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The Pirate Bay Trial Day 10: Calls for Jail Time

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Re: The Pirate Bay Trial Day 10: Calls for Jail Time

#31

Post by randallsquared »

ErrantX wrote: post #21
randallsquared wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be good because it will cause far more attention than the reverse verdict, and there will be some people who would otherwise have feared unspecific consequences for sharing who will thereby be reassured. It's a PR victory for the forces of anti-copyright (and, to a lesser extent, copyleft), and a conviction would be a draw (there's no way that the music companies can actually win, as far as I can see). I'm i…

yes maybe it would get more attention - but what kind of attention? Basically it would amount to the Swedish coaurts saying that providing the infrastructure ot share Copyrighted material was ok.. which it is not. In the face of that could we expect media companies to be reasonable and sit at the table to work out new ways to provide access to digital media/software? This is not a 2 sided battle in my eyes. TPB are a…

Let me preface by noting that I, too, am a software developer, and ran/was an ISV catering primarily to small business from 2001 to 2008. Nevertheless, I am anti-copyright.

There are several arguments against copyright, but the one I like most is this: property is necessary because two people cannot both (exclusively) use the same property at the same time. The idea of property solves this, and everyone can agree that that is yours while this is mine. The nature of things is that they can't be available for the exclusive use of two or more people. Ideas (copyright and patents, at least; trademarks are less clear) can be used by more than one person without any impact on others using it: everyone can exclusively use an idea at the same time. The reason for this is that "an idea" isn't a thing at all, but a category of things -- a description of a group, each instance of which is owned by virtue of someone owning the physical thing that instantiates it.

In summary: I don't believe in ownership of categories of things, only things themselves.

If you look at the origins of copyright, even its supporters didn't believe it was real property; it was purely a utilitarian attempt to encourage production of ideas by extending an analogy of property to idea production, for a limited time. There are still reasonable arguments to be made about whether it's an net economic win or lose for a legal system to include copyright and patent, and other people can argue that point better than I.

Re: The Pirate Bay Trial Day 10: Calls for Jail Time

#32

Post by randallsquared »

amix wrote: post #15

I think the Pirate Bay is a shady operation. They probably earn millions on giving other peoples work for free. I don't understand the model of "free copying" - if everyone is leeching and nobody is paying how will we get movies like Star Wars, Lord of the Rings or a game like Halo (they cost millions of $ to produce)? I hope an alternative comes where you actually pay for the stuff you leech (especially for movies).…

I'm not sure where you live, but here in the US, I can go to most ice cream shops (Marble Slab Creamery, for example) and try various ice creams for free before I buy. ;)

Re: The Pirate Bay Trial Day 10: Calls for Jail Time

#33

Post by weavejester »

amix wrote: post #15

I think the Pirate Bay is a shady operation. They probably earn millions on giving other peoples work for free. I don't understand the model of "free copying" - if everyone is leeching and nobody is paying how will we get movies like Star Wars, Lord of the Rings or a game like Halo (they cost millions of $ to produce)? I hope an alternative comes where you actually pay for the stuff you leech (especially for movies).…

Shutting down the Pirate Bay won't stop people copying things. Hollywood need to come up with a better way of distributing movies now, whilst they are in a relatively strong position.

I have 100 times more hard drive space and 400 times the bandwidth than I did a decade ago. In another decade, I'll have 100TB of space and 8Gbps of bandwidth, probably all on my cell phone. Not only does this make movies ridiculously easy to download and store, but all those slow, distributed anonymous P2P networks we have today start to look like feasible way of downloading files.

Hollywood face an enemy of exponentially increasing resilience. They can either attempt to come to an understanding now when they have a good hand, or wait until they have no choice but to bargain from a position of weakness.

Re: The Pirate Bay Trial Day 10: Calls for Jail Time

#34

Post by amix »

cdr wrote: post #28
amix wrote: post #15

I think the Pirate Bay is a shady operation. They probably earn millions on giving other peoples work for free. I don't understand the model of "free copying" - if everyone is leeching and nobody is paying how will we get movies like Star Wars, Lord of the Rings or a game like Halo (they cost millions of $ to produce)? I hope an alternative comes where you actually pay for the stuff you leech (especially for movies).…

"Probably earn millions"? You a) don't seem to be following the case, where the people running it credibly claim to be pretty much broke, b) don't seem to know much about such websites - they're almost universally giant money sinks.

Their traffic is the triple of plentyoffish.com and their site is filled with advertising 1). I doubt it's that expensive to run a tracker and especially when they run it in Egypt. I can't really see how they could be broke - they probably state this to not pay taxes and to get people on their side.

1) Check http://i40.tinypic.com/hv77kx.jpg for reference

Re: The Pirate Bay Trial Day 10: Calls for Jail Time

#35

Post by amix »

randallsquared wrote: post #32
amix wrote: post #15

I think the Pirate Bay is a shady operation. They probably earn millions on giving other peoples work for free. I don't understand the model of "free copying" - if everyone is leeching and nobody is paying how will we get movies like Star Wars, Lord of the Rings or a game like Halo (they cost millions of $ to produce)? I hope an alternative comes where you actually pay for the stuff you leech (especially for movies).…

I'm not sure where you live, but here in the US, I can go to most ice cream shops (Marble Slab Creamery, for example) and try various ice creams for free before I buy. ;)

You get a taste of ice-cream - it's the equivalent of hearing a snippet of a song or seeing a trailer for a movie. You don't get a full banana split.

