribution industry were they legal.

> 3.) Creators don't need monetary/financial/fame incentives, they should only create for the act of creation-itself.

I have no problem with creators getting paid. I just think they shouldn't be able to get paid by exploiting the copyright system. They could create a Patreon and get paid for the act of creating instead. That'd enable them to release their works into the public domain.

> Consumers will naturally request and "commission" more work from the creator if their work is good.

Yes.

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

#115

"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…

I was curious, so I went and looked up what a Red Notice is:

> What is a Red Notice? [...] Information related to the crime they are wanted for, which can typically be murder, rape, child abuse or armed robbery. [1]

Using it to go after people who share movies for free seems like a gross abuse of the system.

[1]: https://www.interpol.int/en/How-we-work/Notices/Red-Notices

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

#116
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…

>> Why does Netflix USA/UK/etc have different content? Why do games have region locks and ridiculous DRM?

I pay Netflix in the country I live, but I can't find content in my native language, so, guess what? I get pirate movies. Similar reasoning applies to some old films: very hard to find online in any legal way or at a reasonable price.

I'd love to pay a fair price to get access to films, but the industry makes it very hard for me. So thank you pirates, you make my life easier.

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

#117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's not provided on purpose. Go search for Jeffery epstein flight logs. You will see tons of news articles talking about them and a few of the people flown. It's difficult to find the actual log or a list of all people.

They don't publish the full lists because they don't know which reptiles on those lists their bosses don't want to piss off.

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

#118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As always with the products other people are making, you have the choice to not buy them. That's how it works in the material world. Data works differently. Data is infinite. You can have as much as you want. Why would anyone buy copies when making new ones is as easy as copy and paste? Only the original copy must be paid for. So there is in fact a third choice to buying or not buying data: obtain a copy from someo…

> Only the original copy must be paid for. We are only paying for the original copy, but distributing that payment over many people and over time so it doesn't hurt as much - which single person is going to pay $10K or $1M or $50M for a song or movie?

> which single person is going to pay $1M or $50 million for a song or movie?

Why not crowdfund those amounts instead? That way, all creators get paid before the work even starts and the result can be safely released into the public domain.

We need to develop alternative business models like this in order to replace copyright. Cultural works must be treated like an investment.

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

#119
post #91

Is there substantial "no IP whatsoever" constituency somewhere? Is there a movement or party advocating this? Are there jurisdictions with essentially this framework in place? I'm curious to see what it looks like. I have trouble imagining the internet tolerating any other configuration 100 years from now.

Another article at TF:

https://torrentfreak.com/pirate-party-mep-elected-vice-presi...

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

#120
post #91

Is there substantial "no IP whatsoever" constituency somewhere? Is there a movement or party advocating this? Are there jurisdictions with essentially this framework in place? I'm curious to see what it looks like. I have trouble imagining the internet tolerating any other configuration 100 years from now.

If we ever colonize Mars, it might become one for a little stretch of time. Just like America was at the beginning, China not long ago, etc.
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