[HN Gopher] "The Pirate Bay can't be stopped," co-founder says
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       "The Pirate Bay can't be stopped," co-founder says
        
       Author : TangerineDream
       Score  : 170 points
       Date   : 2021-11-28 16:15 UTC (6 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (torrentfreak.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (torrentfreak.com)
        
       | INTPenis wrote:
       | The Foundation is out on Apple TV and I'm already paying for 4
       | streaming services. Avast matey! Piracy isn't dead, it's just
       | underground.
        
       | mymythisisthis wrote:
       | I wonder if copyright will still be around in 50 years? It's easy
       | to record music. It's easy to share music. It's hard to untangle
       | what inspired a piece of music, and how much an artist reused
       | previous work. I wonder when the whole scheme of copyright will
       | collapse under its own weight.
        
       | smoovb wrote:
       | As Chamath pointed out on the All In Podcast, Pirate Bay and
       | torrenting serve as competition for rights holders, keeping
       | Hollywood pricing and quality in check, and thus a net good for
       | consumers.
       | 
       | The 2013 TPB documentary -
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eTOKXCEwo_8
        
       | no_time wrote:
       | Stopping it may not be possible but the change of hands killed
       | everything that was nice about tpb. Quality plummeted very fast
       | and the last time I checked extremely obvious malicious torrents
       | with faked seeder counts were at the top of the games section for
       | days. The whole site looks like it lost its community and also
       | it's heaps of obscure content.
       | 
       | I'm still grateful for the sysops of tpb and more importantly,
       | Mininova for providing me with endless hours of entertainment
       | before I had the means to stay in a private tracker.
        
       | sli wrote:
       | Maybe not, but its quality can tank so low that nobody recommends
       | it anymore, which has long since happened.
        
       | lnxg33k1 wrote:
       | Well the lawsuits were worth it mainly as a way to create a
       | income stream for the lawyers
        
       | shmerl wrote:
       | _> It is a cultivated myth that we would not have any streaming
       | services for music, film and TV series if Pirate Bay did not
       | exist. Those who claim it do not understand how technology
       | development works._
       | 
       | Someone forgets how legacy copyright industry fights tooth and
       | nail against any innovation, until they realize it's futile and
       | then they try to start using technology instead of fighting it.
       | This hasn't changed a bit. They literally do it every step of the
       | way trying to slow progress down for the sake of their obsession
       | with control.
        
         | sjtindell wrote:
         | With an occasional detour to try to push some sort of
         | technology that nobody actually wants.
        
       | ilrwbwrkhv wrote:
       | Wasn't the founder of Spotify the CEO of uTorrent?
        
         | sslalready wrote:
         | IIRC, the uTorrent guy (Ludde Strigeus) was employeed by
         | Spotify and worked on, among other things, the P2P feature in
         | Spotify.
        
         | rightbyte wrote:
         | Spotify pirated early content.
        
         | boomboomsubban wrote:
         | Kinda, Spotify bought uTorrent to get the head programmer then
         | sold the company.
        
       | Taylor_OD wrote:
       | Hasnt the website been down for months?
        
         | makeworld wrote:
         | Nope.
         | 
         | https://old.reddit.com/r/PirateBay_Proxy/comments/qkax5j/pir...
        
         | aspenmayer wrote:
         | Works fine on my end? The canonical domain is blocked by some
         | ISPs around the world, but there's always the .onion site. You
         | can find the links on Wikipedia probably.
        
       | boomboomsubban wrote:
       | >The piece doesn't go deep into detail but it shows that the
       | entertainment industry lawyer doesn't regret going after the site
       | and its founders, despite the mixed result.
       | 
       | That lawyer is probably the person who has made the most money
       | off of TPB. Of course they don't regret it.
        
         | filmgirlcw wrote:
         | I was at a Grammy luncheon a number of years ago and I somehow
         | wound up seated with all of the entertainment attorneys for the
         | labels/recording industry/whatever and it was a very
         | interesting/bizarre conversation. I've spent much of my adult
         | life (and even pre-adult life), speaking out and writing about
         | the idiocy of those various campaigns to shut down P2P, DRM,
         | etc., and then I was at this industry luncheon with some very
         | nice people who believe the exact opposite of me. Interesting
         | and civil discussions ensued (I was the odd-woman out, both for
         | my position and because I didn't drive to the Beverly Hills
         | Hotel in a $200,000 car), but I got the sense that as misguided
         | as I personally think they are, many of the lawyers honestly
         | think they are doing the right thing to try to protect against
         | so-called infringement the ways that they do. I'm sure the
         | money is definitely part of it (again, I took an Uber to the
         | luncheon. They had valet service for their $200,000 cars), but
         | I don't think that's most of it to be honest.
         | 
         | It was helpful for me to meet and talk with people who have the
         | opposite opinion and perspective of me. Not because we changed
         | each other's minds (my mind wasn't changed), but because I saw
         | that these were people who really thought they were protecting
         | and fighting for the rights and protections of artists and
         | creators. As I said, it didn't change my opinion about how
         | misguided and ultimately harmful those fights have been
         | (especially towards the parties they want to protect), but I
         | did at least see that not all of them are evil boogeyman who
         | just want to get money.
        
           | goodpoint wrote:
           | > They had valet service for their $200,000 cars
           | 
           | > the lawyers honestly think they are doing the right thing
           | 
           | Reminds me of:
           | 
           | "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when
           | his salary depends on his not understanding it." - Upton
           | Sinclair
        
           | akudha wrote:
           | _I personally think they are, many of the lawyers honestly
           | think they are doing the right thing_
           | 
           | They have tons of money, they're highly educated, well
           | connected individuals, are they not? All they have to do is
           | spend one Saturday reading up. With the money they have, they
           | can even hire researchers to do some original research for
           | them. My guess is that they don't want to know. Money has a
           | way of suppressing one's good side.
           | 
           | I am having a hard time sympathizing with these lawyers. They
           | go after students, poor people for downloading a song or two.
           | They're the reason for the sorry state of copyright laws
        
             | dane-pgp wrote:
             | > They're the reason for the sorry state of copyright laws
             | 
             | Blaming lawyers for the state of copyright laws is doing a
             | huge service to the legislators that pass them and the
             | lobbyists who write them.
        
               | jessaustin wrote:
               | ...90% of whom are lawyers.
        
             | filmgirlcw wrote:
             | I don't disagree, but having pressed some of them on those
             | exact issues (not all at that luncheon), it really is
             | similar to talking to district attorneys who often
             | prosecute low-level drug crimes (which I personally find
             | even more egregious). These are people who really are
             | convinced they are doing the right thing. As I said, this
             | doesn't change my opinion, but it does make having a
             | conversation more productive.
        
               | kf6nux wrote:
               | The people in the USA practicing eugenics thought they
               | were doing the right thing. The people in the USA
               | creating concentration camps for the Japanese (a.k.a.
               | internment camps) thought they were doing the right
               | thing.
               | 
               | Belief in yourself and your cause is irrelevant. Most
               | people have that regardless of what they do.
        
