US indictments of piracy group members throw top-tier piracy world into chaos • Hacker News Board

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

#291

Post by dariosalvi78 » Thu, Aug 27, 2020, 4:22 PM UTC

frank2 wrote: post #278

dariosalvi78 wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> 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…

>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. Are most of the movies you pirate in your native language?

Yes. I don't have problems with other languages, but it's for my daughter. I want to watch movies with her in my language so that she gets used to it. Audio is cheap, I don't know why they don't include all languages the movie was translated to.

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

#292

Post by s1artibartfast » Thu, Aug 27, 2020, 4:57 PM UTC

philipov wrote: post #274

s1artibartfast wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You know what sucks? Wanting to buy something, being willing to pay for it and finding out that what I want is not available to me. Because of copyright. This seems to me to be a very strange mindset. Someone else has created content you want, is not offered for sale to you, so you it is in your right to seal it? What makes this OK and where does it end?

> What makes this OK and where does it end? What makes it okay is that intellectual property can be copied infinitely without depriving the original owner of it, and the fact that they refuse to sell it to you means you're not even depriving them of potential income, so there's no way of claiming there was any damage done. It ends when you start talking about actual property that has limited physical supply. Intellec…

Thanks for responding and making your position clear. It seems that your belief that intellectual property should not exist is central to your position. I tend to disagree, but I am sure you have heard the objections.

If you don't believe that intellectual property is legitimate, why isnt it OK to deprive someone of potential income from it in the cases where it is monetized? Does the attempt to monetize it grant some sort of exclusivity?

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

#293

Post by thatcat » Thu, Aug 27, 2020, 5:00 PM UTC

RHSeeger wrote: post #200

matheusmoreira wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 th…

> 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. Property laws exist to stop the strong from just taking what they want from the weak. Effectively, someone can point to something and say "this is mine, you cannot have it", and either society backs them up on this or it does not. The only thing preventing someone from ste…

You can’t point at intellectual property. The original intent of ip laws were to incentivize the spread of ideas, not to create a system of repression for profit.

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

#294

Post by saagarjha » Thu, Aug 27, 2020, 5:02 PM UTC

colejohnson66 wrote: post #289

saagarjha wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not the same. It’s like you shipped your software to people and someone took the copy you sold them and gave to it someone else.

...while keeping a copy for themselves. And then reselling that copy over and over . It’s not the same; It’s profiting off someone else’s work.

But it is not breaking and entering.

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

#295

Post by jessaustin » Thu, Aug 27, 2020, 5:17 PM UTC

onedognight wrote: post #153

jessaustin wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems like a "conspiracy theory".

Which part? Dotcom claimed personal knowledge that Seth Rich gave the hacked emails to Wikileaks? Here he’s saying it [1]. That Assange did the same? Here he is alluding to it[2]. Mueller and the recent Senate Intelligence Committee Report said Seth Rich has nothing to do with it[3]. Or do you think the Seth Rich conspiracy didn’t come from the Russian state? Here’s a story pointing out that it came from the Russian…

As sibling comment indicates, someone like Dotcom will say anything at any time. He's kind of like CIA in that respect. I love the link to the M5M sock saying Trump has no chance in 2016, barely two months before he is widely believed to have won. Why is the name "Seth Rich" mostly brought up by "believe-the-dominant-narrative" cheerleaders? Are you guys feeling guilty about something? Why not just obey his parents' wishes? It's impossible to know for sure, but it's most likely that what you'd prefer to call a "hack" was actually a leak by someone other than Rich. [0]

NPR are run by John Lansing, previously responsible for external propaganda as head of "USAGM". Now he handles internal propaganda. It's funny to read that very detailed report, full of all sorts of picturesque details with no sources about those three hours in the dark. Oh wait, Deborah Sines had to go OTR to CYA her cold case. That was worth picking this scab, in 2019.

Liberal Democrats (as differentiated from actual progressives) don't have imaginations, so they assume any widely-held belief must come from somewhere specific. If it's a belief they don't like, they have to blame a nefarious source. People connected to the Clintons have been dropping like flies for decades. When Epstein died, the most commonly-searched phrase was "Clinton body count", even though Trump had "partied" with him too. (Trump can't hire assassins because they insist on being paid in full.) Nobody had to be told by Russians to blame HRC for the death of someone on her campaign. When coupled with embarrassing public leaks of DNC shenanigans, lots of people independently decided that Rich might have been connected. It's best to ignore Rich and pay attention to who says what, and how that relates to facts actually in evidence. (e.g. DKIM-verified emails.)

[0] https://consortiumnews.com/2017/07/24/intel-vets-challenge-r...

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

#296

Post by mikecoles » Thu, Aug 27, 2020, 5:36 PM UTC

sanbor wrote: post #89

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 It does for some people. But also creates jobs, opportunity and initiative. In my personal case when I was 12 years old in Argentina I was able to access Encarta and Visual Basic 5 thanks to piracy. This let me to get into programming and get better education. If not for piracy, many people would not be able to afford Windows, Photoshop, and other software. In rich c…

You're a thief. I'm not able to access a luxury car. I should go steal one so I can make some money as an Uber Lux contractor, according to you.

