ACTA - SOPA and PIPA

[AtreyuKun]

Hey that's politics. Gotta be a whore and do tricks for them lobbyists if you want to get that cash baby.

No I completely get it, I just don't think I've ever heard it so bluntly put. He just told flatly told us all that with enough money you can buy anyone. I mean for ****s sake, what the hell is wrong with this country?

[heders]

Fight Back: Government Shuts Down MegaUpload

Unbelievable: After history's largest online protest, the U.S. Government nonchalantly responds with the middle finger. The Wall Street Journal reports: The FBI shut down Thursday one of the world's most popular file-sharing websites, MegaUpload.com, and announced the arrest of four of the people behind it in a global crackdown against the suspected online pirates.Here -- check it out: If SOPA and PIPA pass it'll just broaden the government's power to do things like this: MegaUpload.com. (And make it ILLEGAL for us to link to sites that are seized -- like we just did in the last sentence.)As MegaUpload's website notes -- er... noted:The fact is that the vast majority of mega's Internet traffic is legitimate, and we are here to stay. If the content industry would like to take advantage of our popularity, we are happy to enter into a dialogue.We've been saying for months that these bills would criminalize and blackout innovation in America. An extremely popular startup was just shut down and its employees extradited and arrested, merely because Hollywood didn't like some of the technical details of how they ran their site.

But these technical details are exactly the same as those used by YouTube, Amazon, and Dropbox. PIPA/SOPA supporters keep saying these bills would never hurt sites like that -- now it's clear that can't possibly be true.

http://act.demandprogress.org/act/megaupload_seizure/

[wa3zrm]

Don't buy the hype, these 13 year olds may have $10k worth of pirated software on their computer but they were unlikely to spend more than $60 if they did have the money so not much is lost.

This is VERY TRUE. I worked in the public school system for over 15 years and have seen this first hand. You would be AMAZED what some of these teenagers have on their machines!

[lxskllr]

That's not exactly true sgreger, the sales might have increases but they're still losing money (that's for sure)

For example in Romania, no one pays $30 for an original DVD, almost no-one has a genuine copy of windows on their PC and all the music is downloaded from pirated sites, IRC etc.

Romanians don't have as much money as many people do. Why should anyone expect them to pay $30 for a DVD? There's damned few DVDs I'd pay $30 for; it just isn't worth it to me. People need to help themselves. Running libre software(which is also usually free) is a good start, but if someone with almost nothing gets something without paying for it, and doesn't injure someone else in the process, I can live with that. These companies are being petty pricks, and disingenuous about how much money they're losing.

[Nuusku]

If SOPA passes, and we post piratebay links on senate.gov
Would they shut down their own website?

[lxskllr]

If SOPA passes, and we post piratebay links on senate.gov
Would they shut down their own website?

Silly. Rules aren't for the rulers, just the subjects ;^)

[AtreyuKun]

All of this really worries me. I mean I can no longer say that I have faith in my country. I can't tell my daughter to believe her leaders or the police. I can't ask her to put her faith into something that I believe is collapsing. I already believe that Santa, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, and Jesus are all lies, and so is my government.
Maybe it's the day we ceased to be customers and became consumers that did it, but it seems we exist only to consume what OUR corporate executive officers tell us to. The day it became criminal instead of civil.....maybe that was it. Corportocracy. **** it.

[precious007]

Romanians don't have as much money as many people do. Why should anyone expect them to pay $30 for a DVD? There's damned few DVDs I'd pay $30 for; it just isn't worth it to me. People need to help themselves. Running libre software(which is also usually free) is a good start, but if someone with almost nothing gets something without paying for it, and doesn't injure someone else in the process, I can live with that. These companies are being petty pricks, and disingenuous about how much money they're losing.

lx,

It's not just the Romanians that don't afford so highly priced software/games/music etc.

It's about 70% if not more of the World's population. Imagine that Asia is very poor (almost all asia) and most of the population lives there.

Another thing I'd like to say that the Genuine software is insanely priced: most of you guys might agree with me.

here's the price for the latest Adobe Suite:

One of Adobe's key announcements the last time its massive, spendy Creative Suite was

updated to CS5.5

was that the software would be available as a subscription and not just as an outright purchase. The subscription offer seemed to lower the barrier to entry for the suite—which includes Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, and more depending on the edition and runs from $1,299 to $2,599

For god sakes, 2,599 for a few DVD's :-)

Keep'em. Could buy a car with that money.

