Evil students nicking music hand over your hard drives

[The PIT]

http://www.abc.net.au/news/justin/weekly/newsnat-18jul2003-52.htm

[drslump]

this whole fight against piracy stinks, who they think they are? the Nazi's gestapo?

[Brian Ellis]

Whereas I agree that the music industry are not on a "love me" campaign, someone who has illicit copies of any kind of copyright material IS breakking the law.

I've written several technical books and I know that they have been photocopied from cover to cover, on occasion. That means I don't receive my pittance of royalties when this happens. A software I wrote was also back-engineered by a pirate and published in a slightly different form. In this case, I obtained an injunction preventing the pirate from further publication and he was forced to hand over all documents and copies, but only after he sold a hundred or so copies, for which I got nothing except a lot of hassle. So I was a member of the Nazi Gestapo for stopping this guy from depriving me of my just income, was I?

Would you agree that it's right for hard drives to be seized as evidence in cases of child pornography? That is a crime. Piracy of software and music is also a crime.

[Gurm]

The issue is invasion of privacy, methinks.

Gurm_

[VJ]

Hmm...
It is a thin line between "finding incriminating evidence" and "respecting privacy"...


Jörg

[isochar]

Laws unfortunately do not change as quickly as the times do, and this is a clear example. Technology has made it possible for all the "internet generation" kids to grow-up with freely distributable intellectual property. The cork is out of the bottle, so there is nothing the RIAA, MPAA, etc. can do at this point other than to reevaluate their business model. (Read: China where a majority of music/movies/software is pirated)

There will be some unfortunate businesses and individuals who fall prey to the scare tactics of these agencies... in the end the MPAA/RIAA will still be forced to adapt their business models. Crazy thing is that all these companies are run by greedy bastards who do not have the forsight to realize the revolution that they are trying to combat. :/

[Brian Ellis]

What is worse is that my daughter bought, at a hefty price, a DVD of Chicago. This looked to be, for all intents and purposes, like a shrink-wrapped genuine article. On opening it up, it was a DVD-R with a paper label. It played OK except that every now and then there was a "subtitle" stating it was a preview copy distributed by xxx. Her 35 bucks went towards a $2 DVD-R blank, a label and DVD box and label (well-printed to deceive), the rest being profit for the pirate and retailer. I asked her to inform the police, but she did not wish to get involved.

[GNEP]

Well I think that you have it there Brian - most of the efforts regarding piracy should be aimed towards investigation of ORGANISED LARGE-SCALE piracy - AFAIK this is a significant proportion of the problem.

[Brian Ellis]

And what could be a larger scale than ripping MP3 music off the Internet?

[GNEP]

Have you ever been to the far east?

[isochar]

P2P=organized large-scale piracy (but also legimate uses)

[GNEP]

I was meaning more the "organised" whereby relatively small numbers of people PROFIT from the piracy - ie by flooding shops in the far east (and markets here...) with crap burnt CDs and DVDs. This is organised crime in the traditional sense. The thing with P2P is that no individual is gaining much - but the small number of large media companies are losing lots from the crimes. Difficult to prosecute any lawbreaker in that situation - usually the free market would take care of the matter and companies would move out of a market where they were losing money, or substitute/augment their product to stay in a similar market. However here they are trying to turn the clock back to a time when they could charge money for a recording of music/video in large-ish chunks (>£10). The problem is there is still no real banking infrastructure present to process micropayments, down to fractions of a penny, and internationally. This is the missing component for all sides.

/stream of consciousnous off

[The PIT]

It used to be the same over the radio. 99% of the time I bought the music so in the end they didn't lose any sales. The rest I would never buy anyway or keep.
At the moment the music is so crap it's no wonder they can't sell any singles. Apparently sales in Albums is rising but they don't mention that do they.

[az]

Of course copying music and other intellectual property is a crime, but as isochar said, the times are changing. For the first time in history, I can "steal" something without taking it away from you, much like a smile is shared without it being cut in half. Unfortunately, finding a business model that takes into account the realities, namely that it is dead easy, fast, and costs next to nothing to copy intellectual property nowadays, is not trivial. I think we need to move to a solution where easy,fast, and cheap micropayment for adults and adolecents is freely available and standardized worldwide, and payment for music etc. is - for real persons, not businesses - not mandatory, but voluntary, much like you can listen to a street musician and give him money when you think it's appropriate.

AZ

[Brian Ellis]

az

I'm sorry, your smile analogy does not work. When you steal (without inverted commas/quotes) intellectual property, you steal the author's royalties from him. This is pecuniary theft. If it were done wholesale, as when ripping off the Internet, you may be depriving the author of his main source of income, maybe to the extent that he is declared bankrupt or he voluntarily decides that the game is not worth the candle and future work just does not appear. The world may be a poorer place in consequence.

[I must admit that, with some of the music I hear nowadays, the world may be a far richer place if they did stop producing their cacophony But that's another story!]