quoting for truth.
How many PC games go against the consumer, shouting at you that you can't install twice etc. Hell, I actually bought Windows XP Pro, and after one machine died I suddenly found I had to jump through a shitload of hoops to even install it on another machine. Thanks, activation! With pirated stuff you just don't get that bullshit
sorry for the derail I'd had a few pints
or maybe I hadn't a few pints..
edit: to add to the discussion, I remember someone comparing consumers to electricity or water- they take the path of least resistance, and in this case, for a lot of media, getting the pirate version is easier and less hasstle. I firmly believe its not just about the price.
how many times have you cursed copy protection systems, drm, messages telling you not to pirate, not being able to play this film on that device.. none of these issues exist with pirated stuff. Pirated material is literally a better product (unless some muppet sticks a virus in it)
So imo, companies need to be
1. providing products in a format the users want, not crippling features on purpose.
2. providing easy to use and non bloated methods of purchasing and delivering content. not cramming your download service with spyware and adverts, and requiring a form as long as your arm full of personal information.
util the products we want are easier to buy and get hold of legally, and actually reflect the features we want, piracy will always be a problem no matter how many internet police you throw at it
its pretty surprising what small incremental changes to the language will do over time, with foreign influences, people not listening correctly and all that jazz. its happending now, and in 1000 years, we might not even be talking english anymore.
could give a rats ass assigns more value than couldn't give a rats ass.. the first one means you give something so little value its only worth a rats ass, and the second meaning it's not even worth the least palatable thing you can think of
..is my understanding
You guys say it wrong, end of story! It makes no sense. What word you choose to stress in the sentence is irrelevant, it still makes no sense whatsoever.
could give a rats ass assigns more value than couldn't give a rats ass.. the first one means you give something so little value its only worth a rats ass, and the second meaning it's not even worth the least palatable thing you can think of
..is my understanding
It's not the piracy that pisses me off about The Pirate Bay (You'll never be able to stop it and if TBP shut down, it'll just get spread to other sites) - The thing that makes me happy they've been jailed is their higher-than-thou attitudes that no one could possibly convict them.
I think they deserved to go to jail because they were acting like douchebags whilst organising a massively huge piracy website and making money off of it.
By all intents, they are criminals. They acted like schmucks whilst being criminals. Should I be ok with that?
Your first post reads to me like "they weren't the only ones and I don't care about the rest of the p2p site owners, but I'm happy the piratebay guys got caught because they were douchebags about it.
Or, to be completely honest, your post actually reads like "I'm happy they'll get their cherries popped in prison because they're cooler than me".
Like other people said, what they were doing was more of a grey area in Sweden, rather than a straight out fellony or whatever.
I'm also sure that all the programms you use to work on that portfolio until you can get a job and actually buy them are completely legal "student editions".
And finally, reading that monopoly line made me want to punch a hole through my monitor. Seriously, it was that bad. Yeah, we get it, you felt wronged for my misquoting your righteous post, you don't have to get all cheesy about it.
back onto the pirating business, Norway has plans to release 50.000 books digitally, from the national libraries. the final material will be available at bokhylla.no
Bokhylla.no project was presented by the National Librarian Vigdis Moe Skarstein and Secretary General of NFF, Trond Andreassen on Book in Lillestrøm in November 2008.
Moe Skarstein pointed out that the Bokhylla.no - along with the "predecessor" North Project - will provide experiences that can form the basis for the work of a principled model for compensation by the use of digital copyrighted material.
The project should in short, digitize the available literature from three decades: 1790-years, 1890-year and 1990-years. Parts of all the material, and as good as anything from 1990-years, will be subject to copyright protection. In it lies the challenge.
Not today
Implementation of the project Bokhylla.no involves a facilitation of copyrighted material, exceeds what the National Library can do without special arrangements. An agreement must therefore be found with the copyright holders, and and appropriate models and compensation methods must be presented. 21.11.2008 was therefore appointed a working group that had the mandate to look into the issues and opportunities surrounding this issue right.
Arbeidsgruppa submitted its report to the Ministry 3. March of this year. The group discusses various principles for the calculation of compensation. The recommendations we have landed on is that the consideration that assumed negotiated with the right organizations, should be paid for adding none of the material, not for the individual Internet user exploitation. The compensation should be calculated on a price per page for a given period of time.
