Tuesday, November 23, 2010

Piracy

I have strong feelings about piracy so I’m going to start with that. Alright, you might have heard through various websites and news groups that 4chan has started a campaign against the RIAA and MPAA, showing them that they do not approve of them bringing lawsuits against upstanding Americans like you and me for stealing a couple of songs or for downloading a movie here and there. Well, this has mostly been building over the last year or so since reports of the ACTA have started to come out, and I have to say there is a lot in the ACTA that I really just don't agree with. As you can see from the links below, our friends over in the EU are not happy with the ACTA either. If you haven't seen or read the ACTA leaked copy yet it can be torrented at the piratebay or you can find info for it on Wikipedia. Basically the main things that you should be aware of is the three strike rule which, according to one of the articles below, will be removed here during the next round of negotiations; but what it would do is if you're caught downloading or saving copyrighted info to your computer you get three warnings before they shut off your internet permanently. The next thing that you should be aware of is that this treaty would give the people that the government appoints the right to search your iPods, laptops, iPhones, smart phones, etc. for any copyrighted material without probable cause or a warrant and you will need to let them look at them. Essentially, they could walk up to your house knock on your door and say they are there to search your hard drives and computers for copy righted material and you can't stop them from doing so. I don't know about you, but I for one don't want someone going through my hard drive. One it's a invasion of privacy and two it violates one of my rights as a US citizen. The treaty says the searches will occur at boarders and airports, but really, what’s to stop them from coming to my house and pulling this shit.

Alright, let’s talk about the black list bill a little bit. What this bill would do is give the government the power to remove a site from the internet if the site was housing copyrighted material. The first problem I see here is that (and this point was made in one of the links I provided), let’s say that this bill had been brought up around 5 years ago. Well, during this time sites like Veoh and YouTube had lots of copyrighted material posted on them, and if this bill had been brought up then and passed, sites like YouTube most likely wouldn't be around anymore. Just because a site happened to have a user who uploaded something that he wasn't supposed to should not give these people free rein to take a whole site off the internet just because they are mad their shit got posted. The current system works just fine for this, we have a take down system in which the company messages the site telling them to remove the content or else, and truthfully most of the time the site complies, so why start a bill that is going to waste tons of your money just so these fuckers can feel like they have some power over what is happening on the internet when in reality all they are doing is wasting your money on something they can literally do nothing about?

I’ve talked to many people about the current state of affairs we find ourselves in and many agree with me that if the MPAA had changed with the times and started providing a service 5 years ago that for a fee you could download movies, most people would be willing to pay for it. Instead, they would rather sue you over the stuff you stole instead of trying out a legit service that allowed people to pay for a movie. Truthfully any movie that is in theaters and is leaked is a camcorder recording that some dude sat there filming and most of the time they are crap and not even worth watching. It isn't until the DVDs are released that people will really start downloading, and even then I know people who will download it just to see if they like and then delete it and go out and buy it.

Now I’m going to give you my feelings on piracy. The RIAA can eat it. They don't give shit to the artists and musicians, these guys make most of their money from touring, which is the way it should be. These guys, even when they are big, should want to play for crowds of people and not just sit in a studio cutting records. There are quite a few of them that really don't care that their songs are being torrented and in fact encourage people to do it. As for the movie industry, pirating is most likely hurting them a little bit, but not as bad as they are claiming. People are still willing to go see a movie in the theater, especially if it's good like Inception or (haven't seen it yet) Tron. Also, let’s say someone goes online and watches a movie that they really like and decides to go to the theater with his girlfriend and watch the movies simply for the experience. In this instance piracy just made the MPAA some money. At the same time though, when I see new BlueRay releases that are outrageously expensive, I’m not willing to pay close to 40 bucks for a movie sorry, that’s game prices or crack prices. And if you went and saw it in the theater you’re paying close to 50. Something needs to be done, but I don't think it needs to be as drastic as a black list or an international treaty.

Link about DDOS attacks, though very one sided if you ask me. The article doesn't tell you that what started 4chans anger is the fact that the RIAA paid a company to DDOS thepiratebay.org. They played with fire and got burned.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-31001_3-20022264-261.html/

Our next link is about the COICA which is essentially a black list for the internet kind of like what China has, except this bill would allow the US to remove a site off of the internet if it had copy righted material on it.

http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/11/case-against-coica

Another interesting link is to this lawsuit that keeps going into appeals while the RIAA keeps raising their amount they want to be paid by this poor woman in a very poor attempt to make a statement about how they feel about internet piracy.

RIAA Wins Big Against File-Sharer, $1.5M for 24 Songs | TorrentFreak

More anger coming from Mr. Simmons of Kiss, This guy is funny. He thinks people today listen to what he thinks. I can tell you this much, there was a lot of angry users of a certain website that had some faxes and dog poo to send Mr. Simmons.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/10/kiss-frontman-we-should-have-sued-them-all.ars

This article is an interesting read. Very long, but interesting. Give it a once over.

The real cost of free | Cory Doctorow | Technology | guardian.co.uk

This right here is why I love the Brits. They may say some pretty crazy shit sometimes (not meaning to offend anyone), but they know when something is going to be really bad and when to stand up and say something.
EU Parliament Members Not At All Happy About ACTA | Techdirt

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