Piracy is necessary and doesn't hurt revenues

[Greg Anos]

Originally Posted by BelleZora

Just a comment on the thread itself, not on the subject of the thread: even when the discussion heats up and MR members resort to shouting at each other (so to speak), it is more endearing than disturbing. I avoid most other internet sites because participants suck all the hope for humanity from my soul.

Kudos to everyone who vigorously and passionately defends his/her position while trying to demolish other arguments and all while refraining from nastiness and personal attacks. (A short descent into shouting is oh so human, but not nasty).

Carry on.

Carry On Argueing? Don't remember that movie...

[Doonge]

Originally Posted by Ralph Sir Edward

Carry On Argueing? Don't remember that movie...

It's because it's not sold where you live
You should pirate it.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Doonge

In my initial post, which you reacted to, I clearly stated I wasn't talking about legality, and I was making a point about cheating the intent of Region restriction.

Many posts from somebody who's nitpicking on the term "necessary" and fails to understand context followed just to repeat that what you do is "legal" (which nobody disputes or care about).

If you disregard the intent of the rights-holders (or are just ignorant about it, which is a fair assumption because we are all supposed to be to some degree), then you cannot assess anything about morality like you did, and you should not get butthurt by the word "cheating" because it will only lead to pointless conversations like we had. After all, legal cheating is not cheating, amirite?

I even stated, still in the initial post which you reacted to, that I didn't think that what you did was a bad thing to do, so you knew I had no problem with legality or morality: why bother with your rebuttal if it's to retreat without saying anything in the end?
You wanted to have my attention by talking to me directly, while I was talking generally (even if I was refering to your posts), then you contribute nothing to me. But hey, that's still legal, and that's not immoral right?

And what is a bit irksome is that you know what we are talking about, and you know what you are doing. The post #78 which you allude to is clearly disregarding the intent of the rights-holders and sticking to "litteral" law. You are writing lines and lines beating around the bush.

As I explained to you (and others) very clearly, the reason that there is no problem with, say, a person in the UK buying DVD's from Amazon.com, is that this is an activity which is, and always has been, perfectly legal. There has never been any restriction on who can buy DVDs, any more than there is a restriction on who can buy paperback books. You appear to be suggesting that you think there's something "immoral" about it: I honestly can see no reason to agree with this. What on Earth is immoral about buying something?

Some other people (not you) appear to be saying that buying a DVD from a foreign retailer is no different to piracy. I find this a completely ludicrous suggestion, to equate legally buying something with copying it illegally.

I'm sorry if you find this explanation unsatisfactory, but it's the only one you're going to get, 'cos them's my views on it. Take 'em or leave 'em,

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

Not exactly. There is an official region code means that a DVD can play in all regions. Anything else is by definition Geo-restricted. At one time, you read about importers being raided, but for the most part now, no one bothers.

There are actually two different region free codes, one of which is unofficial but broadly supported. The reason the codes are being deprecated is because they are illegal in some countries and might be illegal globally.

Region-code enforcement has been discussed as a possible violation of World Trade Organization free trade agreements or competition law.[14] The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has warned that DVD players that enforce region-coding may violate their Competition and Consumer Act 2010.[15][16][17] Under New Zealand copyright law, DVD region codes and the mechanisms in DVD players to enforce them have no legal protection.[18] The practice has also been criticized by the European Commission[19] which as of 2001 March 14 is investigating whether the resulting price discrimination amounts to a violation of EU competition law.[20]

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD_region_code

As of 2007 many "multi-region" DVD players defeated regional lockout and RCE by automatically identifying and matching a disc's region code and/or allowing the user to manually select a particular region.[5][6] Some manufacturers of DVD players now freely supply information on how to disable regional lockout, and on some recent models, it appears to be disabled by default.

Buying out of region DVDs *today* is no different from buying a foreign edition book, CD, or LP. Which has long been perfectly acceptable.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Do you think this is pertinent to the discussion? The question being discussed is whether or not "piracy is necessary", not whether or not it's difficult.

I think piracy can sometimes be a good thing.

When Napster first came out, sales of CDs went up 20% because people downloaded music, tried it, liked it and wen tout out and bought CDs. Napster was shut down and sales of CDs went down. That's stopping something that look bad, but was actually good.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by mgbino

From my understanding, the purchasing of region-free DVD players is legal in most countries, but the production of such DVD players is not. In the U.S., manufactures can't sell a region free player. In Australia they can.

I was able to buy a Phillips DVD player that yu were able to convert to be region free just by typing in the right codes from the remote. It wasn't difficult at all to do and to find the codes online was very simple.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by HarryT

A rational person would enquire before subscribing to a service what its terms and conditions were. Eg Amazon UK's video streaming service clearly tells you that the service will only work for customers in the UK:



Anyone who subscribes to such a service without ascertaining this fact in advance has only themselves to blame. It's not a justification for piracy.

