It's 2010 and at least here in the U.S. the pirating activities of millions prompted Hulu, Vevo and other great legal sites to get content. Hollywood bended which is great and downloading is so 2005. If your pirating and outside the US then more power to you as you dont have legal alternatives - yet.
If your in the US I wonder why are you still pirating copyrighted material? Im curious to hear...
Why would I pay $10 a month to watch old TV shows with ads in a Flash-only player when I can pirate and get hours-old ad-free HD TV shows that play anywhere?
Fuck DRM. When the video-distribution industry gets rid of DRM, then I'll buy video online. When my favorite TV shows are available for $10 a season in 1080p without DRM (and with episodes released before the official airtime, preferably), I will be the first to sign up. Until then, the pirates provide a significantly better product. For free.
The music industry figured it out. I have no trouble buying music I like in a lossless format these days, and there is never DRM. So why not the video industry? Their product is significantly more disposable than music, and yet it costs more and they use more "technology" to "protect" it. It doesn't make sense.
(I listen to songs over and over again. I watch a TV show once, and then delete it to free up hard drive space for more TV shows.)
I wonder what the response would be like if there was a party dedicated to breaking the GPL. Piracy seems to be fine, but anybody that violates an open source license like the GPL gets demonized like they are a criminal.
Being mistrustful of copyright laws seems to be a hacker ethic. The price of an open web is to tolerate a certain amount of piracy. Sure, you could stamp out 99% of piracy on the web, by logging usage, throttling traffic, suing teenagers and deploying other heavy-handed tactics. But at what cost? I would argue that having an open web is better than trying to prune it to perfection. You will snuff out innovation and kill future Googles (do you think Google who have grown and thrived in AOL's walled garden?). Of couse, this isn't even factored into the equation when arguing against piracy because it's all 'what if'.
How many people here on HN have used pirated software to help build a web app? Quite a few I'd bet. If your fledging web app is a success, whose software are you gonna buy when you are successful? The one you 'test-drove' as a pirate of course. Remember Jobs and Woz used a 'blue box' to get free long distance calls on AT&T's network. Their next idea was the Apple I. Fast forward to the 2000's and the iPhone is making At&T billions. If this scene played out today, they would've probably been sued into oblivion or arrested by the FBI., and Apple would never have been.
Why do you think the tech industry and the web grew out of America and not some other wealthy country? It's because America tolerates a certain amount of rebellious, anti-authoritarian behavior (among other things).
Pg talkes about this much better than I can in his essay about the nature of hackers:
"Why are programmers so violently opposed to these laws? If I were a legislator, I'd be interested in this mystery—for the same reason that, if I were a farmer and suddenly heard a lot of squawking coming from my hen house one night, I'd want to go out and investigate. Hackers are not stupid, and unanimity is very rare in this world. So if they're all squawking, perhaps there is something amiss.
Could it be that such laws, though intended to protect America, will actually harm it? Think about it."
I'm not pro-piracy per se, but I believe a certain amount has to be tolerated as the alternative is a police state on the web.
The whole point of the GPL is to stop companies from profiting off of other's programs without also giving something back to the community. Noone in the "pirate movement" supports for-profit piracy or copyright infringement.
I think it's a lot like Robin Hood. Piracy is viewed in some ways as "rob from the rich and give to the poor" which people in general can get on board with. However, breaking the GPL would be more like the opposite. Instead, someone is seeking personal gain/fame (aka the "rich") vs the people who volunteered their time ("poor") and that's just not right.
If you think of it as a question of ethics, not law, it's perfectly logical. That is; breaking the GPL does not make you a demon because you are breaking the law, but rather because you are being nasty to nice people. Illegally copying a movie is easier to accept, because it is easy to imagine that you are being nasty to the MPAA (if you are at all nasty).
The Pirate Party is not dedicated to piracy. It's dedicated to privacy and personal integrity, fighting the patent system and maintaining an open, free internet.
Depends whether you think of law as being the ultimate good, or something else.
If you had civil-rights objections to copyright then you'd perceive the GPL as a neat hack around it but be looking for something to destroy it.
Thinking about the rule of law as an ultimate good is a valid position.
I've actually tried this, and you get into contrived situations like this one: the boss shows you a four line perl script in use at a client site that another company wrote ten years ago, and asks you to modify it in a trivial way to solve an important problem. You'll respond that you aren't allowed to do that for breach of copyright - unless the client company specifically relinquished the code then the rights vest with them. Further, you will explain that you can now no longer write code to replicate the functionality of it because you have been influenced by having read the code of the client company.
Advocates of the rule of law should oppose laws that are selectively enforced, and absurdly complicated.
The ones who usually violate the GPL are companies trying to profit from it. I don't care if an individual breaks a licence or copyright laws, it just tells that markets don't work¹. For example, I pirate HD movies only because nobody sells me them over the net as on-demand.
