Topic: Nintendo Wises Up

[Chozo Ghost]

Your attempts to trivialize it only show how little you really understand the situation.

I understand the RIAA/MPAA likes to sue people for millions of dollars and bankrupt them for the rest of their lives. Isn't it like $200,000 per song or something like that? If you steal a CD from a store the consequences are far less severe than stealing that album online. I agree both are stealing and should be illegal, but the punishment is far in excess of the crime. Especially when you hear stories of elderly people who don't even have a computer being sued, or people who died years ago are being sued. That just goes to show that they don't even know who is really guilty when they send out these lawsuits.

So no its not a trivial thing at all if you are the recipient of one of these lawsuits. Your life is forever ruined and your quality of living is forever lowered because you will never live long enough or make enough money to ever be able to pay back the huge fines, unless you are lucky and hit the lottery or something like that.

[NWR_insanolord]

Also, the piracy, despite how much of it there is, may, in fact, be trivial. There's really no way to know how much of an impact it has on the movie, music and gaming industry.

[bustin98]

It's not the stealing they are concerned so much about, but rather the distributing. When you become a torrent seed, you are a source of a file. And if you have a million MP3s sitting on your hard drive, you have the potential to distribute a million songs to millions of fellow torrent users.

They way companies go after people is wrong because all anyone is is an IP address. So if someone spoofs your address suddenly you could find yourself on the wrong end of a search warrant.

[Chozo Ghost]

I think the RIAA/MPAA is happy piracy exists because they probably make more money off suing thousands of people for millions of dollars each than they make off the actual album sales. That is their business model. The claim they are victims of piracy, but really the fines from that piracy is making them very rich.

[Dasmos]

itt: moderators breaking forum rules and discussing politics.

[bustin98]

Until Vudu shows up...

[NWR_insanolord]

itt: moderators breaking forum rules and discussing politics.

We're above the law. Deal with it.

[Morari]

As for the last part of your comment, let's be grown adults and be honest - this isn't about "Someone pirating a few things..."  It's about a large segment of the population pirating massive quantities of copyrighted material.  Your attempts to trivialize it only show how little you really understand the situation.

Shouldn't the government be looking into supporting this large segment of the population, then? If a majority of the population partake in an activity, exactly when does it cease to be criminal? Isn't that how democracy is supposed to work? Instead they're acting as a dying industry's personal security force.

[TJ Spyke]

"large" is not the same as "majority". Also, this country has never been a democracy, it's always been a republic. The problem with democracy is that sometimes the people don't always want what is right. The government had to act themselves to do stuff like enacting civil rights laws in states where most people opposed them.

Plus, even if a majority of people did pirate stuff, that is still not a reason to legalize it.

[Chozo Ghost]

The government had to act themselves to do stuff like enacting civil rights laws in states where most people opposed them.

Yet it was also the government which enacted the Jim Crow laws in the first place. Whether a government action ends up being "good" or not depends entirely on who is controlling the government, because they are the ones who steer it and get it to pass various laws and whatnot. That said, I don't think the MPAA/RIAA should be holding the reins of government. The honest truth of the matter is they only care about their own interests, and would not care if a law they supported trampled the crap out of civil liberties in the process.

[TJ Spyke]

State governments enacted Jim Crow laws. The federal government had to fix that. That was my point, there are plenty of times a state wants to do something discriminatory, and the federal government had to fix it.

[NWR_insanolord]

Hey, no discussing non-SOPA politics in this thread unless you have mod powers.

[TJ Spyke]

Speaking of SOPA, the ESA announced they were dropping their support of it the other day.

[NWR_insanolord]

That's a pretty bold move.

[UncleBob]

I think the RIAA/MPAA is happy piracy exists because they probably make more money off suing thousands of people for millions of dollars each than they make off the actual album sales. That is their business model. The claim they are victims of piracy, but really the fines from that piracy is making them very rich.

This is completely ridiculous.  Do you actually have any stats on how many of these lawsuits have A) Made it to court, B) Been found in favor of the record company, and C) How many of those winning lawsuits actually had defendants who paid out?

