Quote Of The Day

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The quote of the day is brought to you by the crew at TorrentFreak. The quote "You don’t have to support piracy to hate bullying and extortion" is exactly how we feel about the subject. While we don't condone piracy, we can't stand the tactics used by the RIAA / MPAA either. The real victims are the artists and consumers.

Last month, the Gamer/Law legal blog published an article which in many ways failed to understand what so-called pay-up-or-else anti-piracy schemes are all about. Now the owner of Gamer/Law is back with an open letter titled “To those who defend game pirates”. Since it’s published in Edge, probably the best print-based games publication ever made, I simply can’t let this one lie.
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Yes, I agree w/ the TF crew's quote. An analogy would be saying that being pro-choice doesn't necessarily mean you support killing babies, but merely allowing the mother the choice to abort or not.
 
I think we should stand more firmly on the "piracy" issue and stop this cover-my-ass attitude of "not condoning." Like Switzerland recently did, when a judge said that downloads for private usage were legal.

We all "pirate" or have pirated at one stage or another, and the most "virtuous" people should not be disillusioned that even if they don't "pirate" themselves, their own kids, family and friends do. Using the terms "piracy" or "pirating" does not help change the general mindset either, I think this term should be strictly restricted to people who are making money out of it. People who download a song or a movie are not "pirates," maybe just "download" or a variant of this term should be used instead.

Every song is already on YouTube, so converting them into audio files is akin to recording from the radio onto tapes. But there is absolutely no reason why billions of people should pay Google (or rather that Google should be paid by ads viewed by these billions of visitors) for these songs, to which Google/YouTube contributes absolutely nothing cultural (IP rights). And of course, transferring should not be restricted to advanced users or performed repeatedly by millions of people, so it makes sense that the songs from YouTube or better audio formats are made available on the Net for everyone to enjoy, especially kids or people who don't have money to buy CDs or tunes in the first place.

Sales figures seem to indicate that people who are able to discover and like artists through downloads will buy their songs, merchandise, concert tickets. At least enough people to make up for "lost sales", which are mostly no loss at all since the vast majority of downloaders would never have bought these songs as I already mentioned.

I know the issue is not as simple as I make it, but common sense (not lawyers arguments) should make it easy to distinguish between sites that make a hefty profit on downloads and those that make just enough money to sustain their own infrastructure. The situation might also be different for movies or software, but probably not by much. A poor graphic designer in India who downloaded Photoshop will make a profit at the expense of Photoshop owners for a while, but he/she will hopefully get richer and might buy the software and add-ons later on.

The whole entertainment and software industry (and probably other economical sectors too as they start using the Internet) should rather embrace this new digital world of file sharing.
If music labels made all their albums freely downloadable, the player app could tell the user something like "Hey, you seems to like this album/song, you listened to it 5 times already; Would you like to purchase it/They'll be touring in your city in 6 months, would you like to purchase concert tickets/etc." or "Hey, you seem to like this genre a lot, would you like to listen to other songs in this genre that other people enjoy?" like some online music sites already propose.

The same could go for apps, even proposing a leasing option for people who can't afford to purchase them. There are lots of creative and decent money-making schemes that could profit to both the creators and the consumer, especially since it would be completely by-passing the middleman who is just a parasite in this Internet age. Only sites who really add value to the creators or consumers would survive.

So in short, I think we should actively support piracy, or rather a specific form of non-commercial piracy, and not call it "piracy" anymore. The arguments that I sometimes see like "it's your choice, if you can't afford to buy it, don't download it or don't complain if you get sued" or "music is not a birth right" or "I buy only from indie labels" are either not fair to certain people (why would some rich kids be able to listen "legally" to some songs when the other kids in the same school would not be allowed to partake to the same pop culture) or stupid (the majority of "good" songs and artists are in RIAA labels, and indie labels get bought all the time, without changing their name.)
 
Chimel said:
I think we should stand more firmly on the "piracy" issue and stop this cover-my-ass attitude of "not condoning."
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What is "cover-my-ass" about WE DO NOT SUPPORT PIRACY but we don't like seeing people bulied and extorted? Seems pretty straight forward. :rolleyes:


Team Obi Juan said:
"We"?
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[H] is more than one person and "we" do not condone piracy but we don't like seeing the elderly, sick, children and dead people bullied into settlements because they can't afford representation.
 
Steve said:
[H] is more than one person and "we" do not condone piracy but we don't like seeing the elderly, sick, children and dead people bullied into settlements because they can't afford representation.
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How can a dead person be bullied?
 
"The glass used to be full, but we decided to siphon it out and sell it later. Back to Full map pack now available for $15"
-EA/DICE
 
dgingeri said:
Join the movement! I've created an Anti-SOPA/PROTECT IP page in Facebook (since I didn't find one already.) Join me and like this page. I'll be posting any news, like this, that would seem to indicate an possible way to abuse SOPA or PROTECT IP.

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Anti-SOPAPROTECT-IP/211470862270937
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Better yet, e-mail your congressperson (www.house.gov) like I did. :cool:

Dear Congressman <Name>,

The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) (H.R. 3261) and the PROTECT IP Act
(PIPA) would ruin so much of what's best about the Internet: They will
give the government and corporations new powers to block Americans'
access to sites that are accused of copyright infringement, force sites
like YouTube to go to new lengths to police users' contributions, and
put people in prison for streaming certain content online. Please do
everything in your power to oppose this bill and protect our freedom of
speech. Thank you.

Sincerely,
<My name>
 
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