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Old 10-04-2012, 10:28 AM   #16
Catlady
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The focus should be on stopping the uploaders; leave the downloaders alone. Obviously, if material isn't available on the file-sharing sites in the first place, it can't be downloaded.
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Old 10-04-2012, 10:29 AM   #17
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Originally Posted by Catlady View Post
The focus should be on stopping the uploaders; leave the downloaders alone. Obviously, if material isn't available on the file-sharing sites in the first place, it can't be downloaded.
So you think that downloaders should be able to break the law with impunity? Both are equally guilty. It takes two to tango, as the saying goes.
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Old 10-04-2012, 10:47 AM   #18
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I think the article is absolutely spot on. It's not advocating unauthorized downloading (I refuse to call it theft or piracy, because it's neither), it's merely outlining today's reality.

Whatever your stance on downloading, from being in favor of jail time for downloaders, to donation-based anarchy (not naming any names), or somewhere in between, you have to admit one self-evident truth: that the Film/Music/Book industries have failed to adapt to the modern realities of the digital world (to put it mildly) & have handled the situation in just about the worst, most brainlessly heavy-handed way possible.

I believe in paying for my content - to support the artists & creative types, NOT to line the pockets of fat cat executives. With entities like the RIAA using scare tactics, bullying, and trying to throw people in jail or fine them into bankruptcy, and trying to pass ridiculous legislation like SOPA, I certainly have zero sympathy for big media companies.

Last edited by usuallee; 10-04-2012 at 10:49 AM. Reason: minor grammatical error
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Old 10-04-2012, 10:56 AM   #19
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Absolutely. You will never defeat piracy as long as it's cheaper than buying something, which it seems to me it always will be.

The solution is to make it as easy and cheap and friendly as possible to buy something. I think this is why the likes of the Kindle store, iTunes/App Store and Steam actually succeed as well as they do.
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Old 10-04-2012, 11:12 AM   #20
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I think there are two kinds of 'piracy' (buying something that breaks normal trading rules):

1. Buying out of neccessity (product not available 'legally' or you can't afford the proper price).
2. Buying something because it's cheaper and you are greedy.

Until people/society changes we are stuck with piracy.
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Old 10-04-2012, 11:14 AM   #21
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Originally Posted by AncientGardener View Post
I think there are two kinds of 'piracy' (buying something that breaks normal trading rules):

1. Buying out of neccessity (product not available 'legally' or you can't afford the proper price).
Hmmm. Not being able to afford something hardly makes downloading entertainment a "necessity" does it? There are all sorts of things in the world that I can't afford, but that doesn't justify my taking them without paying.
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Old 10-04-2012, 11:20 AM   #22
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If something is cheap enough, and available easily enough, there are many people who will pay rather than go looking for pirated content.

I don't buy DVDs often; if I do they usually have to be sub-£3, and/or something that I like so much that I'll pay more for, and are bought purely on a whim during shopping trips. I don't use Netflix, because I don't sit down to passively watch something very often. If there were a service that charged a throwaway amount (such as £1) to rent a movie/tv series for a week, I'd probably use fairly frequently; £1 doesn't sound like much, but it's £1 of my money more than nothing, and throwaway pricing can attract more purchases (as Apple's app store proves).
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Old 10-04-2012, 11:21 AM   #23
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Hmmm. Not being able to afford something hardly makes downloading entertainment a "necessity" does it? There are all sorts of things in the world that I can't afford, but that doesn't justify my taking them without paying.
Not all books are for entertainment (college, work related, etc?) but I take your point.
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Old 10-04-2012, 11:24 AM   #24
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Originally Posted by Catlady View Post
The focus should be on stopping the uploaders; leave the downloaders alone. Obviously, if material isn't available on the file-sharing sites in the first place, it can't be downloaded.
It is more than that though. Without downloaders the demand for uploading would not be there. Both go together.

Honestly, there is always going to be an active filesharing community. the way forward is to reduce the amount of filesharing that is happening. Until the BPH's and the RIAA/MPAA lose their mid 20th century mindset and offer better distribution systems more in keeping with the modern digital age, that is simply not going to happen.
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Old 10-04-2012, 11:56 AM   #25
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So you think that downloaders should be able to break the law with impunity? Both are equally guilty. It takes two to tango, as the saying goes.
No, I'm saying that if you successfully go after the uploaders, the problem of the downloaders disappears.

They are not equally guilty. An uploader is potentially responsible for thousands upon thousands of lost sales for each upload. A downloader is potentially responsible for a single lost sale for each download--his or her own possible purchase.
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Old 10-04-2012, 12:02 PM   #26
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EuroGamer covered this topic; they were speaking of video games, but it's even more true for books:
Quote:
Piracy suggests villainy of some kind, when in truth all that punters are doing when taking something for free is "taking something for free". It's like lifting a leaflet, or taking one of those samples of cheese from Tesco's deli counter. It's what people do. There's no malice in it.

