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Why I get my entertainment via BitTorrent

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Re: Why I get my entertainment via BitTorrent

#31

Post by microtonal »

yason wrote: post #17

And that's why the European counterparts of MAFIAA shouldn't be able to appeal to lost sales in many of these countries because don't have any fucking sales to lose . I've long advocated a fair-use rule that where a copyrighted work in some format isn't readily for sale in some geographical area, then people in that area should have the legal right to produce a copy of it in that format for themselves. The format is…

Indeed. I'd add to that that paying 15 Euro for a BluRay may be perfectly acceptable in the Western world, but a huge budget hit in the rest of the world.

The buy 'physical media via the Internet' argument doesn't fly there either.

Re: Why I get my entertainment via BitTorrent

#32

Post by michael_dorfman »

ugh wrote: post #21
rrrazdan wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole system makes eminent sense. Content that has been permitted by the owner is released in your country, when the owner permits. If you are resort to piracy because of this, you are still stealing.

You are not stealing, you are making illegal copies.

Which is a form of theft (cf http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theft_of_services).

There's no point in rehashing the semantic argument; it's still theft in the eyes of the law, and while renaming it may help assuage your conscience, it doesn't really add much to the argument.

Re: Why I get my entertainment via BitTorrent

#33

Post by ordinary »

_delirium wrote: post #14
kahawe wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And a lot of videos on youtube are blocked as well and you get that "Sorry, not available in your country" link. I always cringe hard and scream inside when I see that since I am trying to view a link online on a website so it should not make ANY difference which country I am coming from. Please keep your pre-historic distribution and business model out of the web!!! Doing something like that should just be banned by…

That was really annoying to me even as an American as well (though I currently live in Denmark). When I embed Youtube videos in things like blog posts, I want to know that all my readers can view them, not just me , but Youtube won't tell me which videos are region-restricted. I ended up having to use a proxy in another country to test for myself, so I could avoid unknowingly embedding US-only videos.

I'm genuinely curious why they would refuse to make that information easily accessible. Thoughts?

Re: Why I get my entertainment via BitTorrent

#34

Post by microtonal »

Nate75Sanders wrote: post #24
asymmetric wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For Netflix, he'd also need a US credit card.

Ah, didn't realize that. Maybe gifting or something would work.

The better alternative is iTunes. You don't need a VPN, since Apple is not blocking based on IP address.

You'll only need a US address (I am at Starbucks pretty much all day) and a US iTunes gift card (easy to get by), and you are settled.

It's a grey area, but MAFIAA should prefer it over piracy ;).

Re: Why I get my entertainment via BitTorrent

#35

Post by ZeroGravitas »

michael_dorfman wrote: post #32
ugh wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are not stealing, you are making illegal copies.

Which is a form of theft (cf http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theft_of_services ). There's no point in rehashing the semantic argument; it's still theft in the eyes of the law, and while renaming it may help assuage your conscience, it doesn't really add much to the argument.

Clearly there is a point to rehashing the argument as long as you're pointing to a wikipedia page on theft of services and claiming that bitorrenting a copy of a TV show is the same thing. Clearly they're not. Hacking a cable box to access channels without paying for them might be, but if you're completely routing around their service, in part because they don't actually provide what you want (e.g. a show in your language), then you're clearly not stealing it.

Re: Why I get my entertainment via BitTorrent

#36

Post by roel_v »

microtonal wrote: post #31
yason wrote: post #17

And that's why the European counterparts of MAFIAA shouldn't be able to appeal to lost sales in many of these countries because don't have any fucking sales to lose . I've long advocated a fair-use rule that where a copyrighted work in some format isn't readily for sale in some geographical area, then people in that area should have the legal right to produce a copy of it in that format for themselves. The format is…

Indeed. I'd add to that that paying 15 Euro for a BluRay may be perfectly acceptable in the Western world, but a huge budget hit in the rest of the world. The buy 'physical media via the Internet' argument doesn't fly there either.

Right, and a 250k Lamborghini is also a huge budget hit for me in the West. Which is why I drive a shitty Citroen.

I'm sick and tired of the entitled whining. Nobody owes you the right to listen to the latest album of whoever is at the top of the charts; in fact, nobody owes you anything but what they agreed on. The proposition is very clear: there are people who create something. They give it to you, on the condition that you pay for it. They may not want to offer it to you because it's too hard to do business in your country. If you don't agree to their terms, or their decision not to offer you their stuff, that still doesn't give you the right to just take whatever it is they're offering from another source.

