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

torrentfreak.com

261–270 of 306 posts

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

#261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Pirating GPL-licensed software is explicitly allowed by the GPL. That's kind of the whole point of the GPL, to ensure that that stays true.

That's more like the BSD/MIT licences. GPL goes beyond that, in particular requiring that if you distribute modifications you have made to someone else's GPL'd code then you must also distribute your own source code. It is a different kind of restriction on taking without giving back, and it too relies on copyright to be effective.

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

#262
post #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.

Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy[0] goes into minute detail of the politics of colonising Mars.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_trilogy

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

#263

Vast majority of comments here are hilarious. Piracy is a crime, deal with it. You don't have a right to content made for a profit without paying for it. If you don't agree with the price or the distribution method, don't consume the content, problem solved. The argument that resources should be spent on "real crime" is equally silly. These organizations can and do put immense resources into all other forms of crime.…

> Piracy is a crime, deal with it.

It shouldn't be. Deal with it.

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

#264

Are these scandinavian countries cooperating with the U.S. media mafia on this? How did they get names and locations?

Most certainly. As would probably every other country in Europe. You should know that media piracy is on the same level as terrorism.

Judging from the terms some pirates are sentenced to, I'd say the legal system considers piracy to be much worse.

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

#265
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 Indeed, and we should support those who create the works we enjoy, but consider that the model of buying individual works from a publisher is rooted in the obsolete requirement to create a physical good upon which the work is distributed. Given that we now live in an age where the cost of distribution is effectively $0, perhaps we need to find a new model for compensating creative work…

If the stated goal is that artists only deserve what I want to pay and there is too much graft and payment friction with conglomerates shouldn’t an ethical fan/pirate site always link to the artists Patreon?

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

#266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I wanted non- pirated games I had to put a lot of time into it (pysically transport the CD's) then hunt for bugfixes and workarounds to get it running on my operating system and then later deal with the consequences of embedded malware (DRM) and workarounds that interfered with other software. Today's piracy is way more easier than any method of acquiring such games 15 or 25 years ago.

> When I wanted non-pirated games I had to put a lot of time into it (pysically transport the CD's) Physically transporting the CD's from the game shop (which was an hour errand to me) doesn't compare to downloading for days or hunting that guy whose brother maybe had it on a random CD in his room.

That's fair; different people have different experiences. I have a long history of setting things up so that downloads happen in the background while I'm doing something else, and that rarely took longer than arranging a trip into town anyway. My other complaints still apply though.

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

#267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pirating GPL-licensed software is explicitly allowed by the GPL. That's kind of the whole point of the GPL, to ensure that that stays true.

That's more like the BSD/MIT licences. GPL goes beyond that, in particular requiring that if you distribute modifications you have made to someone else's GPL'd code then you must also distribute your own source code. It is a different kind of restriction on taking without giving back, and it too relies on copyright to be effective.

> GPL goes beyond that, in particular requiring that if you distribute modifications you have made to someone else's GPL'd code then you must also distribute your own source code.

> > That's kind of the whole point of the GPL, to ensure that that stays true [even of future uses of that code].

Distributing a copyrighted work in a mangled, unreadable format to impede and discourage people from exercising their rights (to share or modify it) is basically DRM, and the GPL is right to prohibit that.

(And yes, this would apply to, eg, Photoshop project files, although even more so than video game source code, I don't consider prefered editing forms for primarily artistic works to be a particularly high priority.)

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

#268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

We need to develop alternative business models like this in order to replace copyright. Indeed. So where is the evidence that any of the alternatives anyone has tried so far can reliably come even close (within an order of magnitude, say) to funding the same quality and quantity of creative work as we support today through copyright?

Bandcamp, Patreon works well. No idea if it would work for something like Taylor Swift, but it absolutely works for smaller artists.

Even the most technologically lay person can "pirate" music. Most people I know just listen to music on youtube. Rarely if ever do profits from listening to small artists on youtube actually reach them. So, in effect, the product is easily acquired for free and there is no practical incentive to buy the product.

Yet indie artists still sustain themselves through sites like bandcamp, where devoted users can pay what they think the song/album is worth. I do so in the hope that they will create more works that I enjoy. That's the business model.

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

#269
post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you dont see many cams around due to the enforcement against in theatre camming. even teleciene versions are few in number [a way of camming in your pirate loPHt]. it seems cams were a counting coup for scene credit and its now just looked at as dangerous. actual copying of prerelease screeners is in the mire as well. screeners basically were watermarked and sent out as promotionals so a theatre location could judge…

The Telecine way does not involve a cam. I think you mean Telesync. Some more details here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecine_(copying) .

telesync uses an audio channel, telecine is just video and uses an electronic photomultiplier array as a sensor to convert the light of each frame on acetate to a bitfield frame, its not a camera but done properly it can be high quality. its not a cam its more like scanning each frame of film. the thing is about 20 years ago there was a lot of cams and TKs and TSs, now that streaming is the thing its not very common to see these and you know they are very old compared to the usual transcoding and wrapping nowadays

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

#270
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.

So, by that logic I assume you're in favor of legalizing things like crack cocaine and methamphetamine? After all, if someone is a against such products, they have the choice to not buy them. (Not entirely rhetorical - I can imagine a internally consistent position with those principles, I just don't think you actually hold it.)

I think it is pretty easy to allow consistent viewpoints which hold that crack and copyrights are different things.

But, yeah, I think we might find some common ground on legalizing drugs and treating addictions as medical conditions. banning them hasn’t really had fantastic outcomes.

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