               | Qub3d wrote:
               | "It is difficult to get a man to understand something,
               | when his salary depends on his not understanding it." -
               | Upton Sinclair
               | 
               | Maybe a bit of a truism, but it is a popular quote for a
               | reason
        
               | akudha wrote:
               | I can sympathize with someone who isn't educated or
               | living in a rural area (cut off from the world) or raised
               | in a cult etc. I _really_ can't believe the lawyers who
               | went to Ivy League colleges are that naive. They're much
               | smarter than an average guy like me.
               | 
               | Doesn't mean they are evil, just that they're paid enough
               | to set aside any moral concerns they have.
        
               | kmeisthax wrote:
               | The legal profession self-selects for people who think
               | this way, for a number of various reasons.
               | 
               | 1. If you disagree with the base assumptions of
               | copyright, you are going to misunderstand the law and
               | fail your LSAT/bar exam/etc. You will be blinded by "it's
               | just to keep big companies afloat" to notice the actual
               | rules of things like fair use.
               | 
               | 2. If you get a law license but disagree with the base
               | assumptions of the law, you are going to be at a
               | financial disadvantage by refusing to represent clients
               | whose politics disagrees with yours.[0]
               | 
               | 3. If you choose to represent copyright defendants, you
               | can only do so to the extent that there is a legal
               | argument that they can make. It is illegal for a lawyer
               | to aid a client in the commission of a crime... and if
               | your legal career is based around the idea that something
               | _shouldn 't_ be a crime, then you will need to hold your
               | tongue and pick your battles a lot.
               | 
               | 4. If you somehow jump through those hoops and
               | competently represent clients... you probably have
               | sacrificed on your "abolish copyright" ideology a fair
               | bit.
               | 
               | [0] Remember that at this point you are probably deep in
               | student debt - your legal career is predicated on you
               | paying back your loans by charging your clients lots of
               | money.
        
           | donmcronald wrote:
           | Most of the piracy sites are super scummy. I can see the
           | appeal in trying to shut them down. I've always wondered how
           | the economics of those setups that push you through a half
           | dozen link shorteners / ad pages with captchas all over the
           | place work. I bet there's ad fraud going on with the captchas
           | being solved for bots that are doing less than respectable
           | things.
           | 
           | Look at Kim Dotcom / Mega Upload for an example of who the
           | big winners are in the piracy space. Some of it is big
           | business, so it's easy to see the lawyers' side. I'd still
           | consider myself pro piracy because it creates a floor in
           | terms of how bad big companies can treat us, but there are
           | some participants that deserve to be chased by lawyers.
        
             | superkuh wrote:
             | No. Most of the piracy sites that are public and well known
             | are super scummy. That is because only that kind of scummy
             | income can protect and justify the exposure. Semi-private
             | and private piracy sites are really nice, safe, and have
             | better organization and UI than most big money for profit
             | sites that attempt to distribute the same types of media.
             | What.cd was way less scummy than any large commercial media
             | distribution company.
        
               | kmeisthax wrote:
               | Yes, but there's no guarantee that What.cd[0] remains a
               | charismatic defendant in any scenario where they don't
               | get shut down. Nor should the law be written around
               | protecting charismatic defendants.
               | 
               | The argument against copyright maximalism should not be
               | made on the basis that "nice" pirate sites can exist - in
               | fact, you should advocate for copyright reform or
               | reduction on the basis of the least tolerable, most
               | scummy site that should be allowed to exist.
               | 
               | [0] insert any other non-scummy pirate site here
        
               | [deleted]
        
           | tokai wrote:
           | People work very hard to not see themselves as a villain -
           | especially when they are just that.
        
           | mandmandam wrote:
           | If their actions are indistinguishable from the actions of
           | evil bogeymen, I do wonder what the real difference is.
           | 
           | I think the truly worst people alive right now are really,
           | really fucking charming and 'nice' to have dinner with in a
           | fancy hotel - they get plenty of practice - but if kindly
           | confronted with undeniable evidence of their harms they would
           | immediately rationalize their actions with bullshit, and get
           | as far from you as possible.
        
             | adjkant wrote:
             | I think the issue here is with the conception of "evil".
             | The one shown in most media is incredibly flawed, and it is
             | why the best villians are the ones that can actually argue
             | their point, make you understand where they are coming
             | from, and potentially even come to their side. People are
             | not evil, they are simply acting as all humans do most of
             | the time: in self preservation of some form. What makes a
             | person appear "evil" is simply the situations they have
             | ended up in and the accompanying beliefs and knowledge.
             | 
             | > but if kindly confronted with undeniable evidence of
             | their harms they would immediately rationalize their
             | actions with bullshit, and get as far from you as possible.
             | 
             | This is not meant to excuse that response, but I do want to
             | point out that it is the rational and "easy" path of
             | response. When people make ideas the core of their
             | personality and survival, threats to those ideas are now
             | personal threats. The path of coming to challenge and
             | change those ideas is a hard road in most cases. It takes a
             | very strong and brave person to change their mind on a core
             | belief.
             | 
             | The better way IMO to approach it is to ensure people don't
             | get caught in the position in the first place. Don't make
             | beliefs the center of yourself, make values the center, and
             | choose them carefully and with nuance. It allows you to
             | change course on beliefs or ideas with much less pain and
             | personal internal sacrifice. That needs to start early
             | though, way before anyone at that table sat down for their
             | meal. It's an education issue, an early one at that.
        
         | arthurcolle wrote:
         | this would be a funny youtube video, have all the RIAA lawyers,
         | this lawyer, then all the haxxor TPB coders, passing around a
         | blunt discussing the state of the industry
        
           | emj wrote:
           | You "don't do drugs" in Sweden so that won't happen, publicly
           | almost everyone is against pot. This might be changing but
           | not in the near future.
        
             | Maursault wrote:
             | FWIW, pot, or cannabis, _is not_ a drug, no more than
             | nutmeg. They 're vegetables. Alcohol, on the other hand, is
             | indeed a drug. So, no drinkers in Sweden? It always sounded
             | like a pretty nice place to me, and now it sounds even more
             | so.
        
       | locallost wrote:
       | In general these days I have mixed feelings about piracy, mostly
       | because a lot of people don't want to pay because "everything is
       | very commercial and they only want money", yet a lot of the
       | pirated content are incredibly commercial mainstream things (e.g.
       | blockbusters). This leads me to the positive aspect of it: I
       | recently remembered an old Canadian movie from my childhood, and
       | wanted to watch it with my son, but despite so many streaming
       | services, tough luck finding it legally. I bet I could find it
       | within minutes on torrent.
       | 
       | So I would be happy if we were at least able to legally download
       | things you can't really find "officially" because too few people
       | care and nobody sells it.
        
         | amenod wrote:
         | This! I would say that if there is no simple way to find
         | commercial content (for the location of the potential
         | customer!), the law should treat the case as if the copyright
         | owner waived their right to the copyrighted material.
        
           | therealcamino wrote:
           | So if you ever offer a work for sale, you're obligated to
           | either sell it forever, or have it given away?
        
             | brokenmachine wrote:
             | Yes.
        
         | breakfastduck wrote:
         | Yes, this is a huge positive. It serves as a kind of archiving
         | enabler too.
         | 
         | I'm sure many years from now we'll be thankful that we can find
         | 'obscure' movies and TV shows from the early 2000/10/20s etc
        
       | xbar wrote:
       | "It is a cultivated myth that we would not have any streaming
       | services for music, film and TV series if Pirate Bay did not
       | exist. "
       | 
       | This is false. Although, if someone wants to argue that other
       | piracy services were more influential in breaking the old DRM
       | systems, I will debate it with you.
        
