As everyone on this forum is completely honest and would never even think of downloading illegal content then the current laws suggesting internet disconection for 3 strikes will be of no concern.

I especially admire the French, who's president has made it a personal mission to ensure that struggling record companys, sorry, artists, are protected from this evil scurge. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HADOPI_law

However, as per the usual double standards that apply in this world at present it appears the rules don't apply to him. https://torrentfreak.com/frenc ... tfreak+%28Torrentfreak%29
( Clearly a closet Beach Boys fan )

Unfortunatly, clearly pinged themselves are people from these sad companies that wanted these laws in the first place. https://torrentfreak.com/buste ... universal-and-fox-111213/

The Swiss appear to have a far more rational opinion, must be time for someone to invade them ! https://torrentfreak.com/swiss ... c-will-stay-legal-111202/

Meanwhile, back in the real world, be careful out there folks....... https://torrentfreak.com/5-way ... rents-anonymously-100819/

Quote from Racer X NZ :

As everyone on this forum is completely honest and would never even think of downloading illegal content...

@ Racer X :I guess that if you used to live in France, you would think different... (or do like most people would: don't give f...).
All in all, the small man you refer to is a living joke... a very bad one, indeed.

The games industry has already worked out how to destroy piracy, make the games free to play. Why can't other industries copy the same principles? Make movies free to rent online in low quality when they first come out, charge extra for HD rental, then obviously charge a bit more for a permanent copy with special features. You can do the same with albums, people could rent a basic copy of the album for free, then pay for a permanent copy with extra bonus tracks.

The real issue is the society we live in is founded on principles of greed and selfishness, the many will always suffer for the profit of the few, this is just one very tiny example of that.

The right to privacy and end user rights always come second when anyone mentions child pornography or piracy. It all just leads to censorship and once the said system is in place it is easy to censor sites critizising the system as well.

Like has happened in Finland. We have a totally ineffective child pornography filter which just basically censors the internet (and the original problem remains in the internets) and is so easy to go around that everyone knows how to do it. Then the first victim of said system was a site that was critizising the said filter. After long court process and having to pay all the costs the site was removed from the list. Needless to say the filter does not need to obey law because its sole purpose is to function above it.

Sooner or later we end up like in China where there are topics you can discuss about and topics you can not. Nothing is more important than political correctness and just hiding the problems instead of removing and solving them.

Quote from ATC Quicksilver :

The games industry has already worked out how to destroy piracy, make the games free to play.

+ online.

Quote from ATC Quicksilver :

The real issue is the society we live in is founded on principles of greed and selfishness, the many will always suffer for the profit of the few, this is just one very tiny example of that.

Yes and no. A society built on 'non-greed' doesn't magically create a utopia. Just look at the soviet union, cuba etc...

Copyright law was originally created to give the 'artist' a brief monopoly on a certain idea or product. That has some merits, however it's got to a point where major corporations just buy up a shit load of copyrighted material which in effect outlaws the sharing of creativity and ideas. Just an example of crony-capitalism. Creating laws the benefit the few in the name of the many.

Piracy has always existed and will always exist. It's simply easier now than it ever was before and therefore more widespread.

Trying to fight it is a waste of time. The only reason that big record companies are trying to get ISPs to fight it is because they're still running a business model that hasn't changed in 60 years. They need to stop clinging on to the past and change what they do to fit.

Concert tickets (as some of you might have noticed) have increased in price vastly in the last decade or so. That's the result of reduced album sales, PROBABLY linked to piracy. But that's fine by me. Get an album for free but at least pay to go see the artist live. Buy a t-shirt.

You can't beat piracy; they've been trying and failing for years. Move with the times or become irrelevant.

But in the meantime, buy an Albany Down album

I don't see a point in trying to stop piracy, after all, it is greener than say CD's/DVD's/whatever the data is on, or in fact anything sold via the internet is greener, like the Kindle books. Even vinyl records were pirated back in the day.

