Sweden has outlawed the downloading of copyrighted movies, games and music in an attempt to curb rampant piracy.
About 10% of Swedes freely swap music, games and films on their computers, one of the highest rates in the world.
With no law banning file-sharing, Sweden had become a hotbed of piracy where films, music and software were readily swapped.
now can blame it on microsoft lobbying and other miscreants
liberal sweden?
Besides that “piracy” shows a bias, and should not be used by a news outlet anyway, it is not piracy if its not illegal. So Sweden could not become a “hotbed of piracy”, so both the article and the Osnews summary is wrong in this regard.
Swedens Copyright laws are pretty much the same as anywhere else in Europe the discriminant was that File sharing was not recognized by the swedish copyright laws and premitted the distribution of Copyrighted material through this medium.
also may i ask how piracy shows a bias? its a word associated with Illegal aquisition of goods, taking something without paying what the company asks for it is just that.
yes you may argue large companies “rip” the consumer off, but they argue that its because of piracy that their prices are so high, its a case of “the chicken & the egg” scenario.
Just as an arbitrary note guys – in Britain for much of the last 15-20 years cd’s have typically cost around £ 12.99 – £ 14.99 in the shops – In American dollars that’s roughly $ 20-25 a cd (which is awful really) – it’s pretty clear that we’ve been excessively “ripped-off” throughout the years…. – that’s not to condone rampant music sharing – on the contrary, most of us would be happy to pay £ 5 for an album, but not £14.99 !!!!!
Except that real piracy involves violent theft of real, material goods. Online “piracy” involves alleged theft of imaginary goods. No violence, and no real, material goods were taken. A company that sells software still has exactly as much software to sell after someone pirates it.
So “piracy” is NOT direct theft. Nor can it be proved that anyone loses revenue over it. Why? Because you can’t prove that people who pirate something would have bought it otherwise.
As for it being illegal? Well, in the USA that’s pretty meaningless. We have literally thousands of stupid laws. I try to ignore as many of those as I can get away with.
Sorry to complain, but… the headline doesn’t do justice to the fact and neither to the linked article’s headline (or even it’s content).
Now I wonder how they are going to stop Sony’s 100 GB single sided quad layer BlueRay Disk?
Heck that’s enough space to put 10x my entire music library or a quite a few movies, combined with heavy encryption where only those with complete trust are given the password.
Heck authorities have enough trouble catching drug dealers, only catching a tiny percentage of sellers and buyers. How are they supposed to combat this mass storage threat?
Hollywood better get with the times and be the first to distribute their material worldwide and on the internet instantly, when it can get a good buck for their stuff from mass distribution.
iTunes is working very well for the music industry, people rather pay a buck and get a good quality song that they own with a clear concious than take a risk with a bad download that some kid laughs his butt off in the last few minutes of the song.
So will Hollywood get the message? Doesn’t seem like it.
We will see when HDCP is cracked and movies still get circulated worldwide regardless of stringent copy protection methods and high prices.
The world is screaming for content, just make it affordable and easy to get and pay for and most will pay.
We play the society game of buying and selling all day worldwide. It’s Hollywoods greed and strongarm tactics that’s the problem.
true but i chose that title because i do not know one person, or have i met one person who file-shares original content that is of their own creation, they just share movies, music, games, books, all of which none of them own the right to distribute.
only things that can really be distributed through p2p are:
# Open Source software (that is no covered by TM or an additional license claus i.e. RHEL which you can not distribute without removing a hell of alot of stuff)
# Material you created yourself
other than that i cant see any other “legal” use of p2p, and IMO that only accounts for less than 10% of p2p activity
As a swede I’m sure things will continue as normal.
Even the police have said that they wont prioritize or waste time on “pirates” (filetraders).
The reason for this is that the punishment is so low. (No jail, just a low fine. Like a parkingfine)
And the ISP’s won’t help out much either b’coz downloading movies and songs is their marketing campain to get people to upgrade their speed to 24mbit.
Nobody called people copying their audio casettes “Pirates” way back then. “Pirates” ought to be people counterfeiting others products, and then selling it in the streets, like today is done in some Asian countries, and _NOT_ the normal guy/girl listening to a song.
But today they just spread out out the definition, so every kid downloading Britney or Aguilera becomes an Arrrrr!-Pirate. So out of nothing, we suddendly have vast percents of the population being criminalized and failing to see that something theyve done all their life, should suddendly make them a criminal, just its done on the internet.
I suppose almost nobody will accept the new legislation that forbids a fair use the’ve known for ages, and on the other side lose the last bit of understanding for the legislators, who lost the touch with the population. Now many will respond to this unjust law with a “now more than ever” defiance reaction, and just give more care not to get caught.
Do you really think it is possible to forbid something as natural and habitual as free information flow and exchange? Especially in the information age? (Information age denotes free inforamtion exchange, not selling of information.) Do you really think it is possible to control peoples communications without drastic penalties and a control state of stalinian proportions? Dream on. Even China is losing that grip.
Piracy has never been legal in Sweden. It has just been “legal” to download music from a legal source, that is it’s still been illegal to share music.
More intresting would be the fact that they raised the prices on music/games and so forth because of piracy. And they raised the price on empty CD/DVD’s because of piracy.
Sooo… let’s see, if I legaly buy a CD I pay more. If I do a backup on my files I pay more, If I legaly use my DVD-recorder and record a TV-show I pay a shitload more. Infact everything I do legaly is punished. The fact is why the hell would I go down to a CD-store and buy a CD, when they don’t even have what I like. I can get exactly what I like from an Internetshop FASTER then from a local store AND cheaper.
Today we also have more stuff to spend our money on. A few years ago you just bought LP’s and later CD’s. Today you buy Xboxgames/Ps2games/GCgames/DVDs/CDs/MDs… (you get the point) AND machines to use the stuff. EVERYONE can’t have my money, don’t blame it on piracy.
(P.S. Sorry about my bad english
)
How could be downloading illegal ? According to the Paris Convention on Author Rights, audio & video is categorized in the same shelf as books. Imagine what you can do with books in library. Copy for personal use (it means also for family & friends) is LEGAL. OTOH, Software is different, it has exception that all uses ought to be accompanied with valid licence. But uploading is public distribution and therefore ILLEGAL. But downloading is not.
… it will continue
Crazy politicans, they have also raised the prices of CD/DVD/MP3-players with 0.25 swedish öre/MB for R-media and 0.40 öre/MB RW-media, which means a CD-R will cost 1.75 sek extra, and a DVD-RW will cost 18.80 sek extra, this money goes to the music and movie industry for compensation for what is illegal to do
Makes sense.
Also to place women and man on the equal level in the society we got a bunch of weird rules yesterday. That salarys should be the same I can understand, but we also got rules like hair-dressers can’t charge different amount of money for men and women, wtf? What if it takes 2 hours to cut a women but only 30min for a man?