       | posttool wrote:
       | Torrents tied to a digital wallet is a clear next step. Creators
       | could get paid and no need for a "distributor". Anyone could host
       | pointers, we could download and pay when we watch.
        
       | hypertele-Xii wrote:
       | Since we are already paying for all the media we _might_ pirate,
       | in the form of a tax on empty media lobbyed by the media
       | conglomerates - new hard drives included; And our attention and
       | consciousness are constantly exploited by a barrage of malicious
       | advertizements and spyware; And our tools and computers are
       | gradually stripped of our freedoms and capabilities of expression
       | in favor of inescapable consumerism and engagement;
       | 
       | I feel absolutely justified employing whatever technological
       | means available to bring equality and democratization to digital
       | arts. I'm a political pirate.
        
       | booleandilemma wrote:
       | Piracy was cool when I was a college student with barely enough
       | money to buy McDonalds, nowadays however I believe in paying for
       | people's work. It just seems fair. I don't work for free and I
       | don't expect others to either.
       | 
       | And yes, this includes publishers and content providers, they're
       | providing something of value too.
        
         | quadrangle wrote:
         | The Pirate Bay provides value also. So, how does that fit into
         | your logic?
        
       | cute_boi wrote:
       | Many people doesn't realize the value provided by pirate bay.
       | Without sites like piratebay, scihub or libgen only rich
       | privileged people would be able to enjoy the fruits. But thanks
       | to sites like them poor people living in any places can enjoy the
       | privilege.
       | 
       | I understand there are some downsides like small creators getting
       | destroyed. But as with any technology we know digital piracy has
       | various advantage. Also music, movies etc offered by torrents can
       | be far reliable because Netflix etc can remove content at any
       | minute according to their wish.
       | 
       | DRM is the main issue in piracy and I hope we can bypass this
       | easily. And I also think many piracy doesn't have any dent on so
       | called big producers. They are just mad that they can't suck few
       | bucks from poor people.
        
         | franciscop wrote:
         | > "small creators getting destroyed", "piracy doesn't have any
         | dent on so called big producers"
         | 
         | Quite the opposite, one of the very few scientific articles on
         | the topic piracy has been found to help small-mid level artists
         | (but hurt big artists), explanation here:
         | 
         | https://torrentfreak.com/piracy-can-help-music-sales-of-many...
         | 
         | For instance and as said in the article artists like Ed Sheeran
         | became popular thanks to piracy among college students.
        
         | _peeley wrote:
         | Content preservation is a seriously underrated aspect of
         | piracy. Prior to getting shut down in 2016, what.cd was
         | practically the modern-day Library of Alexandria of music.
         | Literally anything you could ever want to listen to was
         | available in lossless FLAC format, made available by anonymous
         | volunteers purely out of a love of music.
         | 
         | Now it's gone, and who knows how much music has been lost to
         | time as a result.
        
           | matheusmoreira wrote:
           | Shutting down what.cd should be considered a crime against
           | humanity. I will never forgive copyright holders for that.
        
         | CuriouslyC wrote:
         | Small creators aren't destroyed by piracy, because people who
         | have money generally want to support artists that they like
         | when they feel like that support will actually make a
         | difference to that artist's livelihood, and will allow the
         | artist to keep creating. A perfect example of this is Stardew
         | Valley. I know people who pirate the vast majority of the
         | things they consume, but have purchased multiple copies of that
         | game so they could give it to friends.
        
           | 1_player wrote:
           | It's a little different with video games, since platforms
           | like Steam have changed the face of video game piracy. Gabe
           | Newell himself said that piracy is a service problem, not a
           | pricing problem. Steam removed any barrier to publishers to
           | put their game on the platforms and players to buy the games,
           | and game piracy is pretty much dead in the water and Valve is
           | worth billions of dollars.
           | 
           | Whereas the music industry and even worse, the movie
           | industry, still have their heads up their arses and are
           | losing hundreds of billions of dollars if they just provided
           | a single platform where everything is available to stream,
           | everywhere in the world, with no restriction but a single
           | monthly fee.
           | 
           | DRM is a problem, but the need to subscribe to a dozen
           | different services to have access to most, but not all,
           | media, is the biggest issue.
           | 
           | I haven't downloaded a video game since the early 2010s, I
           | have given Valve thousands of dollars since, and I will keep
           | paying for my torrenting VPN for music and movies for the
           | foreseeable future. Long live The Pirate Bay.
        
           | dbbk wrote:
           | Why are small creators inherently more entitled to 'support'
           | than larger creators though? Why do we just decide that at a
           | certain threshold, it's fine to take things for free?
        
             | scghost wrote:
             | The value of the money made is relative to how much money
             | the person has. A person going from $0 -> $5 gets more
             | value than a person going from $1,000,000 -> $1,000,005.
        
             | matheusmoreira wrote:
             | Small creators don't lobby the government in order to
             | extend copyright duration for the nth time.
        
             | LocalH wrote:
             | Once a creator reaches a (likely fuzzy, undefined, needs
             | more study) threshold, they gain the ability to negatively
             | influence the laws in their favor, against the laws'
             | original intent. Regulatory capture and all. Look at all
             | the lobbying that happened by the Walt Disney Corporation,
             | among others, to extend the copyright term to the insanity
             | we see today. Some people/corporations also want
             | _perpetual_ copyright that never expires, and they tend to
             | be the larger ones (although not all, so that is sort of
             | almost orthogonal).
        
           | akudha wrote:
           | I watched a YouTube video on the creation of Stardew valley.
           | He did everything himself, including music and graphics. He
           | also didn't compromise on anything. Took him years to finish.
           | 
           | I don't play games, I still spent 5$ (I think) on the game,
           | just because he is an impressive individual and I wanted to
           | do my part so he stays that way.
           | 
           | Companies underestimate how much love fans have for creators,
           | when they're sincere and their work is very good. The only
           | way companies know to make money is treat their users like
           | shit, use lawyers all the time etc etc
        
             | sli wrote:
             | > I don't play games, ...
             | 
             | Stardew Valley is a load of fun and very much built with
             | non-gamers in mind. It's pretty accessible (though you may
             | want to keep the wiki handy). It's also really relaxing.
             | You should try it out, you might really enjoy it.
        
         | yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
         | > I understand there are some downsides like small creators
         | getting destroyed
         | 
         | Do they? I was vaguely under the impression that the
         | overwhelming majority of people pirating stuff wouldn't have
         | paid, and that whenever actual studies are run they show piracy
         | benefiting the original creators.
        
           | realusername wrote:
           | Indeed, to my knowledge, nobody ever managed to prove in a
           | proper study that the creators actually lose money with
           | piracy.
        
             | dane-pgp wrote:
             | To provide a single data point, here[0] is an article about
             | one such study. "EU study finds piracy doesn't hurt game
             | sales, may actually help. Results suggest a positive
             | effect, but there's a huge margin of error."
             | 
             | [0] https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/09/eu-study-finds-
             | piracy...
        
