Have you seen the front page of Pirate Bay? • Hacker News Board

Re: Have you seen the front page of Pirate Bay?

#51

Post by Retric » Tue, Feb 24, 2009, 7:08 PM UTC

Xichekolas wrote: post #35

kajecounterhack wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pray tell me, what are these root issues you speak of? I'm mostly in agreement with vaksel. I don't see how the copyright system has anything to do with how the MPAA/RIAA tries to enforce it's copyright upon meaningless things like dancing videos of babies. Which by the way happened http://www.switched.com/2008/08/21/dancing-baby-lawsuit-turn...

Well just to throw it up for consideration, I think granting exclusive rights to a work for "life + 70 years" for an individual and 120 years for a corporation is rather absurd. If the point of copyright was really to encourage artists/writers to produce content, don't you think 25 years would be sufficient time to capitalize on a work? Although I'd even settle for simply "life". The original copyright terms (in 1790…

IMO, I think life + 20 is reasonable. To avoid upsetting company's like Disney a fee per work to preserve valuable copyright seems reasonable. I would say 10k / year + 5% of the gross sales would be reasonable. That way you promote new works, but don't need to fight corporations that want copy write to last until the end of time. It's also a good divider between works that people are actually interested in preserving from works that generate little income.

Re: Have you seen the front page of Pirate Bay?

#52

Post by doki_pen » Tue, Feb 24, 2009, 7:22 PM UTC

ashleyw wrote: post #27

The right to violate copyright is part of our human rights? Now I'm an occasional pirate (mainly TV, since I'm not in the US), but these guys are bonkers; I know pirating is wrong, however these guys seem to think that nobody should have the rights to their own work, and anyone should be allowed to take what they want without giving anything back to the owner. Is it just me, or is that absurd?

Copyright is not a human right. This is why it runs out. It was meant to be a way to encourage people to create a long time ago. Sharing, on the other hand, is a human right. People were willing to sacrafice this right when they had no means of sharing. Many things have changed since then and we need to think of what rights we sacrifice and what we get in return.

Re: Have you seen the front page of Pirate Bay?

#53

Post by bad_user » Tue, Feb 24, 2009, 7:27 PM UTC

jacoblyles wrote: post #42

sangaya wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The part about the kitten isn't directly relevant to the pirate bay, I'll give you that. Though I look at the cartoon as more of an over all social commentary about our current state of affairs; not "this is our situation." All too often the copyright lawyers said DMCA takedowns against just such videos. Heck they've sent takedowns to youtube because a person was singing copy written music ( cough viacom cough ). As…

>"The internet allows for piracy at a scale that far surpasses the scale of sharing tapes among friends, but it's not going away and need to be capitalized on." With services available like the Pirate Bay, an artist might have millions of fans enjoying his music but there will be no way for him to capitalize on it. The only way I can see to monetize bit torrent for artists are very indirect and way out of proportion…

> Examples include using recorded music as an advertisement for big, expensive concerts and begging people to donate after they already have your music for free.

What? But this is exactly how musicians earned their living since the forever.

> Downloaders sometimes say it is because "music isn't as good as it used to be".

That's not true. Many people simply claim that the good stuff isn't being promoted as it should. Instead what you'll see all day on MTV are boy bands.

I do pay for the music I like. Not because I want to reward the artists, but because it's a lot of fun going to the mall, looking at entire shelfs of CDs, meet girls, stuff like that. And when I'm going to a concert I feel the need to re-listen to the songs I just heard.

Re: Have you seen the front page of Pirate Bay?

#54

Post by mandelbr0t » Tue, Feb 24, 2009, 8:22 PM UTC

jackzombie wrote: post #13

jonursenbach wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it's our fault for having an archaic copyright system that people are still trying to enforce instead of fixing the root issues.

I totally agree. I feel that if something is important, than the message should not be only available to people who can afford to read/hear the message, but should be readily available for anyone who is willing to learn. Whenever I read a great book, or hear a great song, I try to promote it as much as possible because I think that it is important that the artist's message is heard and understood by as many people as…

Going at art in this way is backwards from the direction that children need to be taught. Not everyone is a potential scientist, or businessman...What about children who are born to be dancers? Or musicians? With this mind set, the arts will slowly degrade as children are shunned away from them due to an assumed "lack of money" in the business.

Re: Have you seen the front page of Pirate Bay?

#55

Post by moe » Tue, Feb 24, 2009, 9:10 PM UTC

jackzombie wrote: post #49

jacoblyles wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps I picked a bad example, but for most of his art he was, in fact, paid for it. And it is hard for me to imagine that he would have had the resources to create, say, the Sistine Chapel ceiling if he were doing it for free. Of course, nowadays our idea of art is a mashup, so maybe that can mix fine with an anti-market ideology.

Michael-Angelo (one of the greatest artists of all time) is as good an example as any. But I think that he was commissioned to do the Sistine Chapel, he didn't paint the Chapel and then charge admission to it (I think the church took care of that).

If the book is to be believed then he was a sculpter at heart and didn't actually like painting much. He was indeed commissioned to do the chapel but I unfortunately can't remember whether he did it out of free will or whether he was pressed to do it.