Sweden is full of crap rules like those, people can think by themself you know.
Even if the people you know mainly uses p2p to infringe on copyright, that’s “all” they are doing. They are illegally copying something, or giving others the opportunity to do so.
But that’s not piracy, it’s copyright infrigement.
I think the reason that so many posters acted so forcefully against the title of your story is because they feel that terms like piracy and theft don’t realy do justice to what people do when they copy a file, but are simply terms used by special interst groups to daemonize p2p users.
1 US$ = 7.71 sek
1 € = 9.36 sek
So for each DVD+RW you pay 2.7$ or 2€ extra.
(If you are retarded enough to buy the media from this crap country then you could buy it from England for example)
Now over %10 of all people in Sweden are criminals. What a bullshit! The absurd criminalization and the mega donations from record labels into lawmakers’ pockets needs to end.
The vast majority of people in Sweden is for free filesharing and opposed to any further restrictions and now their government makes free filesharing illegal against the democratic decision of the people. What happened to democracy in Sweden and their once legitimate government?
true, it does seem a bit OTT now that i do come to think of it. but the summary actual comes from the BBC News piece.
i can alter the title, but as i said the summary is from the original article.
Yes, and what’s going to happen? PPL will buy media from other countrys instead and Sweden will get less money, brilliant law indeed.
EU is for companies, not people.
So we are more or less screwed since we joined.
Sweden is one among the last countries which changes their laws to match those of EU, althought our crap government choosed a more restrictive route.
Soon we’ll have software patents to, enjoy.
That about VAT is also true for alcohol, here in Sweden only Systembolaget is allowed to sell alcohol, and 75cl is around 240 SEK that is $31/€26.
But since we are members of EU we are allowed to buy much more from say Germany for example, go figure.
They better change that tax to match the rest or EU or they are just shooting themself in the foot, not that they will notice, the foot is gone since long.
It’s obvious that either you’re a troll, or you are not a software developer, or a creator of any other form of IP that you’d hope to make money off of (note I said “hope”).
Piracy doesn’t require people on ships sporting eye patches and parrots on their shoulders robbing you at knife or gunpoint or whatever; it can be quite a bit “gentler” than that.
Your argument “After a file is shared, they still have just as much software to sell” is a moronic argument, as is the specious “how can they prove that they would have been able to sell that copy anyway?” argument. Just because it costs very little to share something means nothing to the costs of creating it. Even “free” software costs quite a bit to create, but the difference is that someone chose to give it away for whatever their reason is. There’s a funny thing about those that share stuff they claim they would never buy themselves: quite often, someone that might have bought it, but were too cheap or lazy to actually pay for it simply because they found they could get it without paying for it *do* get it, precisely to get the milk without paying for the cow. There are piracy boards that *sell* cracked copies (or cracks for) commercial software at a much lower price than the price a seller would ask.
By your same dim-witted argument, you could also claim that stealing someone’s idea they were getting patented (or had) is perfectly fine and legal and moral because they still have the idea, they just aren’t using the particular implementation you have.
Theft is theft, regardless of how “gentle” the thief is, but it seems you will never comprehend that concept, because you’ve got absolutely nothing worth stealing. Go http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=piracy and look at all the definitions, and note it doesn’t just list “violent” theft.
We have had the worlds highest taxes for long, but we also have only around 55% of the people working with REAL jobs.
In the 70ies we where among the richest countries, in the ninteenth century (that is 18xx?) something like 1/3-1/2 of the people moved to the US.
And it seems we are going back to that :/
> they feel that terms like piracy and theft don’t realy do
> justice to what people do when they copy a file, but are
> simply terms used by special interst groups to daemonize p2p
> users.
Of course. What motivation cound somebody have to rename the term used for this misdemeanor, “copyright infringement”, to something more lurid, and denoting an (completely different) offence, like “theft” and “piracy”.
They know people dont care for “copyright infringement”, so they simply change it to something more harsh, so they are able to screech “thief, thief! hold the thief!”. Its as ridiculous as, for example, suprisedly starting to call sexual harrasment “rape”. Demonising for effect.
That about VAT is also true for alcohol, here in Sweden only Systembolaget is allowed to sell alcohol, and 75cl is around 240 SEK that is $31/€26.
But since we are members of EU we are allowed to buy much more from say Germany for example, go figure.
They better change that tax to match the rest or EU or they are just shooting themself in the foot, not that they will notice, the foot is gone since long.
Its is even worse when trying to get stuff back into Sweden; had a friend with a beautiful wine collection, and courtacy of the bloated beaucracy in Sweden, it wasn’t worth the trouble trying to bring it back 🙁
But then again, there is a culture in Europe, especially in Scandinavia of big ugly governments coming into peoples lives, telling people how to live, and the citizens willing to label that social engineering as ‘compassionate it government’ when in reality, it is the government treating the citizens like children.
You have to pay for having a television in Sweden. That’s about 2000Sek a year. True, most PPL have one, well I don’t. I use my computers monitor for games and also watch DVDs on it. I still have to pay, why? Because I “have to ability to recive two shitty channels” (that is, my appartment have an antenna that I can’t remove). If I still have to pay it why not just call it tax or say it’s part of the rent.
Quote:
“Before the new law was passed, it was only illegal to make
copyrighted material available to others via the net, whereas downloading the content was allowed.”
Sharing was already outlawed, and has been for a long time. Now downloading material that common sense tells you is copyright (games, movies, music) is also a crime. I can live with this. Peer-to-peer technology is still perfectly legal though, as it should be.
We’ve had an explosive roll-out of broadband access, with new consumer patterns as a result, so it’s no surprise the politicians and IP-holders have reacted in this repressive and conservative manner.
Swede’s are also getting additional media taxes, on CD/DVD/flash/harddisk media, covering the loss-of-income to musicians by “private copying” (private/pirate copying – the first is legal, the other is not). This tax is an indiscriminate tool, a blunt object we’re all hit by.
While some music IP holders may be hurt (Are they really?) by piracy, the business as a whole is making heaps of money in new markets, such as mobile phone ring tunes, etc.
Also, by-passing copy-protection, etc, is now illegal, making game console chipping also illegal. A brave new world indeed…
I wish the Internet, especially the web, would be more “free speech” and less “free beer”. People seem to value the latter and completely forget about real freedom/liberties.
You know that this kind the discrimination just hurts this tools –also used to legal distribution–, right? Because spreading this concept will just give an argument to everyone trying to stop any distribution system because a role different motives, but basically their own interests.
Sorry to say that, but this kind the sensationalism leads me to think more about a tabloid than good, and responsible ,journalism. not trolling, but this is just my opinion (and I’ve higher expectations about OSNews been not partial or connected to opinions in any way).