         | zionic wrote:
         | For me the breaking point was when Netflix removed the entire
         | stargate series. That was a real wake up call for me personally
         | and I canceled my subscription. 100+ TB later...
        
           | Chirael wrote:
           | Yeah, "show I finally have time to watch, isn't available any
           | more" is really irritating; every time it happens is one more
           | push back to TPB
        
       | philliphaydon wrote:
       | > When Wadsted was asked whether it was worth the time and money,
       | she replied with "Absolutely!"
       | 
       | > "Even though it was the American film companies that paid for
       | my work, that work benefited all the authors and copyright
       | holders. This is a very important but often forgotten aspect,"
       | Wadsted told M3.
       | 
       | It really didn't benefit film companies tho, it exposed TPB to
       | probably 100's of millions of people who didn't know about it
       | previously. I wouldn't be surprised if more people know how to
       | pirate content as a result.
        
         | dane-pgp wrote:
         | She wasn't really answering whether it benefited film
         | companies. Notice her answer immediately focuses on "paid for
         | my work". The only way she can conceive of the question is "Did
         | I personally profit from the campaign?", and that defines her
         | moral horizons too.
        
       | jquery wrote:
       | Won't stop them from trying. The DRM folks have plenty of help
       | from the evangelical "moral police" who want to wipe out
       | obscenity online, even where there is no victim.
        
         | vmception wrote:
         | They believe the content creators are the victims
        
         | input_sh wrote:
         | DRM will never stop the pirates. As long as you can reproduce
         | something, you can always record the output. For example, you
         | can always record your audio output from Spotify or video
         | output from Netflix.
         | 
         | DRM is a minor annoyance and nothing more.
        
           | drdaeman wrote:
           | > and nothing more
           | 
           | I strongly suspect DRM is not a way to stop someone but a
           | security theatre serving as way to make money off the
           | licensing and hardware. That's why the industry does and
           | always will require it - not because they're stupid to
           | believe it protects something (though it nominally does) but
           | simply because it greases their other hand.
           | 
           | Also, yeah, it kills the second hand market.
        
             | betterunix2 wrote:
             | Let me give you an alternative view: DRM is a highly
             | effective way for the movie industry to make money. No, it
             | is not perfect, but DRM creates a system where:
             | 
             | 1. Sharing is hard. Plenty of people legally purchase a
             | movie, and then want to give it to their friends; DRM makes
             | that difficult and thus generates at least some additional
             | sales.
             | 
             | 2. Forced obsolescence -- people who buy media legally can
             | be forced to buy it again and again every time they buy a
             | new entertainment device.
             | 
             | 3. Creative business models -- in a world without DRM, you
             | could not offer "rental" downloads, "streaming" would just
             | be a form of "downloading," and the industry could not
             | offer special "deals" like "family" passes that permit more
             | than one account holder to view a purchased movie. All of
             | these are ways to make money that could not happen in a
             | world without DRM.
             | 
             | Yes, DRM is always broken after enough time -- that is not
             | as much of a problem as you might expect. As long as the
             | time between a DRM system being deployed and being broken
             | is long enough that the industry makes back more than the
             | cost of developing the DRM system, the system worked.
             | Developing new DRM systems from time to time is just the
             | cost of doing business, not really a problem for anyone in
             | the industry, and as you point out it may even work to the
             | benefit of certain participants.
             | 
             | I am not a big fan of DRM (in fact, I would argue that the
             | entire movie industry needs to rethink its business model,
             | embrace the true power of file sharing as a means of
             | distributing movies and focusing more on using movies as a
             | draw or value-add for other lines of business), but it is
             | not as if the movie industry executives are a bunch of
             | buffoons who continue to waste their money after decades of
             | broken DRM. If DRM was not adding to the industry's profits
             | they would have stopped bothering with it -- see e.g. the
             | music industry, which has a somewhat different business
             | model and which has largely given up on their DRM dreams.
        
           | mdoms wrote:
           | The analog hole.
           | 
           | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analog_hole
        
             | squarefoot wrote:
             | Which is one of the reasons behind the removal of the
             | headphone analog output from various devices.
        
               | betterunix2 wrote:
               | Which only raises the price of exploiting the analog hole
               | by a relatively small amount -- it is not hard to buy
               | better audio recording equipment to record the audio as
               | it is being played, and the postprocessing needed to make
               | it sound like the original is not very complex. A few
               | thousand dollars (maybe low tens of thousands) wuold be
               | enough to get you a rig that records a high-def movie
               | with little noticeable loss, and anecdotally I have heard
               | of such systems being used to rip TV shows as they air.
        
               | goodpoint wrote:
               | > buy better audio recording equipment to record the
               | audio
               | 
               | Huh?! You can just buy a sound card or even a DAC for
               | very little.
        
           | dane-pgp wrote:
           | Just wait until Apple decides to "protect" its users from
           | piracy by running a Content ID system client side. Then even
           | if you can download a pirated file, your OS won't play it. If
           | you're lucky, it will just delete the file, rather than
           | informing the police.
        
             | l33tbro wrote:
             | How would Apple determine between an mp4 that is a pirated
             | movie or a personal video you've downloaded to edit in
             | Final Cut?
        
               | dane-pgp wrote:
               | The same way that YouTube determines whether there is
               | copyrighted music playing in the background of the video
               | you upload, or the way Apple determines if you are trying
               | to upload illegal images to iCloud.
        
             | breakfastduck wrote:
             | Apple don't give two shits about piracy.
             | 
             | Their own pro grade software that is paid for (logic, final
             | cut) is always cracked basically day 1 of release and
             | they've never made any attempt to tighten up authentication
        
             | pell wrote:
             | Wasn't Apple one of the major vendors _removing_ DRM back
             | in the iTunes days?
        
             | anon9001 wrote:
             | That's just another DRM to be disabled.
             | 
             | If we can't disable it somehow, we'll switch operating
             | systems.
             | 
             | Keep in mind that we're still seeing jailbreaks for iPhones
             | after all these years.
        
               | dane-pgp wrote:
               | > If we can't disable it somehow, we'll switch operating
               | systems.
               | 
               | I admire your optimism. Unfortunately, once Apple has
               | shown it is possible to prevent the playing of unlicensed
               | copyrighted works, Windows and Android will have to match
               | this or be treated as second-class platforms by the media
               | industries.
               | 
               | Very few people will be willing to buy dedicated Linux
               | computers (with custom Secure Boot keys) for watching
               | torrented videos, and such devices will then become
               | subject to more and more regulations, like having to pay
               | an annual fee to the government.
        
           | anon_cow1111 wrote:
           | Streaming-exclusive games are a notable exception to this,
           | which is why it's so important to smash things like Stadia
           | before they can gain a foothold.
           | 
           | Not even from a piracy standpoint, just a "I want to play
           | this after the server/company shuts down" standpoint.
        
             | thekingofravens wrote:
             | I know I won't spend a penny on a service like stadia or
             | xbox game pass. Even if it does have good here and now
             | offerings. Games are the last category of software you can
             | still generally "buy" these days and get permanent access
             | with a one-time payment.
        
