You Will Never Kill Piracy, and Piracy Will Never Kill You

[SteveEisenberg]

Originally Posted by GreenMonkey

You cannot kill copyright infringement.

You can't kill any anti-social action no matter how serious or trivial. I'm amazed that people keep repeating such a spectacularly weak argument.

This is also true of the thread title. You will never kill (enter here any anti-social action except homicide) and (re-enter here said anti-social action) will never kill you.

Originally Posted by DrNefario

The first uploader, the person who copied the item, is in many ways more altruistic than any of the downloaders.

Uploaders probably have, in private, some choice words to say about the courage of those who only download and never upload.

[Iznogood]

Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg

Uploaders probably have, in private, some choice words to say about the courage of those who only download and never upload.

Most likely words that should not be reprinted on a family-friendly forum like this I suppose.

And this is exactly why it's more efficient to investigate the uploaders than the downloaders. I realize that torrent is uploading while you're downloading, but with uploaders I mean those who keep uploading after the download is completed. To leave the downloaders alone and investigate the uploaders by traditional means and get waterproof evidence against them is, as far as I can see, the most efficient way to limit the piracy. Certainly the most cost-efficient way.

[Giggleton]

Originally Posted by norway1456

Most likely words that should not be reprinted on a family-friendly forum like this I suppose.

And this is exactly why it's more efficient to investigate the uploaders than the downloaders. I realize that torrent is uploading while you're downloading, but with uploaders I mean those who keep uploading after the download is completed. To leave the downloaders alone and investigate the uploaders by traditional means and get waterproof evidence against them is, as far as I can see, the most efficient way to limit the piracy. Certainly the most cost-efficient way.

I think what SteveEisenberg was referring to as uploaders are those that go out of their way to obtain rare or out of print materials and then upload them to the network for public consumption, you may call this piracy, others may call it a public service.

[sabredog]

Originally Posted by Catlady

And "illegally downloading" is very different from uploading to file-sharing sites.

Time for an analogy. Let's say John smokes pot on occasion; sometimes he shares it with a friend. John's dealer is Mary, who has dozens of other customers. Mary gets the stuff from a much bigger supplier who has dozens of other dealers.

All are engaging in illegal acts. Who should you go after? Which prosecution potentially has the biggest impact on the problem?

Pretty bad analogy really. Piracy is nowhere close to insidious as the drug trade, no matter what the entertainment industry and BPH's loudly trumpet.

[caleb72]

Loved the article.

If we accept that crippling the e-Universe is not a likely option then I really believe the only sensible option is to invest your time in making people want to give you money. It's a tough adjustment to make for businesses so used to demanding, but these are the businesses that are starting to become the beggars in this game.

If they don't adapt they may die or they may choose to withdraw and then we'll lose what they can produce, but there's always going to be the innovator out there offering an alternative. It might take a different form and we might lose some aspects of the blockbuster as it currently exists, but talent itself does not cost millions of dollars and clever people can make/exploit new markets when old markets are no longer viable.

I look on with interest.

[Greg Anos]

The article was bang on. But don't worry, nothing will change. Human inertia guarantees it.

As long as there is cheap storage and cheap communications (and that will only change if Civilization collapses, because there are too many other uses for the same infrastructure for it to be abandoned for the demands of I.P. owners.), there will be piracy.

Squeeze the Internet, up pops encrypted VPN. Squeeze them? You'd be squeezing every big corporation in the world, and they won't let that happen. Even if that happens, there's sneakernet. I saw 64GB SD chips for the mid $30 USD range range. That's 150+ hours of CD quality FLAC files, or 8 maxed out DVDs, a maxed out BLU-RAY, or who knows how many books (the mind boggles - 64,000?). Pass them to you friends by hand. Or encrypted in the mail. What's in them? Only you and The Shadow know...(and the recipient, of course) Shucks, I can build an encryption methodology that's take weeks for the NSA to crack. (Wouldn't do Hollywood any good, besides, I don't deal with the MAFIAA.)

So the status quo will remain, and the MAFIAA will keep trying to bring on a police state to try to bring back the past.

Good Luck...

[SteveEisenberg]

Originally Posted by Giggleton

I think what SteveEisenberg was referring to as uploaders are those that go out of their way to obtain rare or out of print materials and then upload them to the network for public consumption . . .

No. I wasn't thinking about out of print books.

If you only download out of print books, all is forgiven. But I suspect that darknet literature overwhelmingly consists of popular titles.

[Catlady]

Originally Posted by sabredog

Pretty bad analogy really. Piracy is nowhere close to insidious as the drug trade, no matter what the entertainment industry and BPH's loudly trumpet.

That was not the point of the analogy.

[Barty]

Actually, it is not true for all forms of piracy. I think the cable and satellite companies have stopped cable / satellite theft.

Looking toward the future, quantum cryptography may be unbreakable.

[dkperez]

Ignoring rare, out-of-print, and other special cases, which I suspect will always have people "pirate", I believe the best way to reduce piracy is to make it so simple, economical, and ubiquitous to get legitimate copies that it isn't worth the effort to pirate an e-book...