Negotiations
- availability will at first be in a time-limited trial, until around the end of 2011, if the project is started in the spring of 2009, according to the report and press release which was presented Monday 16. March.
On the basis of the working group's recommendations will provide KKD Nasjonalbiblioteket the authority to negotiate with Kopinor to reveal a deal on compensation in connection with the project.
Burn them on the stick, it's more entertaining and will have higher viewership. Plus, if they start with a slow fire, the broadcast can last longer and put more commercials in it
People bother me.
Not the pirates, but rather the people who are expecting 6000 dollars for software (that costs them remarkably less to make a copy of) or 60 dollars for a game that, again, costs under a dollar to make.
People are obsessed with money, and they really need to realize that it doesn't matter much.
Our money is losing value, too, with all of these bailouts going on (along with this psychological economy crash), and yet the prices of this haven't adjusted to help us. Its a shame how horribly selfish some people are. I personally agree with what someone on the first page said about pirating, and that is this; If I do download anything and I like it enough, I will buy it. Unless it is too expensive.
Some people aren't rich, so they should take that into account. Logic shows that the less something costs, the more people will buy it. I am sure that this is true, and I believe that companies should figure out the math behind it and lower the price to maximize the revenue. A simple parabolic equation based on a survey or something would do. Then I would be more inclined to buy the product.
People bother me.
Not the pirates, but rather the people who are expecting 6000 dollars for software (that costs them remarkably less to make a copy of) or 60 dollars for a game that, again, costs under a dollar to make.
People are obsessed with money, and they really need to realize that it doesn't matter much.
Our money is losing value, too, with all of these bailouts going on (along with this psychological economy crash), and yet the prices of this haven't adjusted to help us. Its a shame how horribly selfish some people are. I personally agree with what someone on the first page said about pirating, and that is this; If I do download anything and I like it enough, I will buy it. Unless it is too expensive.
Some people aren't rich, so they should take that into account. Logic shows that the less something costs, the more people will buy it. I am sure that this is true, and I believe that companies should figure out the math behind it and lower the price to maximize the revenue. A simple parabolic equation based on a survey or something would do. Then I would be more inclined to buy the product.
You could probably confuse a salesperson into selling you a macbook for a fiver.
Say what you wish guys, but if it wasn't for piracy, 99% of the people here, would have never be here!
Remenber that old 3dsmax* torrent that started it all for you? yeah...
That statement's a bit naive. I started using 3DS Max four years before bittorrent existed, and Polycount itself pre-dates nearly every P2P networking app. I don't know how many Polycounters got started with software in school or using free apps like Blender and Gmax, but don't go assuming that we're all pirates.
People bother me.
Not the pirates, but rather the people who are expecting 6000 dollars for software (that costs them remarkably less to make a copy of) or 60 dollars for a game that, again, costs under a dollar to make.
Is that how it works at studios? They plant a magical seed then wait 1-5 years and this bush pops out with all these awesome games on it, and they take those games and copy it again and again, making the cool 59.00 profit off each copy. Damn I gotta get in on that racket!
Or does the first person who buys the software shoulder the entire dev cost and the rest of us cash in for $1 a copy?
I also didn't know that every studio was not for profit, someone should tell them to change their filing status quick! April 15th already passed!
That statement's a bit naive. I started using 3DS Max four years before bittorrent existed, and Polycount itself pre-dates nearly every P2P networking app. I don't know how many Polycounters got started with software in school or using free apps like Blender and Gmax, but don't go assuming that we're all pirates.
Pff, why? The site isn't going anywhere. And if it does eventually go down, guess what? You've got your old firends Mininova, Torrent Reactor and many many others to keep a steady supply of illegal material.
Speaking of "could care less", it's still a stupid thing to say, because you're saying that you do care. The phrase, "couldn't care less", is like an extreme of "I don't care". But "I could care less" is actually less negative than "I don't care", so it's effectively useless as it's a longer, more complicated version of a more common expression that's also got more impact. I'd rather see people go back to "I don't care" rather than "I could care less". Or start using the later as a milder expression, meaning "I'm slightly interested, but you'd better put more effort into impress me or I'm going to start NOT caring".