Again: just my opinion and not a personal attack…
“only things that can really be distributed through p2p are:
# Open Source software (that is no covered by TM or an additional license claus i.e. RHEL which you can not distribute without removing a hell of alot of stuff)
# Material you created yourself
other than that i cant see any other “legal” use of p2p, and IMO that only accounts for less than 10% of p2p activity ”
———-
And Public Domain works, works out of copyright-time, Anything under the Creative Commons liscence, Copyrighted works for wich the author has given permission to be distributed … I could go on …
As you say, a lot of material is not Open Source software, or being distributed by the author. This does not mean it is in anyway infringing upon any laws.
Yes, I know a lot of p2p files ARE infringing, but not all, and your examples are not the only exceptions by a long way.
No, you don’t have to pay the television licence if you don’t own a television receiver. It doesn’t matter if your apartment has an antenna or not.
I would guess that’s the end for (well known) torrent site the pirate bay, which is asfaik hosted in sweden
You wanna bet?
I got a bill after I transfered my address, and called them. And they said that it used to be like that but that they have changed it.
@ Mad dwarf: i actually forgot about those other cases where you can distribute, thank you for the reminder
@ Anonymous (—.bredband.comhem.se): the same is true in the UK you only pay the TV license if you own an actual TV set or receiver, although the EU is talking about classing TFT DVI monitors as TV’s so they can charge you a TV Tax and get you to pay a TV license even if you dont own a TV but own a TFT DVI connector Monitor; in countries where TV licences apply
As a suede doing some file sharing every now and then, I have pretty mixed feelings about this law change, proposed and evaluated by a group of non-technical middle-aged “concrete” politicians that probably just use computers for Word, IE and Outlook.
About private file-sharing. One the one hand I realise that sharing can be pretty bad for SOME types of media businesses – who the fuck is gonna buy the Simpsons/South Park/24/etc DVD collections for $$$$ when the stuff is available on the net for 0? On the other hand, file sharing is free PR for the same media – I have a bought lot of South Park gadgets and t-shirts because I just love the series, I buy computer games when the developers have done something extra like Linux clients, I go to movies and to quite a lot of concerts to listen to artists I might have first discovered on the net. Somehow, I feel that I actually pay what I think the products are worth. Sweden has been *very* slow to adopt commercial on-line music and film downloading, and I guess I’ll have to wait for hell to freeze over before there is a good black metal/death metal store where I can get high-quality mp3s/oggs (pun intended 😉 .
About liberty and education. The (mainly male, sadly) population in Sweden aged something like 40 and below is very computer literate. While this has been very benefical for the national economy, I think that much of the knowledge of and fascination with computers stems from playing around with “pirated” software such as Windows, games, Photoshop, and various tech tools as kids and teens (in the pre-open source and even pre-internet era of the 1990s). Banning file sharing may stifle software exploration, innovation and common entrepreneurship. I dont know.
The Swedish law enforcement (police and courts) has really been loosing a lot of respect lately from the citizens they are set to protect (overuse of violence, sex scandals, poor view of women sexuality, illegal intrusions in privacy etc). If they start busting teens for downloading Warcraft and Metallica they will just add to their the despise.
As long as the entertainment industry continues to be utterly overpriced and painfully slow evolving we will probably have the highest crime rate ever recorded in a modern civilization.
I know I’m right but I think you should read the actual law text yourself. http://lagen.nu/1989:41
You can also read about it at http://www.radiotjanst.se
“About private file-sharing. One the one hand I realise that sharing can be pretty bad for SOME types of media businesses – who the fuck is gonna buy the Simpsons/South Park/24/etc DVD collections for $$$$ when the stuff is available on the net for 0? On the other hand, file sharing is free PR for the same media”
Two things:
The content providers didn’t outsource their advertising to the filesharing community.
Two since when has advertising been the entire item you’re trying to sell. Yes there’s exceptions, but not as a continuously sustainable business model.
In short, the community made that decision for them, and if it really was about free advertising, then what’s on P2P networks would be considerably forshortened, or otherwise crippled.
“As long as the entertainment industry continues to be utterly overpriced and painfully slow evolving we will probably have the highest crime rate ever recorded in a modern civilization”
Well back in the day before technology removed the consequences of one’s actions. If one wanted change, they had to go through the pain of withdrawal. They didn’t get to enjoy that “overpriced” content. Some even had the courage to tell the content provider why they wouldn’t be enjoying the content providers “content”. Amazingly enough “doing without” seemed to send a clear message. Contrast that to the message “illegal copyright violation” via P2P sends. “Why sirs, your content is good enough to download and spread around, but apparently not good enough to compensate you for.”
What are you trying to tell us?
Swedes are not allowed to critisize a new law in Sweden, because Sweden is a great country (which it is, I don’t doubt it) and because there are countries where there are real human rights abuses?
What kind of argument is that?
“Pirates” ought to be people counterfeiting others products, and then selling it in the streets
LOL… that makes Microsoft the biggest pirate of them all! The difference of cource is that Microsoft carries the “Letter of Marque” (http://www.geographia.com/bahamas/pirates02.htm) due to their campaign contributions and lobbying.
Many seems to think that people will buy more when it is illegal and that big companies will not loose any money.
Then look at it like this, today you can’t really try a game in the store anymore since it takes a few gigs on a hard disk and takes time installing. You bought a game you think is really good it has been blown sky high in game magazines so you buy it for 600sek ca. 570€, only when you come home and installed it and played it you see it was really shity. If you had downloaded it you could have tried it to see if you wanted to lay money on it. And costs, costs, costs, for a student it is way too much. It is not us it is wrong with it is the buisness as a whole, screw greedy people in between buyer and producer, screw software patents and license money. Then we would have a fraction of the cost of today for a game or software like 3dsmax. If the price 1/6 of today people could buy 6 times more and would probably do that too for good games and software. Same goes with music buisness we in sweden have paid too much too long there is a limit you know persson. A poor boy in kenya should have equal right to be able to afford to buy a game or music album as people in usa or france.
excuses for bad english
> Just as an arbitrary note guys – in Britain for much of the
> last 15-20 years cd’s have typically cost around £ 12.99 – £
> 14.99 in the shops – In American dollars that’s roughly
> $ 20-25 a cd (which is awful really) – it’s pretty clear that
> we’ve been excessively “ripped-off” throughout the years….
Do you have used music stores? The prices are often fairly reasonable here, they’re typically a better value than buying from iTMS, and have a more regular quality than randomly picking files from P2P networks. Since CD-Audio is an obnoxiously inefficient medium you rip them as FLACs or APEs, and transcode them to any lossy formats you like as needed.