Re: The Pirate Bay Trial Day 10: Calls for Jail Time

#36

Post by jrockway »

ErrantX wrote: post #30
thwarted wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heh, remember those cable breaks in the middle of the Mediterranean? Other sites might suggest it was a CIA or Echelon style operation, but here, I think we can all agree that it was the Pirate Bay ensuring their connectivity by splicing their servers onto it.

Heh I'd forgotten about that. I almost wish they had managed to buy seaworld too because it would have been amusing to see the Music moguls trying to get at them there :D

It's Sealand, not seaworld.

Re: The Pirate Bay Trial Day 10: Calls for Jail Time

#37

Post by SteveFoerster »

randallsquared wrote: post #31
ErrantX wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yes maybe it would get more attention - but what kind of attention? Basically it would amount to the Swedish coaurts saying that providing the infrastructure ot share Copyrighted material was ok.. which it is not. In the face of that could we expect media companies to be reasonable and sit at the table to work out new ways to provide access to digital media/software? This is not a 2 sided battle in my eyes. TPB are a…

Let me preface by noting that I, too, am a software developer, and ran/was an ISV catering primarily to small business from 2001 to 2008. Nevertheless, I am anti-copyright. There are several arguments against copyright, but the one I like most is this: property is necessary because two people cannot both (exclusively) use the same property at the same time. The idea of property solves this, and everyone can agree tha…

I would go further than this. Censorship is when the state forbids speech. Copyright is a state entitlement of monopoly on specific speech wherein the state forbids it to all but that monopoly holder. Therefore, copyright is censorship.

As for economics, I'd guess it's a loss. Copyright and patent are state subsidies for speech and technology. But while you generally do get more of something you subsidize, it's always at a greater cost elsewhere in one's economy.

Re: The Pirate Bay Trial Day 10: Calls for Jail Time

#38

Post by abstractbill »

amix wrote: post #15

I think the Pirate Bay is a shady operation. They probably earn millions on giving other peoples work for free. I don't understand the model of "free copying" - if everyone is leeching and nobody is paying how will we get movies like Star Wars, Lord of the Rings or a game like Halo (they cost millions of $ to produce)? I hope an alternative comes where you actually pay for the stuff you leech (especially for movies).…

...if everyone is leeching and nobody is paying how will we get movies like Star Wars, Lord of the Rings or a game like Halo (they cost millions of $ to produce)? ... I hope an alternative comes where you actually pay for the stuff you leech...

Really? I hope production costs keep falling as rapidly as they have been. If more people produce great content that doesn't cost millions of dollars to make, we all win.

Re: The Pirate Bay Trial Day 10: Calls for Jail Time

#39

Post by Xichekolas »

amix wrote: post #35
randallsquared wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure where you live, but here in the US, I can go to most ice cream shops (Marble Slab Creamery, for example) and try various ice creams for free before I buy. ;)

You get a taste of ice-cream - it's the equivalent of hearing a snippet of a song or seeing a trailer for a movie. You don't get a full banana split.

I'd argue that is a flawed analogy.

When you taste the ice cream, you get the full essence of it. All the subsequent bites will taste like that one. You know what you are getting.

When you hear a 30 second song clip or see a movie trailer, you get a selectively packaged subset of the full product. I have heard many clips and seen many trailers that are simply awesome, and then the actual song or movie ends up being terrible.

So the analogy would be better if you got to hear the song once for free, and then had to buy to own, which is kind of between the two extremes now (leech it or buy it unheard). Radio (traditional or internet-based) does a decent job of this now, but only for singles. There is still no way to try a whole album before buying unless you catch it on the headphones in Best Buy.

The trouble with movies is that generally you don't watch them many times. I can't really speak for everyone there, but I know I would be much more willing to pay for movies if I could get a good 720p copy of it for say $10-15. The reason I don't buy movies now is that I don't want a pile of DVDs in my tiny apartment. I could buy them, rip them, then resell them, but as I understand it, this is just as illegal as downloading them to begin with. So to summarize, give us some format options besides just a DVD that costs $23.

Re: The Pirate Bay Trial Day 10: Calls for Jail Time

#40

Post by axod »

amix wrote: post #34
cdr wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Probably earn millions"? You a) don't seem to be following the case, where the people running it credibly claim to be pretty much broke, b) don't seem to know much about such websites - they're almost universally giant money sinks.

Their traffic is the triple of plentyoffish.com and their site is filled with advertising 1). I doubt it's that expensive to run a tracker and especially when they run it in Egypt. I can't really see how they could be broke - they probably state this to not pay taxes and to get people on their side. 1) Check http://i40.tinypic.com/hv77kx.jpg for reference

advertising works on plentyoffish, because the visitors are looking for dates etc, and there are many paid for matchmaking advertisers who want those users.

What is the equivalent on something like the pirate bay? "Buy the movie from amazon"? I'm skeptical you'd get anywhere near the same revenue. People go to somewhere like the pirate bay for a specific reason - to get a specific file.

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