Set up a torrent tracker, get fined, go to jail.
Join a bank, destroy the economy, profit.
Let's draw out the distinction.
The Pirate Bay guys were criminally prosecuted for....violating (largely obsolete) copyright. Almost no one in finance has been held even civilly liable for vastly more economically damaging actions.
On the one hand, we have damages worth maybe (maybe) a few million. On the other, a few trillion.
On the one hand, innovation and better music is stifled — benefits are foregone. On the other, reform of a broken banking system is stifled — losses are incurred.
That's everything that's wrong with the economy in two sentences: the ongoing inability of today's leaders to deal with 21st century economics.
On the one hand, innovation and better music is stifled
I agree with you about everything except this statement. I fail to see the correlation between greater (albeit monetarily unrewarding) exposure to music and technology.
...the ongoing inability of today's leaders to deal with 21st century economics.
Because they're old, stupid fucks who don't really understand or give a shit about our present world.
off topic again - annoying butcherings of the english language:
"your guys'es"
?? i'll never understand this one haha
Wait now that one I get. It's hard to communicate the trailing single quote that denotes the possessive. Writing "those guys' dogs and horses are big" works.. you understand that there are multiple people, who own multiple dogs and horses which are big. Saying that out loud (without the "guys'es") makes it more ambiguous: are the guys, the dogs and the horses all big? (those guys, dogs, horses are big)
What is horrible is saying "you'se guys". I used to hear a lot of locals in Middlesbrough use that expression. I think it's the plural of "you". Could also be spelled "yous", I recon.
Pirating hurts big-time business. It can help smaller developers and arists. If people know what they're doing, they can take advantage of it. There's a small Swedish band called Machinae Supremacy that built their reputation entirely on releasing music on the Internet. They put up a bunch of songs for free on their website until they had such a large following they could afford to record an album on their own and sell it. And while they did that, they still put up a few songs for free now and then. They're working on their fourth album now, and they still get stuff out for free as often as they can. If you're in Sweden, their entire latest album is available for free on Spotify. Rumors say they actually leaked their own albums on torrent the day they were released...
Why? Because to them, the important thing is that people listen to their music. And thanks to torrents and such, they get their word out to thousands, maybe even hundreds of thousands more people than they normally could.
I would assume the same works if you're an indie game developer. The most important thing early on is that you get people to know you, and torrents let people do that to an extent rivalled by exactly no other method available. So I'm actually not sure... it does hurt the big guys, but if it helps enough little guys, maybe it could act as a sort of normalizer for the industry.
You can support musicians in other ways than buying their record. The entire concept of record contracts and record labels in general is so fucking outdated, so biased and so stupid that it boggles the mind that bands and artists still put up with it.
Exactly. People need to get with the times. You've got guys like Machinae Supremacy, who I mentioned, who intentionally spread much of their music online for free. Travis, who I adore, have been heard at live performances, not exactly condoning piracy, but encouraging people to spread their music to as many people as they can, in whatever way they can. They don't care how people listen to their music, they just want people to hear them. Isn't that what music is about? If you can make a living off doing what you love, like us artists try to, then great. Go for it. But if you absolutely cannot stand the thought of someone listening to your stuff without you getting cash in your pocket for it, maybe you need to rethink your career.
The biggest reward of all used to be knowing that people are hearing you... People seem to forget that once enough green starts rolling in.
I guess old musicians did get screwed over when the game changed. But now that it's an accepted reality, people need to adjust.
The funny thing is, Machinae Supremacy and Travis are two of my absolute favorite bands right now, and I will try to support them as much as I can in the future. Guess how I heard of them? A friend of mine downloaded MaSu's second album and sent a couple of songs to me. Another friend of mine owns all of Travis' CDs and has been sending them to me over Messenger for years now, song by song. That's pretty much always how it starts nowdays. That's how you get your fans. Embrace that.
I'm afraid you're preaching to the choir there, Rox. Not that there's anything wrong with that, ofcourse, as it's always nice to hear some eloborate on their opinion, no matter how similar it is.
