There's rapists and child molesters who get less than that. Welcome to the Plutocracy, where hate crimes will soon be replaced with "corporate crimes" (i.e. crimes against corporations) which will be punishable through flogging, caning, and, in severe cases, death.And President Bush signed a law last month creating penalties of up to 10 years in prison for anyone caught distributing a movie or song prior to its commercial release.
--scharmers
Beating dead horse in 3... 2... 1...
Intellectual copyright has to be protected.
It's how I make my living, and how the people whose games, books, movies, and albums inspired me make theirs.
Federal charges? If I found somebody with a burnt copy of a game or album I worked on, I'd beat the living hell out of them.
I definitely think that concepts of fair use have to be meaninfully re-examined (there's a big difference to me in terms of an enthusiast playing an emulator of a title that has been commercially unavailable for years and is likely to never see any form of future commercial release, and guys like this who are pirating first-run movies), but that doesn't give people who disagree with the laws the right to interpret it on their own terms.
But does it need to be protected with up to 10 years in prison when compared against other crimes?Originally Posted by Sockpuppet
Is it as serious as rape or murder? No.
But it doesn't sound like these guys were small-timers, either. This looks sort of like institutionalized copyright infringement. If you want to avoid punishment, or you feel the consequences are unreasonable, then don't break the law in the first place.
Yes, otherwise the big corporations might take 15% reductions in net earnings for FY2006 and then America would be DOMED11!!11!!!!
Sorry, current copyright law is such a joke that it's hard to take the topic seriously anymore. I realize QT3 is heavy on writers and programmers who will shortly dogpile me but it's hard to care about a set of laws that are so frequently ignored by average joes and are so obviously written to suit corporate interests.
What do you expect from a government that places the rights of corporate entities about that of private citizens.
Those corporate interests pay my salary.
I don't get why the wanna-be Robin Hoods of the digital frontier always seem to conveniently overlook that fact.
I don't think that fact is overlooked nearly as much as you might think. It's just not a compelling argument to anyone except those who face job losses if the law changes.
"People might lose their jobs" isn't a good argument because lots of things can cause job losses. As long as the public benefits overall then a few job losses are quite an acceptable cost.
Yes, I'm sure the evil government and big corporations will shortly be tattooing barcodes on your neck and whatnot. It's the apocalypse, scharmers, the apocalypse!!
Back in reality-land, please note that the penalty is "up to 10 years." Not "guaranteed to be 10 years" or "usually 10 years" or even "ever 10 years." Are rape and murder more serious than copyright infringement? Of course--and they have maximum terms of life in prison (rape) or death (murder) under federal law.
They can dogpile me too, because whenever I hear this the first thing I think is "If you can't make money in the current market, you need to change your business model, not the market." People and corporations who try to force the market to support their model are going to waste a lot of money on lawyers and will eventually be replaced by someone who figures out a business model that works.
well one example of the top of my head. I would say thats because your corporate entity is paying you with money stolen from customers. Well at least it could be if you where one of those guys contributing to the whole release broken game and patch later ideology. Im not one to say that particular ideology causes piracy, but i will say it sure help does ease the conscience of those who choose to do it. Not to point fingers or anything, but at least where gaming and music is concerned those guys are not doing much to make them want to quit.
I could use the same reasoning to justify robbing an electronics store to get the new stereo I want. Give me a fucking break. And Nick: just because society benefits (monetarily) doesn't mean it's justifiable. Society benefitted from slavery.
I could be wrong but just because it says "up to" doesn't mean a discipline sentance would approach even close to that. It's those "minimum" terms you gotta be careful with.
Stolen from customers? How is charging to see a movie stealing from customers?
Buggy software is a known risk. But it's not any less buggy when it's pirated. In the smoking thread you are big on consumer choice, so choose not to buy.
Troy
I said benefit, I didn't limit it to monetary measurements of benefit.
Stolen from customers? Are you insane? I'm sorry, did I miss the part where a game company forced you to buy their busted game at gunpoint? Because I could swear that was just consumers being idiots by putting up with that stuff.
(Side note: Yeah, I agree with you that it's shitty for companies to put out broken games and maybe in severe cases you could say that's a fraud or false advertising. But when you're defrauded, you're not allowed to "get even" by stealing something from the person who defrauded you or someone who is totally innocent except that they happen to work in the same industry so it's all the same as far as you're concerned. If you think a company has wronged you, pursue your legal remedies or stop doing business with them. Asshole.)
Aw yeah, now it's on.
"I think I should get things for free. The world should change the way it does things so I can get things for free."
Karl Marx, loosely paraphrased.
How else do you think society benefits from piracy? The only benefit is that you get to have someone's IP for less money (like zero money). There's no extra artwork created (in fact, piracy causes less artwork to be created). I guess you could say the artwork is shared more widely, but that's no justification. It's not okay for me to break into the Lourve and steal all their original paintings just because I plan on taking them on a traveling roadshow. It's not okay for me to steal your car just because I would drive it more than you do.I said benefit, I didn't limit it to monetary measurements of benefit.
