Take that file-swappers!
A big blow to parasitic companies..
Monday, June 27, 2005 by Frogboy | Discussion: WinCustomize News
Today was a big win for those of us who value intellectual property. Companies like Grokster and Kazaa and others who profit off of enabling people to conveniently steal software, music, videos, etc. are now on notice thanks to today's Supreme Court ruling on the issue.
The Supreme court found that peer-to-peer providers are indeed liable for how users make use of their network. I for one am pretty pleased with this outcome on a number of levels.
A few years ago, Napster took the world by storm. Its developer was hailed as a visionary and the company became a household name. But many developers, including us, were pretty unhappy with the whole thing. Automated piracy is not revolutionary or innovative. Many companies (including Stardock) had thought of such file sharing concepts in the past but did not invest in them because it would be difficult to keep people from pirating. But companies and individuals with fewer scruples not only went forward with such ideas but profited greatly from them and won both fame and fortune.
These companies exist, IMO, purely to profit from people pirating other people's work. Perhaps these guys will find real jobs now and earn money honestly.
The Supreme Court wrote:
"There is no evidence that either company (Grokster or StreamCast) made an effort to filter copyrighted material from users' downloads or otherwise impede the sharing of copyrighted files," Souter wrote. "Each company showed itself to be aiming to satisfy a known source of demand for copyright infringement, the market comprising former Napster users."
While the court will, in future cases, need to clarify some of the elements of its ruling, I think this is a big win for people who create intellectual property. I don't have a huge angst about piracy per se, but I have a lot of angst about companies in the business of profiting from it.
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Reply #122 Saturday, July 2, 2005 6:06 AM
or to put it more succinctly, perhaps the 'new-gen' has the wit to know when they have and are being manipulated by those who claim to have our best interests at stake. this is our world. this is our time. which is nice. non?
Reply #123 Saturday, July 2, 2005 6:30 AM
| this is our world. this is our time. which is nice. non? |
Check back on that one in 20 years' time, oui?....
Reply #124 Saturday, July 2, 2005 6:59 AM
And whether an individual believes in something or not does not makes that person immune to the laws already established.
My point exactly JourneyMan Apocalypse_67. Well said
.Reply #125 Saturday, July 2, 2005 12:20 PM
I never used Napster, it was wrong, pure and simple and therefore I made a conscious choice not to use it. Not out of a great love for Metallica and their continued status as millionaires... rather as a choice for myself as to whether *I* wanted to do the right thing or not. Earlier someone said they would not pay $22 for a CD... that is your right and your choice. If all the listeners of music would agree with you and sales stopped completely; then the price would drop to a level that people did find acceptable and sales would start up again. That is the power of the free market. However the decision to obtain the contents of that CD for free simply because "I want it now" is the SAME as any other theft, period, end of discussion. You are a thief. You may not use a mask, gun, or crowbar, but your intent and motives are exactly the same as any other thief stealing any other object.
A true scenario, a new and struggling young band who I knew one of the members. They wrote and performed their own original songs, they gave away CD's of their music at early concerts. They fianlly started making a name for themselves locally and stopped giving away CD's. They were able to get better bookings to larger audiences. They tried to start selling CD's (at $5 each) to help cover their costs of performing. Almost no takers, yet dozens of posts on their website "why should I buy your CD when I can get it for free on Kazaa". Even new songs which had never been recorded only played live at concerts were available on Kazaa. After 7 years of trying to make it, they did not. The band no longer exists. The members have gone on to other things. Yes you can still find their old music on Kazaa, but you will never hear their new music anywhere... because of Kazaa and a generation of thieves who stole them out of existence.
I look forward to the day when I see someone of any age hauled into court and sued for 20 million dollars or so for the 1,000's of pirated songs and movies (and software) he has on his multiple 200 GB hard drives in his system.
Reply #126 Saturday, July 2, 2005 12:47 PM
Reply #127 Saturday, July 2, 2005 3:01 PM
| Check back on that one in 20 years' time, oui?.... |
but i do not need to wait 20 years to understand what is already self-evident admin jafo. if one is to believe even conservative estimates file sharing is not confined to a 'minority'. it has gone mainstream as a cultural phenomena. as some of us 'vocal youngsters' have repeatedly said, one can debate the moral ethics of this endlessly it does not change the situation. any amount of sententious moralizing nor legislation is going to change that. perhaps information wants to be free afterall.
Reply #128 Saturday, July 2, 2005 3:33 PM
| perhaps information wants to be free afterall. |
Information does not want. Information is. This is just a roundabout way of saying you don't want to pay. So far I've read denial, rationalization & justification for stealing. Now work on realization and acceptance and then you will be half way home towards being truly free.
Reply #129 Saturday, July 2, 2005 5:05 PM
| Information does not want. Information is. This is just a roundabout way of saying you don't want to pay. So far I've read denial, rationalization & justification for stealing. Now work on realization and acceptance and then you will be half way home towards being truly free. |
since you also choose to quote my own discourse bichur i must assume that your remarks refer directly to my own argument (or are you simply genreralising as well?), in which case it might help to address a few of your more obvious misconceptions. i do not believe i made any claims to defining 'information' in such essentialist terms. i did paraphrase a much quoted slogan and not a little ironically at that. perhaps it was not black and white enough.
neither have i made any defence of filesharing that attempts to rationalize or justify its existence. rather i have attempted to argue that issues of intellectual property and copyright are far more complex than the simplistic moralizing that some participants in this discussion seem prone to.
from the perspective of this discussion perhaps the only realisation i need to work on is that reductionist thinking and an inability to move beyond binaristic positions would appear to be an attribute of age.
