Megaupload seized / shut down

[dyeager]

I think you're doing it right. The people at the tops of these industries are dinosaurs who need to make access to their content easier. Otherwise, it's just going to get stolen. I have a Hulu+ account and a Netflix account. If I can't find what I'm looking for, I'm going the free way.

I don't agree - even if you believe it should be available free, if it actually isn't, you're stealing it. Folks have made some legitimate and sound philosophical stances here on WHY things should work differently in these industries, but until they do the free way is stealing. Again, we may eventually find out with more evidence and research that in fact nobody is actually getting hurt, but let's call it what it is.

[Annubis]

I think you're doing it right. The people at the tops of these industries are dinosaurs who need to make access to their content easier. Otherwise, it's just going to get stolen. I have a Hulu+ account and a Netflix account. If I can't find what I'm looking for, I'm going the free way.

but let's call it what it is.

Not to be anal, but if you want to call it what it is, the term is pirating. The term has a rather different meaning than stealing.
Stealing implies robbing something leaving none to who had it, while pirating means creating a perfect duplicate.

[Vanguard]

Yes, it's stealing. If the people involved in these industries don't have the business smarts to see there is a massive audience online, they are being stupid. If they think that not putting their content online will curb piracy, they're being naive.

I'm not saying that makes it not stealing, but I don't feel particularly bad about pirating content that is otherwise unavailable to me.

[dyeager]

Not to be anal, but if you want to call it what it is, the term is pirating. The term has a rather different meaning than stealing.
Stealing implies robbing something leaving none to who had it, while pirating means creating a perfect duplicate.

If we're going to argue connotation, we're probably going to go in circles, but I see the distinction you're making.

If we're going with dictionary definition, software/music/tv/whatever piracy is stealing. But again I see your point and it is a fair one.

If nothing else, my biggest point in all this continues to be that if you're going to do this, you have to be honest about it and admit you are taking something that is being made available at a cost for nothing. It may be a cost you are not willing to pay or that you disagree with due to a number of philosophical or business issues, but you're still taking something available for a price without paying that price. That is what I mean by stealing.

[Vanguard]

What about OOP things, or stuff the company has not put on the internet?

I don't have a TV. I do all of my electronic media consumption on the internet. If your shit isn't readily available directly, I'm going to steal it and I'm not going to feel bad. Why? Because you don't allow me the opportunity to get it legitimately through a widely accepted medium. Case in point: Game of Thrones. I tried to buy it through HBO's site, but, because my internet provider doesn't offer HBO, they wouldn't.

I still watched it. I may even buy the DVD once it goes down in price.

[Ragnarok-Sabin]

Not to be anal, but if you want to call it what it is, the term is pirating. The term has a rather different meaning than stealing.
Stealing implies robbing something leaving none to who had it, while pirating means creating a perfect duplicate.

If we're going to argue connotation, we're probably going to go in circles, but I see the distinction you're making.

If we're going with dictionary definition, software/music/tv/whatever piracy is stealing. But again I see your point and it is a fair one.

If nothing else, my biggest point in all this continues to be that if you're going to do this, you have to be honest about it and admit you are taking something that is being made available at a cost for nothing. It may be a cost you are not willing to pay or that you disagree with due to a number of philosophical or business issues, but you're still taking something available for a price without paying that price. That is what I mean by stealing.

Yes. In some cases, I do take for free products for which money is being asked. By some definitions--yours in particular--that is stealing. By others, it is not; the dictionary definition of theft is this:

1. the act of stealing; the wrongful taking and carrying away of the personal goods or property of another; larceny.
2. an instance of this.

Carrying away implies physically taking something from someone, leaving them nothing. As Annubis pointed out, this is not what pirating is. But in the end, this is a pointless semantic discussion. Very few people are arguing that piracy is perfectly pure, morally. 