Re: Have you seen the front page of Pirate Bay?

#56

Post by Xichekolas » Tue, Feb 24, 2009, 9:12 PM UTC

Retric wrote: post #51

Xichekolas wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well just to throw it up for consideration, I think granting exclusive rights to a work for "life + 70 years" for an individual and 120 years for a corporation is rather absurd. If the point of copyright was really to encourage artists/writers to produce content, don't you think 25 years would be sufficient time to capitalize on a work? Although I'd even settle for simply "life". The original copyright terms (in 1790…

IMO, I think life + 20 is reasonable. To avoid upsetting company's like Disney a fee per work to preserve valuable copyright seems reasonable. I would say 10k / year + 5% of the gross sales would be reasonable. That way you promote new works, but don't need to fight corporations that want copy write to last until the end of time. It's also a good divider between works that people are actually interested in preserving…

I think "life" is sufficient. With that, someone can capitalize on their work for their entire career. Anything past death simply serves to allow offspring to ride the laurels of their parents.

As for corporations, I'd be open to a pay-as-you-go system like you propose, only I'd make the payment grow at some exponential percentage. Say the first year costs $1 and the fee grows by 25% a year. Adjusted for 3% inflation, the fees would be something like:

  Year  Fee/yr
  1     $1
  10    $5.71
  25    $104.17
  50    $13,169
  100   $210 million
  150   $3.36 trillion

This would put a natural limit on corporate copyright, due to their willingness to pay. With this system, Disney would pay $5,659,799 this year for the Mickey Mouse copyright (assuming it started at 10 cents in 1928, which is assuming 3% inflation backwards from now). By 2033 this would be a billion dollars a year... by 2064 a trillion. (Again, at 3% inflation, a trillion dollars in 2064 is like $200 billion today).

Re: Have you seen the front page of Pirate Bay?

#57

Post by anamax » Tue, Feb 24, 2009, 9:12 PM UTC

jimbokun wrote: post #37

sangaya wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The part about the kitten isn't directly relevant to the pirate bay, I'll give you that. Though I look at the cartoon as more of an over all social commentary about our current state of affairs; not "this is our situation." All too often the copyright lawyers said DMCA takedowns against just such videos. Heck they've sent takedowns to youtube because a person was singing copy written music ( cough viacom cough ). As…

"If someone can find it I'd be grateful, but WIRED had a chart in an article sometime about 2004 showing that: average length of song is trending down, number of songs per album trending down, number of new artists trending down, number of albums per artist trending down, cost per album trending up, piracy trending up, and sales trending down. So yeah, it must be solely the fault of the internet and those dirty pirat…

> Uh, what? All those facts seem pretty consistent with artists losing sales due to piracy.

All? I don't see the relationship between piracy and the number of songs on an album or song length.

Music competes competes with other things for attention and "wallet share". For example, online gaming is exploding among the population that is not buying as much music.

Re: Have you seen the front page of Pirate Bay?

#58

Post by jackzombie » Tue, Feb 24, 2009, 9:40 PM UTC

moe wrote: post #55

jackzombie wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Michael-Angelo (one of the greatest artists of all time) is as good an example as any. But I think that he was commissioned to do the Sistine Chapel, he didn't paint the Chapel and then charge admission to it (I think the church took care of that).

If the book is to be believed then he was a sculpter at heart and didn't actually like painting much. He was indeed commissioned to do the chapel but I unfortunately can't remember whether he did it out of free will or whether he was pressed to do it.

Thanks for the book recommendation, thats my favourite way to find new material to read. I've put your recommendation on my ever increasing list of books to read this summer.

Re: Have you seen the front page of Pirate Bay?

#59

Post by tjr » Tue, Feb 24, 2009, 9:45 PM UTC

doki_pen wrote: post #46

jacoblyles wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"The internet allows for piracy at a scale that far surpasses the scale of sharing tapes among friends, but it's not going away and need to be capitalized on." With services available like the Pirate Bay, an artist might have millions of fans enjoying his music but there will be no way for him to capitalize on it. The only way I can see to monetize bit torrent for artists are very indirect and way out of proportion…

Musicians have always made a majority of their money from playing live shows(with some large exceptions, obviously). Do you need this backed up with facts? It's pretty well known. Albums are a great way to advertise your live music. It used to cost a ton of money to make a crappy recording. Now it's practically free to create a good recording. I don't see the point of the recording industry, frankly. I'm not willing…

And, in this home-grown music future, would people pay for recordings of good music? Or is recorded music just worthless?

I produced a recording last year that cost about $20,000, to get best-of-class session players for the sound I was after. While I'd rather people hear the music than not, even if they don't pay for it, I would sure appreciate folks buying a copy.

Re: Have you seen the front page of Pirate Bay?

#60

Post by chacha102 » Wed, Feb 25, 2009, 12:25 AM UTC

sketerpot wrote: post #6

Those guys have style, and always have.

I loved reading their Legal page that showcases how dumb companies are. When will companies get a clue that if they make it inconvenient for customers, people are going to torrent it. (One of the reasons iTunes is widely used, its easy to pay a buck for a song instead of torrenting it)