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Originally Posted by spooky69
Finding copyrighted texts should be laughably easy compared to child pornography (and you are obviously making a really transparent and unfair association between possessing CP and e-book piracy, by the way), and I'm actually in favor of implementing as much security into the processing of internet traffic as possible as long as it doesn't infringe on an individual's rights.
On the other hand, man, Steve...this doesn't address the underlying dynamics of why piracy exists, and how pirates exist as part of the business model.
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You don't see the similarity between two groups that swap illegal data files across the internet, spooky?
Actually, I was only making the connection because the tools being developed to combat one illegal act may be used someday to combat others.
However, the very idea that "pirates are part of a business model" is the laughable part. Stealing is never part of a business model... it is the
systematic attack of the business model. A business model is about developing a product, building a store, and finding ways to make it profitable for you to sell it. Piracy is the person who breaks the window of the store and takes what he wants, regardless of the intent of the business model. That person isn't encouraging people to go buy at your store. In fact, he's more likely driving away every legitimate buyer, who now doesn't trust the integrity or safety of that store, and attracting only more pirates looking to loot through the broken window.
And it is especially heinous, because we are not talking about something a poor, starving bum needs to survive... we're talking about entertainment for electronic devices. A flagrant luxury, not a necessity. It's stealing a Lexus, when 50 cents and a bus token will get you where you want to go.
The business of trying to legitimize piracy by claiming that steps taken against it will only result in the erosion of the Constitution and Bill of Rights as Big Brother jackboots over us all is disingenuous, illogical, and already proven to be historically inaccurate. Laws to control what people can and cannot do with their owned property, and limiting their access to public and private resources, have been passed over and over, and we're no more sweating under the hot breath of Big Brother now than we were a hundred years ago.
I've read the statements of the Pirate Party, for example. They see Big Brother in every stop sign. They live in the mistaken fantasy that somewhere, someone in a little room with a camera is watching each and every one of them, writing down their every move, and waiting for the moment when they can push their little button, and their subject will be dragged off to the stockade for the inevitable decade of torture before finally being shot as a traitor for throwing gum on the sidewalk. And they are based in Sweden, likely one of the most liberal and free of countries on the planet! Those guys need to find themselves a little island to play
Lord of the Flies on, and give the rest of us a break.
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Originally Posted by spooky69
I know that does come off as a justification for piracy,
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...yep...
Quote:
Originally Posted by spooky69
but I'm really arguing that anticipating and accepting the *existence* (not fairness/morality) of piracy is a lot more natural (a loaded word in and of itself) than trying to find ways to eliminate all copywritic wrongdoing in the digital realm through policing of internet data.
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Storeowners accept the existence of looters. That's why they buy shatterproof glass and put bars on the windows and locks on their door. They do what they can to stop looters, catch them, and have them thrown in jail. And when they decide they are losing too much from looters, they close their shop, denying looters their product, and they move to a location where looters do not harass them. If they can't find such a place, they go out of business. And nobody gets their product. Nobody.
Big Brother aside, this is where we're headed: A world in which we all lose our shirts paying for security against looters; or a world in which the store owners give up, and there's nothing for us to protect.