My base point, I guess, is that the price of things is not meant to be set by the creator; the price of something is set by the consumer. By this I mean that if a creator asks too much, people don't buy their product. For me, and many others, too much money is being asked for shoddy services; the main goal of piracy for such people is not the cheap aquisition of a property. Rather, we don't want to support archaic/draconian business practices. I do see where you're coming from, in that these people should probably simply boycott the product rather than take it for free, but hell, no one is perfect, and that's inconvenient. I don't want to miss out on an awesome show like Game of Thrones because HBO is too stubborn to put it on Netflix (or something to that effect).

In the meantime, all the big media conglomerates need to do to fix the problem is shut up, swallow their pride, and change with the times. Instead they're doing everything they can to undermine their customers, and that is absolute bullshit.

[Kevadu]

Wow, there are a lot of things I want to comment about on this thread...

Point 1:  The music industry has traditionally followed a broken and abusive model based on a near-monopoly of distribution channels.  They massively overcharge, their only real expense is marketing (how much does it actually cost to write a song), and yeah artists get screwed.  They don't really make anything from albums and they're mostly just for promotion anyway.  The money they make comes from giving concerts.

But this has absolutely nothing to do with movies/software/anything else.  Stop talking like it does.  Seriously.  At the very least the fact that there really isn't anything equivalent to 'touring' in any of these other examples should be obvious.  The product is what it is, and 100% of the money comes from selling that product.  Also, making a game or a movie requires a massive investment compared to writing a song.  Triple-A games are costing in the tens of millions to make these days.  Somebody has to fund that.  Even if you don't like the publishers, they are serving a valuable and important role here.  And they also take on real risk, since many games flop and don't recoup their investments.

So basically, shut up about the music industry unless you are specifically talking about pirating music and nothing else.


Point 2:  Piracy does real damage to fledgeling industries.  It's easy to look at the people who are already successful and think something like, "it's OK to pirate their stuff, they're rich".  I'm not going to say I agree with that attitude, but it's something a lot of people have.  However pirates are indiscriminate, and the easiest places to see piracies effect is in areas that have been less successful.  We're gamers here, so look what piracy did to the PSP market in the US.  PSP hardware actually sold quite well early on, but nobody was buying the games (so what do you think they were doing with that hardware?).  As a result game publishers stopped releasing games for it.

I would also like to talk extensively about what rampant disrespect for copyright has done to the commercial manga industry in the US, but I don't have a lot of time at the moment and that's something I could go on and on about.  Basically it's completely screwed it over (and a lot of people are profitting off of it illegally and not giving a dime back to the creators...).


Point 3:  Stop your entitlement-driven whining.  The fact that a company didn't make their product super-convenient to buy doesn't mean you're allowed to steal it.  None of these entertainment products are in any way essential to your life.  You can do without them.

[Vanguard]

Actually, the predatory business practices found in the record industry are echoed in book publishing and movie production. While I can't rattle off numbers the same way, there are similar abuses found in those sectors. The music industry discussion is important because most people don't know what they're talking about and use arguments so thin they wouldn't cover a bumper sticker. Anyone who had real insider knowledge would be able to tell you the same.

I never said that a company not making a product convenient for me to buy entitles me to steal it. I just said I would. There is a difference. Saying I can do without them would still mean I'm not giving them money.

[Ragnarok-Sabin]

Agreed. I'm not trying to argue that piracy is some how the 'right' choice. I'm just saying where, personally, I see a large part of it stemming from. I honestly believe that if companies offered their products in ways that were easy to use, convenient (see: Steam), and were reasonably priced, we would see huge drops in just how much piracy actually occurs. Not to say it would solve the problem entirely, of course not, but you would probably see more Average Joe's watching it on Netflix rather than downloading it illegally, simply for the convenience. As it is now, it's much more convenient to stream or download a movie illegally than rent it, and very few people are willing to buy a DVD for a movie they may only watch one time, ever.

Looking at your PSP example, I wonder how differently things would have panned out if support had been focused on the PSN rather than on UMD right from the start. It's quite possible that things would have ended up the same, but my gut feeling tells me there may have been more success for the PSP.