[lxskllr]

Sure. I was just furthering the Romania example you started. A lot of people can't afford that stuff. They aren't the customers. If they all quit downloading material, money to the companies wouldn't increase substantially. If I had a food machine that made food at no cost to me, and I sold it to my neighbors, that would be a pretty good business. If I turned away a homeless man that couldn't afford my food, that would make me a dickhead. I'd be fscking someone over all on some vague notion of "principle", and not out of any real impact on my personal circumstance.

[truthwolf1]

This has been going on all week but a couple of days ago I swear I saw a ad for people (sheep) to tell their government officials to support the online piracy bill. IT WAS VERY, VERY ODD.... Usually they are super sneaky.

[lxskllr]

This has been going on all week but a couple of days ago I swear I saw a ad for people (sheep) to tell their government officials to support the online piracy bill. IT WAS VERY, VERY ODD.... Usually they are super sneaky.

Yea, they had billboards, and TV spots. You can probably find them online. Taking advantage of the ignorant is amoral, and sleazy.

[wa3zrm]

I don't know about you all, but I find it extremely amusing that the piratebay and snus both hail from the same country

[Nuusku]

If piratebay goes down, we will exchange data with usb sticks!! If usb sticks go down we will trade CDs full of stuff. if they put CDs down we will fu**ing trade our computers! they cant stop us

[Fazer]

If piratebay goes down, we will exchange data with usb sticks!! If usb sticks go down we will trade CDs full of stuff. if they put CDs down we will fu**ing trade our computers! they cant stop us

So true ...

They will never stop people downloading, ever! All that will happen is, people will download the old school way, hangout in IRC chartrooms getting to know the locals until you’re given an FTP username and password. And when not on the internet, the methods used above.

[sgreger1]

That's not exactly true sgreger, the sales might have increases but they're still losing money (that's for sure)

For example in Romania, no one pays $30 for an original DVD, almost no-one has a genuine copy of windows on their PC and all the music is downloaded from pirated sites, IRC etc.

Now lets do some math, if everyone in Romania would spend on average $100 on genuine products (music,videos,games) that would mean roughly 1.5 billion a year.

Imagine that the entire eastern Europe, the poor countries in the Balkan area all do the same. That means 5 - 10 billions loss.

Assuming the largest corporations such as microsoft only made 50 billion since they introduced their products on the market, now that's quite a loss, and I am pretty sure Bill Gates is pissed off. The studies made probably show just the increase in sales, but they haven't done any math on what type of losses piracy does world wide.

Not to mention asia with billions in population where you can get pirated DVD's - CD's in the corner of the street.

In terms of piracy, the net is just a little kid in the playground :-) The black offline market is way bigger and the losses are insane.

Just do some math, it's pretty hard to tell, but I can assure you that maybe 2 - 3 billion people worldwide don't pay for genuine stuff


Some recent stats, and they're talking software. Games, music and all the other would probably be another 30 billion.

They're serious numbers I guess if we were to add up all the piracy worlwide in all areas it would around 100 billion which is five times the amount made in one of the highest and most profitable industries world wide the steel industry.

The problem with these bogus number they use is that they are bogus. Here is their logic: "okay 1 million people downloaded my movie, therefore if they hadn't stolen it than they each would have bought one at full retail price, so 1,000,000 x$30 per movie "ZOMG I LOST 30 MILLION DOLLARS!". Except that is a completely false way of calculating things.

You cannot assume that every 13 year old would have paid $4,000 for photoshop if they couldn't pirate it, you can' say that if a million poeple downloaded your movie that they would have paid full price to buy it if it wasn't available via torrent. Lots of times I already own the DVD but I will just torrent it so I can save it on my computer. Or for games that I have already bought 3 or 4 times in my life. Hell last night I torrented Mechwarrior 4 even though MekTek gives it away for free, but since their servers were down I torrented it. There are lots of other reasons why people torrent things, therefore 1 download != one lost sale.




Bottom line:
I'm not claiming they don't lose out on any money, but that can be said of anything. Are we going on international manhunts to find kids who snuck in the back door of a movie theatre? Remember that? You would have one friend buy a ticket, then he would go to the back door and open it so you and your other 5 friends could get in so you could all watch the movie for free? Do you see people getting felony charges over that? Why is it any different online?