               | toxik wrote:
               | In actual fact, games need to be kept up to date in order
               | to run okay on newer OS versions, and most of them are
               | trying to get you to subscribe or otherwise DLC /
               | microtransact you to death. Shame really
        
           | hyperman1 wrote:
           | DRM has nothing to do with pirating. Piracy is just a nice
           | excuse.
           | 
           | DRM is about killing the second hand market. About keeping
           | the market segmentation between countries. About killing fair
           | use.
           | 
           | It has been very succesful in all of this.
        
       | freewizard wrote:
       | It's crazy DRM today has made screen capture almost impossible on
       | consumer devices, and I see people use one device to photo the
       | other just to share a screenshot to friends. If it turns out
       | pirate can't be stopped by this, why bother anyway?
        
         | AlexanderTheGr8 wrote:
         | I know that screen capture is impossible on mobile phones. I
         | use Linux and screen capture is definitely possible on linux.
         | 
         | Is screen capture possible on windows/mac?
        
       | mproud wrote:
       | It'll stop me if the certificate is invalid.
        
       | swayvil wrote:
       | Consider the good that a piece of copyable art does. The
       | happiness, insight and highness that it creates.
       | 
       | It's food for a person's soul. Multiplied a million times. The
       | world is definitely made better.
       | 
       | Compare that good with the good of "the owner gets paid".
       | 
       | Pirating is clearly the _much_ greater good. Pirating is a moral
       | necessity.
        
       | tdhz77 wrote:
       | I was in high school during the beginning of tpb. I leaned
       | towards the Pirate Bay's ideas and philosophy of what- digital
       | good was and where ownership exists.
       | 
       | I'm thankful that I followed the arguments and merits of both
       | sides.
       | 
       | If I was in high school now, I don't think I would be as lucky as
       | to get to be apart of good faith arguments. Instead, I might end
       | up believing in Qnon.
       | 
       | I'm so thankful that the original web was much more pure, good
       | hearted than what it has become today.
        
         | tjr225 wrote:
         | Something awful, 4chan, and Ogrish were all started 2003 or
         | earlier.
        
           | dannyw wrote:
           | don't let the n words fool you; 4ch is very actively
           | moderated; both by janitors but also it's users.
           | 
           | It's politically incorrect, but not as bad as Facebook in
           | terms of damage to society.
        
             | anon9001 wrote:
             | 4chan is like a focus group for unacceptable ideas.
        
               | belorn wrote:
               | I have always seen 4chan to be more like a youth center
               | than a focus group, with the associated criminal aspects.
               | In both cases the suggested universal solution tend to be
               | an increase in supervision.
        
             | sweetbitter wrote:
             | At least on anonymous imageboards or even pseudonymous
             | forums you can learn your lesson of how foolish/incorrect
             | you are about something with no future repercussions, no
             | embarrassment, no one to use it against you in the future-
             | you can just up and change your entire perception at the
             | drop of a hat frictionlessly, without paying a personal
             | cost to do it.
        
         | zionic wrote:
         | The Qanon psyop was primarily targeted towards neocon and right
         | wing boomers, not teenagers. You wouldn't be at risk of
         | "falling" for it today as a high schooler. It's also been dead
         | since 2019 or so.
         | 
         | I say psyop because it was essentially boomer catnip. "Good
         | guys are in control" "sit back and do nothing, we have them
         | right where we want them" "it's all going according to plan"
         | etc etc.
         | 
         | As far as psyops go it was wildly successful, posting cryptic
         | messages anyone following the news heavily would know then
         | "reveal" them later as proof. This manufactured false
         | credibility as an insider, then their "instructions" were to
         | essentially sit back and do nothing while the deep state was
         | taken town for you.
         | 
         | They also sprinkled in religious references to further appeal
         | to evangelical boomers, again playing off the "X will save me,
         | I don't need to get off my butt and do anything" angle.
         | 
         | I say all this because the overwhelming consensus among the
         | crowd most associate with Q (center right to far right) is that
         | Trump was a traitor and Q was a tool to keep his more radical
         | fans from doing anything during his term.
        
           | throwoutway wrote:
           | I've never followed this. Are you saying that Q was a psyop
           | by left-wing against right-wing to convince them not to vote?
        
         | emerged wrote:
         | The difference IMO is the scale of individual social networks.
         | It used to be relatively smaller independent forums which had
         | all their own particular rules and populations. Things were
         | more truly distributed in an organic way.
         | 
         | Now we have these massive scale social networks who attract all
         | the absolute worst scum of the earth, botnets, etc. The
         | companies running these networks are super massive and formed
         | connections to political parties and financial interests.
         | 
         | The saddest thing is we could all just decide to get off these
         | massive networks and use the smaller ones again, but the genie
         | is out of the bottle and a critical mass of people can't be
         | convinced to leave the new networks.
        
           | jd115 wrote:
           | No, the difference is that social media has been very
           | successfully weaponised, by the nation-state/mafia syndicates
           | which communism gave birth to. So successfully, in fact, that
           | it has made traditional warfare practically obsolete.
           | 
           | The social networks of today are to the world what the
           | "Pravda" newspaper was to the Eastern Bloc in the 20th
           | century. A weapon of mass subversion. (Oh the magnitude of
           | trolling and shade in the name of that newspaper... Nothing
           | in the past 100 years has surpassed that!)
        
             | dm319 wrote:
             | Media is a weapon of mass subversion in any society. Look
             | at Murdoch.
        
             | anon9001 wrote:
             | This is the right take.
             | 
             | Also, every hacker online pre-facebook realized that it
             | wouldn't take that much effort to do social engineering on
             | a mass scale, but there was a brief period before any large
             | organizations actually got involved and started doing it.
             | 
             | I think we got a glimpse of something special in the early
             | internet, and I think we can build toward that again.
        
               | codezero wrote:
               | It can't be built towards unless the nation state actors
               | and bots are accounted for and routed around. I don't see
               | that happening.
        
               | jd115 wrote:
               | This is a start: https://www.voanews.com/a/australian-
               | government-vows-to-unma...
        
               | codezero wrote:
               | I thought that in their case it was to out people who
               | oppose government officials? That seems like the opposite
               | of I'm understanding correctly.
        
               | zozbot234 wrote:
               | > I think we got a glimpse of something special in the
               | early internet, and I think we can build toward that
               | again.
               | 
               | I mean, you are writing on HN, a specialized community of
               | practice which is the polar opposite from massive social
               | media sites like Facebook or Twitter. And if HN is not
               | exclusive enough for you, there is Lobsters where you
               | need an invite to even post or comment. To me, these
               | dynamics are pretty close to what went on on the "early
               | internet" pre social media. Though it would be nice if
               | federation standards were more widely adopted, to enable
               | optional interop across sites.
        
       | aborsy wrote:
       | There is an interview with co-founders of Pirate Bay on darknet
       | dairies.
       | 
       | The founders come across as very arrogant, making childish
       | arguments and apparently unaware of how modern society in which
       | they live functions. Also lots of F words.
       | 
       | I was put off.
        
         | sweetbitter wrote:
         | They have always been like this, yeah. Here is a link to their
         | legal section on their anonymous VPS / anonymous DNS registry
         | service:
         | 
         | http://njallalafimoej5i4eg7vlnqjvmb6zhdh27qxcatdn647jtwwwui3...
        
           | dS0rrow wrote:
           | clearnet link : https://njal.la/blog/t/legal/
        
         | trevyn wrote:
         | Keep in mind that you also may have just come across as very
         | arrogant and apparently unaware of how modern society
         | functions.
        
