UK government to get tough on file-sharers

The Mad Rapper said:
*sigh*

How are they being deprived of 'their rightful recompense'? I only torrent stuff that I wouldn't buy anyway, so they are losing nothing because I would never have bought it any way.
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Oh god, not this old chestnut...

If you are prepared to rip it off and use it you see a value in it. If you see a value in it you should be prepared to pay the agreed rate.

If you see no value in something and would not have paid for it then go without it. You have no inherrant right to have stuff for free just because you don't believe it's worth the value the creator put on it.

I wouldn't pay for tickets to the royal box for the FA cup final, but even if there were two empty seats there I wouldn't expect to be allowed in to sit there, even if I explained to the nice security man that I never would have paid full price for them.
 
Athanor said:
Oh god, not this old chestnut...

If you are prepared to rip it off and use it you see a value in it. If you see a value in it you should be prepared to pay the agreed rate.

If you see no value in something and would not have paid for it then go without it. You have no inherrant right to have stuff for free just because you don't believe it's worth the value the creator put on it.

I wouldn't pay for tickets to the royal box for the FA cup final, but even if there were two empty seats there I wouldn't expect to be allowed in to sit there, even if I explained to the nice security man that I never would have paid full price for them.
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what about if you borrow a dvd from a friend? loss of income should your friend compensate the copyright holder?
 
Athanor said:
Oh god, not this old chestnut...

If you are prepared to rip it off and use it you see a value in it. If you see a value in it you should be prepared to pay the agreed rate.

If you see no value in something and would not have paid for it then go without it. You have no god given right to have stuff for free just because you don't believe it's worth the value the creator put on it.

I wouldn't pay for tickets to the royal box for the FA cup final, but even if there were two empty seats there I wouldn't expect to be allowed in to sit there, even if I explained to the nice security man that I never would have paid full price for them.
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I am only prepared to d/l it because it costs me nothing. If I was that fussed about it then I'd pay to see it at the movies. I don't have to defend or justify myself to you, I really don't care what you think of my attitude or actions.
 
arknor said:
what about if you borrow a dvd from a friend? loss of income should your friend compensate the copyright holder?
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What does that have to do with anything? Playing semantics doesn't make it right and no one is claiming to be whiter than white.

I suggest you go back and read Druzels post for a good summary
 
The Mad Rapper said:
I am only prepared to d/l it because it costs me nothing. If I was that fussed about it then I'd pay to see it at the movies. I don't have to defend or justify myself to you, I really don't care what you think of my attitude or actions.
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I hate to break it to you but no one is particularly interested in what you do or if you feel the need to explain yourself or not.
 
Athanor said:
What does that have to do with anything? Playing semantics doesn't make it right and no one is claiming to be whiter than white.

I suggest you go back and read Druzels post for a good summary
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why not its still a lost sale he might have bought it if he couldnt watch it for free from his friend.

in the 90's pretty much everyone recorded there friends cd's , songs of the radio , films off the tv etc and it was fine.
i bet it was more widespread than it is these days if your talking percentage.

even spectrums , amigas etc had massive ammountfs of piracy on the games because they were so easy to copy.

record and film industries just want someone to blame because they didnt keep up with the times.

the worlds changed the distribution methods they use didnt.

in todays society people want stuff NOW! if they cant get it at that instant for free they will seek other ways.

if the porn industry can do payper view and subscription services over the internet why cant hollywood?

hustler etc have there whole porn collection on the website for a small monthly fee you can have access to it all , download the movies without drm etc why cant warner brothers and co do the same?
 
anticonscience said:
I wonder what the porn industry think about piracy.
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The Internets are full of sites that offer partial or full clips of copyright porn flicks!


Athanor said:
*sigh* It's simple, copying in and of itself isn't wrong and just calling it copying gives it an air of harmlessness. For the people who are deprived of their for their labour the phrase "ripping off" conveys a more accurate emotional context. I have no idea what you think calling it "Digital Murder" has got to do with anything?

We know it's copyright infringement, I've not said it's stealing so I don't follow your point?
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Why do you feel the need to put an emotional attachment to it? Anyway as for the silly name the industry should know it isn't stealing nor is it what used to be piracy but that's what they try and tell us it is so why not call it Digital Murder. After all it "murders" the "rightful recompense" of the people.

Of course said "rightful recompense" is a flawed argument as the people who downloaded it would probably not have gone out and purchased it in the first place.
 
LordSplodge said:
Of course said "rightful recompense" is a flawed argument as the people who downloaded it would probably not have gone out and purchased it in the first place.
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Athanor already did a pretty good job of rebutting that one I think. 'I wouldn't have bought it anyway' is not a good reason to commit copyright theft.

'Why did you steal my computer program that would have made me millions of pounds? You should have paid for it like anything else'.

'Because I never would have paid for it anyway so it's ok'.

Weak.
 
Also, can we keep this in perspective?

http://www.samknows.com/broadband/news/piracy-isnt-stopping-record-sales-1210.html
Samknows said:
Despite it only being October, the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) says sales of music singles have now managed to surpass the previous all time high – which was actually only last year. According to data from the Official Charts Company, while 115.1 million singles were sold in 2008 – and with ten weeks of trading that include the lucrative Christmas period still to go this year – 117 million have already been sold in 2009.
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All time high? What?

Samknows said:
Michael Lynton cites a report from Oxford Economics that apparently states £600 million pounds could be added to the British economy by “combating audio-visual piracy,” with 8,000 jobs created in the process. In case anyone from the Government was reading, he added £155 million pounds would consequently flow into the country’s coffers through taxation; Lynton is urging Mandelson and co. to bring three-strikes legislation, newly cleared by the EU, to our shores.
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The same Michael Lynton who said;

I’m a guy who doesn’t see anything good having come from the Internet, period.
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Wait, wait, surely he couldn't be serious?