Now that we're being grammar-nazis, I thought I'd bring up the point that what The Pirate Bay engaged in wasn't piracy. It also wasn't theft or copyright infringement. It was file-sharing. That's not me defending it, mind you, that's just me distinguishing between crimes.
Rox: they were arrested for several things over the years, and they finally found something ("promoting other people's infringements of copyright laws") that would stick. Which is a perfect example of how the spirit of the law and the letter of the law have diverged in recent times.
Yes, I don't think theres anyone out there that can defend TPB without resorting to technicalities, but all that means is that their crimes are too far ahead of the laws current status and abilities to deal with them.
The problem with the difference between the "spirit" and the "letter" of the law is that the "spirit" doesn't need to change, but the "letter" desperately does. Not just in high-tech applications such as the TPB case, but in general.
Heres the thing that royally fucks me off though: yesterday, a serial rapist and sex abuser that would drug his victims (potentially 200 of them, confirmed 96, convicted for 12) in the taxi that he drove for a living, was jailed. He has been ordered to pay just over £700 to each of the 12 victims that he got convicted for attacking.
Four nerds from Sweden got fined nearly 3 million Euros for operating a slightly dodgy website, and were tried on a technicality, after a witch-hunt that has lasted several years...
Rox: they were arrested for several things over the years, and they finally found something ("promoting other people's infringements of copyright laws") that would stick. Which is a perfect example of how the spirit of the law and the letter of the law have diverged in recent times.
Yes, I don't think theres anyone out there that can defend TPB without resorting to technicalities, but all that means is that their crimes are too far ahead of the laws current status and abilities to deal with them.
The problem with the difference between the "spirit" and the "letter" of the law is that the "spirit" doesn't need to change, but the "letter" desperately does. Not just in high-tech applications such as the TPB case, but in general.
Heres the thing that royally fucks me off though: yesterday, a serial rapist and sex abuser that would drug his victims (potentially 200 of them, confirmed 96, convicted for 12) in the taxi that he drove for a living, was jailed. He has been ordered to pay just over £700 to each of the 12 victims that he got convicted for attacking.
Four nerds from Sweden got fined nearly 3 million Euros for operating a slightly dodgy website, and were tried on a technicality, after a witch-hunt that has lasted several years...
What?
But, but... those poor studio execs lose their bonuses, the rape victims didn't lose any money
I just read an article, in swedish unfortunately, but in short it says that the judge was biased and involved in several movements/organizations that share opinions with the anti-piracy maffia(prosecutor, hollywood, ipfi, apb etc.).
The judge failed to mention this even though the defending side prior to the trial pointed out a member of the jury as biased whom the judge replaced.
This might result in another trial with a new judge.
Also, just to make it clear:
They didn't make any money out of this since the penalty of 3mill euro might end up on only one of the four. This is because he's the only one that have any financial means to even begin to pay back. He was the one who was the least involved in TPB and the money is inherited.
Swedish author Unni Drougge has released an audio book of her latest work, exclusively on The Pirate Bay. Born in '56, she's released several works since her debut in '94, and is now taking a stand on the side of free information. She recorded her latest book with the help of friends who share her opinions, and set up a PayPal account so anyone who wants to can pay her whatever they want for it, if they want to. From reading the comments, it's almost looking as if she'll earn more from it this way than releasing it commercially...
It's all in Swedish, so if you're not the link's not going to do much for you... But still. Pirate-exclusive content by someone who belongs to the group that would typically sue people over it.
There are way to many torrent sites besides that other ways other apps I just wish people did not download games.
[off topic]
To tell you the truth, demo's are the way to go because I remember playing StarCraft demo, quake demo, quake 3 demo and a couple of others and wanted the game and bought them when they first came out because I enjoyed them so much. So some of the old ways can still be used and profited off of, speaking off can't wait for SC2 demo *hint, hint blizzard*.
[/off topic]
Like Napster before it, torrent site The Pirate Bay--notorious for its use as a hub for online piracy--has been acquired by a legitimate company, and its traffic will now be leveraged to sell legitimate content.
