Thread: Internet Piracy

Steal This Film - Part I

Steal This Film - Part II

Originally Posted by Ynot

Steal This Film - Part I

Steal This Film - Part II

Personally I though that Part II was more refined, more indepth, and more reasearched than part one. Part one more or less was about pirate, and although good, it was not as good as part II and they really did a fantastic job with part II.

Well I see both sides of the issue. There is no completely right perspective. On one hand everyone should be compensated for their work, on the other hand with music only a few percent go to the artists.

Personally the problem is that we have shifted away from live performance. The point of recorded music was orginally to give an artist publicity so they could make more money doing concerts.

I mean look at all the famous rock bands of the 80s and early 90s. All of them became famous, partitially because of their music but also because they were fantastic showman and gave one heck of a concert.

These days our most popular arists are not very good live. Just look at the grammy's or the VMAs pretty much all the hip-hop and pop acts lack luster.

It really is sad because live music is really amazing.

Personally I don't buy music and instead spend a lot of money going to concerts and I bring like 4 other friends in my car. If I'm gonna spend my money on music I want something tangible and fun. I'm not going to pay for some digital file! Besides when you go to concerts all of your money goes to artist.

The problem with copyright ATM is not that it hurts artsits but instead it hurts the big corporations which produce artists and basically leech off content. The problem with the system is that it is so entrenched and that it is almost impossible to make it in the music industry without selling your soul to a record company.

Personally I'm a big fan of radiohead because they own their own label and aren't slaves to a record company.

Originally Posted by aceofspades

Personally I though that Part II was more refined, more indepth, and more reasearched than part one. Part one more or less was about pirate, and although good, it was not as good as part II and they really did a fantastic job with part II.

Oh, absolutely
Part II really brought the issues home

I loved the bit where they explained the "real threats"
The fact that the Phantom Menace has been downloaded 5000 times isn't the threat

While this does cause the distributors to lose out on potential profit
this is not why "piracy" is fought so vigorously
the real threat is the shift from consumer to producer

Where as before, to create and distribute content you needed huge amounts of capital to finance a work, and even more to distribute it to end-users
Suddenly, ordinary people can produce and distribute creative content for pennies

The old-fashioned gate keepers of media distribution losing their power and control over content creation and availability is the real threat

Now content creation is a free-for-all
distribution is, for all intents and purposes, free

Who needs a distributor?
Who needs a record deal?
Who needs a publisher?
Who needs the financial backing of any traditional media gate-keepers?

Consumers turned producers
Decentralised media production and distribution

Originally Posted by Alric

As for freedom, well freedom doesn't work unless you respect your neighbor. In nearly every argument I will argue for more freedoms. You will never see me promoting freedom to harm or steal from anyone however. No one has the freedom to steal your property and we are talking about intellectual property. Its the difference between being a libertarian or being an anarchist.

(my emphasis)

Again we come to this point. This would be a good time to review the OP: copying is not stealing. This is the foundation, basically, of my argument. When I copy a music file onto a friend's hard drive I do not harm the artist at all. The artist isn't even present, and he/she hasn't lost anything. The most one can say of copying is that it indirectly deprives the artist of my friend's money, assuming my friend would have paid if I had not given him a copy.

I agree that freedom does not give one the right to harm others indiscriminately, but just as I think the right to not be harmed should not trump the freedom of other people to defend themselves, I think the right to be paid for one's works should not trump the freedom other people to do what they like in private - especially when the prosecution is based on fuzzy claims like "they would have bought it if they hadn't been able to copy it".

Originally Posted by RedfishBluefish

(my emphasis)

Again we come to this point. This would be a good time to review the OP: copying is not stealing. This is the foundation, basically, of my argument. When I copy a music file onto a friend's hard drive I do not harm the artist at all. The artist isn't even present, and he/she hasn't lost anything. The most one can say of copying is that it indirectly deprives the artist of my friend's money, assuming my friend would have paid if I had not given him a copy.

