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UK national extradited to US for film/TV piracy

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Re: UK national extradited to US for film/TV piracy

#181

Post by pydry »

prima-facie wrote: post #13

The extradition treaty is a disgrace for the UK, completely imbalanced in favour of the US. - https://blog.6kbw.com/posts/this-lopsided-treaty-is-the-us-u... - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UK%E2%80%93US_extradition_trea...

summed up by the US's refusal to extradite a woman who killed a kid in a road accident last year, claimed diplomatic immunity and fled https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-01-24/us-rej...

good thing she didnt copy any bits. somebody could really have been harmed by that.

Re: UK national extradited to US for film/TV piracy

#182

Post by HotHotLava »

andy_ppp wrote: post #125
lolinder wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Definitely not looking forward to the day of ad-supported ebooks. "Sponsored" paragraphs injected into the middle of a chapter? Or maybe flashy banner ads alongside? Sounds like a nightmare.

“Don’t forget to click [Subscribe] and tick the annoy me whenever I release content icon”…

Which is, realistically, a pretty small price to pay for free high-quality content. Most of the higher-end channels also have the option to get an ad-free and nudge-free version if you're willing to pay.

Honestly, I'd much prefer that model for books over the forced Adobe DRM or vendor-specific stores that the industry seems to be trending towards.

Re: UK national extradited to US for film/TV piracy

#183

Post by helloworld11 »

new_guy wrote: post #42
chongli wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That may be the case for Hollywood blockbuster movies but it’s not true for TV shows, YouTube videos, or Twitch streams. People would much rather pay Netflix a small monthly fee for unlimited access to all the TV shows they watch than hunt them down online. Nobody at all bothers to download YouTube videos or Twitch streams since the content is free anyway. Honestly I think even movies could work similarly if the cont…

> People would much rather pay Netflix a small monthly fee for unlimited access to all the TV shows they watch than hunt them down online. Except Netflix, Now TV and Amazon Prime etc DON'T HAVE any of the shows I actually want to watch. It's farcical. I want to pay them, I want to watch shows legally but I can't, so I end up watching them on the 'illegal' sites that do have them.

Could you name a couple of good such sites? I ask for, uh, research purposes.

Re: UK national extradited to US for film/TV piracy

#184

Post by [deleted] »

andy_ppp wrote: post #167
tptacek wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That wasn't the argument made upthread. That argument was an appeal to the fundamental nature of data, that its nature is to be copied. That's true of all data, not just the data you want to see copied.

Yes, and there is credit card information leaked all the time correct? Making it illegal to copy credit card info has actually allowed banks to get away with an extremely insecure system of transferring money. Maybe it would be best if it were always legal to copy bits but the actual crimes were shown by the harms to other done.

[deleted]

Re: UK national extradited to US for film/TV piracy

#185

Post by MichaelZuo »

andy_ppp wrote: post #167
tptacek wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That wasn't the argument made upthread. That argument was an appeal to the fundamental nature of data, that its nature is to be copied. That's true of all data, not just the data you want to see copied.

Yes, and there is credit card information leaked all the time correct? Making it illegal to copy credit card info has actually allowed banks to get away with an extremely insecure system of transferring money. Maybe it would be best if it were always legal to copy bits but the actual crimes were shown by the harms to other done.

I don’t think they’ve made it illegal to copy credit card info, since the manual machines are still in use by older folks and in some remote locations. This is in Canada and US, I’m not sure about banks in other places.

Re: UK national extradited to US for film/TV piracy

#186

Post by mindslight »

tptacek wrote: post #146
mindslight wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An exploit for a software security bug contains much more information, structure, and creativity than a 21 digit shared secret. If you're condemning the action of posting a simple number, then you must also condemn posting something more substantive with much wilder effects. From the open society view that information wants to be copied, at this point the blame rests fully with the payment networks. Rather they just…

I'm not talking about exploits. I'm talking about credit card numbers. If you want to put together a coherent world view that says it's fine to copy a thousand live credit card numbers to a public Pastebin page, that's fine. I'm not interested in litigating that with you. What I'm interested in is whether you can then come up with an argument against enforcing copyright that doesn't produce that outcome, because I do…

Yes, I brought up exploits. Because I'm pretty sure you are comfortable with full disclosure (as am I), and the ethics of pasting credit card numbers is closely related. After all, every pasted credit card number is a boring exploit for a bug that the card companies have dragged their feet on fixing for over two decades.

