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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?'

#171

Post by Benji_San »

k-mcgrady wrote: post #44
realusername wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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…

I don't really think a justification is needed. Yes it's illegal but so is driving faster than the speed limit, yet most people does it because they feel entitled. You can ticket people for breaking the rules but it isn't very effective as people value arriving at a red light 3 seconds faster higher than the risk of getting caught.

Get real no one who has ever pirated anything is going to buy a DVD over pirating simply because buying the DVD is a really shitty service compared to the piratebay alternative.

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

#172

Post by smoyer »

“The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of the mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one.” - Wilhelm Stekel

I think we need Peter Sundes in this world to keep the rest of us vigilant ... I'm not sure going to jail for a cause really helps much either. While I admire him for sticking to his principles, I'd rather he was out in the world doing his work.

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

#173

Post by aragot »

ultramancool wrote: post #127
hackerboos wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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. Why do people confuse the concept of free speech with some specific political or legal idea? There are many other ways in which a reduction of free speech is extremely harmful. Look at the great firewall of China blocking democratic content, look at reviews being c…

Consequently, it should be understood that bytes can't be stopped from being copied. I wish it wasn't just a point of view.

What we're seeing with copyright is governments trying to prevent bits from being copied, which is a pharaonic task and a waste of resources.

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

#174

Post by edgarallenbro »

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #156

I'm sorry, but downloading entertainment is not a human right. He didn't exactly feed starving people by breaking the law. He put up a torrent aggregator to, mostly, Hollywood movies and shoved aggressive and high-revenue porn and malware ads into every nook and cranny of that site. HN and those passionate about internet freedoms deserve better heroes than guys like Sunde, Dotcom, and Ulbricht. These guys very much e…

> I'm sorry, but downloading entertain is not a human right.

Yes, it is. You know why? Because innovation is essential to humanity. Like the apes in 2001: A Space Odyssey, we are the ones who use tools to overcome. It's how we survive. This is true whether its a better way to store clean water in Africa or a better way to acquire entertainment to keep us from killing ourselves in America.

Before TPB, media monopolies were more than willing to take their sweet time moving away from overpriced physical media into digital distribution. With TPB around, all the sudden media distributors had to compete with free digital distribution, which paled physical media in comparison. Rising to the challenge, we got Netflix, Steam, and Spotify. Competing with them now we have things like Hulu, GOG, and Google Play.

TL;DR Fuck off with your lawful-good nonsense

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

#175

Post by sp332 »

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?

Thomas Jefferson disagreed with you.

He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper [candle] at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature.... Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property.

http://www.temple.edu/lawschool/dpost/mcphersonletter.html

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

#176

Post by marknutter »

danielalmeida wrote: post #101
marknutter wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, to be pedantic, TPB never actually shares content with anybody. It just links people to other people who are sharing content. And it isn't always copyrighted content. The point isn't to help people steal stuff, it's to help people share information, regardless of whatever arbitrary laws exist about sharing information. That's a worthy cause, IMO.

I'm not going into the "sharing links vs sharing content" debate. > And it isn't always copyrighted content. True, it isn't ALWAYS, but I guess it's mostly copyrighted. > The point isn't to help people steal stuff, it's to help people share information, regardless of whatever arbitrary laws exist about sharing information. That's a worthy cause, IMO. I do think we should be able to share information freely, not neces…

> I'm not going into the "sharing links vs sharing content" debate.

That's fine, because I see no problem with sharing content either. I'd rather debate on those terms.

If you don't want information shared, don't release it to the public. If your livelihood is based on placing artificial constraints on the work of artists for profit, then maybe you should consider a career change. The middle men are becoming increasingly useless as we become more connected. Artists can raise money on their own and distribute their art for free, and they can still earn a living charging for actual physical things like merchandise and seating at venues.

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

#177

Post by jkaunisv1 »

izolate wrote: post #131
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?

"If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe." You are not born in isolation from the rest of us. Everything you create originated from an idea that you learned from somebody else. You have no right of ownership over something that is not entirely yours.

So if you make an apple pie, you don't mind that I come and steal it from your windowsill? You don't own it, after all.

What if you spend a year making a beautiful cabinet? You didn't invent the tree, or the saw, so it's okay if I come by and cart the cabinet over to my house, right?

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

#178

Post by danielalmeida »

NotOscarWilde wrote: post #155
pothibo wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>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. And let us not forget that Netflix is still unavailable in many countries (pick any Eastern European Country, EU countries included). And where it is available, many titles from the US Netflix are not available. Torrents (and illegal downloads in gen…

> Torrents (and illegal downloads in general) are a strong incentive for copyright owners to improve their game. Otherwise it'd be a stagnant monopoly.

I'm not sure breaking the law (whether you agree with it or not) is the proper way to fight monopoly (?) or to push companies to "improve their game".

Btw, there is no monopoly in the music or gaming industry (not that I know of, at least). There are laws for monopoly issues.

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

#179

Post by LordKano »

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.

Sometimes I need to remind people that Dr. King and Gandhi also went to jail because they did things that were illegal.

People should ask themselves whether or not the law is right.

I think that the question here is a very complicated one. One can support copyright status quo but still have a problem with the heavy handed tactics being used against TPB.

If we follow their logic to it's inevitable conclusion, we could find ourselves in a place where "Unauthorized reviews" could be considered copyright infringement.

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

#180

Post by agumonkey »

rjaco31 wrote: post #169
agumonkey wrote: post #33

The man choosed to do what he did, but when they were heavily fined I already felt an obligation to pay a part of it, as I was a regular user before that. About the future of the web and other larger social questions, I find it hard to believe.. when it's mostly movies and tv shows (even though there was some hard to find vintage content on it sometimes). Lastly, as for anything, when technology N is unavailable, we…

>We won't stream the latest show from the other side of the planet right from peers in real time but well. Ain't that what Popcorn Time is doing?

But Popcorn relies on public trackers to do, or is it fully distributed ?
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