One of the big things I want to impress is that it's not as though illegal downloads are my first stop for everything. I've never downloaded a game illegally (aside from, debate-ably, some ROMs for games which I already owned). I maintain a Crunchyroll, Netflix, and Funimation account monthly, even when I'm not getting much use out of them, in an attempt to support industries that I love. I try to find other ways to affordably access what I'm looking for. If that doesn't get me what I want, then yes, I will pirate it. I am not interested in overpaying for something when I can get it free. I admit, the moral choice would be to boycott rather than pirate, but I am not a perfect person, and I don't want to wait to watch a show I like because Studio X wont pull their collective head out of their ass. Am I in the wrong? Very probably. Are they also in the wrong? Hell yes they are.

[Hidoshi]

The O'Dwyer case is an awful example. When you comply with a cease and desist and then post up a new website that says "fuck the police" on it, you're flouting the law, and should expect repercussions. O'Dwyer's been put up as some kind of poster child for the free speech cause by guys like Jimmy Wales, but it's stupid. O'Dwyer was in the wrong. Is the force being used excessive? A bit, sure, but he's still a bad example. Proponents need to use better examples if they intend to actually fight an abuse of the law.

I didn't realize making websites insulting people was basis for repercussion. "The law" isn't the playground bully, who can bash people's heads in for insulting them. When should I expect people on my doorstep for arguing for corporate separation from government? 5 years? 10? I may well be that the guy is a tremendous douche, but being a tremendous douche isn't a crime, it just makes you unpleasant.

Yeager, I don't defend Megaupload for that, the whole point of contention about this debate is the government being tremendous asshats.

Flouting the law in addition to disobedience is pretty compounding, dude. What I'm saying is that O'Dwyer doesn't have a leg to stand on, and shouldn't be given any sympathy, especially because he was not compliant with the law, and in addition was even insulting towards it.

[Ashton]

Sorry, I can't support the U.S. government overreaching in any capacity, especially if the reasoning for this is shit fueled by corporate interests rather than common good. He should be tried in the UK, where he's from, and even then copyright infringement is really more of a civil problem than a criminal one. If he was a known terrorist or criminal responsible for crimes against the U.S.? Fine. But no, he's a kid who hosted a website. Being a dick is not against the law; we have rappers that sing "fuck the police" nowadays. It's dumb, but they're not criminals.

There's never a 'this side is right, this side is wrong' deal when it comes to stuff like this, but I normally fall into the party that disapproves of the way governments handle this because they're honestly being a bunch of dicks about it. The punishment should fit the crime, but what they are doing now is the equivalent of taking a thief to the public square and chopping off his hands, screaming "THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS TO THIEVES," as a warning to others.

[Annubis]

the equivalent of taking a thief to the public square and chopping off his hands, screaming "THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS TO THIEVES," as a warning to others.

4shared: Mass deletion
FileJungle: Mass deletion, Testing USA IP blocking
FileServe: Mass deletion
FileSonic: Closed file-sharing completely
MediaFire: Mass deletion of files & accounts
UploadStation: Mass deletion, Testing USA IP blocking, losed affiliate program, Closed file-sharing completely (23 Jan)
UploadBox: Closed
Uploaded: Banned USA IP addresses
x7.to: Closed

Seems to be working...

[ZeronHitaro]

And thus the age of isolationism and cross-cultural ignorance returns.

That's pretty much what this is heralding in. Between the copyright nonsense on Youtube and Filesharing services too afraid to host anything it's going to be virtually impossible to experience shows and material from other countries without completely learning the language and moving there. As such this pretty much cuts off your average individual from experiencing any content outside of what your nation allows to pass after being 'localized'.

It's a shame; I really hoped these people would 'nut up', as the saying goes, and play to the internet's greatest strength; for every site you kill 5 more clones will pop right back up. But to see so many rolling over and playing dead at once...pathetic.

[Darklight]

So it will be back soon enough, just like all the other spawns from this scare tactic. Scan and close twitter which is a huge source for piracy, Oh I forgot the FBI uses this as a data base along with creepbook. Oh there has to be a better way to rule the world again?? in a century or 2

[Demon_Princess_Kay]

Anyone hear about this? https://plus.google.com/u/0/111314089359991626869/posts/HQJxDRiwAWq and here's the link it has in it. http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/permalink/2011/111221airvinyl