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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

#161

Post by ChrisLomont »

anoncake wrote: post #99
ChrisLomont wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 jai…

> Some groups use the profits to fund terrorist and drug activity. Is that ok? Some people use the profits from taxi companies to fund terrorism. Is that ok?

Nope.

But it's intellectually dishonest to equate a legal activity tied to breaking the law with illegal activity tied to breaking the law, especially when the illegal activity helps break further laws.

People don't go into taxis to make profits by breaking the law. If they did break the law while securing taxi profits, then that becomes prosecutable, and should be pursued.

People do pirate material because by breaking that law, they can obtain profits not possible without breaking the law.

They also screw over consumers by selling such products on Amazon and elsewhere, and many times when a consumer needs help, or a return, or thinks they have a warranty, the fake goods screw them over. Note nearly every product cloned with a software component is a copyright violation, most anything with a logo is a trademark violation, etc.

The OP implied that there is no benefit to ever jailing a pirate.

So instead of inaccurate metaphors, do you think there is ever a case to be made for jailing a pirate?

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

#162

Post by Nasrudith »

antihero wrote: post #53
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…

It makes perfect sense when you realise that law enforcement's historical and primary goal, over and above protection of us, is the protection of capital.

That gets it wrong. Capital came far later as a goal over the literal strongmen involved with the monopoly of force. The reason they were treasured was because the capital specialists made more money by being taxed than flat out taking everything up front. Monopoly on force is brutally darwinian in that the emergent result of what it cares about it self-perpetuation. The real first layer is the enforcers to be kept loyal. In a more complex system there are specialties and layers of dependency like needing to appease the manufacturers and maintainers of weapons to keep the enforcers using tanks and planes instead of sharpened sticks.

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

#163

Post by johnchristopher »

airstrike wrote: post #123
johnchristopher wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, no. When I was a teen and wanted pirated games I had to put a lot of time into it (downloading/getting the CD's) then hunt for working cracks and then later deal with the consequences of installing cracks. My time was free but as an adult now I could never justify spending evenings to make pirated games work. Today's piracy is way more easier than piracy 15 or 25 years ago. The key selling point of piracy is th…

> but as an adult now I could never justify spending evenings to make pirated games work. Side note: I agree entirely but I do miss those evenings! Even legit games were such a chore to install that when they finally worked, you were swept by a wave of pure joy. Looking at you, Little Big Adventure 2! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Big_Adventure_2

That's one thing that was bugging me. I used to wonder why I missed playing video games and at the same time very few games were entertaining to me anymore. I think it's because what I am missing is the evening of care-free tinkering, of having good time with friends, of having a wide horizon ; I am missing that mood and ambiance, not the gaming part, I miss how I was looking at the world.

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

#164

Post by f154hfds »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #80
f00zz wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

In your view, how do digital content creators such as artists make a living? I am honestly curious. Are you saying that the entire gaming industry should be open source and sustain itself purely on peoples' charity?

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

#165

Post by johnchristopher »

Karunamon wrote: post #139
johnchristopher wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, no. When I was a teen and wanted pirated games I had to put a lot of time into it (downloading/getting the CD's) then hunt for working cracks and then later deal with the consequences of installing cracks. My time was free but as an adult now I could never justify spending evenings to make pirated games work. Today's piracy is way more easier than piracy 15 or 25 years ago. The key selling point of piracy is th…

I've probably spent more total time in the rigamarole surrounding legitimately purchased games (DRM incompatibilities and performance issues, activation servers being down, make and account and log in and click through our EULA, etc) than I have with issues surrounding cracked games. Cracking games from a user standpoint is usually a process of downloading a torrent, waiting a bit, then replacing a handful of files i…

I remember how shock I was that my legal copy of 98 was as buggy as my cracked one :D.

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

#166

Post by Nasrudith »

rolph wrote: post #146
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What percentage of people who would watch a 'cam', but not watch the movie legitimately later, would have paid? If I had to guess I'd go What percent could, even if they wanted to pay, watch the movie legitimately in their country? Does it matter if you watch a cam if you're not even able to pay for the movie? The thing about movies is that they're also part of societal culture - in The West at least. In my personal…

camming is a concretely tangible theft. when a movie is being sold on disk after theatre showings close out, there is already a return for investments and disk sales are just gravy. disks are played many times lent out to family and friends watched in recap after the theatre and donated to thrift shops. a large group of people can "steal" by watching for free multiple times, but millions have been made in theatre wag…

They paid for the ticket didn't they? And even if it was a projection room cam they could have offered a seat there and yet they didn't so no material loss to claim. You can't claim that my tree falling on your grass did damage to your hypothetical Porsche and claim losses of it.

