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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?'

#251

Post by 0x5f3759df-i »

patzerhacker wrote: post #223
scrollaway wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You sure talk a lot about how he was putting malware into people's computer through ads, when he himself said he's glad TPB is gone mostly because of how horrible its ads were[1]. You have a point (to the extent that it can be a point - it's just not really worth talking about anymore): downloading entertainment is not a human right. You make a very poor case of arguing that point. But I don't think anyone really arg…

> You are a fool if you're angry about piracy on your pet project. I'll tell my employees that as our company folds from lack of revenue. I'll tell my wife that as we apply for food stamps. I'll tell the that to the next person interviewing me for a job because people didn't want to pay for the value I provided.

Because Hollywood is just barely scraping by from the lack of revenue....

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

#252

Post by Donzo »

the8472 wrote: post #241
Donzo wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because no one was strong armed for a loaf of bread does not mean that a theft did not occur. No one may have been deprived of physical property, but we do not live an entirely physical world. Piracy deprives content creators of opportunity: the opportunity to distribute their products in the way that they see fit. Perhaps this means that they give all of their work away for free through the channels of their ch…

Well, sure, you can sell it or give it away for free, that's up to you. But once you give it to someone you give someone a blob of information. Which is identical to the one you still have. That chunk of information is not intrinsically tied to you anymore. So you can easily control initial distribution. But to restrict further distribution you have to restrict actions of others. You have to limit their freedoms to d…

Hmm...

You place me in a tricky position, as I am generally against the limitation of freedom.

Yet, it seems that some basic limitation on freedom is an essential part of society.

In general, the most agreeable limitations involve restricting a person's freedom to harm others.

Have content producers been harmed by piracy? I would argue that they have.

Since piracy harms content producers, the rights of others to infringe on their content should be limited.

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

#253

Post by mrSugar »

mbillie1 wrote: post #231
karmacondon wrote: post #43

Many don't agree with the principles of TPB, but Sunde was willing to take risks for what he believed in. He deserves a lot of respect for that no matter what people think about the morality of what he helped to create. Most people go their whole lives without caring strongly about any issue at all, and almost all of those that do care are willing to sacrifice exactly nothing. I'd like to think that I would be willin…

> Sunde was willing to take risks for what he believed in. He deserves a lot of respect for that no matter what people think about the morality of what he helped to create I find this argument completely fallacious. Does it change the value of a thing if someone takes a risk for it? Ought we respect the causes of suicide bombers, since they gave their lives for them?

Try re-reading the post you replied to. The author does not want you to respect the cause for which he has taken the risk, but the fact that he felt strongly enough about it to put his life on the line for it. And yes, even suicide bombers deserve a bit of respect if they do their thing out of conviction, and not because they have been brainwashed about 72 virgins in next life.

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

#254

Post by wtetzner »

Donzo wrote: post #221
the8472 wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It's theft. Stop repeating that. It isn't. Even the courts agree on this one. And TPB did not engage in it either way.

Just because no one was strong armed for a loaf of bread does not mean that a theft did not occur. No one may have been deprived of physical property, but we do not live an entirely physical world. Piracy deprives content creators of opportunity: the opportunity to distribute their products in the way that they see fit. Perhaps this means that they give all of their work away for free through the channels of their ch…

The point is that copyright infringement isn't the same as theft. Just because they're both illegal doesn't mean they are the same thing.

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

#255

Post by mc32 »

humanrebar wrote: post #210
egocodedinsol wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

fwiw, he might concede that illegal downloads are theft, but assert that digital property is also theft. In that case, I could see TPB defending those goals, or at least attacking their opposition. (not an endorsement just pointing it out, blah blah blah)

I don't anyone should concede that copying data is theft. Since theft implies an unlawful transfer of ownership. Copying data and deleting the original is theft.

I don't know about that. When Target or Walmart or whatever credit card processor experiences a data breach and customer data is exposed it's considered data theft and treated as such as well. While we can't compare digital goods with physical goods in a 1:1 manner because they have different properties, so far, aspects as it concerns the law treat them similarly.

Aspects of this may or may not change over time, however, in the meantime they are what they are. It's like physics. Till the consensus changes, current accepted theory applies, even if there are gaps.

