Illegal file sharing on the Internet, what should we do?

mmj_uk said:
The "holier than thou" crowd need to wake up to the suffering of many people on this planet before getting on their high horse about morals, where are your morals when you fund some execs umpteenth Ferrari buying CD's/software that could help save fellow human beings from dying in Africa? you are no better than pirates you just have more money to burn on perks and resent the fact that poor people get the same as you do for free.

Perhaps if we lived in a better society based more around sharing rather than the rich getting richer piracy would be legally encouraged.
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Nice way to look at it. :rolleyes:
 
mmj_uk said:
The "holier than thou" crowd need to wake up to the suffering of many people on this planet before getting on their high horse about morals, where are your morals when you fund some execs umpteenth Ferrari buying CD's/software that could help save fellow human beings from dying in Africa? you are no better than pirates you just have more money to burn on perks and resent the fact that poor people get the same as you do for free.
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Salary has f.a. to do with it. I'm on a particularly poor industrial placement salary, but I haven't decided to just up and start downloading. I wait until I have the money to buy stuff, and then purchase it.

I don't resent poor people for pirating. I resent all pirates for pirating.

mmj_uk said:
Perhaps if we lived in a better society based more around sharing rather than the rich getting richer piracy would be legally encouraged.
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In Communist Russia film downloads you?
 
Some peoples views I find quite funny. There is an older gentleman at work who looks down on "someone" downloading/copying blurays or dvds. It is piracy so he says, that and the quality isn't as good! Yet the old man bought himself a new setbox recorder with hdd to record films/documentaries off of the tv. He also has no problem borrowing films from other people at work. One guy gives him a free movie from a newspaper each week. People like that annoy me.
 
fendi said:
Yet the old man bought himself a new setbox recorder with hdd to record films/documentaries off of the tv. He also has no problem borrowing films from other people at work. One guy gives him a free movie from a newspaper each week. People like that annoy me.
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He's allowed to record stuff and watch it by law.
I think you can only keep it for a month.

There is no law to stop one person lending another person a film.

If its a free film out of a newspaper then what's the problem?
 
Its illegal yes, just like many things like cycling on pavements etc, but until the question of and how to deal with the shear number of people who commit that crime is resolved it will probably stay like it is now for the futare.
 
dmpoole said:
There is no law to stop one person lending another person a film.
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Check a DVD disc ;) It is prohibited to lend films, so in the eyes of the industry you are breaking the law.

I'm still surprised this thread is going on. Until the industry opens up & stops telling people what they should be having instead of making decent alternatives then this is going to go on & on & on & on & on.

Another example, We pay for Sky TV downstairs which has skyone e.t.c, Now if i wanted to watch something from their sky player it costs me another £1 on top of the subscription we've already paid to view these programs. No thanks i'll just download it for free elsewhere.
 
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Phil99 said:
You make a good point that I'd say applied in my case. My music collection is now entirely made up of CDs I physically own, along with a few (legit) digital downloads that have either been free or vastly reduced price. I wouldn't have been able to say the same when I was younger ;)
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Same here. I spent the last 3 or so years building up a huge music collection through some high players (private, invite only sites) in the music P2P world (mainly FLAC). It became ad addiction to find the sound I was after. In doing so I have devalued digital music that I no longer actively download or wish to buy CD's. I am looking to start up a vinyl collection and will be looking at £500 worth of equipment and about the same again buying the albums that have and do mean a lot to me.
 
The internet has brought about problems for the current legal framework, it would be silly to try and solve these new problems with old draconian laws, the theft act was written in 1968, the people writing it had never heard of the internet never mind thought about the implications it would bring.

Record company's need to come around to the future along with the law, the future for the entertainment industry lies largely with digital distribution of some kind, it is for them to figure out and implement. History will repeat it self just as it did when the record industry tried to stop recordable Cassette tapes and then again with VHS tapes.
 
Sweetloaf said:
:)

As it happens, I may not steal a car but if I could use my PC to make an exact replica of a Ferrari at no cost to myself or a car manufacturer I'm pretty sure I'd give it a go.

It would be morally wrong but I wouldn't give a flying **** I'd have a free Ferrari.
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Indeed.
 
IS it just me remembering the good old days of the library, where the library would buy one copy of a book, and a relatively unlimited number of people could go and read that book for, free. Don't remember them being done for piracy, because it would be ridiculous.

Piracy arguments are a joke, its all based about percieved loss. Exec "there were 3 million illegal downloads of cd X , that means we lost 3million x cd X's price, boo hoo" . What crap, mostly you'll find the majority of fans of whatever band made cd X went and bought it because they like and want to support the band, they pay lots of money to go see the band live and buy other crap aswell. the 3 million people wouldn't all simply buy the cd if they couldn't have downloaded it, maybe some would, but lots and lots wouldn't, the majority infact.


Most piracy is a case of, I only make a certain amount a year, its ridiculous spending 10k on every cd ever made this year, I'm going to spend £100 on cd's, £400 on going to gigs and festivals and i'll download anything I simply wouldn't actually ever buy. Its not hurting anyone, literally.

PIracy so far, in terms of games, has caused me to buy 3 games, and today buy the Witcher as yes, I dl'd it as I hated the demo but was bored, after I got past the bugs its a fantastic game so I bought it. Without it available to download i would NEVER IN A MILLION YEARS have bought it as the demo was SOOO bad. I'll kick myself for not buying L4D because i ended up buying it and hating it, complete waste of money.

THe industry simply acts like theres this unlimited supply of money and everyone would buy everything they downloaded if they weren't able to, all that would happen is the EXACT same amount of money is spent on cds/dvds/games/films/cinema tickets and the likes, but less people would have seen film x so less people know who the director is or how good his films are, less people would have played game Y, or listened to band Z.

People already pay what they can afford to on cd's and the rest, because thats what people do, without piracy nothing would change, industries wouldn't make more money or sales, more people wouldn't go to the cinema or go to gigs. absolutely nothing would change.
 
carlazai said:
Blu-rays are a great example of the right quality product at the right price point and in a format almost impossible to copy.
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*Checks newsgroup

Oh wow look at that! Pages and pages and pages of Blu-Ray disc rips. (Some of these exceed 40Gb!) Oh and that's not including the other pages and pages full of Blu-Ray films ripped and slammed into .mkv files.
 
CDs and DVDs cost far too much. In places like Singapore, to combat piracy, you can buy entire albums for the equivalent of £1 or even less legitimately.

As far as I am concerned, iTunes and similar stores have totally killed the music piracy scene (at least in comparison to what it was like in the late 90s and early 00s.)

They (vendors and producers) probably make more money that way, too.

Steam is proving to be a dab hand at beating the pirates. Can't remember the last time I saw a Steam-only game that was pirated and not be useless within a week.

Basically, the RIAA and people like Sony BMG need to pull their thumbs out and think, rather than just spit dummies and try to make examples of one or two people, in a community of millions who don't care and will just move to another site.
 
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I would pay £5 per album digital download, and quit pirating. That will never happen (It does happen obviously. But it's rare I find something that I actually like for that kind of price, it's usually itunes deals, which I have no interest in) . I do buy a vinyl copy of my favorite albums, but man, I'm not paying £16-£20 for a cd, I'm not insane..
 
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