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Peter Sunde: 'I went to jail for my cause. What did you do?'

wired.co.uk

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Re: Peter Sunde: 'I went to jail for my cause. What did you do?'

#91

Post by 3984239849823 »

realusername wrote: post #19
k-mcgrady wrote: post #2

He went to jail for creating a website that enabled people to download music and movies without paying for them. Jail is a harsh punishment IMO for that. ACTA/SOPA etc. are all terrible things that we can't allow and we can't allow the internet to become more centralised/controlled by government. But that's not why he went to jail. Enabling illegal downloads of content has little to do with those causes.

And what's the alternative ? The world is not the United States, in most countries of the world, there is simply no legal way to get a movie/tv show on the Internet. I'm not even talking about 3rd world countries here, Netflix (the only service which is good enough to compare to Torrents) just barely arrived in Europe and their list of movies is so poor, it's not even worth talking about it. Torrents are not working…

Technically watching movies form internet is perfectly legal in most countries. Some distributor made movie accessible under some sort of license. It is not user obligation (or duty) to investigate wherever all legalities are sorted between producer and distributor.

Plus some countries made it legal to make copy for personal use... and so on.

Re: Peter Sunde: 'I went to jail for my cause. What did you do?'

#92

Post by Htsthbjig »

This is a complex issue.

While I believe copying without compensation is bad, and not something to feel proud of, I also understand the position of a Chinese or a person from Ghana that have to work 15 times more to be able to access the same item than an American.

The West has used countries like Ghana to dump technological trash that make children get malformations and cancer.

Think on this for a moment: what does 20 dollars means for you, now multiply it x15.

Now if you want to access an important resource for you or your family like a book, what do you do? You pirate it.

Most of the people in this world economic power is closer to the people of Ghana that to the people in California.

Copyright is out of control, it should be like patents 20 years, with the extensions it is becoming eternal and making impossible to reuse any work legally.

Re: Peter Sunde: 'I went to jail for my cause. What did you do?'

#93

Post by k-mcgrady »

AndrewDucker wrote: post #86
k-mcgrady wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> "I oppose the legal definition that copyright == property" How about a definition like - "If I create something, I own it and have the right to profit from it." Why should my right to profit from what I create have a limited term? Why should it be ok for someone to copy it just because they have the ability to?

Why should the person who first arrange a series of words in a particular order have the power to prevent other people from arranging words into the same order, in perpetuity? Copyright prevents the free speech of others. There's some justification for it doing so. But it's not a natural, or absolute, right.

There are exceptions to copyright to minimise the impact on free speech (satire, news for example). I guess people's opinions on this will ultimately come down to their views on free speech and that varies throughout the world.

Re: Peter Sunde: 'I went to jail for my cause. What did you do?'

#94

Post by gambiting »

sangnoir wrote: post #72
icantthinkofone wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Theft is theft, not free speech.

What is your opinion of the people who shared the DeCSS key? If "46DCEAD317FE45D80923EB97E4956410D4CDB2C2" is free speech, so is a magnet URI

Let's say you wrote a book and writing books is your only means of putting food on the table - and then one day you sit next to someone on the train who is reading a scanned copy of your book on their tablet. You ask them about it, and they say "yeah I don't buy books really, I downloaded this off torrents". Sure, the book they have is not "stolen" per se, but would you personally not feel like someone "stole" at least some of your work from you?

I believe that this is a very interesting entry point to a discussion, because the immediate reply to this is - that library books don't generate any extra income to the author. And that is also true. But I feel like even without calling it theft it is not entirely fair.

Re: Peter Sunde: 'I went to jail for my cause. What did you do?'

#95

Post by yitchelle »

kruczek wrote: post #51
k-mcgrady wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Netflix isn't the only option. You can use iTunes (which is available in a lot of countries with a large collection). You can buy the DVD online or in a store. You can buy a DVD online from a different country and have it shipped to you. And if ALL of that fails - what right do you have to that content anyway? You might want to give them your money, they might not want it. It sucks but it's a poor justification for p…

> You might want to give them your money, they might not want it. Actually in such case piracy doesn't need any justification, since it doesn't harm anyone. With only two alternatives - either to download content illegally or to not get it at all, content owners get exactly the same: nothing.

> since it doesn't harm anyone

How did you come this this conclusion?

Re: Peter Sunde: 'I went to jail for my cause. What did you do?'

