StarDestroyer.Net BBS

Count Chocula wrote:Theft is theft.

Count Chocula wrote:Theft is theft. You want free music, use Pandora or iheart radio. Free books, look online or copypaste User Fiction or Fanfiction.net. Have you heard of Netflix? Use Gamefly to try before you buy. Does that mean you may have less shit on your hard drive? Yeah, but what you have is yours.

EDIT and to answer your question: the government is clearly operating within its mandate if the Web sites in question are not broadcasting paid for or licensed content. Complaining about it is like bitching that you have to call someone else for your pot because your current supplier is in jail.

Count Chocula wrote:Okay I stand corrected. If the Canadian government is siezing Web sites beyond its boundaries, it's also beyond its mandate. In-country, they are within rights. If the sites did not host pirated files the government is entirely in the wrong and will (hopefully) be liable to tort. Your original post BTW did NOT say the government siezed sites that didn't host pirated files...was that an oversight on your part or a bear trap? It may be within rights to block access to offshore sites, but that's not legal as far as I know in America, maybe it is in Canada.

And copyright infringement IIRC is still theft. Time, money, and fixed assets all go into producing copyrighted IP like music and videos. Piracy that produces illicit copies is still theft of the producer's funds.

And copyright infringement IIRC is still theft.

Count Chocula wrote:Okay I stand corrected. If the Canadian government is siezing Web sites beyond its boundaries, it's also beyond its mandate. In-country, they are within rights. If the sites did not host pirated files the government is entirely in the wrong and will (hopefully) be liable to tort. Your original post BTW did NOT say the government siezed sites that didn't host pirated files...was that an oversight on your part or a bear trap? It may be within rights to block access to offshore sites, but that's not legal as far as I know in America, maybe it is in Canada.

And copyright infringement IIRC is still theft. Time, money, and fixed assets all go into producing copyrighted IP like music and videos. Piracy that produces illicit copies is still theft of the producer's funds.

Destructionator XIII wrote: Providing links to infringing content is giving the means and opportunity to make it happen, and thus might fit the definition.


I pulled this reasoning out of my own brain, not any sources. I'm also not a lawyer. But, I believe that, yes, it is illegal to tell people where to do this, at least in bigger cases.

18-Till-I-Die wrote:If I were to make a suggestion, and if given carte blanche to do whatever it takes to stop piracy (for whatever reason), I guess then outlawing computers and modems and enforcing the law with actual felony jail time akin to a major drug offense would simply take the technology out of the hands of the average citizen. If all computers are tightly controlled by the government that would, maybe, stop it. Assuming of course that no one found a way to jerry rig a computer and wi-fi, and that the government actually was willing to take such draconian measures.

But that's absurd and never going to happen, obviously.

Destructionator XIII wrote: 1) They provide a legitimate service too. These other sites only reason for existing is to facilitate crime.

The New York Times caught up this weekend with the Queens resident who ran dajaz1.com, who noted his own puzzlement at having his domain seized without warning:

After being shown the affidavit, the operator of dajaz1.com — a widely read hip-hop blog that posts new songs and videos — disputed many of the warrant’s examples of what it called copyright infringement. He said that, like much of the material on his site, the songs had been sent to him for promotional purposes by record labels and the artists.

As proof, the operator, a Queens man who declined to give his real name but is known online as Splash, showed The New York Times several e-mails from record label employees and third-party marketers offering songs mentioned in the affidavit.

“It’s not my fault if someone at a record label is sending me the song,” Splash said.

And, I'm not sure about this, but probably also 3) if asked, they'd comply; they don't have to be forced.

Destructionator XIII wrote: The government might be sloppy here, but I suspect we aren't hearing the whole story either.

"Based on my participation in the investigation, I have learned that there is a 'domino effect' to online piracy… Domestic industries lose approximately $25.6 billion a year in revenue to piracy, the domestic economy loses nearly 375,000 jobs either directly or indirectly related to online piracy, and American workers lose more than $16 billion in annual earnings as result of copyright infringement."

Reynolds didn't "learn" any of this by researching the complex effects of illegal file-sharing on Big Content (bad), concert revenues (good), consumer bank balances (good), superstars (possibly bad), and lesser-known artists (probably good). He learned it from speaking with the movie and music businesses, whose representatives appear to have basically directed this investigation.

In 2009, the songwriters' collection agency SESAC talked about online piracy and Congress' recent allocation of $30 million to help address it. Then-head of the MPAA, Dan Glickman, said that the government had to act "due to the negative domino effect on the industry and its employees. 'Copyright industries in the US lose $25.6 billion a year in revenue to piracy, the U.S. economy loses nearly 375,000 jobs either directly or indirectly related to the copyright industry, and American workers lose more than $16 billion in annual earnings,' he said." Sound familiar?

Consider, for instance, this excruciating description of BitTorrent: "A Bit torrent (referred to in short as 'torrent' or 'torrent file') is a files distribution system used for transferring files across a network of people." Yikes. Would you put this man in charge of your computer crime investigations?