There is a way around that sort of. Use the BBC iPlayer, setup a VPN to one of the free UK VPN services, and download the HD version and voila, you have to program that you can watch. Because the BBC website sees a UK IP, it's happy to let the download happen.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Ralph Sir Edward

Here is the US letter of the law (from the Digital Millenium Copyright Act):

No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title...; to “circumvent a technological measure” means to descramble a scrambled work, to decrypt an encrypted work, or otherwise to avoid, bypass, remove, deactivate, or impair a technological measure, without the authority of the copyright owner.

A region code (in the US) qualified as a "technological measure".

I make no comment on othe countries' laws....

But, we don't know if that's actually legal. There has not been a court case to see if the DMCA trumps Fair Use or nor. Fair Use was out there before DMCA and DMCA makes no mention of trumping Fair Use. So until we get a legal rulling on this, it's a grey area. So you cannot quote the DMCA and say it's illegal. It might not be.

Let's take this example to task... Tor went DRM free. Redshirts was the first eBook they sold without DRM. Due to technical issues, in some shops, it was sold with DRM. The author put up on his blog to go get the DRM removal tools and use them to strip the DRM. This was done with the full knowledge of the publisher thus making the stripping of the DRM legal because the rights holder(s) allowed it to be done. That also might have then made the DRM removal tools legal as well. Now that just screws with the DMCA big time.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by HarryT

As I explained to you (and others) very clearly, the reason that there is no problem with, say, a person in the UK buying DVD's from Amazon.com, is that this is an activity which is, and always has been, perfectly legal. There has never been any restriction on who can buy DVDs, any more than there is a restriction on who can buy paperback books. You appear to be suggesting that you think there's something "immoral" about it: I honestly can see no reason to agree with this. What on Earth is immoral about buying something?

Some other people (not you) appear to be saying that buying a DVD from a foreign retailer is no different to piracy. I find this a completely ludicrous suggestion, to equate legally buying something with copying it illegally.

I'm sorry if you find this explanation unsatisfactory, but it's the only one you're going to get, 'cos them's my views on it. Take 'em or leave 'em,

OK, let's say you buy a DVD from Amazon.com that's set to be watchable only in the US. One month later, you find out that there is now a UK company selling the DVD buy restricted for just the UK. You've taken money from the UK company selling the UK DVD. Is that right? Nope, it's not.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

OK, let's say you buy a DVD from Amazon.com that's set to be watchable only in the US. One month later, you find out that there is now a UK company selling the DVD buy restricted for just the UK. You've taken money from the UK company selling the UK DVD. Is that right? Nope, it's not.

There's no such thing as a "DVD that's set to be watchable only in the US", any more than there's a paperback book that's only readable in the US.

There are DVDs that are only sold in the US, just as there are books that are only sold in the US, but both can be bought by anybody. To suggest that buying a DVD from the US is "wrong" is as silly as saying that buying a book from the US is wrong. Is that what you're suggesting?

[CommonReader]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

The law of being entitled to whatever catches your fancy?
Entitlement culture at its finest.

You mean that's different from media companies getting the laws they want, as long as they've greased the right palms? People increasingly don't care about the law any more, as they see it as being tilted completely in the interests of the industry while ignoring consumers.
If companies don't want to sell their content to them for good money, then why should people be concerned about safeguarding the interests of those companies? And no, having to jump through all sorts of hoops to pretend that you are being located somewhere else isn't an acceptable option for most people.
Additionally, copying isn't the same as stealing. Anyone who returned at night to a car park during a downpour just to find his car gone because of theft, knows very well the difference between such a theft and someone turning up, creating a perfect copy of his car, and driving away with the copy.

[Canuck_in_Japan]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Why are they being cheated? They're being paid.

Perhaps they want to sell the DVD in your country for a higher price than what they are selling in country A. So by buying an out of region DVD you technically could be cheating that company out of money, Harry.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by Canuck_in_Japan

Perhaps they want to sell the DVD in your country for a higher price than what they are selling in country A. So by buying an out of region DVD you technically could be cheating that company out of money, Harry.

Cheating them out of money they wanted to cheat you out of?

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

There are actually two different region free codes, one of which is unofficial but broadly supported. The reason the codes are being deprecated is because they are illegal in some countries and might be illegal globally.



http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD_region_code



Buying out of region DVDs *today* is no different from buying a foreign edition book, CD, or LP. Which has long been perfectly acceptable.

It seems to me that you keep using "out of region" because you shy away from the implications of bypassing Geo-restrictions. Yes, some countries have made Geo-restriction illegal. It doesn't change the fact that out of region and Geo-restriction are one and the same things. Yes, I understand what region codes are, you don't have to link to the Wiki article about region codes like it somehow adds validity to your claim. There was nothing in that article that said that Geo-restriction and out of region are different things.

[Rizla]

We live in a culture that rewards theft. People believe in it.