Internet cafe company Global Gaming Factory paid $7.8 million for the site. The company will "introduce models which entail that content providers and copyright owners get paid for content that is downloaded via the site," according to CEO Hans Pandeya.
Following a highly publicized court battle in Sweden, the owners of The Pirate Bay were sentenced to one year in prison and fines of $905,000 each in April.
According to the Pirate Bay blog, profits from the sale will "go into a foundation that is going to help with projects about freedom of speech, freedom of information and the openess of the nets."
"We've been working on this project for many years," wrote the owners. "It's time to invite more people into the project, in a way that is secure and safe for everybody. We need that, or the site will die."
For many, The Pirate Bay's decision to sell itself to Global Gaming Factory X on Tuesday for $7.74 million has shattered what some had begun to accept as a truism: that piracy was acceptable, and that The Pirate Bay would fight for their rights until the bitter end.
"We've been working on this project for many years," the site's owners wrote in an unsigned blog post on Tuesday. "It's time to invite more people into the project, in a way that is secure and safe for everybody. We need that, or the site will die. And letting TPB die is the last thing that is allowed to happen!"
The site's owners positioned the transfer of ownership as an evolution in the site's development. "The old crew is still around in different ways," they wrote, apparently referring to founders Peter Sunde, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Fredrik Neij and Carl Lundstrom. "We will also not stop being active in the politics of the internets - quite the opposite. Now we're fueling up for going into the next gear. TPB will have economical muscles to let people evolve it. It will team up with great technicians to evolve the protocols. And we, the people interested in more than just technology, will have the time to focus on that. It's win-win-win."
"GGF wants to accept the challenge to position itself as a respectable participant in the market and contribute to Internet's infrastructure, with the goal to establish working models for co-operation and a clear allocation of responsibilities on market terms, respecting both intellectual property rights and the rights of privacy," Global Gaming Factory said in a press release.
That may be true, but Tuesday's decision sent a much different message to the legions of the site's fans, and they began making their protests heard.
Their two biggest fears? One, that the new ownership would remove all of the links to the pirated files, and two, that the new management will turn over account information to the IFPI and other international rights agencies.
"Sad day,and what makes it even worse is that TPB thinks its users are stupid enough to believe them when they say 'It's win-win-win'., "MrBob7777 wrote in one of the hudreds of comments attached to the original TPB blog post. "They were paid off to shut the site down,that's it. It may still be called The Pirate bay but everything that made it great will be gone."
"Please remove my account asap," user "zagarov" added. "Can't believe you sell out like that... I feel like an idiot for supporting you. also, in name of us all, please destroy all logs before you hand over your balls to GGF."
Even the MPAA, an obvious champion of copyright holders, didn't quite know what to make of the announcement. "We don't have enough information to comment at this time," a spokeswoman said in an emailed statement. "We of course always support the ever-growing array of legitimate options for consumers to get movies and telelvsion shows in convenient and flexible ways."
Some of the site's readers commented that the tone of the post sounded markedly different than the belligerent attitude taken by Peter Sunde during his online press conference immediately after the April ruling that found the four defendants guilty for contributing to copyright infringement. That ruling is under appeal.
"In the beginning there are these bullies who are bullying Daniel-san," Sunde said. "He gets beaten up, and that's wher we're at right now. And at the end we're going to have this epic end where we have this crane [kick]...we're going to stand there with a leg - a wooden leg, probably - a bit hurt, but we're going to kick their ass."
Many of the traditional havens for pirated files are beginning to disappear: Mininova.org, for example, is being sued by BREIN, a Dutch rights agency; a verdict is expected on July 15, according to the site's blog. Mininova was a smaller version of Suprnova.org, which closed its doors several years ago. In November, owner Gary Fung of Isohunt, a similar site, filed suit seeking to have his site validated as an index site, rather than a haven for piracy. Both Mininova and Isohunt continue to host pirated files.
What's unclear is whether the source of those files, the trackers, will continue to be created and uploaded by The Pirate Bay and its users. Any individual can link to a tracker, but that tracker needs to be created and hosted to allow access to BitTorrent files. Removing them would strike a major blow against piracy.
However, not all trackers are publicly shared. So-called "private" trackers circulate underground, requiring connections to access them, and a so-called "ratio" to maintain membership. Users need to typically upload an equal amount of data as they download to maintain this membership, or risk being booted out for "leeching".