         | 2pEXgD0fZ5cF wrote:
         | > unaware of how modern society in which they live functions
         | 
         | how so?
        
         | rightbyte wrote:
         | > Also lots of F words.
         | 
         | They are not native English speakers. Learning english from
         | American pop-culture makes you swear alot.
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | cheese_van wrote:
       | Recently saw a movie, liked the soundtrack, and decided to buy
       | the mp3 (On the Run - Naz Tokio). Found it, of course, on Amazon,
       | good deal, and made the purchase.
       | 
       | Tried to download it after the purchase, but the mp3 was ONLY
       | available in the cloud for various devices, not for direct
       | download. There was language that might have implied this was the
       | case, but it was not clear or I was oblivious, probably the
       | latter.
       | 
       | I was refunded my $1.29 and went straight to a pirate site and
       | got it for free. I would rather have paid. Occasionally, the
       | availability of piracy is a check on bad ideas, in this case,
       | cloud walled gardens.
        
         | nelblu wrote:
         | THIS! I had similar problem with watching a movie trilogy on
         | Google play movies. The movie won't play on my computer but
         | only played on android app (no i didn't have any firewall or
         | special ad blocker on my PC). I called google customer service
         | and asked them to fix, it took them 3 days to get back and the
         | problem was still not fixed, needless to say I was mad and they
         | refunded instantly. Next thing I just downloaded it....
         | 
         | I'd have loved to pay but if movie studios (or whoever is
         | responsible for this sh#tshow) will go out of their way to not
         | give me a mp4 or similar device/service independent playable
         | format then I couldn't care less about their loss.
        
         | ecf wrote:
         | It took me about half an hour of constant retries for the
         | rented Apple TV movie I downloaded for offline use to play.
         | Each time, for some reason or another, was blocked with the
         | error message "This movie can only be played on displays that
         | support HDCP (High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection)".
         | 
         | I was on a plane with no internet, so troubleshooting the error
         | was impossible. Furthermore, I can't test playback of a movie
         | in the future because doing so starts the three day expiration
         | timer.
         | 
         | In the future I guarantee I'll be torrenting.
        
           | cm2187 wrote:
           | Plus if you go on holiday for a few days, you will likely
           | have crappy wifi, and you don't know in advance what movie
           | you will be in the mood to watch. These streaming services
           | just do not work for me.
        
           | laurent92 wrote:
           | Torrenting + crossing a border... Not a good idea. Even
           | having "photos for personal use" while crossing the boarder
           | isn't a good idea. I'm so afraid of TSA...
        
             | jimktrains2 wrote:
             | The TSA handles neither customs nor border patrol.
        
             | goodpoint wrote:
             | "crossing A border" is not the same thing as "crossing the
             | US border".
        
           | geraltofrivia wrote:
           | I've stopped relying on offline downloads (on netflix) since
           | upon crossing national boundaries, the offline content is
           | deleted. As an expat who travels back to India once a blue
           | moon (and has shitty internet back home), I now pirate any
           | content I plan to see during my vacations.
        
             | brokenmachine wrote:
             | Wow, that's terrible.
             | 
             | To paraphrase Chris Rock talking about OJ, "now I'm not
             | saying you should have pirated... But I understand!"
        
           | donmcronald wrote:
           | I have Apple TV for the year because I got a new iPad and I
           | still "pirated" Foundation because the Apple TV app for Roku
           | isn't very good. I hate the interface, the playback skips
           | (very infrequently), and the subtitle support is pretty bad.
           | 
           | There's no way Plex and Emby should be better than Apple's
           | equivalent, but they are IMO.
        
             | vetinari wrote:
             | On the other hand, I was actually impressed, that Apple TV
             | appeared on Android TV in the first place and that it is
             | actually decent (at least on Nvidia Shield).
             | 
             | My only nitpick is, that for some reason the default
             | subtitles are "language + SDH" and not just "language".
        
         | ligerzer0 wrote:
         | I recently bought some hardware which came with license for
         | software ( vst plug-ins).
         | 
         | After registering the hardware, then making an account with the
         | third party who provides the software, I was able to download a
         | demo version which I should then have been able to unlock into
         | a full version using the serial number and license file
         | provided to me...but this was not the case.
         | 
         | After about an hour of tinkering, restarting, and googling, I
         | decided to try and pirate a copy of the software that I was
         | entitled to the full working version of.
         | 
         | Took about two minutes to download and have it running.
        
           | r00t4ccess wrote:
           | How are you liking cubase?
        
         | dane-pgp wrote:
         | > There was language that might have implied this was the case,
         | but it was not clear or I was oblivious, probably the latter.
         | 
         | For what it's worth, the language and layout was probably A/B
         | tested and painstakingly tuned to maximise the probability of
         | you making that mistake. Don't blame yourself when there's this
         | unfair power imbalance, blame them for using their power
         | against you maliciously.
        
           | PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
           | > For what it's worth, the language and layout was probably
           | A/B tested and painstakingly tuned to maximise the
           | probability
           | 
           | This sort of belief (that corporations do extensive testing
           | and tuning of language) seems quite widely held, but I've
           | never seen much support for it.
           | 
           | I've frequently seen claims that Amazon must have "A/B tested
           | and painstakingly tuned" the company name, whereas it was
           | really just the founder's whim after watching a documentary,
           | and never received any testing of any kind.
        
             | rp1 wrote:
             | Have you ever worked at a large corporation like Facebook
             | or Amazon? They have extensive internal A/B testing
             | frameworks that record a wide variety of user metrics for
             | arbitrary control and treatment exposures. It's very easy
             | to set up an A/B test and pretty much necessary for almost
             | all changes. Additionally, employees are expected to have
             | concrete artifacts when they go up for promotion, and A/B
             | test results are often a large part of that.
        
               | PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
               | > Have you ever worked at a large corporation like
               | Facebook or Amazon?
               | 
               | Employee #2 at amzn.
               | 
               | But sure, that doesn't count because I got out before the
               | company hit 20 employees.
               | 
               | I don't doubt that large corporations with heavy
               | technology dependence engage in what you're describing to
               | cover _some_ aspects of their operations. I do doubt that
               | is covers _all_ aspects, and in particular, I very much
               | doubt if amzn A /B tested the language described in the
               | GP for the purposes claimed by the parent of my comment.
        
               | rp1 wrote:
               | That's pretty impressive! Having worked at Amazon much
               | later, I do think that most copy changes do go through an
               | A/B test. I remember an instance where we tested 20
               | different versions of a minor UI change. Interestingly,
               | there was a wide spread in the performance of the
               | different treatments.
        
             | standardUser wrote:
             | Even the small startups I have worked for A/B test
             | everything they can within inches of its life to eke out an
             | extra penny and a half. This is standard operating
             | procedure.
        
             | tux3 wrote:
             | Sometimes this happens as a sort of 'evolutionary' process.
             | If a dodgy company has better wording for a misleading
             | product, its deception will work better, so you can have
             | highly tuned wording without anyone having to run an
             | explicit A/B test.
        
         | wildrhythms wrote:
         | Gabe Newell: "Piracy is an issue of service, not price."
        