I agree that freedom does not give one the right to harm others indiscriminately, but just as I think the right to not be harmed should not trump the freedom of other people to defend themselves, I think the right to be paid for one's works should not trump the freedom other people to do what they like in private - especially when the prosecution is based on fuzzy claims like "they would have bought it if they hadn't been able to copy it".

i can't even begin to count the number of times I have become a fan of a group because someone gave me their music and than I went to a concert and brought 4 friends, forking over 100 dollars directly to that band.

So the bands that I have pirated and then caused me to go to their concert have made more money off of me than if I wouldn't have pirated their music and just not listened to them because I didn't want to fork over money for CD.

It's not us who are stealing, its the record company. I choose to give bands the money that they have earned rather than forking it over to the RIAA so they can spend more money on lobbying and going after people like me.

So then printing my own books of say harry potter and selling them without permission of the person who wrote it, and the company that sells it is ok. Its not stealing because I only made copies, and then sold the copies.

Originally Posted by Alric

So then printing my own books of say harry potter and selling them without permission of the person who wrote it, and the company that sells it is ok. Its not stealing because I only made copies, and then sold the copies.

NO. You don't quite get it yet. If you print copies of a book and just keep them, you're not claiming to have written the book. But if you make copies and sell them, then you have stolen the IP, because you are now effectively claiming to be the author.

Originally Posted by drewmandan

NO. You don't quite get it yet. If you print copies of a book and just keep them, you're not claiming to have written the book. But if you make copies and sell them, then you have stolen the IP, because you are now effectively claiming to be the author.

Yes I agree, you shouldn't profit off other people's work. I just think content should be shared. The whole point of content is to be shared and spread.

That being said the author needs to be compensated....its just a really tough issue overall.

Originally Posted by drewmandan

NO. You don't quite get it yet. If you print copies of a book and just keep them, you're not claiming to have written the book. But if you make copies and sell them, then you have stolen the IP, because you are now effectively claiming to be the author.

Thats not true. You could sell the copies with the authors name still on it. In which case you are not claiming to be the author. Your only profiting off his work.

I don't see a problem with that.

Except it would be impossible to make any money as an author. Why would a company pay a person for their book, when they can create it without their permission?

Originally Posted by Alric

Except it would be impossible to make any money as an author. Why would a company pay a person for their book, when they can create it without their permission?

I don't see a problem with that. It's still made clear who the author is. There is a fundamental right to ownership of ones works, but not a right to profit from them.

Because not everyone is a jerk like that.

Originally Posted by Alric

Except it would be impossible to make any money as an author. Why would a company pay a person for their book, when they can create it without their permission?

Companies wouldn't (because they have no morals ).

However I imagine a great amount of people would be willing to buy an "official" copy of the book, given an assurance that a reasonable amount of the profit would go to the author. Even better, readers would be able to choose among competing publishing companies based on how fair the profit margins are.

Originally Posted by RedfishBluefish

Companies wouldn't (because they have no morals ).

However I imagine a great amount of people would be willing to buy an "official" copy of the book, given an assurance that a reasonable amount of the profit would go to the author. Even better, readers would be able to choose among competing publishing companies based on how fair the profit margins are.

Well there needs to be a balance. Someone shouldn't be able to sell someone else's work.

But at the time you shouldn't be strung up and lynched just for downloading a new band's music.

Heck if we could all relax and find a balance then we wouldn't have a problem and artists could continue to get compensated for their work.

I my self use to buy computer games all the time back in like 2000.

However recently in the past 5-6 years, game company's have been making more and more crap.

I'm getting sick of going out and wasting 50$ on a PC game, only to find out its crap. Then its not like i can take it back to the store and get my money back.

I cant afford to fork over 50$ to these big game company's for games which suck because the game company cant take the time to make a decent game.