1. HERE IS A THING I LIKE

2. DO I WANT IT? (YES)

3. DO I HAVE TO PAY FOR IT? (NO)

4. DO I WANT TO PAY FOR IT? (YES/NO)

5. YES: PAY FOR IT

6. NO: JUST TAKE IT FOR FREE

END

That's it in a nutshell. And here's the fundamental problem with the whole piracy issue. Publishers are focusing on dismantling Stage 6 of that process when they should be analysing decisions made at Stage 4.
Whether or not you think downloading-free-stuff is (or should be) a crime, or is an act of evil rather than casual convenience, the point is: to stop piracy, the consumer needs to be addressed at Stage 4, not Stage 6. Stage 6 is *never* going to be changeable, especially for books. There will *always* be ways to read a book for free; many of those will continue to be legit.

All the big hype about The Evils Of Book Piracy have done, is convince a lot of avid readers that publishers think they're leeches for buying used books.
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Old 10-04-2012, 12:04 PM   #27
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It is more than that though. Without downloaders the demand for uploading would not be there. Both go together.

Honestly, there is always going to be an active filesharing community. the way forward is to reduce the amount of filesharing that is happening. Until the BPH's and the RIAA/MPAA lose their mid 20th century mindset and offer better distribution systems more in keeping with the modern digital age, that is simply not going to happen.
Sure they go together. But as a practical matter I think it makes more sense to use resources to go after the uploaders and the sites that host them than individual downloaders, or people who circumvent copy protection to make their own backup copies.
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Old 10-04-2012, 12:13 PM   #28
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Sure they go together. But as a practical matter I think it makes more sense to use resources to go after the uploaders and the sites that host them than individual downloaders, or people who circumvent copy protection to make their own backup copies.
I don't think anyone's suggesting that people who circumvent copy protection for material they've legally bought should be prosecuted, but that's very different to illegally downloading material that's commercially available. That is wrong, and should be prosecuted.
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Old 10-04-2012, 12:15 PM   #29
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So you think that downloaders should be able to break the law with impunity? Both are equally guilty. It takes two to tango, as the saying goes.
Have you ever tried slaying an hydra? Where, for each head you cut off, two new grows up in its place? It's not an easy thing, fighting such a beast head by head. The fight isn't about "right" or "wrong", it's about finding the most efficient way of killing the beast.

No, I've not lost my mind. The hydra metafor is, in my opinion, very similar to what the big media houses is trying to do. Take the downloaders, one by one, and for each time they take one, the publicity makes two to take his/hers place.

Reasearch* has shown that a few people who make a living out of the pirate sites is behind most of the pirated material "out there". Which, to me, makes sense. I, as an "ordinary" person, has no advantage from uploading "stuff". It is illegal, I could get in trouble over it, it takes space on my hard drives and my bandwidth. The ordinary person may or may not be tempted to download, and if you want to go after all the downloaders you need the weapons of PIPA and SOPA and whatnot. These are weapons of mass destruction, capable of destroying the openness and freedom of speech and so on. But the ordinary person has no interest in uploading. That is why, if one takes down the biggest uploaders, you reduce the big problem of piracy to a much smaller problem.

It is easier to go after the few than the many; a stab through the hydras heart is easier than killing it head by head. Besides, it may not be neccessary to force sensorship and ruining the open internet to take down the hydra either. It is possible to use traditional methods (investigation, arrestation, charges and convictions) of the biggest uploaders with the means we have available today; there are some problems with international laws, US juristiction does not cover the entire earth and so on, but by rattling its sables, US have quite a bit of influence in other countries as well.

I say again: this fight should not be about "rigth" or "wrong", nor about punishing all infrigers. The main goal should be to solve the problem with as light methods as possible. By spending just a fraction of the amount used on DRM schemes, lobbying for these socalled "acts", bribing politicians, TV commercials and whatnot, it could have been possible to take down many of the largest uploaders or sites.

"Let the small fish go and focus on the big fish" has been fishers motto for a long time. If the MAFIAA (I just love that term) could follow the same motto, let the police and the courts focus on the biggest "fishes" out there instead of drowning the police and said courts with massive amounts of work, maybe we wouldn't find ourselves in this mess. Even Hercules, when cleaning Augias stables, had to start somewhere. Why not start with the big fishes and see what happens?

I don't say that this will solve the problem of piracy, but it would limit it to a fraction of what it is today. Piracy is popular because you could find anything out there. By limiting the selection and availability by making it harder to run a pirate site pluss taking out the uploaders, I think it will become less popular.

I know that it is far from easy to take down a site in our divided world, the piratebay farce has shown that. The original people behind the piratebay is sentenced to jail and gigantic fines, but the current owners are not affected. It is difficult, but far more productive if successfull. Remember what happened after Megaupload was taken down? Almost all similar sites shut down in the aftershock of the quake. It's easier, cheaper and more efficient that anything involving suing en masse.

In my opinion, the MAFIAA are trying to solve the problem with far too heavy guns. They are using heavy artillery to take down Sparrows (sic!) instead of catching the big eagles, even though the big eagles are an easier target, even with traditional weaponry.

*I don't find a link to this article. I think this was discussed in an earlier debate here, and I think I read it in one of the articles discussed in said debate, but I fail to remember which. Can anybody help with links here?

Last edited by Iznogood; 10-04-2012 at 01:49 PM.
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Old 10-04-2012, 12:20 PM   #30
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Thievery is part of human nature, hence it will never go away completely.
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