#96

Post by jfaucett »

Swizec wrote: post #28
jfaucett wrote: post #24

I think the problem is that no one realizes the internet we grew up with and loved is changing fundamentally and we can't be passivist users of the medium anymore. If you are you're basically saying you're okay with a future where governments regulate which services you can use and ISPs control how fast you can download bits based on whether you're using their sponsored services or not. Its bullshit but its what's ha…

It's not a hardware problem, it's a convenience problem. People like that there's somebody else worrying about this. They are willing to do almost anything it takes so they don't have to worry about issues of basic infrastructure. We already do this with water, electricity, and other infrastructure. Anything it takes as long as I can get water/power/trash-taken-out just by flipping a switch and paying a bill. We, as…

I agree with everything you've said and might rephrase my statement into a its a "lacking service" problem. But I still think the hardware and technology has to exists - which as far as I know is currently not the case, so that startups and entrepreneurs can provide what you are talking about to customers.

Anyone, who can choose between state survellianced/traffic prioritized internet and a survelliance free/encrypted/net neutral internet will take the later option all other things being equal.

Re: Peter Sunde: 'I went to jail for my cause. What did you do?'

#97

Post by the8472 »

k-mcgrady wrote: post #84
tomp wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Theft is a concept that originates from our definition of "property". I oppose the legal definition that copyright == property; I agree that a reasonably short copyright term can encourage the creation of art, but what we have now is outrageous and I don't think the trade-off makes sense for the public.

>> "I oppose the legal definition that copyright == property" How about a definition like - "If I create something, I own it and have the right to profit from it." Why should my right to profit from what I create have a limited term? Why should it be ok for someone to copy it just because they have the ability to?

Your "right to profit" only exists in so far that you can try to profit from it, but naturally that might fail if someone takes your idea and implements it cheaper.

Copyright is only a government-granted, temporary monopoly on that idea to incentivize you to live from creating them in the first place and to create more.

Once you have given your idea to someone else, where does your natural right come from to control what they do with it?

Re: Peter Sunde: 'I went to jail for my cause. What did you do?'

#98

Post by stelonix »

hackerboos wrote: post #34
the8472 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The Pirate Bay isn't some noble cause Consider it as a litmus test for free speech. Providing links to pirated content, not even the content itself, can easily be seen as free speech.

I think you're really stretching it there. Freedom of speech is the political right to communicate one's opinions and ideas using one's body and property to anyone who is willing to receive them. Not sharing hashcodes to copyrighted works over the internet.

Somehow you see "links to hashes" as stretching freedom of speech and the ability to arbitrarily ban hashes in strings as the way it's supposed to be?

I believe you and the parent post have fundamentally different views of what's right, just and moral, and any discussion between you and him/her or anyone else with the same views will lead to nothing.

Re: Peter Sunde: 'I went to jail for my cause. What did you do?'

#99

Post by gedrap »

tomp wrote: post #6
k-mcgrady wrote: post #2

He went to jail for creating a website that enabled people to download music and movies without paying for them. Jail is a harsh punishment IMO for that. ACTA/SOPA etc. are all terrible things that we can't allow and we can't allow the internet to become more centralised/controlled by government. But that's not why he went to jail. Enabling illegal downloads of content has little to do with those causes.

And Manning went to jail for revealing government secrets about government crimes. And Snowden cannot return home because he revealed that people are being spied on. It's very easy to say, "he went to jail because what he did was illegal". It's harder to say "he went to jail despite what he did was right". I support TPB's cause. I believe that non-profit sharing of information should be free.

>>> sharing of information

But what TPB mainly distributed, was not information, it was products. And they are not essential products, you can live just fine without TV series or movies. People don't die because they can't play their favourite video game. It's like saying designer clothes should be free.

Information should be shared without profit, yeah, that's what wikipedia is doing fine.

But video games are not information, so are TV shows, movies, etc. They are products which cost money to produce. It doesn't make economical sense to give it away for free hoping to get money from ads or whatever. Mobile games do that, and mostly they are unplayable without purchasing credits, etc. Even then, the quality is often very poor.

You can point to open source, but people producing open source software are minority of all engineers.

What you are saying might be morally 'right' but unfortunately being morally right doesn't pay the rent, bills and food.

Re: Peter Sunde: 'I went to jail for my cause. What did you do?'

#100

Post by icebraining »

Donzo wrote: post #83
tomp wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How are the people who created Facebook compensated? I see no reason why ad-based free distribution couldn't be used for e.g. music and movies. People want convenience more than they want free - nobody uses Diaspora, everybody uses Facebook. Also, there is a lot of money to be earned by selling concerts, cinema performances, memorabilia... (I also wouldn't oppose some reasonably short copyright term, e.g. from a few…

Do you believe that content creators should have some say in how their work is distributed? Should they be able to choose whatever monetization system they feel is most appropriate for their work?

Creators should have complete say in how their work is to be distributed and monetized, within the confines of the law.

That doesn't tell us what the law should be, though.

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