But The Pirate Bay's owners also cited Global Gaming Factory's profit motive as a means of leaving the site unchanged. "If the new owners will screw around with the site, nobody will keep using it," they wrote. "That's the biggest insurance one can have that the site will be run in the way that we all want to."
The Pirate Bay also acquired Peerialism, a "peerealistic" technology for sending video and other content over the Internet using peer-to-peer techniques, for about $12.9 million.
The Pirate Bay's decision was also announced just a day after news leaked of the Video Bay, a site that appeared to be a Flash-based version of YouTube, but with the ability to upload video files, copyrighted or not.
This is probably the end for these guys. Some other site or method will spring up, become popular, grow a big sack of cash that lawyers will harvest when its ripe. It's a little cycle no one wants to break because it makes a lot of people a lot of money.
Replies
How many PC games go against the consumer, shouting at you that you can't install twice etc. Hell, I actually bought Windows XP Pro, and after one machine died I suddenly found I had to jump through a shitload of hoops to even install it on another machine. Thanks, activation! With pirated stuff you just don't get that bullshit
its supposed to mean, "its not worth even a rats ass"
the opposite would be "a million dollars for your thoughts."
for those who have attained a spark of interest in the origins of the english language,
i suggest anglo-saxon:
first, history lesson on the german language:
[ame]
then, some dude talking old english, which you won't understand a word of:
[ame]
its pretty surprising what small incremental changes to the language will do over time, with foreign influences, people not listening correctly and all that jazz. its happending now, and in 1000 years, we might not even be talking english anymore.
..is my understanding
Redonkulus.
Your first post reads to me like "they weren't the only ones and I don't care about the rest of the p2p site owners, but I'm happy the piratebay guys got caught because they were douchebags about it.
Or, to be completely honest, your post actually reads like "I'm happy they'll get their cherries popped in prison because they're cooler than me".
Like other people said, what they were doing was more of a grey area in Sweden, rather than a straight out fellony or whatever.
I'm also sure that all the programms you use to work on that portfolio until you can get a job and actually buy them are completely legal "student editions".
And finally, reading that monopoly line made me want to punch a hole through my monitor. Seriously, it was that bad. Yeah, we get it, you felt wronged for my misquoting your righteous post, you don't have to get all cheesy about it.
article in norwegian:
http://www.bokogbibliotek.no/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1042
translation:
Bokhylla.no project was presented by the National Librarian Vigdis Moe Skarstein and Secretary General of NFF, Trond Andreassen on Book in Lillestrøm in November 2008.
Moe Skarstein pointed out that the Bokhylla.no - along with the "predecessor" North Project - will provide experiences that can form the basis for the work of a principled model for compensation by the use of digital copyrighted material.
The project should in short, digitize the available literature from three decades: 1790-years, 1890-year and 1990-years. Parts of all the material, and as good as anything from 1990-years, will be subject to copyright protection. In it lies the challenge.
Not today
Implementation of the project Bokhylla.no involves a facilitation of copyrighted material, exceeds what the National Library can do without special arrangements. An agreement must therefore be found with the copyright holders, and and appropriate models and compensation methods must be presented. 21.11.2008 was therefore appointed a working group that had the mandate to look into the issues and opportunities surrounding this issue right.
Arbeidsgruppa submitted its report to the Ministry 3. March of this year. The group discusses various principles for the calculation of compensation. The recommendations we have landed on is that the consideration that assumed negotiated with the right organizations, should be paid for adding none of the material, not for the individual Internet user exploitation. The compensation should be calculated on a price per page for a given period of time.
Negotiations
- availability will at first be in a time-limited trial, until around the end of 2011, if the project is started in the spring of 2009, according to the report and press release which was presented Monday 16. March.
On the basis of the working group's recommendations will provide KKD Nasjonalbiblioteket the authority to negotiate with Kopinor to reveal a deal on compensation in connection with the project.
So am I
Not the pirates, but rather the people who are expecting 6000 dollars for software (that costs them remarkably less to make a copy of) or 60 dollars for a game that, again, costs under a dollar to make.