People typically get a lot of value from music that they like. They’ll listen to many, many times over the course of their lives. Even a $20 CD you’ll spend many hours listening to over the course of the time you own it is a better value than buying a latte or seeing a movie at a theatre.
filesharing as such wasnt really legal, it wasnt legal to upload only to download. and if people dont upload no one can
download.
but now it’s also forbidden to download. ofcourse collecting evidence will be a bitch.
well this law dosent really affect tpb becus they dont host any files. a torrent is only a link to the file afterall
share it, and when it is gone keep wondering why….
i gladly pay my few dollars to legally download my music…
~da troll~
“Then look at it like this, today you can’t really try a game in the store anymore since it takes a few gigs on a hard disk and takes time installing. ”
And this is different from the downloaded copy, how?
“You bought a game you think is really good it has been blown sky high in game magazines so you buy it for 600sek ca. 570€, only when you come home and installed it and played it you see it was really shity.”
Word of mouth. Also It appears that people want a risk-free life. Life is “shitty” and doing illegal and/or unethical acts aren’t going to suddenly change that.
” If you had downloaded it you could have tried it to see if you wanted to lay money on it.”
I’m certainly glad that someone invented the “game demo”, else I might have to do something socially unacceptable.
“And costs, costs, costs, for a student it is way too much. It is not us it is wrong with it is the buisness as a whole, screw greedy people in between buyer and producer, screw software patents and license money. Then we would have a fraction of the cost of today for a game or software like 3dsmax. If the price 1/6 of today people could buy 6 times more and would probably do that too for good games and software. Same goes with music buisness we in sweden have paid too much too long there is a limit you know persson. A poor boy in kenya should have equal right to be able to afford to buy a game or music album as people in usa or france. ”
Well aside from the fact that Kenya and France are very different countries. If you all were really the economic activists you claim to be? Then you wouldn’t purchase anything. You wouldn’t download either. You’d simply do like what people use to do before technology made the decision consequence free, and do without. The product stays at the store, and you get to keep your money. Combine that with feedback to the content industry, and you send an effective unambigious message. Some of the more active activists could even start their own companies, and offer the artists better terms.
Instead we want gratification NOW, and real change smells too much like work. Ethical sprinters all.
“well this law dosent really affect tpb becus they dont host any files. a torrent is only a link to the file afterall”
Someone has to drive the getaway car.
> Then look at it like this, today you can’t really try a game
> in the store anymore since it takes a few gigs on a hard
> disk and takes time installing. You bought a game you think
> is really good it has been blown sky high in game magazines
> so you buy it for 600sek ca. 570€, only when you come home
> and installed it and played it you see it was really shity.
You should read reviews written by people you trust, instead of jackasses in the pockets of the publishers. If that isn’t possible you can always stick with products from studios you’ve had good experiences with in the past. Failing that you can always wait the arbitrarily long period of time for the release of the demo.
> Then we would have a fraction of the cost of today for a
> game or software like 3dsmax. If the price 1/6 of today
> people could buy 6 times more and would probably do that
> too for good games and software.
Games are ridiculously expensive and time-consuming to make, and for the name-brand FPS engines, flight sims, and a couple of the MMORPGs, the people that will use the software are probably buying $200-500 video cards, $150 worth of RAM, and $200-1000 CPUs to play them on. For them they’re already dealing with a more selective, yuppyish sort of Apple market than the $100 Gamecube consumer. They’re less concerned about broadening their market by reducing the cost of their game (which often will be the driving force for the sale of much more expensive hardware) than they are getting as much cream from this lucrative market as they can.
If there were a large or equal profit to be made at a lower price-point, then studios similar to Croteam could always pop up and put in 60-70 hour work weeks, budget tens of millions of dollars to sell titles at $10-20, and see if they undercut the competition.
Of course there are a lot of budget titles with much lower overhead, but the problem isn’t that there aren’t affordable entertainment items, the problem is that the entertainment items that everyone actually wants cost more.
3DS Max is a professional tool marketed at people working on teams with large budgets. It too is a relatively small-volume high-margin product that too is a fairly complex piece of software. Reducing its cost won’t increase its sales considerably because the people that can really make use of its features are already the vastly more expensive component of producing content with it.
If you just want to edit models for a game then try out Milkshape 3D.
Swedens Copyright laws are pretty much the same as anywhere else in Europe the discriminant was that File sharing was not recognized by the swedish copyright laws and premitted the distribution of Copyrighted material through this medium.
May be true, I do not know myself, but I believe you. But the article/summary specifically talked about the downloading part, and implied it was legal. So the article is wrong regardless whether the above statement of yours is true or not.
also may i ask how piracy shows a bias? its a word associated with Illegal aquisition of goods, taking something without paying what the company asks for it is just that.
The act of associating it with mere unlawful acquisition of goods, which you describe, IS exactly biased thinking, because “piracy” in its original sense only covered the acquisition of goods *by force*. So anyone describing unlawful copying as “piracy” degrades the beings who practice such acts as violent persons, potential murderers.
> The act of associating it with mere unlawful acquisition of
> goods, which you describe, IS exactly biased thinking,
The government barring members of certain religious groups from holding public office is religious persecution! That is so long as you’re from a culture for which this is true, and it’ll certainly appear that way to you in other places even if the inhabitants of those places don’t refer to it as such. Stop persecuting Scientologists, Germany.
Sort of how people from the EU are known from time to time to refer to the U.S. executing criminals are human rights violations despite the fact that we don’t particularly see it that way.
> because “piracy” in its original sense only covered the
> acquisition of goods *by force*. So anyone describing
> unlawful copying as “piracy” degrades the beings who
> practice such acts as violent persons, potential
> murderers.
Piracy has been used to refer to distributing illicit copies of things like books for at least something like two hundred years. Stop getting history lessons from Richard Stallman.
you don’t without a tv-tuner.
“Piracy has been used to refer to distributing illicit copies of things like books for at least something like two hundred years. Stop getting history lessons from Richard Stallman.”
It has? Could you provide any prove for your claim?
Thanks.
Piracy doesn’t require people on ships sporting eye patches and parrots on their shoulders robbing you at knife or gunpoint or whatever; it can be quite a bit “gentler” than that.
It should mean exactly this. There are plenty of words that describe other forms of simple theft or illegal copying appropriately. “Borrowing” piracy as a word for that is unnecessary and unexact.
By your same dim-witted argument, you could also claim that stealing someone’s idea they were getting patented (or had) is perfectly fine and legal and moral because they still have the idea, they just aren’t using the particular implementation you have.
Well, for legality: Patent law is not nearly as uniform around the world as copyright law is. Very often, it is legal to use the same idea another one had. A good example are software patents, which simply do not exist in many countries of the world. Keep in mind too, that it is entirely legal in many countries (if not all), to personally use patented inventions, without getting permission, if you do not use them commercially.
By your same dim-witted argument, you could also claim that stealing someone’s idea they were getting patented (or had) is perfectly fine and legal and moral because they still have the idea, they just aren’t using the particular implementation you have.