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

#297

Post by brigandish » Thu, Aug 27, 2020, 9:15 PM UTC

banannaise wrote: post #288

brigandish wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its market value should be whatever people in the market are willing to pay for it given that the owners are willing to sell it at that price. There are lots of things that have artificial scarcity through the simple act of ownership and this is one of them.

And artificial scarcity is just kind of... fine? We don't mind people intentionally destroying (or locking away) things just to increase the monetary value of other things?

Why would you assign malign intention to it? The facts are that there is scarcity and that where there is scarcity and demand then the monetary value will rise above zero. Just because someone can make something unlimited doesn't mean they should, especially to satisfy your desires - that's the job of you and your hard work or your wallet.

The same goes for the "it won't deprive you of anything" argument. There are plenty of things we all own that if someone borrowed it wouldn't necessarily negatively affect us, but that doesn't mean that we should lend them while we're not using them, especially not for free simply because it would satisfy someone else's desires and pocket if it were free.

There should be better delivery of items given the tech we have (it's better than it was but could be much better); there should be copyright laws that benefit the actual creator more, not just huge corporations (these appear to be getting worse); the price of media is often too high (though again, it's a lot better than it was); none of these are solved by pretending we could or should live in a communist utopia.

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

#298

Post by CarbyAu » Thu, Aug 27, 2020, 9:37 PM UTC

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #281

CarbyAu wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The thing about movies is that they're also part of societal culture - in The West at least." This is an interesting point. Moral correctness aside... The content industries try as hard as possible to make their stuff "socially mandatory" via marketing. If they could make it law to consume their product they would. So, socially: For as long as there is such a social pressure, there will be people who try to fulfill…

Yes, this is why I think a copyright term of ~7 years fits (for mass media). It allows recrual of costs and it allows participation in media that's still culturally relevant. Further, it allows still culturally relevant works to be remixed, worked on, 'improved' by the populous. Currently the long copyright terms are not encouraging innovation; the same works are being resold to the same people over and over.

I agree the current copyrights are stifling innovation, and largely leveraging branding.

Marvel, Star Wars, Star Trek to name a few. These things haven't died out because they have people invested in their brand and storyline.

But they also haven't done anything super cool because they don't want to take the risk they might damage their brand. They try to make"reliable blockbusters".

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

#299

Post by thefounder » Thu, Aug 27, 2020, 10:09 PM UTC

ChrisLomont wrote: post #79

thefounder wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 jai…

I wonder who produced that paper(i.e who sponsored it). How easy and convenient to link pirating to terrorism, don't you think? What's next? pirating and WMD?

>> A group willing to do this illegally is often willing to do other high-profit risky and illegal activity.

A law abiding citizen is just a docile citizen if he abides by wrong/unjust laws. If you were a jew in Nazi Germany a law abiding citizen would have given you in to the Gestapo while a "pirate" would have taken the risk to give you shelder.

A group willing to torrent Game of Thrones is not often willing to do terrorism, you poor little ....! They just want to watch a fucking movie and decide to torrent it because:

a) they don't have the money to buy it

b) they can't buy it because some stupid executives believe some people should watch it 20 years after it's released in x country.

c) they can't watch it on the device they want/when they want because of the excellent DRM laws that you praise and I assume you abide of(i.g their HDMI cable is not version 2.0a it's just 1.4b

d) they are humans

Before hunting "Game of Thrones" pirates can we please do something about all the big guys such GS [0] that steal billions from poor people, some of them unable to pay for that Game of Thrones movie they pirate? I mean something more than a handshake for returning a part of the money when they get caught.

If you want to stop crime you should invest in education and provide opportunities for a decent life.

Either way, jailing your neightbour for pirating movies will not make him a better neightbour. Most likely will turn him/her into a real criminal vengeful on the system/society.

Btw, good job with Aaron[1]! You've done the "right thing", right? So much justice that makes me sick to my stomach. All this to make the few wealthy and privileged wealthier and the lives of the poors more miserable!

When I read your comment your attitude remembered me of a quote from Cloud Atlas[2]: "There is a natural order to this world, and those who try to upend it do not fare well. "

[0] https://www.bbc.com/news/business-53529075

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz

[2] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lxumQYpBzr0

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

#300

Post by matheusmoreira » Fri, Aug 28, 2020, 12:08 AM UTC

s1artibartfast wrote: post #273

matheusmoreira wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Copyright law has a place Yes, in a pre-computer and pre-internet society. It has no place in the 21st century. > allowing large corporations to use legal action to shelter themselves from having to improve their offering hurts both consumers and small businesses You know what sucks? Wanting to buy something, being willing to pay for it and finding out that what I want is not available to me. Because of copyright.…

>You know what sucks? Wanting to buy something, being willing to pay for it and finding out that what I want is not available to me. Because of copyright. This seems to me to be a very strange mindset. Someone else has created content you want, is not offered for sale to you, so you it is in your right to seal it? What makes this OK and where does it end?

Copyright infringement is not stealing. When the content is not being offered to people of a certain demographic, the rightsholders literally cannot even claim that they're causing any damage even if they choose to "pirate". They never had the chance to buy it in the first place. Even worse is how they then blame "piracy" when asked why their goods are not available!