People are obsessed with money, and they really need to realize that it doesn't matter much.
Our money is losing value, too, with all of these bailouts going on (along with this psychological economy crash), and yet the prices of this haven't adjusted to help us. Its a shame how horribly selfish some people are. I personally agree with what someone on the first page said about pirating, and that is this; If I do download anything and I like it enough, I will buy it. Unless it is too expensive.
Some people aren't rich, so they should take that into account. Logic shows that the less something costs, the more people will buy it. I am sure that this is true, and I believe that companies should figure out the math behind it and lower the price to maximize the revenue. A simple parabolic equation based on a survey or something would do. Then I would be more inclined to buy the product.
You could probably confuse a salesperson into selling you a macbook for a fiver.
That statement's a bit naive. I started using 3DS Max four years before bittorrent existed, and Polycount itself pre-dates nearly every P2P networking app. I don't know how many Polycounters got started with software in school or using free apps like Blender and Gmax, but don't go assuming that we're all pirates.
Or does the first person who buys the software shoulder the entire dev cost and the rest of us cash in for $1 a copy?
I also didn't know that every studio was not for profit, someone should tell them to change their filing status quick! April 15th already passed!
im gonna quickly download all the programs i need before the site goes down.
Speaking of "could care less", it's still a stupid thing to say, because you're saying that you do care. The phrase, "couldn't care less", is like an extreme of "I don't care". But "I could care less" is actually less negative than "I don't care", so it's effectively useless as it's a longer, more complicated version of a more common expression that's also got more impact. I'd rather see people go back to "I don't care" rather than "I could care less". Or start using the later as a milder expression, meaning "I'm slightly interested, but you'd better put more effort into impress me or I'm going to start NOT caring".
But for now, I'm definitely going to stop caring.
The pirate bay will never go down again, because those guys are awesome geniuses. Behold their genius in action!
"your guys'es"
?? i'll never understand this one haha
Join a bank, destroy the economy, profit.
Let's draw out the distinction.
The Pirate Bay guys were criminally prosecuted for....violating (largely obsolete) copyright. Almost no one in finance has been held even civilly liable for vastly more economically damaging actions.
On the one hand, we have damages worth maybe (maybe) a few million. On the other, a few trillion.
On the one hand, innovation and better music is stifled — benefits are foregone. On the other, reform of a broken banking system is stifled — losses are incurred.
That's everything that's wrong with the economy in two sentences: the ongoing inability of today's leaders to deal with 21st century economics.
I agree with you about everything except this statement. I fail to see the correlation between greater (albeit monetarily unrewarding) exposure to music and technology.
Because they're old, stupid fucks who don't really understand or give a shit about our present world.
Wait now that one I get. It's hard to communicate the trailing single quote that denotes the possessive. Writing "those guys' dogs and horses are big" works.. you understand that there are multiple people, who own multiple dogs and horses which are big. Saying that out loud (without the "guys'es") makes it more ambiguous: are the guys, the dogs and the horses all big? (those guys, dogs, horses are big)
But in all seriousness torrenting movies, music and other media ultimately hurts the creative side since the torrenters are not paying for their work.
...now if you'll excuse me I have some movies, books, CDs and videogames to return to the library.
Pirating hurts big-time business. It can help smaller developers and arists. If people know what they're doing, they can take advantage of it. There's a small Swedish band called Machinae Supremacy that built their reputation entirely on releasing music on the Internet. They put up a bunch of songs for free on their website until they had such a large following they could afford to record an album on their own and sell it. And while they did that, they still put up a few songs for free now and then. They're working on their fourth album now, and they still get stuff out for free as often as they can. If you're in Sweden, their entire latest album is available for free on Spotify. Rumors say they actually leaked their own albums on torrent the day they were released...
Why? Because to them, the important thing is that people listen to their music. And thanks to torrents and such, they get their word out to thousands, maybe even hundreds of thousands more people than they normally could.
I would assume the same works if you're an indie game developer. The most important thing early on is that you get people to know you, and torrents let people do that to an extent rivalled by exactly no other method available. So I'm actually not sure... it does hurt the big guys, but if it helps enough little guys, maybe it could act as a sort of normalizer for the industry.