NetFlix is a prime example here.

Considering only the business and theft part of this questions, there are two ways to look at it:

- The ultimately greedy film/music/game companies are taking desperate measures to squeeze every single penny out of the customers, calling everybody who disagrees with their attitude a pirate, thief, etc. They don't consider their malwarish DRM tools and usually overpriced data carriers the very reason why some people much rather download stuff from TPB. To top it off they recently shot a "documentary" about piracy being the plague of the entertainment industry; surprisingly, the "documentary" is full of intentional lies and false accusations. One can also love how they blame RapidShare, MegaUpload & co. for nothing else but inventing a much better business model which motivates their customers to pay for the extra services.
They're bad, bad, bad... or.. not?

- There is a huge community of people who become accustomed to getting everything for free. I rarely see people around me even considering buying a music CD or a video game when they can get it for free in an instant. You can argue about ancient business models and unreasonably high prices, but that doesn't change the fact that no matter what the recording companies do, these people will still pirate stuff, following the "Why pay when I don't have to" logic. I do NOT agree with HADOPI or SOPA approach which looks like it's been inspired by KGB practices, but something has to be done about this. It's kind of hard to think of a regulation mechanism that wouldn't backfire, but this pirating chain where pretty much everyone is innocent or immune from prosecution by todays standards is ridiculous.

Quote from Intrepid :

Yes and no. A society built on 'non-greed' doesn't magically create a utopia. Just look at the soviet union, cuba etc...

Copyright law was originally created to give the 'artist' a brief monopoly on a certain idea or product. That has some merits, however it's got to a point where major corporations just buy up a shit load of copyrighted material which in effect outlaws the sharing of creativity and ideas. Just an example of crony-capitalism. Creating laws the benefit the few in the name of the many.

That's true, communism is a good idea, it's the fairest system, but it doesn't work because people are greedy and selfish, and none of us are born equal. I would prefer a liberal dictatorship where the leaders are not elected, but randomly selected, ensuring they are selected from a pool of people who wouldn't naturally seek power and wealth. But that's a discussion for another day...

As for copyright, I think they need to change the law so that you can't extend copyright and they should lessen the amount of time something can be covered by copyright. The sharing of ideas and creativity is what will advance us fastest as a species and a society, the pursuit of wealth shouldn't get in the way of that.

I had come to the conclusion a long time ago that it was impossible for the piracy of music to be stopped without taking away technology. Music can played on the radio and then recorded by everybody watching. It is simply too easy.

The biggest issue is the potential for massive abuse of internet anti piracy legislation. Once states have the power to remove websites for 'piracy' its not a particularly big leap for them to start taking down websites for all kinds of dubious reasons. I'm pretty sure that the passing of the Stop Online Piracy Act in the USA will probably lead to full on political internet censorship at some point in the near future.

The motive is clear, those in power have had enough of the ability the internet gives ordinary citizens to uncover and spread word of their corruption, given the slightest opportunity I have no doubt many governments would love to crack down on their countries access to the internet. Doing it in the name of anti-piracy is almost certainly a red herring. Any efforts to do so must be treated very seriously and opposed vigorously.

Quote :

Doing it in the name of anti-piracy is almost certainly a red herring.

Then, you would be amazed if you look at what has been done here in the name of public security...
Now guess how France managed to get at #44 rank on press freedom?

Quote from B.Franklin :

"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."

Sorry if it sounds too much biased, can't help myself.

so then what is the solution? Everything that entertains us from games to movies to books should be free for everyone? I'm not for restricting the internet in any way, but this issue seems like a no-win situation. I don't download anything illegally because I think it is wrong to take someone's work for free, but millions of other people don't care.

What is the incentive for creating music, movies or games once the money is gone? It takes thousands of people to make these products and once they're not being paid anymore what will they do?

One possible solution is the business model that muso mates of mine adopt.

You put up stuff, songs etc for free.