Reply #130 Saturday, July 2, 2005 7:20 PM
If you think that 'binaristic positions' is a failing of the elderly and that 'oh it's far more complex than that' is an attribute of the genius youth then you are apportioning far too much clout to the knowledge of said youth.
Sure it's 'complex'.....when delved into deeply, but the question 'is unauthorised file-sharing illegal' is not, not in the community/country where this website is based.
Outer Mongolia or Upper Woy Woy might have a different slant, but it's irrellevant as this site is in neither place.
YOU might think you are head-bashing the rights of free-thought and free information exchange....but you are actually just failing to argue a free commodity market, where you are NOT a vendor at ANY price and therefore have no valid input.
Oh yes...blind Freddy can see that 'Money for nothing and your chicks for free' means you can sit on your arse all day...not/never contribute effort to the economy through personal sweat and endeavour and GET anything you want just by clicking a button.
No shades of semantics alters the reality that it is still theft of property.
Yeah, but nothing. It is.
Fair dinkum and true dinks.
Information sharing is the communication of thought/knowledge. It's NOT the downloading of an MP3 that is a 'digital' manifestation of a bunch of people banging on musical Instruments for fame and profit.
Let's see how many more spins people can put on justifying 'file-sharing' [excluding the truly legal kind].
Come on, let's see them gears turning....
Reply #131 Saturday, July 2, 2005 8:28 PM
| YOU might think you are head-bashing the rights of free-thought and free information exchange....but you are actually just failing to argue a free commodity market, where you are NOT a vendor at ANY price and therefore have no valid input. |
oh i don't know. somehow i don't think i need to defend the 'free commodity market' at all. how much more free can information become afterall? i have not, and do not refute the legality of your postion admin jafo. one cannot help but think however that it is a little redundant considering the circumstances. perhaps if you reiterate it one more time things will change. afterall both mgm and the title of this discussion appear to have claimed some kind of victory.
Reply #132 Sunday, July 3, 2005 3:03 AM
Well here is one: theft is theft. period. Whether you are stealing a digital copy of some guys singing and banging on musical instruments (a good description of Metallica, in my opinion) OR whether yopu are trying to hotwire a Porsche at 3AM OR whether you are the guy who hacked into Card Systems and stole 40,000 credit card numbers OR (on and on, the list is endless). The point is that YOUR action is on the list. You may not like it, you may not agree with it, but that does not negate the fact that it is still a crime. period. end of story.
Now, if you are arguing that EVEN THOUGH it is a crime that you can (and will) continue to do it and that there is little or nothing that can be done to stop you... I will agree with you on that, for the moment anyway. For every technology there is a counter-technology. It is a constant game of "one upsmanship". As a network security professional, I see this played out on a virtual daily basis. Enjoy your P2P stealfest while you can, because like Napster, and like Kazaa soon will be, it will be stopped. There are companies (supposedly) loosing millions of dollars because of this and they will spend 10's of millions to stop it rest assured.
"Just because we have the ability to do a thing, does not mean we should do that thing"
- Somebody famous, but I forget the name.
Reply #133 Sunday, July 3, 2005 4:55 AM
| For every technology there is a counter-technology. It is a constant game of "one upsmanship" |
really cougent. perhaps one cannot doubt your affinity for binaristic oppositions afterall. on the one hand you claim that p2p filesharing will be stopped and yet at the same time you state that for every technology there is a counter technology that perpetuates a 'constant game of "one upmanship". a logicality that seeks to argue both extremes and still be taken seriously. how novel. is that something that comes with age as well?
Reply #134 Sunday, July 3, 2005 9:28 AM
There are things that can be stopped all at once and there are others that have to be stop one by one. The later applies to the current issue.
And if history has taught us something, is that you can get away with some things sometimes, but you cannot get away with everything every time.
Hey, maybe that too comes with age.
Reply #135 Sunday, July 3, 2005 1:52 PM
| Vasqo, age is irrelevant to anything |
mais oui apocalypse67. i could not agree more. however it was not i that has felt the continual need to define this discussion in terms of youth and age, us and them dualisms. my references are purely intentional but i'm sure you already knew that. one could think of it as simply the mirroring back of other participants predilection for binaristic thinking. why there's that term again, one can almost see a pattern developing here, non?
Reply #136 Sunday, July 3, 2005 4:24 PM
You know what?
Let him without sin cast the first stone...
I'll bet EVERYONE and one point or another has downloaded music or cracks for programs or even programs they didn't pay for.
Enough with the bickering it's pointless.
Reply #137 Sunday, July 3, 2005 9:03 PM
Reply #138 Monday, July 4, 2005 12:33 AM
Reply #139 Monday, July 4, 2005 7:47 AM
Illegally Sharing/Downloading files is a totally different thing. First, you are not paying 40K (as you would for a 'Vette) or any kind of money for a software or a CD (If you did, I’m sure you would think twice before sharing it) and second, the laws are there and dictate that illegally copying, sharing and/or downloading these files is punishable by law.
Again, your common sense should tell you better.
Reply #140 Monday, July 4, 2005 10:50 AM
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Reply #121 Saturday, July 2, 2005 4:30 AM