Dictionaries list every meaning of a word which is used sufficiently wide. That has nothing to do with the question if such usage is *good*. Naturally that illegal copying is listed among the meanings show how much the music/entertainment industry has managed to distort the view on these issues. We should try especially hard then to not let them get away with that!
Besides that: Other dictionaries I have at home here do not list illegal copies as piracy. Again others do only include illegal copying if these copies are intended to be sold. (For example the online edition of OALD)
Piracy is robbing a ship while it’s at sea, torturing and killing the crew and raping the passengers.
Still there are vast amounts of illiterate halfwits who yell and boast that when copying a cd you are committing robbery, murder and rape at the same time.
Is that a moral of a maggot or what?
Most scandinavian countries, at least Finland, allow copying of copyrighted material for personal use and to few people that are close to you.
Why?
Because it makes life easier for people and it’s not law’s business to intrude their private life when they are not committing a crime (copyright infringement is infringement, not a crime). To cover the possible and naturally unverified loss to copyright holders, all media that is used for recording is slightly taxed. That income is then directed and distibuted back to the copyright holders.
This system is well designed and proven in practise for decades.
And still you hear big american content conglomerates screaming and making wild claims which are exactly like the ones they made against Sony – for inventing VCR, which was supposed to kill, kill, kill all the media and movies.
Instead video rent business made huge profits for all studios.
I’m a shareholder and one of the founders of a game company and trained animator, and I have serious trouble swallowing these wild claims of loss and doom. Actually all these companies seem to be making a lot of money out of increased knowledge of their products – word of the mouth is proven to be best marketing approach. And they would be making a lot more if they would develop working internet distribution channels.
To let other game designers finish (Warren Spector, Chris Hecker, Jason Della Rocca):
Chris: I’m pro-piracy. I want people to play the games I make. I do it because it’s art. I think DRM is a total fucking stupid mess. If the game industry collapses and can be reborn, I’m all for it. Pirate on!
Greg: they’re not pirating the game! Someone bought a legal copy! The world is not designed in such a way that money inherently funnels its way into your wallet!?
Warren: I never minded piracy. Anyone who minds about piracy is full of shit. Anyone who pirates your game wasn’t going to buy it anyway!
> The act of associating it with mere unlawful acquisition of
> goods, which you describe, IS exactly biased thinking,
The government barring members of certain religious groups from holding public office is religious persecution! That is so long as you’re from a culture for which this is true, and it’ll certainly appear that way to you in other places even if the inhabitants of those places don’t refer to it as such. Stop persecuting Scientologists, Germany.
Should this be some form of ironic note? It has so little to do with my post. Two things about this though:
First, in Germany the fact that some members of Scientology are not allowed to be civil servants in some offices has a related specific twist. It is that Scientology has not unambiguously the status of a religious community in a legal sense here. Of course if it is not a religion, there can be no religious persecution. Let me repeat that this is foremost a legal aspect.
Second, the term “public office” seems to be ambiguous to me. The dictionary translates it to have a meaning of an office where the people serving the office get appointed/elected. For such offices, in Germany there are very high hurdles for banning someone from being eligible. I doubt that belonging to Scientology could suffice as a reason. On the other hand, becoming a civil servant can be more problematic for Scientologists.
(By the way, Scientology itself withdrew some filed court cases regarding restrictions for Scientology members to become civil servants here in Germany. If I am informed right, these were requested temporary restraining orders against the government of bavaria.)
Piracy has been used to refer to distributing illicit copies of things like books for at least something like two hundred years. Stop getting history lessons from Richard Stallman.
That is not true, I have some dictionaries (and a encyclopedia) which do not include this meaning. But even if you statement were true, you would misrepresent what I have written, because I did not speak about distribution, but rather, like the article summary does, of acquisition, that is, downloading.
Prior to the law coming into force, Sweden was the only European nation that let people download copyrighted material for personal use.
That’s not true, downloading and sharing without profit is perfectly legal in Spain (Èjpaña). The terrorist organization SGAE is trying to change this, though, sponsored by known idiots like the proprietary Pilar Bardem system.
Swedes are not allowed to critisize a new law in Sweden, because Sweden is a great country (which it is, I don’t doubt it) and because there are countries where there are real human rights abuses?
Yes.
What kind of argument is that?
A very vaild one.
While ‘piracy’ and ‘theft’ as concerns illicit copying of copyrighted material has entered the popular vernacular, and might actually be in SOME dictionaries, it is NOT a legal defintion accepted in the US courts. Look at the scolding the 9th circuit court of appeals gave the RIAA’s lawyer last year. The offense is copyright infringement. Period. Any other use is a colloquialism with no bearing to the legal system. It is an attempt by certain groups to make the offense sound more graphic so they can get away with such lopsided penalties.
Since when did downloading Metallica become worse than being caught with a couple kilos of cocaine? Since the RIAA decided to wage war on their customer base. You read in the paper every month where the RIAA and MPAA hire a goon squad to illegally raid some immigrant selling bootleg copies of CDs and DVDs on the street. They rarely tend to get the police to do the raids because the police understand there are more important crimes to deal with then the POTENTIAL loss of a couple dollars to some filthy rich a-hole in Hollywood.
As someone else mentioned, there are taxes on blank media to help reimburse the ‘artists’ for any potential loss due to copyright infringement. What do you see in the papers? The artists suing the RIAA to FORCE them to give them their cut of that money they are legally entitled to. Does this sound like a company worth keeping? Worth propping up with laws that make depriving them of another dollar a worse offense than torching houses?
The RIAA and MPAA and their members MAY have had a use IN THE PAST, but time and technology has passed them by. They aren’t needed anymore and need to be put down for the good of society. Artists can put together their own creations without them – giving them more freedom and higher profits. SMART groups have already started doing this… like The Dead (formerly The Grateful Dead). They’ve been making their own CDs and selling directly to customers for several years now, and they’re raking in the money. Many new bands are operating straight off the web, using P2P to help advertise and profitize their works.
Even movies no longer need the big studios anymore. Look at the recent fanworks like Star Trek New Voyages and I.M.P.S. if you don’t believe me. These are done by small groups with little money. Just think of what folks like Speilburg could do without the studios trying to suck the life out of their creations for yet another buck.
Swedes are not allowed to critisize a new law in Sweden, because Sweden is a great country (which it is, I don’t doubt it) and because there are countries where there are real human rights abuses?
Yes.
What kind of argument is that?
A very vaild one.
Huh?
I’d rally in favor of a little law and order… but I think they are placing too much emphasis on the law side. They already had a law against uploading, all this prosecution does is open up nailing downloaders and for what?
“We passed a law to reduce crime.”
Any time a politician tells you that or promises to do so, that is the biggest pile of dung they can feed you yet people accept it regularly.
Passing a new law NEVER reduces crime, it only turns law abiding citizens into criminals.