As for the last part of your comment, let's be grown adults and be honest - this isn't about "Someone pirating a few things..."  It's about a large segment of the population pirating massive quantities of copyrighted material.  Your attempts to trivialize it only show how little you really understand the situation.

Shouldn't the government be looking into supporting this large segment of the population, then?

Perhaps - but remember one of the basic tenants of our government - "Majority rules with minority rights." - meaning the majority of people can't trample on the rights of the minority.

[broodwars]

I think the RIAA/MPAA is happy piracy exists because they probably make more money off suing thousands of people for millions of dollars each than they make off the actual album sales. That is their business model. The claim they are victims of piracy, but really the fines from that piracy is making them very rich.

This is completely ridiculous.  Do you actually have any stats on how many of these lawsuits have A) Made it to court, B) Been found in favor of the record company, and C) How many of those winning lawsuits actually had defendants who paid out?

Don't forget as well all the money paid to the lawyers in these lawsuits, because companies LOVE paying lawyers so much they just can't wait to hand out lawsuits for protracted multi-year legal battles with people very unlikely to actually pay up.

[Chozo Ghost]

https://www.eff.org/wp/riaa-v-people-five-years-later

The campaign has been supplemented with the creation of a new website, http://www.P2Plawsuits.com. At the website, those receiving pre-litigation letters can simply settle their cases by paying the settlement with a credit card, without any aspect of the case ever entering the legal system. This in turn saves the recording industry the substantial costs of actually having to file and pursue a "John Doe" suit. The "reduced" settlement amount, in other words, represents the record companies’ savings from cutting out the middleman—our justice system. At the same time, the costs saved by the RIAA in not filing an actual suit can then be applied towards targeting more students with pre-litigation letters.

So you see, they can avoid the costly and lengthy legal process by coercing their victims into paying for a "discount settlement" with their credit cards through this website. Its a racket.

Is a song really worth $100,000? No one would argue someone who steals a pack of bubblegum should be fined $100,000. You can buy an mp3 for about a $1 which is about the same as a pack of gum, but stealing a pack of gum is treated like a trivial offense but if you steal a song then you are a felon and end up bankrupted for life. As I said earlier, the punishment is far in excess of the actual crime and the RIAA/MPAA is profiting greatly from these settlements.

If they are really just doing this to stop piracy then why do they have a website demanding money from people by credit card? If this was really about principle I would expect them to go about this differently. This is a source of revenue, and they don't want it to go away. The truth is they are perfectly happy with piracy existing, in the same way that a weapons manufacturer is happy with war, because they profit from it.

[UncleBob]

Do you have any concrete numbers regarding how many people have actually paid using this website?

[Chozo Ghost]

No, I don't. It may be on Google, but I suspect its something only the RIAA knows and probably wouldn't want anyone else to know.

[broodwars]

Is a song really worth $100,000? No one would argue someone who steals a pack of bubblegum should be fined $100,000. You can buy an mp3 for about a $1 which is about the same as a pack of gum, but stealing a pack of gum is treated like a trivial offense but if you steal a song then you are a felon and end up bankrupted for life.

The problem with your analogy is that I can't take your pack of bubblegum and then give it to 10,000 other people (who are then also not buying the gum) with exactly the same quality and amount as the pack I would have originally stolen (which still keeping my gum).  You can make the argument as to whether people who merely download the file deserve the same punishment as those that host or seed the file on the internet, but your physical argument is flawed.

[oohhboy]

The problem I have with his statement is that he has implied there was a quid quo pro transaction which is Bribery in any other country, the kind where people go to jail for. The legal loop holes make it technically legal, but it still bribery by another name. Dodd's statement is literally "We made you, you owe us and we can unmake you". Classic villain talk.

This problem is much bigger than simple piracy. In a city you can't take a simple photo without catching something in the picture that is under copyright. Maybe it's a logo, a TV, an ad, some building design or a name. You put your photo up on the net. Without fair use which Hollywood very happily attacks, the things in the background is copyright infringement. You are using their intellectual property without their expressed permission correct? Piracy is just one form of copyright infringement.