If a person can find what they're after at B&N for $0.99 or at most $2.99, I'm unlikely to do the work to find a pirate copy 'cause it's not worth the effort...

Keep charging $10, $12, or $14 for a popular ebook that's already made money as a hardcover and more money as a paperback (doesn't matter whether it's true or not, we're talking the PERCEPTION of having made money), and on which he/she can't recoup a portion of their investment by selling it to Half Price Books, and piracy will continue to burgeon and increase in popularity.

[Indio777]

Originally Posted by sabredog

Yep, then put 'em in gibbets and hang them near the Hollywood sign....

Or else put their heads on spikes ....

I liked the article.

Make things freely available that I can watch/read/listen to on a variety of devices if I so choose at a reasonable price. Although how one determines what is "reasonable" is a good question ...

And stop, whenever possible (but can be difficult sometimes due to rights issues; maybe those need to be reviewed) limiting access based on region. That really irritates me sometimes.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by darksaber35

Ohh dear the truth tumbles out for all to read as you obviously have a vested in interest in bringing in draconian laws to the UK to protect you own business MR H.

Please don't put words into my mouth. I do not want to see draconian laws; I want to see just laws, and justice includes punishing those who take the income away from ordinary people like me who try to make a living from writing software, books, or whatever. Piracy is not just something which affects large companies; it also impacts the normal person, too, and as things stand at the moment there is no justice for the little guy like me, while the slime who pirate content are getting away with it with impunity.

[taosaur]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Please don't put words into my mouth. I do not want to see draconian laws; I want to see just laws, and justice includes punishing those who take the income away from ordinary people like me who try to make a living from writing software, books, or whatever. Piracy is not just something which affects large companies; it also impacts the normal person, too, and as things stand at the moment there is no justice for the little guy like me, while the slime who pirate content are getting away with it with impunity.

It sounds like you are much more interested in thinking nasty thoughts about those you believe have wronged you than you are in actually monetizing your work. People who acquire your work through backchannels have not taken income away from you because you never had the money. What they have done is expressed satisfaction with your work and dissatisfaction with your distribution system. You may feel righteous telling them "My way or the highway!" but technology will not let you make good on that threat. In the meantime you are alienating all those "slime" who may be simultaneously part of your paying audience (obtaining something from pirates does not mean you obtain everything from pirates) and/or may become paying customers if either their circumstances or your distribution methods change.

[Piper_]

My two cents, FWIW...

1. These companies do themselves no favors with all the various ways they feed into an "us vs them" atmosphere. Especially with their attempts to create an “every reader of a book should pay us for that book, or they are thieves" mentality...

It doesn't escape the notice of all those who share books through an office/neighborhood/family/friends/whatever “library." (The fact that it isn't technically the same, since a copy could be made and kept, is academic, if not pedantic, since (wild guess) most of them read them only once, anyway.)

Could someone abuse it? Yeah, but people tend to live up or down to expectations; the honor system is better PR than the Captain Queeg approach.



2. Making downloading a crime is a bad idea; it would be a poor use of limited resources and provoke bad will due to the authorities investigating/prosecuting people they “catch" downloading books... when there are so many reasons/circumstances a jury would consider excusable.

We can discuss the ethics forever, but as a juror, if I'm asked to actually condemn a person as a criminal for something like downloading a copy of a book he paid for in paper or is not for sale in his region, etc., I'm more likely to vote to fine the plaintiffs and authorities who wasted my time and tax dollars.

A few trials like that would be a PR, if not precedent, nightmare for the prosecution and plaintiffs, IMO.

(Dang, I got carried away with my 2 cents. )

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by taosaur

It sounds like you are much more interested in thinking nasty thoughts about those you believe have wronged you than you are in actually monetizing your work. People who acquire your work through backchannels have not taken income away from you because you never had the money. What they have done is expressed satisfaction with your work and dissatisfaction with your distribution system. You may feel righteous telling them "My way or the highway!" but technology will not let you make good on that threat. In the meantime you are alienating all those "slime" who may be simultaneously part of your paying audience (obtaining something from pirates does not mean you obtain everything from pirates) and/or may become paying customers if either their circumstances or your distribution methods change.

This is sophistry, pure and simple. I have a right - both moral and legal - to expect payment from those who use my work, and those who use it without paying are taking money from me to which I am legally entitled. The law provides no practical mechanism for me to prosecute these people, and that is unjust. Copyright infringement laws, as they currently stand, provide no protection for the ordinary person, since only large companies can afford to take civil action against the offenders. I can't go to the police and say "Fred Bloggs is using my software without paying for it", even if he stands up and shouts from the rooftops that he's doing so. This is not justice, by any definition. If the law says to someone "you have these rights" then it should provide a mechanism to enforce those rights.

I'm not "money grabbing". I give away a lot of stuff for free (all the eBooks I upload to MR, for example), but I do eBooks for fun, and software for money. I don't think I'm being unreasonable in expecting to get paid for that software by people who choose to use it. I don't know how you make your living, but, whatever you do for a job, you probably expect to get paid for it. Current copyright law does not provide a practical method for creators of intellectual property to ensure that they do get paid for their work.