But for how long?
thumbs up
Recently 2 sysadmins from a major Australian ISP were charged with an offence. They ignored an email notice to remove copyrighted material from the company servers. They thought the notice was spam.
I recently noticed a seller on ebay Australia selling fake designer clothing claiming it was genuine. Despite 150+ customer complaints in the last 3 months the seller is still active.
Why is ebay allowed to sell billions of dollars worth of counterfeit and stolen goods each year while two sysadmins at an ISP get prosecuted for a simple mistake?
It is just corporate hypocrisy.
utsl wrote: A company that sells software still has exactly as much software to sell after someone pirates it.
So “piracy” is NOT direct theft. Nor can it be proved that anyone loses revenue over it. Why? Because you can’t prove that people who pirate something would have bought it otherwise.
I must agree with what JT wrote about this. That first sentence above pretty well shoots your entire arguement in the foot.
If I had 100 copies of a program to sell, the only 100 available, and 100 people pirated it, I would have 100 copies to sell, but 100 people now have the program that shouldn’t. Then – if you have the program and would not have bought it, why do you have it in the first place? Just the thrill of cheating?
I wonder if that’s why compaines give you a TBYB product. Then you figure it’s something you might use so you go ahead and pirate it anyway. Hey you’ve already got the full product in TBYB form, must be a way to crack it – right? The hunt is on. Oh, here’s a patch that unlocks it or a keygen. I’m home free!
The ones that pirate software are the first to complain that their rights are being taken away. How does it feel when the shoe is on the other foot?
word says that there are more lobbyists in Brussels than there are politians. Wonder whom the EU is aimed for? The people or the major corps.
Also, they fund tobacco farmers at the same time they incurage people to stop smoking, same goes for alcohol.
A bit off topic, but shows what a giant bureaucratic peace of shit the whole EU is.
Hope there will be a change of direction now that the French and Dutch people said what someone should have said a long time ago. No!
The community should be led by the people not the companies running for profit and nothing but the profit.
I’m both a programmer and a musician. I also see better ways to make money doing both of those things than betting the government can effectively enforce copyrights.
I used the original, non-propaganda meaning of piracy. The one that’s in my dictionary. Other people have covered that fairly well.
Costs of creating a product have exactly nothing to do with a perceived right to make money off of it. That’s an unbelievably silly argument. Equivilent to saying that the money earned from an movie should be proportionate to the money spent to make it. That might be perceived (by some) as fair, but it doesn’t work that way in the real world.
Your whole post seems to lack a basic understanding of economics. Things have the value that people are willing to pay for them. That’s just the way it is. For software, music, and movies, it seems that increasingly that value is much lower than what the producers wish to charge. The law doesn’t do much to protect works with no commercial value, and it looks like that’s exactly the value these things are going to end up having. Too bad. The alleged owners can learn to live with the market value, or they can go bankrupt.
The moral issue is whether an idea is property. I don’t know of any basis other than legal fiat for claiming that. That’s entirely irrelevent to morality. Just about as irrelevent as morality has become to law in the US nowadays. 🙁
As for charging for illegal copies or cracks, I see no special moral problems there. They are selling things they don’t own, just exactly the same as the legal sellers. If someone wants to buy something that has no moral owner, I see no reason not to let them. 😉
@RickW – you fell into a common hole used by the jack-booted thugs of the BSA.
If I had 100 copies of a program to sell, the only 100 available, and 100 people pirated it, I would have 100 copies to sell, but 100 people now have the program that shouldn’t. Then – if you have the program and would not have bought it, why do you have it in the first place? Just the thrill of cheating?
You forgot, you have a POTENTIAL customer base in the tens of millions (even on small platforms like Mac and linux). If only a hundred people pirate your program, it must really suck. If 100,000 people pirate the program, that reduces the potential customer base by less than 1%. If you can’t sell 100 programs in that kind of market, you should dump it. Even the lousiest pieces of trash sell hundreds of thousands of copies in the Windows market. It’s why Windows has such big support – a HUGE customer base in the hundreds of millions. If a MILLION people pirated the program, it’d still be less than 1% of the market.
You aren’t going to sell a copy to EVERYONE, but you will sell enough to make plenty of money IF THE PROGRAM IS ANY GOOD. If it doesn’t sell, it has NOTHING to do with piracy.
Look at id – they have probably had the most pirated games in the history of gaming. Have they gone out of business? Did they throw a hissy-fit and sue 12 year-old boys for “stealing” their property? Have they even put copy protection on ANY of their games? HELL NO!! They make money out the wazoo, then release the game to open source as they start selling the next game.
I could have gotten DOOM3 off the net, but I went down to the store and bought a copy. Not everyone did. DOOM3 is STILL big on P2P and bittorrent. But DOOM3 is a blockbuster in sales and id will make a ton of money on it over its lifespan, both in direct sales as well as licensing the game engine.
The people making the biggest fuss are the ones who SHOULD be out of business. They are trying to force the courts to MAKE people GIVE them the money they think they should be getting, without earning it.
Just as an arbitrary note guys – in Britain for much of the last 15-20 years cd’s have typically cost around £ 12.99 – £ 14.99 in the shops – In American dollars that’s roughly $ 20-25 a cd (which is awful really) – it’s pretty clear that we’ve been excessively “ripped-off” throughout the years…. – that’s not to condone rampant music sharing – on the contrary, most of us would be happy to pay £ 5 for an album, but not £14.99 !!!!!
Gee, I’d really like to pay 0.02 for gasoline. And 0.01 for bread. But I can’t. I actually go into the store and plunk down my hard-earned cash because that’s what the provider of those materials charges. Damn them! The simple fact is that people will do anything to get something for nothing. Including rip off other people. So give it a rest. The record companies are no less deserving of profits.
Nobody called people copying their audio casettes “Pirates” way back then. “Pirates” ought to be people counterfeiting others products, and then selling it in the streets, like today is done in some Asian countries, and _NOT_ the normal guy/girl listening to a song.
But today they just spread out out the definition, so every kid downloading Britney or Aguilera becomes an Arrrrr!-Pirate. So out of nothing, we suddendly have vast percents of the population being criminalized and failing to see that something theyve done all their life, should suddendly make them a criminal, just its done on the internet.
The difference is that the Internet provides an entirely different economy of scale. You can’t share your VHS tapes and audio cassettes with millions of people. But you CAN do that with your Internet connection. So the issues are fundamentally different — and content providers have a right to protect their assets. I don’t blame them for wanting to prevent a bunch of freeloaders from stealing their bread and butter.
An example:
When I go see a movie, I prefer to go to the cheap theatre after the movie has been out a while. Why? Because I’m occasionally willing to pay $1-2, but very rarely willing to pay $8-10. If the movie isn’t available at a price I’m willing to pay, I’ll do without. If it is, I might go.
Does the more expensive theatre lose money when I go to the cheap theatre?