         | elcomet wrote:
         | I mean if you would rather have paid you could have left the
         | money to the author and pirate the mp3 anyway.
        
           | matheusmoreira wrote:
           | How much of that money goes to the author instead of amazon?
        
           | another_story wrote:
           | I do wish all artists had a donate page. Most do not.
        
         | jbluepolarbear wrote:
         | How long ago was this? I bought an mp3 from Amazon (The Touch -
         | Stan Bush) in 2019 and I'm still able to download the mp3.
        
         | pengaru wrote:
         | We just need the technology improved slightly to solve this
         | problem.
         | 
         | Artists should be seeding high quality files to the torrents
         | themselves, in formats that are signed and include a crypto
         | wallet for sending "donations". Then the playback software just
         | needs to check the signature to ensure you're giving money to
         | the actual creator and not some imposter if you want to throw
         | money their way, through a payment ui the players conveniently
         | make available to you.
         | 
         | There's just no need for the middle-men who make it all
         | miserable, and exploit control of the audience for their own
         | gain via advertising/"recommendations"/propaganda etc. Torrents
         | have fixed the distribution problem, and no consumers are
         | really interested in depriving their favorite artists from
         | making a living. It's just a glaring omission that the torrent
         | system doesn't incorporate a reliable artists compensation
         | circuit, like it's just unfinished.
        
           | brokenmachine wrote:
           | That's a very interesting thought, but the one thing I think
           | would be a problem is fake torrents with other parties
           | bitcoin wallets embedded.
           | 
           | Also some bands don't want to operate on "donations" and want
           | to set a price for the download. I wonder how that would work
           | to be able to set a price.
           | 
           | Of course you could avoid this by only getting the torrent
           | from the official band's website, but fakes would certainly
           | be a problem.
        
         | cute_boi wrote:
         | And the problem with downloading using cloud is you have to use
         | their apps and requires them to supply your phone data forever
         | which is no no in my book. Imagine the dystopia there would be
         | if there were no piracy.
         | 
         | You got refunded but in my country many sites have implicit
         | rule "Once you purchase it, we can't return it back".
        
           | lovelyviking wrote:
           | >You got refunded but in my country many sites have implicit
           | rule "Once you purchase it, we can't return it back".
           | 
           | Do they specify what you actually purchase, I can't figure
           | out what is it you purchase in such cases.
        
           | zozbot234 wrote:
           | Don't they have your data as part of the Amazon account
           | anyway? Why does that even matter?
        
         | busymom0 wrote:
         | Had a similar experience recently. Tried to buy 3 songs from a
         | particular artist on Apple Music and for some reason, my Mac
         | got the downloaded music and can play it but my iPhone refuses
         | to recognize any of my purchases tracks despite being logged in
         | the same account. Ended up pirating then tracks even though I
         | had also paid for them already.
        
         | lovelyviking wrote:
         | >went straight to a pirate site
         | 
         | Pirates rob ships in the see and use guns for that purpose I
         | presume. What a web site providing access to the music has to
         | do with it?
         | 
         | The whole 'buy mp3' idea always have been troubling for me
         | because I can't figure out exactly what I actually buy there.
         | What is it I purchase?
         | 
         | The right to listen for some composition?
         | 
         | The right to listen it in that specific mp3 format ?
         | 
         | The right to listen it more then one time because I have access
         | to the file?
         | 
         | What do I actually possess after the purchase that I didn't
         | possess before?
         | 
         | If it's my property then what is it? Is it a property at all if
         | the usage of it is limited? For instance it belongs to me but
         | somehow there are some limits to play it in my own restaurant,
         | isn't it?
         | 
         | It's all presented as you buy something and it's clear what you
         | buy. But if you are trying to think about it's more and more
         | unclear.
         | 
         | It looks more like some bully simply blocks access to something
         | he got using some leverage over the author then sells you
         | 'unblock' feature while author is stripped away from any rights
         | by the same bully and have no ability to sell it directly to
         | you. Isn't it a case now days of redundant MIM?
         | 
         | Another issue is with how long it is blocked by paywall. The
         | initial idea was how much? 10 years ? 15 years? How come that
         | let's say Beatles are still protected from public? How that
         | even possible and why nobody rises the issue of abusing initial
         | idea?
        
           | muspimerol wrote:
           | All of your questions have to do with copyright, which has
           | little to do with the format of the thing you're purchasing
           | (an mp3).
        
           | mistrial9 wrote:
           | We travel in ships, further than most
           | 
           | Raiding and pillaging, from North to South coast
           | 
           | We steal _only metal_ like guns, tanks and toasters!
           | 
           | We melt them all down, and make .. roller coasters!
           | 
           | -anonymous
        
           | danachow wrote:
           | This does not even rise to high school level discourse. All
           | of the points you bring up have been discussed more
           | critically and insightfully on Body building forums. I'll
           | start with that you seem to be hung up on that the only thing
           | money can be exchanged for is property.
        
             | lovelyviking wrote:
             | >This does not even rise to high school level discourse.
             | 
             | I am asking basic questions because I do not see basic
             | answers which are consistent with logic. It would be more
             | useful and helpful to provide those answers if you know
             | them of course.
             | 
             | >All of the points you bring up have been discussed more
             | critically and insightfully on Body building forums.
             | 
             | Unfortunately in practice it is hard to observe
             | _impressive_ results of  "what was discussed more
             | critically and insightfully". So again perhaps sharing
             | their line of thoughts would be useful.
             | 
             | My concern of course that "what was discussed more
             | critically and insightfully" did not produce something
             | logically consistent and that might explain why we do not
             | see actual answers.
             | 
             | >I'll start with that you seem to be hung up on that the
             | only thing money can be exchanged for is property.
             | 
             | If we put aside "hung up on that the only thing money can
             | be exchanged for is property" part which is irrelevant then
             | probably we can see the real answer to the question : What
             | one actually gets for his money and what is purchased when
             | one "buys" some mp3?
        
             | taejo wrote:
             | Thanks for the info. Next time I want to know what Amazon
             | means when they sell me "MP3 Music", I will remember to go
             | to body building forums before clicking "Buy"
        
               | behringer wrote:
               | Amazon does provide the MP3 files themselves.
               | 
               | https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?node
               | Id=...
               | 
               | They surely make it difficult to find, though.
        
               | cheese_van wrote:
               | I tried to follow those convoluted instructions to no
               | avail. Did it not like my Linux box? Who knows. But a
               | company that made its fortunes making buying convenient
               | should know better.
        
           | betterunix2 wrote:
           | "The whole 'buy mp3' idea always have been troubling for me
           | because I can't figure out exactly what I actually buy there.
           | What is it I purchase?"
           | 
           | You purchased convenience -- not having to deal with
           | filesharing systems that are polluted with various
           | misidentified files, not having to try to figure out if the
           | thing you are downloading is actually malware (for non-
           | technical users this is often a challenge), not having to
           | correct / create tags for the MP3 (artist/album/etc.), not
           | having to guess at the quality of the audio (sometimes
           | "lossless" actually means "preserved loss from some other
           | format"), etc. For most people the convenience justifies the
           | price.
        