How is it that we don't have anything like TPB set up in international waters or something?
Wow, freaking fascists.
You can support musicians in other ways than buying their record. The entire concept of record contracts and record labels in general is so fucking outdated, so biased and so stupid that it boggles the mind that bands and artists still put up with it.
The biggest reward of all used to be knowing that people are hearing you... People seem to forget that once enough green starts rolling in.
I guess old musicians did get screwed over when the game changed. But now that it's an accepted reality, people need to adjust.
The funny thing is, Machinae Supremacy and Travis are two of my absolute favorite bands right now, and I will try to support them as much as I can in the future. Guess how I heard of them? A friend of mine downloaded MaSu's second album and sent a couple of songs to me. Another friend of mine owns all of Travis' CDs and has been sending them to me over Messenger for years now, song by song. That's pretty much always how it starts nowdays. That's how you get your fans. Embrace that.
Now that we're being grammar-nazis, I thought I'd bring up the point that what The Pirate Bay engaged in wasn't piracy. It also wasn't theft or copyright infringement. It was file-sharing. That's not me defending it, mind you, that's just me distinguishing between crimes.
And on that other more related note... I still don't know what crime TPB was convicted of... I still don't get what happened.
Yes, I don't think theres anyone out there that can defend TPB without resorting to technicalities, but all that means is that their crimes are too far ahead of the laws current status and abilities to deal with them.
The problem with the difference between the "spirit" and the "letter" of the law is that the "spirit" doesn't need to change, but the "letter" desperately does. Not just in high-tech applications such as the TPB case, but in general.
Heres the thing that royally fucks me off though: yesterday, a serial rapist and sex abuser that would drug his victims (potentially 200 of them, confirmed 96, convicted for 12) in the taxi that he drove for a living, was jailed. He has been ordered to pay just over £700 to each of the 12 victims that he got convicted for attacking.
Four nerds from Sweden got fined nearly 3 million Euros for operating a slightly dodgy website, and were tried on a technicality, after a witch-hunt that has lasted several years...
What?
http://i.gizmodo.com/5223533/the-pirate-google-bay-gives-the-finger-to-record-companies-studios
But, but... those poor studio execs lose their bonuses, the rape victims didn't lose any money
The judge failed to mention this even though the defending side prior to the trial pointed out a member of the jury as biased whom the judge replaced.
This might result in another trial with a new judge.
http://www.dn.se/kultur-noje/musik/the-pirate-bay-rattegangen-kan-tas-om-1.850410
Also, just to make it clear:
They didn't make any money out of this since the penalty of 3mill euro might end up on only one of the four. This is because he's the only one that have any financial means to even begin to pay back. He was the one who was the least involved in TPB and the money is inherited.
http://www.thelocal.se/19028.html
Once again, not taking sides with it, but if the law can't play fair they shouldn't fucking play at all.
It's all in Swedish, so if you're not the link's not going to do much for you... But still. Pirate-exclusive content by someone who belongs to the group that would typically sue people over it.
[off topic]
To tell you the truth, demo's are the way to go because I remember playing StarCraft demo, quake demo, quake 3 demo and a couple of others and wanted the game and bought them when they first came out because I enjoyed them so much. So some of the old ways can still be used and profited off of, speaking off can't wait for SC2 demo *hint, hint blizzard*.
[/off topic]
Like Napster before it, torrent site The Pirate Bay--notorious for its use as a hub for online piracy--has been acquired by a legitimate company, and its traffic will now be leveraged to sell legitimate content.
Internet cafe company Global Gaming Factory paid $7.8 million for the site. The company will "introduce models which entail that content providers and copyright owners get paid for content that is downloaded via the site," according to CEO Hans Pandeya.
Following a highly publicized court battle in Sweden, the owners of The Pirate Bay were sentenced to one year in prison and fines of $905,000 each in April.
According to the Pirate Bay blog, profits from the sale will "go into a foundation that is going to help with projects about freedom of speech, freedom of information and the openess of the nets."
"We've been working on this project for many years," wrote the owners. "It's time to invite more people into the project, in a way that is secure and safe for everybody. We need that, or the site will die."