You also sell limited release albums, with posters, whatever. You can sell this at a premium.

When you sell the 'limited' release stuff the demand is there as you have built up a base by giving away your free stuff.

Hmmm, sounds a bit like a game we all play................

Quote from flymike91 :

What is the incentive for creating music, movies or games once the money is gone? It takes thousands of people to make these products and once they're not being paid anymore what will they do?

Music can only be made with the money incentive? Your re-writing thousands of years of history with that statement. The market just changes and adapts.

For example the music making market has gone from making money out of music creation to making money out of providing the products for music creation i.e home studios etc...

It terms of games and movies? It's a tad trickier but with games I don't think it's that far off until we can expect open source games that can live with the likes of BF3 and so on... What then becomes important is the hardware to create these games and the hardware to plat them.

In terms of sims teams and various businesses pay vast amounts to people like Scawan to develop in house simulations.

Businesses have to become smarter and have to adapt. If the market changes and your business is left wanting... then tough.

I'm totally against piracy other than in the case of music. Music should make money only through concerts (live performances anyways). It is, as I said earlier, too easy to pirate, can't be enforced, and can very easily be remade for free by just about 5% of people. Games, movies and such are low and immoral because it takes large amounts of money to create and are nearly imposable to recreate, but music I feel a whole different way about.

Quote from flymike91 :

What is the incentive for creating music, movies or games once the money is gone? It takes thousands of people to make these products and once they're not being paid anymore what will they do?

It won't put off the people who make the music I like, and it'll mean a world with no Transformers 17 or the bazillion X-Factor 'singers' that have come and gone. It would be a better world.

Quote from flymike91 :

so then what is the solution? Everything that entertains us from games to movies to books should be free for everyone? I'm not for restricting the internet in any way, but this issue seems like a no-win situation. I don't download anything illegally because I think it is wrong to take someone's work for free, but millions of other people don't care.

What is the incentive for creating music, movies or games once the money is gone? It takes thousands of people to make these products and once they're not being paid anymore what will they do?

Didn't think I'd be posting here. As i see it, it can very well continue as is, when you pay, you pay for the full experience, i have no problem going to movies, if there's a movie i really want to see. But if I'm bored on a saturday night (and let's face it, broke), I'll see what's popular on the trackers. The quality is shite, the sound even worse than that. If i wanted the full experience at home, i end up paying to the same people anyway to get proper equipment. But then again, why would i want pay for that, if i could pay less and go to the movies and experience the real thing firsthand.

What I'm saying is, is that artists will always find work if they're talented enough. I think piracy acts as a sort of regulator of public knowledge and quality of the end product. If the vast masses didn't know what can be done using Adobe's products, we would be fine with comic sans everywhere. Piracy has a nice way of reaching to a much wider audience than regular legal mediums have been able to. It's basically free marketing for software, because in the end, if you want finacial gain from your software skills you ultimately will have to pay for the software (not 100% of the time, but you know what i mean), or you will get hammered, hard.

In the end people will pay, if the price is right, the marketing done well and the experience appealing, but piracy isn't as evil as people think. It will always be a part of distribution mediums. Whatever it turns into, someone will copy it. Software developers, musicians, film makers, photographers etc. themselves have all copied someone at some point in their life, so it's a case of is it worth it and will you be able to pay for your actions later.

We all agree the fashion industry employs thousands, if not millions of people, right? It is not illegal to copy someone's design and sell it. The industry hasn't collapsed, and in general it thrives... SHOCK HORROR.

Copyright law is specifically designed for large corporations to buy monopolies on ideas and creativity and make a freakin' fortune.

Quote from Intrepid :

We all agree the fashion industry employs thousands, if not millions of people, right? It is not illegal to copy someone's design and sell it. The industry hasn't collapsed, and in general it thrives... SHOCK HORROR.

I'm not sure where you were going with this example. Fashion is built on completely different set of rules, in fact, some people believe that the pricier wardrobe they have the higher their social rank is.

