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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

#201

Post by CarlsJrMints »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #96
scarface74 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you at all involved with software development? How do you feel about people breaking the GPL?

> Are you at all involved with software development? I've been programming since I was about 13 years old. I am no longer a professional software developer though. I've released some works on my GitHub. My most recent contributions to free software: binary QR decoding for ZBar and a small program for configuring my laptop's backlit keyboard. I also reported a GPG bug and sent in a fix some time ago. > How do you feel…

> binary QR decoding for ZBar

I just saw a video the other day about storing video games in QR codes where the poster submitted a patch for ZBar. Was that you?

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

#202

Post by godelski »

kelnos wrote: post #183
philipov wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Copyright law has a place, but as it currently stands, it doesn't protect independent artists sufficiently, while giving large media firms disproportionate power. This ultimately hurts small content producers a lot more than it helps them, because they have to compete with companies much larger than them that can afford to use their economies of scale to bully independent artists into submission. The fact that it's s…

> "Piracy is a service problem." - Gabe Newell Yup. I'd been a relatively happy HBO Now user for years, but just canceled because they recently inexplicably broke playback on Linux browsers (which had worked properly for years). I had a useless back-and-forth with a customer service rep about how increasing friction like this -- especially with someone who is perfectly willing and able to pay for the service -- just…

I had this problem with Netflix for awhile. I could play it in Linux Firefox if I switched my user agentstring. Contacted them saying "Hey, just unblock the useragent." They were insistent that that's not what they were doing and that they didn't block linux or Firefox. Even got pushed up a tier. A month later they unblocked it, but still, why block it in the first place?

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

#203

Post by anoncake »

ChrisLomont wrote: post #161
anoncake wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 breaki…

That's a silly question. Of course I think there are situations where a taxi driver should be jailed. For example, when they commit terrorism.

Being a taxi driver does not justify immoral acts. That would be absurd. Illegal acts, however, don't need to be justified. The fact homosexuality was once illegal should be proof enough that doing something illegal is not a sufficient condition for deserving punishment.

> 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.

Trademark violations may also be called "piracy", but they have about as much to do with copyright violations as copyright violations have to do with theft.

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

#204

Post by casefields »

tpush wrote: post #196
nfriedly wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Nonsense. If you read your own link red notices are simply issued for wanted criminals likely to flee to another country; what crime was committed is largely irrelevant. This is opposed to yellow notices, which are for missing persons.

Also important to add that red notices themselves are not arrest warrants. People get that confused.

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

#205

Post by matheusmoreira »

CarlsJrMints wrote: post #201
matheusmoreira wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Are you at all involved with software development? I've been programming since I was about 13 years old. I am no longer a professional software developer though. I've released some works on my GitHub. My most recent contributions to free software: binary QR decoding for ZBar and a small program for configuring my laptop's backlit keyboard. I also reported a GPG bug and sent in a fix some time ago. > How do you feel…

> binary QR decoding for ZBar I just saw a video the other day about storing video games in QR codes where the poster submitted a patch for ZBar. Was that you?

Video games in QR codes? That's interesting. Do you have the link to the video? Is it this one?

https://youtu.be/ExwqNreocpg

https://github.com/mchehab/zbar/commit/5bc323849569a629aa0d1...

If so, then the patch he submitted builds upon my work! He fixed a line feed conversion bug that was present in Windows. I use Linux so I did not experience this issue.

I remember seeing that patch get merged but I didn't know about the whole video game context. This is amazing. I wrote the patch because I was trying to print a 4096 bit RSA secret key as a QR code. Awesome to see it getting used for something even more awesome.

Here are the links to my contributions and related pages:

https://github.com/mchehab/zbar/pull/64

https://github.com/mchehab/zbar/issues/55

https://github.com/mchehab/zbar/issues/82

https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=703234

https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=710009

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Paperkey#Restore_the_se...

https://stackoverflow.com/a/60518608/512904

ZBar used to automatically convert binary data to text when decoding 8 bit QR codes, mangling the data in the process. My patch adds the option to disable that, enabling the data to be extracted without corruption.

I also added the one shot feature to the ZBar tools to make it easier to use in automated scripts that expect exactly one output:

https://github.com/mchehab/zbar/pull/60

Looks like we have a real world application for tiny ELFs now!

https://www.muppetlabs.com/~breadbox/software/tiny/teensy.ht...

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

#206

Post by facet1ous »

To be honest, I don't feel bad for these people at all. Film studios, the MPAA, RIAA, etc. are pretty scummy, but the overwhelming majority of pirates are there to get the latest Disney / Marvel movie without having to pay. And these groups are serving that interest.

I'm sure there will be plenty of comments here calling out ethical gray areas or valid cases for torrenting a movie - those no longer for sale, etc. But you're kidding yourself if you think this is the motivation behind most illegal downloads.

At the end of the day, these studios are spending enormous sums of money to produce content and they deserve the copyright and distribution rights that are being egregiously violated. Unless you have a good reason, you should be paying it own/watch it and the government is in the right for enforcing it.

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

#207

Post by pessimizer »

Leaking pre-release movies is just a dangerous thing to do, and even a hypothetical producer/distributor's organization with the weakest stance on piracy one could imagine would go after them. Obtaining copies of unreleased media involves a direct attack to compromise people connected to a company. Even from my anti-copyright position, it's exactly the same as infiltrating a company to find out trade secrets or things that may influence future stock movements.

And there's no doubt it is damaging. So many movies are overbudgeted garbage, and are going to recoup as much as they are going to recoup during their first weekend, before the word gets out that the movie is terrible. All the marketing (which as a rule of thumb costs as much as the film) is focused on that weekend, including getting friendly reviews published, or deciding on a strategy of keeping the film from reviewers altogether. A credible rumor getting around a week before the release that the movie is crap means $10s of millions in losses, and layoffs.

I don't believe in copyright, but this is getting employees of a company (or its contractors, or those who have signed agreements with it in order to get screeners) to steal from the company. This is good when it is internal whistleblowing on crime or corruption, even better when it is government and the only reason for secrecy is to avoid embarrassment or accountability. There's very little detectable public good in exposing an X-Men movie a week before it hits the theaters.

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

#208

Post by [deleted] »

philipov wrote: post #141
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.

Copyright law has a place, but as it currently stands, it doesn't protect independent artists sufficiently, while giving large media firms disproportionate power. This ultimately hurts small content producers a lot more than it helps them, because they have to compete with companies much larger than them that can afford to use their economies of scale to bully independent artists into submission. The fact that it's s…

[deleted]

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

#209

Post by bitwize »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #185
bitwize wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 auth…

By computing freedom, I mean the ability to run whatever software we want on our machines. I didn't mean it in the free software sense. > 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 beli…

Indeed, and without free firmware and operating systems, the hardware is at risk of being locked down. The two concepts are linked.

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

#210

Post by jandrese »

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.

For example, on a recommendation I decided to read Gateway by Frederick Pohl. I like ebooks because it lets me read without keeping the light on and disturbing my wife. First stop was Overdrive, no dice but that's not uncommon. Their selection is pretty slim. Next was Hoopla, but also struck out. So I tried the Kindle Store. I found reviews about people reading it, but no copies for sale. B&Ns store had the same problem. Not available on Google Play. So I went to the wider internet but came up completely dry on legitimate purchase options. WTF. This novel won a Hugo why is it so damn hard to find? Why did the ebook version disappear from all legitimate vendors? Is there some dark secret that they're trying to hide?

Of course if I were willing to torrent it I'd have a perfect copy that I could read anywhere in less than 5 minutes.

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