Pirate Bay Found Guilty

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jayshields
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Re: Pirate Bay Found Guilty

Post by jayshields »

Apollo wrote:A company selling burglar kits, making lotsa money on burglaries (although they're not the ones that actually come through your back door with a crowbar) is also ethically and morally "wrong". Just like TPB.
That's the point. What's wrong with selling crow bars? They can be used legally. Just like indexing torrents can be legal.
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Apollo
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Re: Pirate Bay Found Guilty

Post by Apollo »

jayshields wrote:That's the point. What's wrong with selling crow bars? They can be used legally. Just like indexing torrents can be legal.
Yes, it can. But we all know in 99.9% of all TPB downloads, it's not.

But don't misunderstand me, I'm saying it's "ethically wrong", and the laws should be change to address that. But under the current laws it's perfectly legal, so strictly legally speaking (and that's the only thing that Swedish judge should base his verdict on) it's not illegal at all.

I'm sure the higher court (or wherever they're going to) will acknowledge that.
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Christopher
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Re: Pirate Bay Found Guilty

Post by Christopher »

I think that the problem is the complex and shifting definition of legal/illegal, morally right/wrong and fair use. If you buy a car, you can sell it to your friend or loan it to them. You can also sell it to a business. If you buy a book you can sell it or lend it to your friend. You can also sell it to a business. If you buy digital audio or video, you cannot sell it or lend it to your friend. You also cannot sell it to a business. The same is true of software.

The difference obviously is your ability to make a copy. It is essentially impossible for you to make a copy of a car. It is difficult to make a copy of a book. In both cases the copy of the car or book would probably cost more to create than the original. With digital media it is very easy and essentially free to make exact copies of the original.

So the question is: What is now legal/illegal, morally right/wrong and fair use for digital media? According to the rights holders to the digital media, fair use is much more strict than what most people this is fair use. I think digital rights owners want it so that you can't own digital media at all -- only license it. You cannot share it and can only use it in restricted ways. On the other hand people still have a sense of fair use from books and cars. Plus there are now more situations that are gray areas. Playing music at a party for your friends is perhaps different than playing music in a pub where it helps them make money. But is playing music on your personal website ok?

And there is a broader issue of whether file sharing is theft or free marketing. Digital rights owners use the same ability to easily copy to market their media. Does sharing media increase or decrease the number of purchasers of that media? And if the answer to that is not clear ... and the answer to whether copying is theft or marketing is unclear ... what is the legal, ethical and fair way forward?
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jayshields
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Re: Pirate Bay Found Guilty

Post by jayshields »

If we're moving this topic into general digital media I'd like to point out one thing that has really taken the biscuit for me over the last couple of years, and that's licencing. Installing a piece of software on 2 machines only? What if your computer gets stolen twice?

The single biggest annoyance that software has given me is the BioShock PC game. It requires Internet activation even though it's an entirely offline game, which is stupid in itself. To make the situation worse, during installation it has to go online to fetch a file needed during installation. So then, what happens if the software company goes bust? Who hosts the vital file? Obviously it'll be illegal to distribute this file.

This kind of thing is counter intuitive, because pirates will get around it anyway (I got around it as proof-of-concept with BioShock), and it disgruntles legitimate users to no end.
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JAB Creations
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Re: Pirate Bay Found Guilty

Post by JAB Creations »

The real issue is content delivery. It's simply easier to download a torrent of say a favorite show and watch that without commercials then having to wait for when the television dictates when it will show. Consumers want content tailored to their lives, not to tailor their lives around their entertainment...and if the later is true then they are overly materialistic.

I haven't owned a stereo/CD player for years, all my music (which is 90% independent artists and some film scores I have from CD's) are at my finger tips. I don't want to have a 200 rack CD and I stopped buying DVD's (mostly because of the prices, the repulsive political propaganda, and the space they eventually start to take up).

The main issue though ultimately seems to be pricing. While not directly related here is a chart for price versus demand of dedicated video cards across the vast majority of the pricing spectrum...
Image

Simply put the movie and music industry wants to sell Bluray discs for $30 or more though few people are out of their minds to blow six times the amount of money they paid for the original ticket for a single disc no matter how many special features are crammed on to it. Drop the price down to $10 and imagine how many more copies of the given movie would sell?

There will always be people who pirate which I personally don't care about music and movies though it's real effect is on game studios. We're all developers here so we know about the blood and sweat put in to making video games and how the odds are generally against studios, especially startups.

The future of distrobution is all about the platform. AMD knew this when they decided to purchase ATI. Valve either knew or discovered it when they created Steam. Build something undeniably useful, hook your customers early, make the entry costs non-existent, and makes everything work together seamlessly. There simply is too much opportunity to ignore right there. :twisted:
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