Now extend the concept to TV – I might watch a movie broadcast on TV that I wouldn’t have bothered to go see. (If I had a TV.) Does the cheap theatre lose money?
Do the people that made the movie in the first place lose money if I never see it at all?
Prices in a civilised society are based on a compromise. The buyer wants to pay as little as he can, and the seller wants to make as much as he can. People negotiate, and either come to an agreement, or they don’t. That’s the basis of market economics.
In the US, the price of bread and gasoline are modified by government interference, in the form of taxes, regulation, crop subsidies, and commodity market tinkering. Most of which was actually lobbied for by the big businesses and commodity traders that sell the stuff.
CD prices in the UK are subject to price fixing and wealth redistribution by the government. Same deal.
The recording industry deserves exactly the profits they can earn – not get through government intervention, including copyright.
Gee, I’d really like to pay 0.02 for gasoline. And 0.01 for bread. But I can’t. I actually go into the store and plunk down my hard-earned cash because that’s what the provider of those materials charges. Damn them! The simple fact is that people will do anything to get something for nothing. Including rip off other people. So give it a rest. The record companies are no less deserving of profits.
Nice exageration with the example there, you silly fool
– if you’d bothered to read what I mentioned, I alluded to being perfectly happy with paying £ 5 fo a cd album, but not happy with paying £ 14.99 – nobody’s suggested paying “nothing” or paying a tiny amount such as 50p – don’t twist things !!!
“The recording industry deserves exactly the profits they can earn – not get through government intervention, including copyright.”
Copyright isn’t JUST for record companies, or movie companies, or book companies, or game companies. It’s for everyone who creates (which is everyone unless your dead).
Copyright does have one thing in common with “free speech”. You may not like it when someone uses it in a manner you don’t like. e.g hate speech. but you like it even less when it’s take away from YOU.*
*Also like the other, you can’t do anything you want. e.g. yell fire in crowded theater.
“Does the more expensive theatre lose money when I go to the cheap theatre? ”
Quick! Show of hands. How many understand the principle of “permission” and it’s relevence to this discussion?
Now here’s the other shoe. If harm could be proven to everone’s satisfaction? Would people stop “pirating”? If not, then what would be the point in trying to prove something that’ll not change people’s behaviour one iota?
How about what we call it? e.g. piracy, copyright violation, mauve marshmellows on a stick. See above.
Now with all the above being said. My two cents is that only the “school of ‘very’ hard knocks” is going to ever change people’s behaviours for the better.
>Quick! Show of hands. How many understand the principle of
>”permission” and it’s relevence to this discussion?
Naturally.
When something that I own the copyright to is getting copied without my permission, it might upset me. However, the moral of the story is not so simple – the other end also has rights and conditions which overrides mine. I have no right (not even legal) to harass and persecute people’s private life for non-profit unauthorized copying which actually, at the very end, is probably going to increase my profit and market-share. See Microsoft Windows.
Copyright was meant to protect an original piece so that it’s creator is the only one allowed to make money out of it for reasonable time. But nowadays US and EU has a ridiculously extended copyright, so called Mickey Mouse Protection Act, allowing Disney to sue and persecute artists who take pieces of decades old popculture and comment it in their own works. It’s getting sick, extending copyright 70 years after the author is dead is ridiculous.
that was it , My commments is erased, cant find them.
Censorship at a low level.
I have been here since before the millenium.
rootprompt, slashdot, daemonnews Im back
Title : Sweden bans file-sharing
Story Content : Sweden bans downloading copyrighted material
Title : Sweden bans file-sharing
Story Content : Sweden bans downloading copyrighted material
Title : Sweden bans file-sharing
Story Content : Sweden bans downloading copyrighted material
I figure if I repeat it enough times, I’ll figure out the connection. At first I thought maybe the OSNews people were up to their old tricks, trying to generate page hits with misleading titles, but then I realized they would never do that 😛
that is mean and disrespectful to a large group of people.
“Naturally.
When something that I own the copyright to is getting copied without my permission, it might upset me. However, the moral of the story is not so simple – the other end also has rights and conditions which overrides mine.”
Those are defined as fair use. People don’t stay within it’s confines.
“I have no right (not even legal) to harass and persecute people’s private life for non-profit unauthorized copying which actually, at the very end, is probably going to increase my profit and market-share. See Microsoft Windows.”
Well the problem with the “I’m being persecuted” POV is that it’s a common refuge for those who choose to not look at their behaviour. How many times have the police pulled over a speeder and had to listen to their “why don’t you go after real crimminals?” instead of “Well I realize my actions could affect others, to their detriment. I’m sorry.” Everyone’s a victim on a planet raised on the idea that victimhood is a natural right.
Second, as I’ve already mentioned in the past. The evidence for a positive link between piracy is tenious at best. Wishful thinking at worst. At best the decision to distribute should still rest with the artist.
Third I think that Microsoft is a poor example for justifying piracy. Monopoly effects, luck, good enough technology, and illegal (if not unethical) behaviour played a greater role in Microsoft’s success.
Living in Sweden as i do,we are laughing at this…it is not gonna make so much diffrence…..people are downloading as usually……
that stupid law wont do anything to stop torrent sites…
such as thepiratebay.org
…but downloading copyrighted material without the copyright holder’s permission is illegal. I don’t care how you try to justify it by saying CD’s are a ripoff or how it’s not hurting anyone. It’s stealing, plain & simple. I’m glad Sweden has recognized that.
>Those are defined as fair use. People don’t stay within >it’s confines.
I wasn’t talking about fair use.
Even when people do infringe copyrights, they have rights stronger than the right of the copyright holder. Namely right to privacy. Copyright law is not concerned about what people may do in their own homes because copyright is a lot lesser right than right to privacy.
Why? Because it was designed so. Copyright was meant to protect the artist’s right to their work from unscrupulous businessmen, rip-offs and cheap clones. Not from their customers and not even from other artists (right to comment other work is there).
You may twist it as much as you please, but still at the end copyright infringement is not rape, is not murder and it is not theft.
>Well the problem with the “I’m being persecuted” POV is >that it’s a common refuge for those who choose to not look >at their behaviour.
Did you notice that I said legally?
Then you want to compare filesharing to a crime. How many lives do people directly endanger when they copy Britney Spears? How many lives people directly endanger when they are speeding?
Quit the crap.
>The evidence for a positive link between piracy is tenious >at best. Wishful thinking at worst.
As are any negative links. Just hot air coming from companies too stiff to change their business practises.
Magnatunes allows people to copy and distribute their content under Creative Commons. It even allows people to choose how much to pay for an album starting from few dollars. Still people choose pay 12 dollars on average.
Eat that.
>At best the decision to distribute should still rest with
>the artist.
This holds some moral truth.
Though artists are not copyright holders anymore, check my previous post to see what artists said.
>Third I think that Microsoft is a poor example for >justifying piracy.