Quote from Intrepid :

Copyright law is specifically designed for large corporations to buy monopolies on ideas and creativity and make a freakin' fortune.

Aren't you mixing up multiple issues here? The software patents for instance have been an absolute frikkin' joke lately, but what's so wrong about a company wanting to generate some revenue by selling a movie whose making they paid for? I do agree that the means these companies take to get their money are usually pathetic and quite likely do drive people ever further towards piracy, but the basic idea is perfectly okay.

Don't get me wrong, I have pirated terabytes of everything from games to textbooks, but I started to think that the reasoning people usually use to justify piracy is no less pathetic that malwarish DRM and "You wouldn't steal a car"-like TV spots.

Quote from MadCatX :

Don't get me wrong, I have pirated terabytes of everything from games to textbooks, but I started to think that the reasoning people usually use to justify piracy is no less pathetic that malwarish DRM and "You wouldn't steal a car"-like TV spots.

What I love about "you wouldn't steal a car" TV adverts is that if people could 'download' a car... they freakin' would.

Quote from Intrepid :

What I love about "you wouldn't steal a car" TV adverts is that if people could 'download' a car... they freakin' would.

And isn't this the whole nature of pirating? Downloading is easy and it feels "legal", like you said, if people could downloads cars, iPads and groceries, most of them would do so regardless of the price or "evilness" of the distributors.

Quote from Intrepid :

Music can only be made with the money incentive? Your re-writing thousands of years of history with that statement. The market just changes and adapts.

It terms of games and movies? It's a tad trickier but with games I don't think it's that far off until we can expect open source games that can live with the likes of BF3 and so on... What then becomes important is the hardware to create these games and the hardware to plat them.

In terms of sims teams and various businesses pay vast amounts to people like Scawan to develop in house simulations.

Businesses have to become smarter and have to adapt. If the market changes and your business is left wanting... then tough.

Even musicians in the middle ages got paid, how far back are you talking? Thousands of years ago it didn't cost millions to build a recording studio, develop recording hardware/software, train sound technicians, manage talent, organize international tours.....

I just don't quite see how a business can adapt in such a way. For instance to make blockbuster movie you must pay millions upon millions of dollars to all of the hundreds of people in the credits and you hope to make up for it by selling tickets and licensing the rights for DVD and eventually to the networks who will show it. So if no one buys the tickets, no one buys the DVD, and no one watches it on network TV, then how will they continue to make high budget movies? I think the internet has fostered an attitude of 'everything is free' which to me equates to 'the hard work of talented people is worthless to me but I guess I'll take it anyway'

Open source games may one day match the quality of the big boys but I can't imagine why would a team spend hundreds of hours that they could have used to work for money, and instead give away their product for free. No one will be able to hire men like the LFS team if they lose more money each time they release a new game. Another problem with open source gaming is that people like to play the same game as everyone else (Battlefield, Call of Duty, Forza, World of Warcraft) if there were hundreds of indie developers and no corporate developers like EA or Microsoft Games then how could a game get the marketing it needs to become a global success?

Quote :

(RACER X NZ) One possible solution is the business model that muso mates of mine adopt.
You put up stuff, songs etc for free.
You also sell limited release albums, with posters, whatever. You can sell this at a premium.
When you sell the 'limited' release stuff the demand is there as you have built up a base by giving away your free stuff.
Hmmm, sounds a bit like a game we all play................

So what happens when someone records the extra songs from the limited edition album and puts them up for free? Or they scan your sweet poster and have it reprinted in China to sell for less? And so you built up an online following...for what? People who used to get your music for free are going to start paying for it? The only way I see that working is if you build an online following that is enormous and that will also pay to see you live. Ohh but how are you going to go to where these people are on tour without a bus, a driver, a manager, roadies, sound technicians...? I wonder how many of your friends, if approached by Sony or Virgin records would say "We've got our own way we're doing it so you can take your money, connections, and publicity and shove it!"