They still got their share of the fixed pie. Theft isn't infringement.

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

#167

Post by scollet »

dane-pgp wrote: post #87
holidayacct wrote: post #44

The justice system is complete crap, the US government doesn't have the ability to deal with piracy because it is international. This doesn't work the way people think it does, there is literally no justice involved. The CIA is used to using movies and television as a pathway for manipulating the American population. There is a very long history of this happening and the people they use (yes use) to do this aren't ma…

> it is being done in broad daylight everyday all over the country because it only has meaning to the person being targeted. I'm guessing you also believe that "gang stalking" is a thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalking#False_claims_of_stalk...

Didn't eBay execs gang stalk a journalist? I'm not saying your point is invalid and I'm not validating gp, but I'm sure evidential gang stalking can exist outside of delusion.

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

#168

Post by uabstraction »

jMyles wrote: 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.

There was a wave of Pirate Parties about a decade ago, but they never gained even as much traction as the Greens. Onerous enforcement of intellectual property is just one of the many issues we face with the Internet today, next to the colossal monopolization of social media platforms, internet service providers, and browser vendors. Not to mention severe invasions of privacy driven primarily by global imperialism (alphabet soup intelligence agencies) and surveillance capitalism (Facebook, Google, Twitter, Reddit et. all).

The Internet is undergoing the same process of enclosure and capital accumulation as the rest of the world we live in. This is the fate it is consigned to, as long as people are unwilling to question the economic assumptions we take for granted. All of these decisions which negatively impact the Internet are made for one of two reasons: Accumulating capital, or protecting capital that has already been accumulated. Therefore, a broad anti-capitalist front is the only way something in opposition to this will have any teeth.

There is simply no way for a political movement focused on a specific niche issue like like net neutrality or free exchange of information to stand on its own, or make the state face any consequences for malfeasance. For the same reason we don't have a significant political party of librarians, even though it would really kick ass if we did.

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

#169

Post by bitwize »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #80
f00zz wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Computing freedom is a hippie dream. The castle in the air of "open source" will come crashing down once courts and scholars realize that open source licenses are bare licenses under copyright law. As such, they a) are difficult to enforce; b) can be revoked at any time by the licensor, presenting considerable risk to anyone who uses software under such a license without having paid monetary consideration to the authors of such software.

Special circumstances applied in the Jacobsen v. Katzer and Artifex v. Hancom cases. The rulings in those cases do not generalize to open source licenses in general.

Even without that unfortunate legal wrinkle, the response by the industry has been to close down hardware platforms and transform their existing software into SaaS. In a few years, for instance, Macs will run only macOS -- enforced by hardware and the DMCA. I have no reason to believe PCs won't follow suit shortly thereafter.

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

#170

Post by themacguffinman »

Nasrudith wrote: post #156
bitwize wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you know anybody who works in the creative fields? I do. Nearly all of them -- aside from the programmers -- favor strong copyright and even DRM. And to them, large piracy networks are as much organized theft, and do as much harm, as the Mafia robbing banks. The MPAA and RIAA are not evil to them, either, at least not in the sinister cyberpunk megacorp sense favored by hackers. Creative people see them as the mean…

Their collective delusions don't make them any less wrong. To call copying theft implies a spooky action at a distance to drain money from their account like a voodoo doll. Under that twisted logic if I have a sealed room and keep making copies of Harry Potter I can bankrupt JK Rowling! Hell it would be useful to test if it I can use it for superluminal communication. Magic snark aside they are literally in denial of…

You're twisting the argument. Pirates aren't copying content in a sealed room, they are distributing it to people for free. If you kept making copies of Harry Potter and gave it to anyone for free, it's not delusional to argue that JK Rowling would be far poorer than she is now. Harry Potter is an exceptionally popular product so the reduced revenue may still be enough for JK Rowling, but less popular and more niche content may not work out well enough for their content creators.
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