“And my point is this: the major content businesses of the world and the most talented creators of that content -- music, newspapers, movies and books -- have all been seriously harmed by the Internet.”
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...Woah. So with the highest singles sales ever, music has been seriously harmed?
That book sales have plummeted in the face of rampant e-book piracy? Did the news get through to J.K. Rowling?
The fall of newspaper revenues has nothing to do with piracy, and very much to do with their business model.
As for movies... Well...

Samknows said:
2004: Total Movies Released: 567; Total Combined Gross; $9,327,315,935
2005: Total Movies Released: 594; Total Combined Gross; $8,825,324,278
2006: Total Movies Released: 808; Total Combined Gross; $9,225,689,414
2007: Total Movies Released: 1022; Total Combined Gross; $9,665,661,126
2008: Total Movies Released: 1037; Total Combined Gross; $9,705,677,862
2009: Total Movies Released: 1177; Total Combined Gross; $7,596,626,766
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I agree those figures are not fantastic. Perhaps it's down to;
1) The quality of the movies being released?
2) The broadbrush closure of cinemas around the country? I have to travel for half an hour for my nearest cinema.
3) The quality of the cinemas themselves? It's expensive, full of screaming kids or scumbags I wouldn't want to see in the street, let alone share a cinema with.

Or maybe, if Michael Lynton pulled his head out of his rear end, and provided the public with a fast, affordable internet-based movie rental service, at or near the time of official release, he might just make a LOT of money.
 
LordSplodge said:
Of course said "rightful recompense" is a flawed argument as the people who downloaded it would probably not have gone out and purchased it in the first place.
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That argument doesn't stand up though, at least in part.

If you place enough of a value on something (say a film) to have downloaded and watched it despite knowing that to do so could leave you open to a civil prosecution (assuming it could be proved, blah blah blah) then it's reasonable to expect you see enough value in the item to pay the creator of the asset for their work in producing it.

Now I agree that the problem is more likely to be you don't agree with the price they have put on that item and if it had been more reasonably priced (to you) you might have paid. As I posted earlier the industry urgently needs to revise it's business practises to allow for flat rate subscriptions or reasonable duplication rights (i.e. you buy an item and you can copy it 3 times for freinds/family).

As I said earlier, you wouldn't expect to get away with walking into Wembley on FA cup day, spotting 2 spare seats in an expensive box and demand to be allowed to sit there as you're not depriving anyone else of a seat and you would never have paid for it in the first place. The principle is the same although because we are talking about digital assets and you are unlikely to be caught somehow it gets seen differently.

It's good to have a sensible discussion about stuff like this, and like most things the sensible solution is a compromise of both extreme views.

Unfortunately all to often anything like this descends into pointless flames :(
 
arknor said:
why not its still a lost sale he might have bought it if he couldnt watch it for free from his friend.

in the 90's pretty much everyone recorded there friends cd's , songs of the radio , films off the tv etc and it was fine.
i bet it was more widespread than it is these days if your talking percentage.

even spectrums , amigas etc had massive ammountfs of piracy on the games because they were so easy to copy.

record and film industries just want someone to blame because they didnt keep up with the times.

the worlds changed the distribution methods they use didnt.

in todays society people want stuff NOW! if they cant get it at that instant for free they will seek other ways.

if the porn industry can do payper view and subscription services over the internet why cant hollywood?

hustler etc have there whole porn collection on the website for a small monthly fee you can have access to it all , download the movies without drm etc why cant warner brothers and co do the same?
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That's all well and good but it doesn't answer the question of how do you compete with a distribution medium (piracy) that is essentially free?

If it costs £100 million to make a film do you expect the content owners to just offer it up for you to watch - either by downloading it, seeing it in a cinema or whatever - for nothing, or at a price where they either lose money or only break even? Are they not entitled to make a profit?

Without a certain percentage of people subsidising these films by actually paying to see them in the cinema and buying the DVDs they can't continue to exist, it's basic economics. An industry which just spends out millions producing content is an unsustainable business model if they can't at least break even.

It's therefore not that huge a leap of faith to think that in a world where everyone pirated stuff because it cost nothing - all these aspects of media would eventually dry up. The people that make games, movies, music, etc have to pay their bills like you and I do.

I agree that demonisation of people who borrow DVDs, etc off their friends is an archaic attitude, but it's still not any kind of justification for not paying content authors their due.

Athanor said:
If you place enough of a value on something (say a film) to have downloaded and watched it despite knowing that to do so could leave you open to a civil prosecution (assuming it could be proved, blah blah blah) then it's reasonable to expect you see enough value in the item to pay the creator of the asset for their work in producing it.
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Exactly.

The whole "I wouldn't have bought it anyway so I'm not hurting anyone by pirating it" argument is flawed because pirating it in the first place implies there is some value to you to get it, and ultimately it's not a pirates choice to decide how much they want to pay for something. You pay what the content authors want, or you don't have it.

The closest corollary I can think of off hand is magazines in a newsagent - these are things that whilst tangible can effectively be reprinted an infinite amount of times to satisfy demand, and the cost of the actual paper is negligible. If I want a copy of FHM but don't like how much it costs I can't just steal it, and if I tried there would be a whole moral mental barrier to get past. That mental barrier doesn't exist with software piracy because the pirate is completely abstracted from the "victim", there's no actual feeling that you're taking something without paying for it, etc.

As much as I don't really like Mandelson for a variety of reasons he absolutely hit the nail on the head when he said "The fact that young people now expect to download content for free was morally as well as economically unsustainable"
 
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