           | lelandfe wrote:
           | > Pirates rob ships in the see and use guns for that purpose
           | I presume. What a web site providing access to the music has
           | to do with it?
           | 
           | "Piracy" has been a term of art in the copyright world for
           | over 100 years.
           | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Copyrightpirates.jpg
           | 
           | > Is it a property at all if the usage of it is limited?
           | 
           | If you buy a copy of a book, you are not eligible to reprint
           | that book and sell it yourself. There are limits on what
           | folks can do with copyrighted works they buy.
           | 
           | It might be worth reading, for instance, about the American
           | concept of first-sale doctrine:
           | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine
        
             | lovelyviking wrote:
             | It's unclear why ' _monopoly over making copies_ ' is
             | called in your comment by confusing term ' _copyright_ '.
             | Why something that is not ' _right_ ' and cannot exist as '
             | _right_ ' called by this strange term? How one can have '
             | _right_ ' over what others do? May be you can explain also
             | that?
             | 
             | If such 'right' even exist then it belongs to people who
             | wish to make copy of something isn't it?
             | 
             | It's hard to see why how and who on earth is entitled to
             | prohibit to anyone in having right to make a copy as long
             | as a person who makes copy doesn't present such copy as
             | original.
        
               | lelandfe wrote:
               | > It's hard to see why how and who on earth is entitled
               | to prohibit to anyone in having right to make a copy
               | 
               | The how and who are easy: the Constitution[0], and the
               | American government.
               | 
               | The _why_ is trickier, but the idea at least is that
               | restricting copies means more people buy the  "real"
               | thing, which means more money goes to the owner, and
               | creators are therefore more incentivized to make and
               | copyright things in America.
               | 
               | [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Clause
        
               | kmeisthax wrote:
               | The "why" is that distribution is always cheaper than
               | production of creative works. In other words, people who
               | make new works are stuck with all the costs, while people
               | who sell copies get all the profit. This also tends to be
               | an asymmetric relationship: creators tend to be
               | individuals while publishers tend to be large corporate
               | enterprises with the ability and know-how to bury you.
               | Copyright exists to force publishers to negotiate with
               | creators that would otherwise have no leverage[0].
               | 
               | The idea that copies are supposed to be scarce is an
               | invention of Disney marketing, and I'd argue contrary to
               | the spirit of the law. The stated purpose of copyright is
               | to _increase_ the amount of works on the market (by
               | giving creators some negotiating leverage with
               | publishers), not to make individual copies more valuable.
               | That 's just a side effect, one that is supposed to be
               | bounded by limited term lengths[1].
               | 
               | [0] For those wondering, this is also what drove
               | copyright harmonization over the last century. Any
               | difference in law between countries creates an avenue for
               | publishers to find a way to cheat creators. Before the
               | era of international copyright it was quite common for
               | publishers to race creators to foreign markets, since
               | translation was not yet an exclusive right of the creator
               | and most countries did not recognize each other's
               | copyright interests.
               | 
               | [1] Please stop laughing. I know life+70 is practically
               | forever.
        
               | lovelyviking wrote:
               | >Copyright exists to force publishers to negotiate with
               | creators that would otherwise have no leverage[0].
               | 
               | In my experience when I was thinking to publish something
               | on phtostock I was presented with automatic contract
               | stripping me from all of my "leverage" and if I disagree?
               | it's their way or highway. Of course I could not agree to
               | that. So experience was rather short as you might guess
               | and no live person was even involved on their behalf.
               | 
               | So in my experience it seems that you need some other
               | "leverage" to force publishers to negotiate with
               | creators.
        
               | betterunix2 wrote:
               | Copyright is as much a "right" as mineral rights are a
               | "right." It is just a system for regulating a particular
               | industry. Don't make the mistake of thinking that all
               | "rights" are "natural rights."
        
               | quadrangle wrote:
               | No rights are "natural rights".
        
               | quadrangle wrote:
               | "right" is the right word, the point here is that it is
               | *exclusive.
               | 
               | Speech rights and copy rights are both rights. Great that
               | speech rights are universal in most democratic countries.
               | Awful that copy rights are exclusive.
        
               | PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
               | The default in the USA is that nobody has the right to
               | make a copy of something created by someone else. The
               | right to make copies is limited to the creator of the
               | work. We say "the creator owns the copyright".
               | 
               | Since the legal system in the USA (and elsewhere) has
               | "evolved" to consider copyright to be property in most of
               | the same senses as anything else you can own, it follows
               | that copyright can be transferred to others.
               | 
               | You are welcome to disagree with either premise ("no
               | copying of someone else's creation", "right to copy is
               | property") but that's the situation at present, and it's
               | not obviously wrong unless you adopt some philosophical
               | positions that the USA (and most of western Europe) does
               | not (in aggregate) hold.
        
             | betterunix2 wrote:
             | "Piracy" has been a propaganda term in the copyright
             | world...
             | 
             | FTFY
        
               | akomtu wrote:
               | The correct term is probably greed: not giving back to
               | the author of music, movie, software you use. But greed
               | is also the foundation of our economy, so copyright
               | owners had to come up with a different word.
        
               | 123pie123 wrote:
               | Piracy implies theft and sounds more serious; where as
               | copyright infringement does not sounds as exciting...
               | 
               | (from wikipedia...)
               | 
               | Copyright infringement is the use of works protected by
               | copyright law without permission for a usage where such
               | permission is required, thereby infringing certain
               | exclusive rights granted to the copyright holder, such as
               | the right to reproduce, distribute, display or perform
               | the protected work, or to make derivative works
               | 
               | Theft is the taking of another person's property or
               | services without that person's permission or consent with
               | the intent to deprive the rightful owner of it.
        
             | lovelyviking wrote:
             | >"Piracy" has been a term of art in the copyright world for
             | over 100 years.
             | 
             | So if it's long enough it assumes it's correct? Hard to see
             | logical connection there.
             | 
             | In our power to reconsider false and confusing terminology.
        
               | lelandfe wrote:
               | > So if it's long enough it assumes it's correct
               | 
               | Sure, that's a good enough of a descriptivist basis for a
               | definition to be "correct."
               | 
               | I'd wager most folks on here don't see the name "The
               | Pirate Bay" and question what it has to do with literal
               | seafaring scallywags.
        
               | Levitz wrote:
               | >So if it's long enough it assumes it's correct? Hard to
               | see logical connection there.
               | 
               | Well... Yes? That's how words work, really. If enough
               | people agree a word means something, then it does.
        
               | lovelyviking wrote:
               | When healthy discussion is needed wrong terms do not help
               | because they become propaganda terms masking the real
               | meaning. In that case they should be reconsidered and
               | corrected for discussion to have any chance for success.
        
               | Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
               | No, that's how words lose their meaning: when they are
               | used in inappropriate context to describe something
               | completely unrelated.
               | 
               | Another modern example of a word that rapidly loses its
               | meaning is "fascism": these days it is used as a general
               | term for any policy not supported by the person that uses
               | it. BLM fascists, left fascists, ultraright fascists,
               | antifa fascists. On the subreddit about new Apple
               | "Foundation" show someone described the depicted Empire
               | as fascist. Everybody are fascists, especially the US who
               | have fascias everywhere in state imagery!
        
         | [deleted]
        
       | teddyh wrote:
       | http://piratebayo3klnzokct3wt5yyxb2vpebbuyjl7m623iaxmqhsd52c...
        
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