Broomstick wrote:So... let me get this straight. A bunch of people who feel it's OK to take things off the internet without asking and without payment are now pissed off because some other people took other things off the internet without asking and without payment?

This comes because the site I normally watched sports on was just seized, and already on google you can find the same hosts with their new address providing the same content as before with the exact same url subsitution .net for .me.

It just seems like they're playing whack-a-mole trying to stop piracy and frankly I find it stupid to waste people's tax money even trying. Though not providing links or anything because of board rules I will say that 1 person out of 20 in my communications class pays for most music and movies and the rest might buy something they really like. I'd guess that for most people in their 20's this is the way of things.

What are the board's thoughts on this matter?

Broomstick wrote:But there are people saying it's OK to pirate shit?

It's a search engine you can watch sports on? He's watching off-brand sports?

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) has 10 tough questions for the department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), all of which can be more easily summed up in a single, blunter question: what the hell are you guys doing over there?

Wyden's displeasure is over ICE's Operation In Our Sites, the controversial program that began seizing Internet domain names last year, and just grabbed several more sports-related domains this week. The seizures are all signed off on by a federal judge, but the affected parties get no warning and no chance to first challenge the claim that they are running illegal businesses. In fact, in yesterday's takedown, ICE grabbed the domain Rojadirecta.org, a site that links to live sports on the Web and has twice been declared legal by Spanish courts.

While different countries of course have different laws, and what may be allowable in one country would be illegal in the US, Wyden raises the obvious question of turnabout: "Did [Department of Justice] and ICE take into account the legality of Rojadirecta.org before it ceased its domain name? ... What standard does DoJ expect foreign countries to use when determining whether to seize a domain name controlled in the US for copyright infringement?"

His other questions are just as pointed, and they're all contained in a letter to ICE director John Morton. Wyden asks whether merely linking to infringing online content is illegal (several of the seized domain names did not host any infringing content themselves). He wants to know why the domain names are being seized, but why there's no attempt to prosecute those behind the sites, if these are really criminals. And he wants ICE to keep (and make public) a list of the companies that have lobbied for any particular site's name to be seized, all to ensure that “Operation In Our Sites is not used to create competitive advantages in the marketplace.”

Wyden also digs into one specific case, last year's seizure of the dajaz1.com domain name. The site, which blogged about music and hosted some downloads, was claimed to infringe on copyrights, but Wyden notes that press reports later showed that many of the songs on the site had been provided to its operator directly by music industry executives. Despite the stories, ICE made no move apparent move to look into the case or restore the site's original domain name. Wyden wants "the Administration's justification for continued seizure of this domain name and its rationale for not providing this domain name operator, and others, due process.”

Just in case ICE had any doubts about Wyden's hostility to the entire process, the Senator makes his broader position clear:

In contrast to ordinary copyright litigation, the domain name seizure process does not appear to give targeted websites an opportunity to defend themselves before sanctions are imposed. As you know, there is an active and contentious legal debate about when a website may be held liable for infringing activities by its users. I worry that domain name seizures could function as a means for end-running the normal legal process in order to target websites that may prevail in full court. The new enforcement approach used by Operation In Our Sites is alarmingly unprecedented in the breadth of its potential reach...

For the Administration's efforts to be seen as legitimate, it should be able to defend its use of the forfeiture laws by prosecuting operators of domain names and provide a means to ensure due process. If the federal government is going to take property and risk stifling speech, it must be able to defend those actions not only behind closed doors but also in a court of law.

My thought is that piracy - whether downloading music or watching sports via websites that show copyright broadcasts without permission - is theft.

Of course, the government seizing assets without due process is also a form of theft. But then, if you think it's OK to access copyrighted stuff and make copies without permission then obviously you don't understand the concept of intellectual property or copyright, which makes it baffling that you'd get so upset about the government seizing something you think either doesn't exist, shouldn't exist, or has no value. After all the government isn't destroying anything here, or taking a physical object, it's just making the thing hard or impossible to find. The originator still has the coding, right? Nothing has really been taken, right?

Broomstick wrote:Again - these people want the "music and movies and the rest" but only 1 in 20 is willing to pay anything at all for them. Again - how do these expect these people who create this stuff to make a living? Or maybe it's just the 20 somethings are sponging off mom and dad still and don't understand the concept of earning a living yet.

thejester wrote:

Broomstick wrote:Again - these people want the "music and movies and the rest" but only 1 in 20 is willing to pay anything at all for them. Again - how do these expect these people who create this stuff to make a living? Or maybe it's just the 20 somethings are sponging off mom and dad still and don't understand the concept of earning a living yet.

Oh shit maybe they'll have to pay Alexander Ovechkin 11 million a year instead of 12 million.

Seriously, the idea that me 'stealing' an NHL game which I could not watch on broadcast TV in Australia even if I had cable is putting people out of work is so stupid as to be laughable. But then again, I live in a country where sporting clubs exist to win, not to turn a profit so I guess I've got a crazy egalitarian perspective on the whole thing.

18-Till-I-Die wrote: Will it ever be possible to make people pay for something that they can get for free, from a free site, using free technology provided for free on the free internet?