Download Illegally? Lose your internet.

[General Zod]

What about watching a movie on YouTube? Someone put the entirety of 2004's Dawn of the Dead on his profile. Are they going to track the ISPs of the site's users to see what videos they watch to make sure they aren't using YouTube to watch whole movies without paying?

They'd simply have Youtube remove it. They're not too concerned about someone uploading chunks of a barely watchable movie to a streaming site as they are people uploading entire movies at DVD quality that anyone with broadband can download and burn to a disc.

[TheDarkling]

No, it only assumes that some of them would have paid for it.

No, it assumes enough of them would have bought it to make the venture a success.

That is claim and those making it would need to show some factual basis for it.

Let's be realistic here: if piracy were completely unfettered, it would virtually destroy incentive to spend money, pay salaries, and take financial risks to make productions. There do need to be penalties for piracy, but there also needs to be a more realistic reassessment of the way copyrights are enforced and defined, so that enforcement efforts do not cripple the entire computer industry or lead to government sanctioned legal terror tactics directed against the general population.

I was talking about the general case but Sanctuary specifically, the claim is that the show didn't perform sufficiently because of piracy but there is really no evidence to indicate such.

All we know is that some people pirated the material we have no idea how many paying customers were lost due to the existence of piracy.

In other words, keep copyright but limit its terms (no more lifetime copyright), force copyright holders to respect "fair use" exemptions, and find some way to ensure that people accused of non-commercial copyright violations get due process rather than being steamrolled by legal bullying.

The problem lies in that last one, it is damn near impossible to prove (from a legal standpoint, without spending serious police resources on non criminal matters) somebody is pirating something if they take counter measures.

The main reason the government is musing about stepping in is because the negotiations for a voluntary system are dragging on, mainly(for what I understand) because the ISPs want the copyright holders to take responsibility for paying out any damages in court cases brought against them for breach of contract/deformation of character/lost earnings/whatever else some legal mind can dream up.

The reason the ISPs are worried about this is because they know the information the copyright holders will give them isn't going to hold up as sufficient to prove they are doing something illegal(a torrent tracker showing you connected doesn't actually prove you are).

The internet probably opens up insurmountable problems for the enforcement of copy right law without seriously slashing the standard of evidence required to make a successful (civil) case or coming up with some sort of technological miracle/agreement to chain technology down.

As far as unfettered piracy goes (and allow me to say that I don't really want an argument over the issue such I don't have the time or interest for such things anymore), I have more than enough bandwidth and google which pretty much means I can sail the cyber seas far and wide.
I can download just about anything I want yet I have some where on the order of 200-300 DVD's on my shelves.
Just because a person can pirate something doesn't mean they will or even if they do pirate something that they won't later go out and buy it.

For example it is quite conceivable that I (if I were a dastardly pirate, perish the thought) downloaded every episode of the X-files and burnt them to disk but when they released the entire series boxset I bought it for £140.

I don't think piracy is going to drive creators (or the media companies) into the poor house, people will still buy their stuff, some whilst pirating and some not.
The important thing is that piracy is kept marginalised until/unless some counter proposal is arrived at (which is difficult to envision), fighting piracy in any other manner is going to be unsuccessful and rather dodgy from an ethical standpoint given the means that need to be employed in such a fight.

[Big Orange]

There do need to be penalties for piracy, but there also needs to be a more realistic reassessment of the way copyrights are enforced and defined, so that enforcement efforts do not cripple the entire computer industry or lead to government sanctioned legal terror tactics directed against the general population.

In other words, keep copyright but limit its terms (no more lifetime copyright), force copyright holders to respect "fair use" exemptions, and find some way to ensure that people accused of non-commercial copyright violations get due process rather than being steamrolled by legal bullying.

What about indefinite protection against blatant creative plagiarism?

Although in my mind a music royalty should only last as long as a science/technology patent, about twenty years, and the current music royalty system is obviously taking the piss if "Happy Birthday" bizarrely has a hefty $10, 000 royalty, long after the original writers have died, and in the face of billions of people having that cheery jingle burned into their brains.

And I wager millions download TV shows on torrent or on pirate DVD, due to those shows being denied a DVD release or broadcast re-run because of their music content that the avaristic record labels still demand payment for, for repeated use of the same music (Quantum Leap had to have it's period music removed on R1 DVD, while Cold Case hasn't been officially published at all).

[Netko]

I'm in full agreement with what Wong said (planned to post something similar, it would be redundant now). As for your complaints TheDarkling;

No, it assumes enough of them would have bought it to make the venture a success.

That is claim and those making it would need to show some factual basis for it.

I wasn't claiming they would succeed - simply that the wholesale piracy tainted the numbers to the point where we don't know if they would have succeeded or not had it been more limited, but we know that it failed with the pirating involved (they said that piracy accounted for at least several times the amount of legal downloads - more then enough that the ratio doesn't have to be nowhere near one download meaning one lost sale for it to have a significant negative effect). It had a determental effect, and a chilling effect for future such ventures because they saw that, do to piracy, a fair online-based model simply doesn't have a chance to work.

Regardless of the merits of the series in question, I dislike that it has come to that because it will make it that much harder for the next attempt to do the right thing and not cripple their downloads with DRM since, in that situation, it would be the logical choice. It would also probably not work, but after this situation and similar others they will take probably not working over not working at all, and we all lose.

Also, regardless of how significantly pirating damaged Sanctuary's chances, my main point to Ford Perfect was that, yes, there is a determental effect of some (unspecified) magnitude in place with piracy, especially with media which is bought directly - very clear from the examples shown - which answers his question on how it stifles innovation. I dislike that a great deal because it forces media to the traditional channels where piracy has a much smaller effect do to it not being tied directly to revenues, which in turn makes the media practically unavailable to most people legally compared to some sort of web-based model intended from the start for international audiences. Which, of course, also leads to even more piracy.

[Qwerty 42]

Or even more explicitly, Sanctuary, the project starring Amanda Tapping and with lots of known sci-fi actors in guest roles that was supposed to be a direct-to-web and direct-buy from web project simply failed in that model since they did the right thing (not encoumbered their downloads with DRM) and the pay-to-download episodes simply got pirated to high heavens making the entire model uneconomical. In the end, not all was lost - the show got picked up by Sci-Fi and the first couple of episodes will be reworked versions of the webisodes, but it is a perfect example of how piracy truly can be determental to exactly the kind of innovative, fair web-based models that a lot of the pirates claim is what they want.

That assumes that the people who pirated it would have paid for it if it wasn't available through any other method.

No, it only assumes that some of them would have paid for it. Let's be realistic here: if piracy were completely unfettered, it would virtually destroy incentive to spend money, pay salaries, and take financial risks to make productions. There do need to be penalties for piracy, but there also needs to be a more realistic reassessment of the way copyrights are enforced and defined, so that enforcement efforts do not cripple the entire computer industry or lead to government sanctioned legal terror tactics directed against the general population.

In other words, keep copyright but limit its terms (no more lifetime copyright), force copyright holders to respect "fair use" exemptions, and find some way to ensure that people accused of non-commercial copyright violations get due process rather than being steamrolled by legal bullying.

This is true. The industries are making fools of themselves and probably encouraging piracy by alienating their fanbase by strongarming innocent people into submission.

Also, is is "steamrolled" or "steamrollered"?

[Big Orange]

I'd say it is wrong to buy or download a illicit copy of a already widely available television show or movie, but my conscience is clear if I buy or download a television show or movie that wasn't available at all to begin with due to easily avoidable and stupid reasons (the Adam West Batman series springs to mind).