In the end, "theft" is just reapplying old nomenclature to new phenomena. We could call it something else, give the behavior a new name and then have society turn around and apply the same laws, would that make things any better?

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

#256

Post by pdabbadabba »

humanrebar wrote: post #226
pdabbadabba wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Making money from producing entertainment isn't a human right. No, but at least in the U.S., and most of the rest of the world, it is a legal right. Does that count for nothing just because we're on the internet?

Human rights exist regardless of whether a particular legal framework honors them. Everyone has the right to speech, including the right to the private transmission of data, the right to assemble to pursue common interests, etc. Those rights have limitations when it comes to harming people, but people aren't being harmed by any particular copy of Duck Dynasty S06E03. The thing being harmed here is a business model. I…

Do business models not pay people's salaries? Is this not an interest worth protecting? I think you're view is in trouble (or at least, extremely radical) if it depends on the premise that no law that protects only financial interests can result in imprisonment.

I think this is actually the one (perhaps only) point where copyright infringement is actually analogous to theft. Why do we prohibit shoplifting? Because shoplifting prevents a business owner from profiting off of the thing he had intended to sell, in addition to depriving him of his investment in the inventory (of course, no business owner cares much about his inventory for its own sake, he cares about it because it represents potential profit).

As many will be eager to point out, intellectual property is not finite. But this only means that you're depriving the IP owner of less profit than you would be if it were a tangible good, not that it deprives him of none. You might just as well say, oh well the thief would never have bought that DVD anyway, and the business owner has millions of them (and insurance!), so it's not really something the law should worry about... Also see mc32's sibling comment with some other excellent examples.

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

#257

Post by tomtoise »

mike_hearn wrote: post #224
tomp wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your argument is implicitly based on an assumption that piracy/sharing reduces income/profits. I'm not so sure this assumption is correct; at least it hasn't been demonstrated as true (AFAIK). A strong argument speaking against it is the fact that there are many examples that say the contrary; Avatar is one of the most pirated movies and also one of the most successful ones, and earned a huge amount of money just on…

Your argument is implicitly based on an assumption that piracy/sharing reduces income/profits. I'm not so sure this assumption is correct; at least it hasn't been demonstrated as true (AFAIK). It's absolutely been demonstrated to be true, many many times. Do you think game studios, console makers, movie studios etc put money into DRM because none of them understand their own business? There are lots of people who spo…

>The general figure I see for video game piracy on the PC platform is around 90-95% of players are not paying for it, yet, often they are still consuming resources on e.g. multiplayer servers.

Hang on a sec. If you pirate games, you can't get online on the official servers, that's the whole downside to pirating and the reason so many games now require always-online. Once the game is released through a torrent site, that's it, the developer has no more hand in it. The whole point of cracking a game is to cut the umbilical cord of DRM and online-based play.

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

#259

Post by 0x5f3759df-i »

mike_hearn wrote: post #224
tomp wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your argument is implicitly based on an assumption that piracy/sharing reduces income/profits. I'm not so sure this assumption is correct; at least it hasn't been demonstrated as true (AFAIK). A strong argument speaking against it is the fact that there are many examples that say the contrary; Avatar is one of the most pirated movies and also one of the most successful ones, and earned a huge amount of money just on…

Your argument is implicitly based on an assumption that piracy/sharing reduces income/profits. I'm not so sure this assumption is correct; at least it hasn't been demonstrated as true (AFAIK). It's absolutely been demonstrated to be true, many many times. Do you think game studios, console makers, movie studios etc put money into DRM because none of them understand their own business? There are lots of people who spo…

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/114391-Valves-Gabe...

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

#260

Post by giarc »

newaccountfool wrote: post #225
giarc wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It tilted people's brains into knowing that tomorrow, their favorite TV show must be downloaded somewhere else. Not sure how I feel about this. Regardless of how things have played out, I don't think people should expect free TV shows especially in the day and age of PVR/DVR/TIVO etc. I still think creators should be credited/paid for their work. EDIT - To expand, I think you can disagree with the cable companies an…

I think your implying that every download is a lost sale, it doesn't work like that.

I agree that some people wouldn't watch the show if they couldn't download it, but why do they have that right to get it for free? I understand that torrent technology is great, but TPB founder is using downloading TV shows as an example of how things will change.
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