[1] ... and the industry actively breaks it by creating artificial market regions and distribution restrictions. Hard to see why I'm not allowed to rent a movie from iTunes due to my physical location.
Actually, there has been some discussion[1] about how the Pirate Partys platform would affect the GPL. But as most people involved have some understanding of the issues, you get less of the "x is theft", "x can't survive because of y", etc.
I appreciate the positives and the logical motivation behind this move but does this not provide an opportunity for end-users to torrent more nefarious files?
Surely Swedish pedophiles are having a field day?
Am I missing something?
Who cares? Seriously, even if they are, who cares? The biggest problem with child pornography is that customers drive production of it which drives creation of it. But if some guy is using an anonymous ISP to anonymously download a file for free what possible impact can that have?
You might say that some people would get off on creating it and putting it up on the internet for free, but what's stopping them from doing everything but that last step now?
I don't think torrenting has an effect on it either way, but if you do please provide your argument.
paul9290|15 years ago
If your in the US I wonder why are you still pirating copyrighted material? Im curious to hear...
jrockway|15 years ago
Fuck DRM. When the video-distribution industry gets rid of DRM, then I'll buy video online. When my favorite TV shows are available for $10 a season in 1080p without DRM (and with episodes released before the official airtime, preferably), I will be the first to sign up. Until then, the pirates provide a significantly better product. For free.
The music industry figured it out. I have no trouble buying music I like in a lossless format these days, and there is never DRM. So why not the video industry? Their product is significantly more disposable than music, and yet it costs more and they use more "technology" to "protect" it. It doesn't make sense.
(I listen to songs over and over again. I watch a TV show once, and then delete it to free up hard drive space for more TV shows.)
someone_here|15 years ago
rick888|15 years ago
patrickk|15 years ago
How many people here on HN have used pirated software to help build a web app? Quite a few I'd bet. If your fledging web app is a success, whose software are you gonna buy when you are successful? The one you 'test-drove' as a pirate of course. Remember Jobs and Woz used a 'blue box' to get free long distance calls on AT&T's network. Their next idea was the Apple I. Fast forward to the 2000's and the iPhone is making At&T billions. If this scene played out today, they would've probably been sued into oblivion or arrested by the FBI., and Apple would never have been.
Why do you think the tech industry and the web grew out of America and not some other wealthy country? It's because America tolerates a certain amount of rebellious, anti-authoritarian behavior (among other things).
Pg talkes about this much better than I can in his essay about the nature of hackers:
http://www.paulgraham.com/gba.html
"Why are programmers so violently opposed to these laws? If I were a legislator, I'd be interested in this mystery—for the same reason that, if I were a farmer and suddenly heard a lot of squawking coming from my hen house one night, I'd want to go out and investigate. Hackers are not stupid, and unanimity is very rare in this world. So if they're all squawking, perhaps there is something amiss.
Could it be that such laws, though intended to protect America, will actually harm it? Think about it."
I'm not pro-piracy per se, but I believe a certain amount has to be tolerated as the alternative is a police state on the web.
henrikschroder|15 years ago
The whole point of the GPL is to stop companies from profiting off of other's programs without also giving something back to the community. Noone in the "pirate movement" supports for-profit piracy or copyright infringement.
Mark_B|15 years ago
maggit|15 years ago
Dementati|15 years ago
cturner|15 years ago
If you had civil-rights objections to copyright then you'd perceive the GPL as a neat hack around it but be looking for something to destroy it.
Thinking about the rule of law as an ultimate good is a valid position.
I've actually tried this, and you get into contrived situations like this one: the boss shows you a four line perl script in use at a client site that another company wrote ten years ago, and asks you to modify it in a trivial way to solve an important problem. You'll respond that you aren't allowed to do that for breach of copyright - unless the client company specifically relinquished the code then the rights vest with them. Further, you will explain that you can now no longer write code to replicate the functionality of it because you have been influenced by having read the code of the client company.
Advocates of the rule of law should oppose laws that are selectively enforced, and absurdly complicated.
Yaggo|15 years ago
[1] ... and the industry actively breaks it by creating artificial market regions and distribution restrictions. Hard to see why I'm not allowed to rent a movie from iTunes due to my physical location.
nmftt|15 years ago
[1] http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/pirate-party.html
kurokikaze|15 years ago
madmaze|15 years ago
sp332|15 years ago
Dementati|15 years ago
KoZeN|15 years ago
Surely Swedish pedophiles are having a field day? Am I missing something?
SoftwareMaven|15 years ago
Governments that are saying "we need to monitor your every move to save you from the .5%" are playing on your fears to take your freedoms away.
Dementati|15 years ago
Is monitoring filesharing sites the most effective way of fighting pedophilia?
loewenskind|15 years ago
You might say that some people would get off on creating it and putting it up on the internet for free, but what's stopping them from doing everything but that last step now?
I don't think torrenting has an effect on it either way, but if you do please provide your argument.