SOPA and PIPA was never about piracy or copyright infringement. The exercise was to break the internet so that the channels of distribution reverts back to them. Imagine if the internet was only a couple thousand sites wide, all controlled by a handful of companies, the internet wouldn't be anything more than cable TV with 500 channels. Currently no one owns the internet and this is a very good thing. I hoppe this remains this way forever.

What the MPAA and RIAA did with these bills is the equivalent of Thomas Edison electrocuting an elephant. Looking back now you think hahah, very funny, how silly of Thomas. But if you read the article the entire point of the exercise was to discredit alternating current so he can continue selling electricity under his old system which he controlled. Thomas Edison, the "Great inventor" was trying to stop progress because he didn't own it.

As for TJ's ridiculous assertion that the US is a republic, wrong, the US is a representative democracy if it could be considered that now.
Edmund Burke

Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion

It really doesn't matter exactly what kind democratic governement the US is under as long as it's one person, one vote and his expert opinion is judged on his evidence, not by the weight of his purse. The US government as it functions is now backwards for all intents and purposes to it founding.

[broodwars]

As for TJ's ridiculous assertion that the US is a republic, wrong, the US is a representative democracy if it could be considered that now.

Actually, you're both right to some extent.  The U.S. is a Constitutional Republic, which practices Representative Democracy in choosing its leaders.

[MegaByte]

Also, the piracy, despite how much of it there is, may, in fact, be trivial. There's really no way to know how much of an impact it has on the movie, music and gaming industry.

I'm not going to dig up all the studies that noted that piracy is actually a net positive, but I wanted to leave this here.

[UncleBob]

No, I don't. It may be on Google, but I suspect its something only the RIAA knows and probably wouldn't want anyone else to know.

The lawsuits and the settlements are pretty much attempts at scare tactics.  They know they can't stop piracy - but the biggest reason people pirate (aside from the "Hey, free stuff!") is that there is virtually no downside to it.  If the MPAA/RIAA can make you think maybe, just maybe you're gonna get caught and have to pay out thousands and your entire life will be ruined... then, perhaps, you'll stop downloading.

On a slightly related note, why the **** do people shoplift CDs?  I mean, really - you're not gonna get caught downloading the music online - it's far more risky to come into my store and steal a CD...

[Morari]

SOPA and PIPA was never about piracy or copyright infringement. The exercise was to break the internet so that the channels of distribution reverts back to them. Imagine if the internet was only a couple thousand sites wide, all controlled by a handful of companies, the internet wouldn't be anything more than cable TV with 500 channels. Currently no one owns the internet and this is a very good thing. I hoppe this remains this way forever.

Bingo!

It's all about controlling distribution channels. It always has been. Entities like the RIAA and MPAA are little more than middlemen. They're useless without a strangled market, and the emergence of just such a market scares them. They know that they will fade away. So rather than change and adapt to the market, they would rather hold it back and try to control it in the same way that they always have.

The internet is dynamic. You get what you want, when you want, from where you want. The powers that be would much rather havve an easily controlled and passive experience. They want to decide what you get, and when, and how. Just like they do with television and radio. It's easy to control. Furthermore, it makes the populace itself easier to control.

Sadly, the internet is already closer to that than it was originally intended to be. You can see the corporate control everyday. People gleefully herb themselves into these portals, walled gardens, and gateways, never peaking out beyond the fence. If it's not on Facebook or YouTube, chances are they don't know that it even exists. There is no longer and exploration. Hardly anyone has a personal website nowadays. There are no web rings. It's the same kind of mindset we used to snicker at AOL users for. The sheer popularity of the internet has been its greatest weakness as well as its greatest strength.

Plus, even if a majority of people did pirate stuff, that is still not a reason to legalize it.

Wouldn't it be? That's how revolutions start right there.

The point isn't to argue the decriminalization of copyright infringement though. The point is to get the system grounded back in something resembling reality. To stop catering to dying industries. To spend money where it is really needed and will really help people. I guess that we would have to stop thinking of faceless corporations as "people" first...