So I am left questioning the strength of your condemnation of copying credit card numbers. The activity is lame and thus easy to pick on, but that shouldn't matter if we're talking philosophically.

This does tie back to "the fundamental nature of data", in that full disclosure is based on open society principles of sharing data, even when it will end up harming some parties. The Internet is basically a democratic copying machine. The xxAA have been trying to put the genie back in the bottle the whole time, and force a regime of inescapable information control upon us. Regardless if you're still in favor of some copyright term for pragmatic reasons, you have to admit the overriding information environment in an open society is one of permissive distribution.

Re: UK national extradited to US for film/TV piracy

#187

Post by Stevvo »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #39

The "Spark group" was not a for-profit enterprise, they just gave away what they pirated, and made no money off of it? That seems remarkable.

"Spark group" are part of a resilient not-for-profit subculture of pirates called "the scene" that has existed as long as the internet itself.

Some of the other groups have good enough opsec that they have been around since the 80s. Sure is remarkable.

Re: UK national extradited to US for film/TV piracy

#188

Post by prepend »

rebelos wrote: post #118
prepend wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You cannot have both Yet, we do have both. We are at both peak piracy and peak revenue for digital content. I think it’s false that people state that these things are exclusive.

Please feel free to read the next sentence.

Your next sentence is as baseless and incorrect as the one I quoted.

I’ve been hearing this chicken little shit for 30 years and every year piracy is so bad that the end is near.

I think it’s more likely that piracy drives and improved digital sales. That’s just my hunch, but it’s based on my experience of everything going digital, companies making more money on it than ever, and piracy greater than ever.

Philosophically, I think piracy is a more future oriented and likely successful than the alternative. I fear for a future when we are digital beings having to subscribe to Apple Music in order to remember a song and play it in my “mind.” Piracy today is peace of mind tomorrow.

Re: UK national extradited to US for film/TV piracy

#189

Post by mousepilot »

f1refly wrote: post #165
dangjc wrote: post #134

He stole intellectual property and deserves to be prosecuted. With abundant streaming options these days and threat of being cut off from your ISP, few people pirate films anymore in the US. This is not normal, tolerable practice anymore. People’s livelihoods depend on these industries. A lot of the people here on hacker news make a living from producing intellectual property.

He stole nothing, he merely copied. The abundant streaming options are abusive and leave the "customer" without rights and without options. This is normal, tolerable practice. A lot of people here on hackernews would make just the same, as unpermitted copying has been shown to have an unnoticable, if not positive effect on movie payoff.

I think as long as people can't recognise theft of publishing rights, it will be difficult to have any sort of sensible conversation about it.

Re: UK national extradited to US for film/TV piracy

#190

Post by burnished »

aasasd wrote: post #151
burnished wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes! If you go out and get stabbed by a falling branch you've got no recourse. Of course, the argument you seem to be advocating for hinges on showing how a copy represents material harm. The usual argument is it represents a lost sale. Still not sure how you get sent to jail over that though, maybe the argument itself doesn't have much weight but the people invoking it can push their weight around.

First of all, it doesn't follow in any way from my comment that I'm ‘advocating for’ that argument. You just extrapolated somehow onto the stock set of anti-copyright arguments and decided that I'm opposed to one of them. Actually, I'm sorta happy that such kinds of blatant strawmanning and anti-copyright crowd being generally pretty obnoxious led to me thinking these things over for myself, instead of just accepting…

Oh! I'm sorry for offending you. We started with such sarcasm that I didn't think you'd feel the prick.
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