It seems ever since 3d graphics became big, game play has suffered. Sure the 3d graphics are nice and all, but game play makes the game, not the graphics.

The last 2 games i bought i got totally screwed on, and that was it, i never buy games anymore.

1503AD, was suppose to have mutiplayer and a lot of other features.

They never made the mutiplayer for it, and they never bothered to release a patch to fix the current single player game problems, wth.

Then they make a expansion for it, and never even release it in America, the expansion doesn't even fix half the problems that was plaguing the original release.

Im really so sick of these game companys ****ing us over.

So i support downloading games to find out if its worth playing them or not first, before you buy them. I do however think that if you like a game enough you should go out and buy it.

You can always buy games when they are older, and a lot cheaper.(Just wait a year or two). Or you can play the huge amount of free games there are.

Right now, people never get arrested for downloading games. The only people who ever get caught are people who upload them, and people who do it in extreme amounts(like 100 songs a day.)

Originally Posted by Alric

You can always buy games when they are older, and a lot cheaper.(Just wait a year or two). Or you can play the huge amount of free games there are.

You're right, some companies do that. For example, Valve is big on this. In fact, this past Christmas, Valve was offering Bioshock over Steam for $5. That's right, $5.

But unfortunately, the vast majority of publishers don't understand economics or the concept of price discrimination, which is the practice of lowering a price over time to draw in consumers that wouldn't otherwise buy it.

Originally Posted by Alric

You can always buy games when they are older, and a lot cheaper.(Just wait a year or two). Or you can play the huge amount of free games there are.

Right now, people never get arrested for downloading games. The only people who ever get caught are people who upload them, and people who do it in extreme amounts(like 100 songs a day.)

I buy all my console games at $20 a year or two after they come out, I am not paying the ever increasing price they want for a new game.. Fourty dollars in the 90's to Sixty and Seventy is ridiculous.

Originally Posted by drewmandan

You're right, some companies do that. For example, Valve is big on this. In fact, this past Christmas, Valve was offering Bioshock over Steam for $5. That's right, $5.

But unfortunately, the vast majority of publishers don't understand economics or the concept of price discrimination, which is the practice of lowering a price over time to draw in consumers that wouldn't otherwise buy it.

I am proud to say as much as I am a pirate I paid 70 bucks for the valve pack on new years day. Sure I could have just pirated all of the single player games but I need to commend valve for giving us a good deal.

That and valve has made some great games in the past, all of which I bought even though they were single player. I think valve makes games with a great combo of graphics and gameplay. I mean they aren't all about graphics because you can play their games on the crappiest pc with the settings turned down.

Yep most game companies don't quite understand that the kind of people that pirate games are not going to drop 50 dollars on a game even if they can't pirate it, they will just not play it all.

PS: Bioshock was awesome. I paid the 5 dollars for it and it was so worth it.

So valve has my pirate's approval if that means anything.

Avast valve!

FivE DoLlLaRs for BIOSHOCK?

Lucky. I got mine for around $50.

It's an easy decision for me. If the artist(s) aren't down with pirating music, then I probably don't listen to them anyway. Punk rock, local bands, etc always encourage pirating music and making bootleg recordings of their shows. So I will travel far and wide to see a band live, but I'm sure as hell not paying $15 for a cd in a corperate retail store.

As for movies, I hardly care about them anyway.

Originally Posted by xXSomeGuyXx

FivE DoLlLaRs for BIOSHOCK?

Lucky. I got mine for around $50.

sux4u xD

I'de much rather give my money directly to the artists and get to enjoy a live show.

Originally Posted by zazeNate

It's an easy decision for me. If the artist(s) aren't down with pirating music, then I probably don't listen to them anyway. Punk rock, local bands, etc always encourage pirating music and making bootleg recordings of their shows. So I will travel far and wide to see a band live, but I'm sure as hell not paying $15 for a cd in a corperate retail store.

As for movies, I hardly care about them anyway.

The reason for that is so they can get their name out there.