My concern is not that I am going to lose MY job. It's that entire industries put a lot of work into these products, and the deal is that if you want 'em, you get to pay for 'em.
All this banter isn't really generated by people who want to fight the machine (and god, does that high school polysci bullshit ever get old. you're so punk that it hurts me.) or because "the people" are being robbed (ROBBED!).
It's because all this stuff has now been made REALLY easy to steal, and people think that because they don't feel like paying for something and they probably won't get caught, it's okay to steal it.
When sales go down, companies downsize, catalogues become more 'safe', and when there are no more videogames being made because they don't make enough money to pay anybody's salary (hey, if you get to exaggerate then so do I), then congratulate yourself for what a fucking pioneer of personal freedom you are, and be really really thankful that whatever you were good enough to get paid to do wasn't so easy to steal.
In further developing this role-playing character, you need to go more into the whole idea of buggy music that gets patched later leading to people taking revenge by pirating music.
Would "Surrey With the Fringe on Top" be considered buggy music?In further developing this role-playing character, you need to go more into the whole idea of buggy music that gets patched later leading to people taking revenge by pirating music.
Troy
Exactly. I always get all wound up in these IP threads, and I think that's the reason. It's bad enough when people steal something, but whatever. (Hell, I wouldn't have a job if people didn't steal things.) What I hate, though, is the way people wrap it up in this whole "I have a right to steal this" or "The world forced me to steal this" bullshit. If you're going to steal something, at least be man enough to admit that you're stealing it because you don't want to spend the money and think you can get away with it.
Bottom line--if artisans (muscians, game designers, movie makers, etc) can't get paid, they won't do it. Just look at Communist Russia which eliminated intellectual property rights "for the common good". All they got was poor Shostacovic. Do you really want this state of society? Intellectual property laws developed for the benefit of society. Do you realize that because there wasn't copyright right until late in his life, Mozart died nearly penniless? Vivaldi was long before copyright and he died penniless too. Is that fair?
In this day and age, no one can afford to spend the kind of time that's required to produce the intellectual property that we expect, unless they get paid for it. Pirating stops them from getting paid for it. If you think that somehow it'll work itself all out, talk to people like me who spent a lot of $$ on my Atari computers, only to see the computer system die because of massive pirating.
The only way pirating benefits society is if there are enough people stupid enough to keep paying, while you ride for free.
Lorini
Amazing how i can write volumes on a subject and some can come along and get it completly fucking wrong like this quote here. I am for the owner of the establishments right not that of the consumer.
In anycase the point is a substantial number of people are pirating both music and games to see if they should buy or not. After games like Pirates of the Caribbean and other broken games how can a customer not be scared of getting burned. Add to that the legal restrictions stopping you from returning said busted game, its little wonder that good people are turning to pirace to protect thier wallet.
No, the problem is that the business model for the industry is based around the economics of scarcity, and in the digital world there is no such thing as scarcity. Trying to artificially create scarcity is a losing proposition.
Look at iTunes. People are paying for something they could get for free off the P2P networks. Why? It's not because of some sort of activist desire to do the right thing, people are willing to pay for a service that provides value to them. In this case, the ability to find what they're looking for quickly and easily. iTunes is still flawed, and I personally believe that at some point they're going to be undercut by a company offereing the same service at a lower price with no annoying restrictions. But the point is, there are ways to make money in a digital world. It's not up to the market to support you when you make the wrong decision.
I think your question should have been, "How else do you think society benefits from an unencumbered exchange of ideas" and I think the answer is perfectly obvious. Copyrights expire for a reason. Well, they used to anyway.
I'm not so convinced about that. Go look back at history. An awful lot of great art was produced over the years with no copyright protection.
It isn't? I think we have very fundamentally different views here then.
Now I'm quite disappointed that this silly argument came from someone I respect as much as you Rywill. The key difference in "theft" of IP vs theft of physical property is deprivation. Namely duplicating IP involves no deprivation unlike physical theft. So your corrected analogy about the Lourve would read
"It's not okay for me to break into the Lourve and take digital photographs of all their original paintings just because I plan on taking them on a traveling roadhow."
Only now it doesn't really make sense does it? Because that's AOK in my book.
lets see now im stealing and defrauding as shown by your use of the word you, and im also an asshole. Yup, im done with you.Stolen from customers? Are you insane? I'm sorry, did I miss the part where a game company forced you to buy their busted game at gunpoint? Because I could swear that was just consumers being idiots by putting up with that stuff.
(Side note: Yeah, I agree with you that it's shitty for companies to put out broken games and maybe in severe cases you could say that's a fraud or false advertising. But when you're defrauded, you're not allowed to "get even" by stealing something from the person who defrauded you or someone who is totally innocent except that they happen to work in the same industry so it's all the same as far as you're concerned. If you think a company has wronged you, pursue your legal remedies or stop doing business with them. Asshole.)
I agree--nobody is saying you have to buy CDs if you think they're overpriced. Nor do you have to go to the movies if you think they're overpriced. But "You don't have to buy it" doesn't mean "You have a right to steal it." Because what you're assuming there is that you have a right to have whatever you want--and if it's too expensive, you should be able to just take it.
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