Feel free to find other people who make things you want and offer it at terms you accept; or petition people to offer things at a cheaper price; or whatever. But taking things from creators against their wishes is not only criminal but also immoral.

(Maybe you still do it, even if it's criminal and immoral. That's a personal decision. But then just acknowledge it for what it is and don't try to weasel yourself out of the moral responsibility).

Re: Why I get my entertainment via BitTorrent

#37

Post by archangel_one »

ajkessler wrote: post #26

I'm going to guess that a lot of the reason these services aren't available in a lot of other countries is not that they don't want your money, but rather that your governments either have ridiculous regulations to navigate, or there are concerns about their ability to protect intellectual property rights.

I highly doubt it is the former. I hear the US have pretty ridiculous regulations if you want to do crazy things like broadcast videos over the internet: http://www.dnalounge.com/backstage/webcasting.html. Somehow these services manage to exist in the US regardless of the ridiculous regulations there, but allofmp3.com got stamped on despite complying with Russian law because they fell afoul of licensing interests in the US.

As for the latter, what exactly is the point in "protecting intellectual property rights" in Estonia if you don't sell anything there in the first place, and as a result everyone there who would like to buy your stuff is getting it off thepiratebay.org? Sounds like the worst of both worlds to me.

Re: Why I get my entertainment via BitTorrent

#38

Post by michael_dorfman »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #35
michael_dorfman wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is a form of theft (cf http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theft_of_services ). There's no point in rehashing the semantic argument; it's still theft in the eyes of the law, and while renaming it may help assuage your conscience, it doesn't really add much to the argument.

Clearly there is a point to rehashing the argument as long as you're pointing to a wikipedia page on theft of services and claiming that bitorrenting a copy of a TV show is the same thing. Clearly they're not. Hacking a cable box to access channels without paying for them might be, but if you're completely routing around their service, in part because they don't actually provide what you want (e.g. a show in your lan…

if you're completely routing around their service, in part because they don't actually provide what you want (e.g. a show in your language), then you're clearly not stealing it.

Huh? That's a completely specious claim.

The owner of the rights to the TV show may not be offering the product in your market--yet. The may choose to do so at some point in the future. Whether they do or not, it has no bearing on the fact that you are consuming their product (and infringing on their rights) without paying.

Your argument is essentially saying that it isn't theft of services if a 15-year-old sneaks into an R-rated movie, because the theater won't sell them a ticket.

Re: Why I get my entertainment via BitTorrent

#39

Post by StudyAnimal »

rrrazdan wrote: post #18
StudyAnimal wrote: post #9

As an English speaker in Germany I was particularly interested in using things like iTunes (which is available here) to access TV. What do you know, it is exclusively German language content. And it is also only released when it airs in Germany rather than when it first airs in the US or the UK. Where is the logic there? If I wanted to get German language TV when it airs on TV, I would just watch TV. The whole system…

The whole system makes eminent sense. Content that has been permitted by the owner is released in your country, when the owner permits. If you are resort to piracy because of this, you are still stealing.

Releasing content per country is simply a carry over from the broadcast days where radio signals or cables are naturally constrained by geography. In the internet era it makes no sense either.

Now I don't pirate, as I am on a WAN (plus I do distance learning through a UK University and have to use their proxy server so iPlayer works for me too) and don't seem to be discriminated against by Hulu, or some other sites (Hulu could be breaking some laws though, by allowing me to see the content, or more likely just breaking a license agreement).

Even Germans I know are encouraged to use proxies (is that really pirating?) because they want their shows when they are released, not months later, and they don't necessarily want them overdubbed into German. The system encourages this, by thinking the internet can be divided up into countries like a broadcast signal.

Re: Why I get my entertainment via BitTorrent

#40

Post by Tyrannosaurs »

gcb wrote: post #13
martey wrote: post #7

I don't think that the services mentioned want to exclude non-Americans. All of them deal with music or video, both of which require country-specific licensing.

slicing up markets artificially is the first sign of collusion, cartels.

In this case the boundaries aren't artificial, they're historic.

The world will move to laws which are unified (or at least close enough) and allow day and date releases and true international markets but it's unrealistic to expect it to happen overnight.

But a resistance to change (some of which will have it's feet in positive intentions, some in negative) is different to collusion.

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