Live data from Hacker News

Have you seen the front page of Pirate Bay?

thepiratebay.org

21–30 of 65 posts

Re: Have you seen the front page of Pirate Bay?

#21
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, which is also why I think this spectrial was a mishap to begin with. They should have not attacked torrenting in general, they needed to attack the fact that Pirate Bay did nothing to remove torrents even by request. They also needed to show that Pirate Bay tracks almost exclusively pirated software/movies/music. They went after the wrong thing, because torrenting isn't inherently bad. It's only bad if peopl…

Clearly a technology is not to blame, or Google would be at fault for linking to them as well. But using torrents the 'wrong' way? File sharing is legal in Sweden, which is why they have been able to operate for this long in a very transparent way (in terms of who runs the massive site). Downloading music/movies is legal for personal use for me in Canada. Annoyingly, we pay a tax, but that is a whole other can of wor…

There is no interpretation necessary, it is illegal/wrong to pirate MPAA and RIAA works. It doesn't matter if you think what they do is wrong - they have the law on their side.

Re: Have you seen the front page of Pirate Bay?

#22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it's our fault for having an archaic copyright system that people are still trying to enforce instead of fixing the root issues.

I totally agree. I feel that if something is important, than the message should not be only available to people who can afford to read/hear the message, but should be readily available for anyone who is willing to learn. Whenever I read a great book, or hear a great song, I try to promote it as much as possible because I think that it is important that the artist's message is heard and understood by as many people as…

If someone gets paid for the art they produce, then they can spend their full time on tuning their art. I wonder what the world would be like if Michaelangelo had a day job.

Re: Have you seen the front page of Pirate Bay?

#24
The problem with digital distribution is that it fucks with our already imperfect understanding of how an economy functions. Our explanations of how price works generally relies upon supply and demand as well as the cost of production. How do you analyze these variables when supply is infinite and the cost of production is zero?

This scares a lot of people. The more your business model relies on the status quo the more it scares you.

Re: Have you seen the front page of Pirate Bay?

#25
post #21
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Clearly a technology is not to blame, or Google would be at fault for linking to them as well. But using torrents the 'wrong' way? File sharing is legal in Sweden, which is why they have been able to operate for this long in a very transparent way (in terms of who runs the massive site). Downloading music/movies is legal for personal use for me in Canada. Annoyingly, we pay a tax, but that is a whole other can of wor…

There is no interpretation necessary, it is illegal/wrong to pirate MPAA and RIAA works. It doesn't matter if you think what they do is wrong - they have the law on their side.

Illegal? Yes. Wrong? Not so sure. You should be able to download Queen songs or Steamboat Willie cartoon from the Internet.

I see it as a form of civil disobedience against bought law. No matter how many trials the industry goes through, it will be not respected, because it is not balanced.

Re: Have you seen the front page of Pirate Bay?

#26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it's our fault for having an archaic copyright system that people are still trying to enforce instead of fixing the root issues.

Pray tell me, what are these root issues you speak of? I'm mostly in agreement with vaksel. I don't see how the copyright system has anything to do with how the MPAA/RIAA tries to enforce it's copyright upon meaningless things like dancing videos of babies. Which by the way happened http://www.switched.com/2008/08/21/dancing-baby-lawsuit-turn...

The DMCA seems to legally broaden the intellectual property rights of mega-corporations in nasty ways. The RIAA, MPAA, and many electronics corporations frequently abuse these rights, while staying within the law.

Maybe the RIAA and MPAA are the good guys. They're just stress-testing the system to work out bugs. Legal loopholes and kinks will be discovered, abused, and patched up much more hastily this way.

Re: Have you seen the front page of Pirate Bay?

#27
The right to violate copyright is part of our human rights?

Now I'm an occasional pirate (mainly TV, since I'm not in the US), but these guys are bonkers; I know pirating is wrong, however these guys seem to think that nobody should have the rights to their own work, and anyone should be allowed to take what they want without giving anything back to the owner. Is it just me, or is that absurd?

Re: Have you seen the front page of Pirate Bay?

#28
post #27

The right to violate copyright is part of our human rights? Now I'm an occasional pirate (mainly TV, since I'm not in the US), but these guys are bonkers; I know pirating is wrong, however these guys seem to think that nobody should have the rights to their own work, and anyone should be allowed to take what they want without giving anything back to the owner. Is it just me, or is that absurd?

I think the point is that there are other rights besides copyright, the right to privacy for example, and that where they come into conflict copyright should not automatically supersede all other rights.

Re: Have you seen the front page of Pirate Bay?

#30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I totally agree. I feel that if something is important, than the message should not be only available to people who can afford to read/hear the message, but should be readily available for anyone who is willing to learn. Whenever I read a great book, or hear a great song, I try to promote it as much as possible because I think that it is important that the artist's message is heard and understood by as many people as…

If someone gets paid for the art they produce, then they can spend their full time on tuning their art. I wonder what the world would be like if Michaelangelo had a day job.

I hope you're saying this tongue in cheek because Michelangelo (like most of our great artists btw) ofcourse did have a dayjob. He was struggling for money for the better part of his life, taking on jobs that he hated. Where do you think the "poor artist" or "suffering for art" memes come from?

There was no such thing as a "record deal" in the old times either. You had to suffer until your popularity would pay for itself - and without the leverage of mass media, too.

There's a great book about Michelangelo by Irvin Stone that I'd wholeheartly recommend to anyone interested. It's not dry teaching material but his life told in the form of a novel: http://www.amazon.com/Agony-Ecstasy-Biographical-Novel-Miche...

Post reply on HN