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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?'

#141

Post by webXL »

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.

The power to prevent others from copying the arrangement is an incentive to arrange in the first place. But it should be limited. Property rights allow me to restrict your speech when your literally on my government sanctioned land. I don't see much difference when it comes to IP.

Edit: copyright should be more limited than physical property rights, so I'm in agreement. But neither can be absolute when the government only has a piece of paper to abide by that prevents them from being revoked.

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

#142

Post by tomp »

waterlesscloud wrote: post #125
icebraining wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're still confusing "freedom to share" with "obligation to share". Being for the free sharing of information and choosing to not publish some stuff is completely coherent. Nobody says copyright holders should be forced to publish their works.

So you support spreading the hacked nude photos of celebs? Once someone obtains a copy they should be free to share? And "Nobody says copyright holders should be forced to publish their works." should be a warning flag to you. Once you get to a position that twisty, you should think to yourself there's probably something wrong with it.

> And "Nobody says copyright holders should be forced to publish their works." should be a warning flag to you. Once you get to a position that twisty, you should think to yourself there's probably something wrong with it.

Strange, because that's exactly how the patent/business secrets laws work; a company is free to decide what they want to do with their new invention; they can keep it secret and risk someone else reinventing it, or they can publish it (submit a patent) and receive a temporary monopoly on that technology.

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

#143

Post by pestaa »

clarry wrote: post #138
gambiting wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 lea…

> would you personally not feel like someone "stole" at least some of your work from you? Absolutely not. If anything, I would be flattered to meet somebody actually reading my book, and I'd probably be eager to have a chat with him, maybe ask for opinions and perhaps tell him about other books I'm working on, if it looks like he could be interested. That'd be an event that could make me very happy. The reality is th…

Meanwhile, your family could be starving because you could sell exactly zero copies...

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

#144

Post by rjaco31 »

k-mcgrady wrote: post #93
AndrewDucker wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

DMCA is pretty sloppy when it comes to separate copyright infringement from satire..

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

#145

Post by pparkkin »

gedrap wrote: post #99
tomp wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 in…

Fair enough. I can see how someone would not think they are information.

In this case we can use the word "culture" instead of "information", and the original point still stands. And I am sure we can all agree that TV and movies are culture.

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

#146

Post by the8472 »

icebraining wrote: post #100
Donzo wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"Their work" presumes ownership. Information does not have inherent ownership, unlike physical objects which can only be controlled one / a few people at a time.

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

#147

Post by maccard »

tormeh wrote: post #20
throwawayaway wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

personally, the use for bittorrent is long tail, niche software that has become obsolete and is no longer viable commercially and therefore not available. the idea of the few people that have it being able to share it with the many that may eventually need or want it, is something that the centralised "cloud" based services cannot compete with. so you may think there's no virtue, but there is in spades. you are blind…

That's the theory. Turns out, though, that anything that's not really popular is hard to get hold of on TPB. It's usually easier to get hold of obscure content commercially.

> It's usually easier to get hold of obscure content commercially.

Unfortunately, your definition of osbscure depends on where in the world you're located. iTunes don't provide the same catalogue in the US and the UK or Ireland, Netflix don't provide the same catalogue. BBC documentaries are freely available in the UK online, but extremely difficult to get in Ireland without buying a physical copy, and up until last year, I didn't have a DVD or Blu ray player in my apartment

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

#148

Post by pothibo »

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.

What a narrow view you have. Torrent makes it accessible to see things you have paid for but didn't have time/forgot to watch (TV series). They also make it accessible to get stuff you couldn't (Not because it's available in USA that it is in every country).

That's crazy that someone went to jail for running TPB when the MPAA and RIAA are big monopolies that control how much we should spend on stuff. It's not a free market. Get your head out of the sand.

The only reason the iTunes model has come to exist is because of torrents and illegal sharing.

And people (myself included) buy a lot of stuff from the iTunes Store now.

Netflix exists because of illegal sharing. And even though Netflix is pretty awesome, look at what all the established companies are doing to try to screw with Netflix.

Such a narrow view.

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

#149

Post by fnordfnordfnord »

gambiting wrote: post #94
sangnoir wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 lea…

I think very few people feel that depriving some person of the fruits of his or her labor in the way that you describe is a moral or ethical thing to do. But, it is by definition not theft. Perhaps some new law, or some changes to law are needed to fairly deal with the problem. Treating it as theft is an abuse of the law.

I think it is interesting that you use a hypothetical author as an example since even before technology showed up and wrecked the party, copyright law arguably failed (or at least was never very good) at its supposed purpose.

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

#150

Post by [deleted] »

cinquemb wrote: post #126
stelonix wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

When people have fundamentally different views of what's right, just and moral, and when outcomes of creating things like tpb could land one in prison, what does one do if they want to live in an environment where creating things like tpb wont land them in prison?

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