Think what you please, Microsoft partly gained their monopoly by not touching any unauthorized copying (they were a lot tougher to pirates) until they were sure of their omnipotent position. Until recently, Windows Update worked just fine with illegal copies. Maybe it still does.
‘…but downloading copyrighted material without the copyright holder’s permission is illegal.’
Not where I’m from.
“I wasn’t talking about fair use.
Even when people do infringe copyrights, they have rights stronger than the right of the copyright holder. Namely right to privacy. Copyright law is not concerned about what people may do in their own homes because copyright is a lot lesser right than right to privacy. ”
Well seeing as how the original topic is the downloading of illegal material. Just because you’re doing it from home doesn’t make a lick of difference as far as the laws concerned.
“Why? Because it was designed so. Copyright was meant to protect the artist’s right to their work from unscrupulous businessmen, rip-offs and cheap clones. Not from their customers and not even from other artists (right to comment other work is there). ”
You’re more than welcome to find were it says all those three, and no other. Plus people who “borrow and distribute” aren’t customers. Customers by definition honor reciprocal agreements, by either entering into them, or walking away. And as for the last, even that has limitations.
“You may twist it as much as you please, but still at the end copyright infringement is not rape, is not murder and it is not theft. ”
It doesn’t need to be rape, or murder, or even theft. All it needs to be is illegal.
“Did you notice that I said legally?”
No you said “I have no right (not even legal)”
The fact that one’s distributing a copyrighted work is what the laws concerned about. Profit, or lack of applies in the punisnment phase. Not the “are you guilty” phase.*
“As are any negative links. Just hot air coming from companies too stiff to change their business practises. ”
And yet pirates cite that “hot air” as proof they’re doing no harm. Plus Itunes, and others is change. Any pirate going to cite those facts?
“Think what you please, Microsoft partly gained their monopoly by not touching any unauthorized copying (they were a lot tougher to pirates) until they were sure of their omnipotent position.”
There position was pretty firm since IBM decided on their OS instead of their first choice.
*”…which actually, at the very end, is probably going to increase my profit and market-share. ” Sounds like distribution to me.
>Well seeing as how the original topic is the downloading
>of illegal material. Just because you’re doing it from
>home doesn’t make a lick of difference as far as the laws
>concerned.
Where I live, it does.
Downloading copyrighted works, expect software, is very much legal here. Moderate copying those works to others in private is also legal. Making hard copies and selling them on the web is not, because that would be competing with original copyright holder with *pirated* material (clones).
>Plus people who “borrow and distribute” aren’t customers.
But they are. They might even be fans. Not only that, but they are potential buyers of a hard copy. After all, they have deemed it worthy enough to download.
As mentioned before, Grateful Dead is making income by allowing bootlegs and such.
At least people I know have bought works they have first copied and liked. Stuff they would have never bought because they didn’t knew it existed.
People that copy and don’t buy wouldn’t have bought it at first place.
>It doesn’t need to be rape, or murder, or even theft.
>All it needs to be is illegal.
To do what?
Death penalty? Hefty fines? Or maybe just a note saying “please stop”?
I don’t quite follow..
There are different levels of illegality, some things are really illegal because they directly hurt other people or society in large, and some things are just codified manners without any penalty because they cause no real harm.
For example walking a dog without lease, it’s illegal, still there’s no much penalty or media coverage about it. Morally it’s also on the same level as private copyright infringement, except that the dog without lease is potentially dangerous and would be shot on sight if the harshest copyright codes would be applied to it.
As I said, downloading and smalltime copying is not illegal here when it’s not done for profit.
And I guess you won’t see any difference, but for me there’s a bright, sparkling one when somebody copies my work to someone else and when some enterpreneur makes large amounts of copies and sells them with almost the same prize as I do.
If you didn’t get it, the first one is meaningless (they wouldn’t have bought it anyway) and the latter is bad (straight ripping of my customer base) behaviour.
>No you said “I have no right (not even legal)”
True. Have a cookie.
>The fact that one’s distributing a copyrighted work is
>what the laws concerned about. Profit, or lack of applies
>in the punisnment phase. Not the “are you guilty” phase.*
If half of the nation is doing it without apparent harm to anyone and doesn’t deem it socially despicable, should it be made illegal?
I mean, there are lots of things that were, or are illegal in totalitarian states. Things that to my moral were still good, not bad, but nevertheless illegal.
>And yet pirates cite that “hot air” as proof they’re
>doing no harm. Plus Itunes, and others is change. Any
>pirate going to cite those facts?
No idea. Myself, I think iTunes is pretty bright idea.
>There position was pretty firm since IBM decided on their
>OS instead of their first choice.
Not for Windows.
>Sounds like distribution to me.
Yes, and even unauthorized. Still with good results and increased sales.
As former RIAA spokeswoman, Hilary Rosen, said:
“What the music industry has is not a piracy problem, but a monopoly pricing problem. The “pirates” are just giving consumers the chance to purchase music in a real market. In asking the government to help them go after pirates, what the recording industry is really trying to do is get the government to help them work against the market by maintaining their monopoly pricing. It’s ironic that in the name of “free trade” and commerce, Big Content is actually fighting to counteract the very market forces that they claim to champion.”
Swim or sink. I think RIAA sinks.
Much as I love the idea of p2p these laws should have been put into place a long time ago. I buy all my music from itunes.
> “That salarys should be the same I can understand, but we also got rules like hair-dressers can’t charge different amount of money for men and women, wtf? What if it takes 2 hours to cut a women but only 30min for a man?”
How exactly is that a problem? Just charge for how long it takes instead. Problem solved.
… offline file sharing.
Rip & burn & meet & share
Would that situation change anything? … besides that the culture-pirates from the content-industry can’t monitor the sneakers net.
Or what about private FTPs, access granted only to your *personal* friends … that will result in a similar network, since everyone will have a friend who has a friend …
Pretty much the opposite of the anonymous networks that are already there … and are not yet under culture-pirates attacks.
Sweden has outlawed the unauthorised downloading of copyrighted and the tittle is ‘Sweden Bans File-Sharing’, what a misleading tittle!
Is-it the register or /. here?
Shame on the editors..
the “chicken and the egg”? ummm, Eggs were around millions of years BEFORE chickens..
and Sweeden has NOT changed anything, they courts STILL do not recognize file sharing as piracy, but IF YOU BREAK IN TO SOMEONES NETWORK THEN YOU ARE ENTERING PIRACY!
You maybe wanted to say that 10% of swedes does NOT share files
If I remeber correctly, selling unauthorized copies is “piracy”, not copying – even if that can be forbidden by contract.
you brits are getting ripped off! you pay double for everything that Americans and the rest of the EU pay for.
Yea, but then again, Brits are by far pushing the most fake stuff on ebay, ripping off the rest of the world. Hell, I’m guessing they list more fake goods than genuine products.