This template for the SOPA blackout (the one we used) was created by Zachary Johnson.

Depending on where you live, you might not be able to read the thought-provoking polemic posted by the Pirate Bay yesterday, so here it is in full. It’s well worth reading.

INTERNETS, 18th of January 2012. PRESS RELEASE, FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE.

Over a century ago Thomas Edison got the patent for a device which would “do for the eye what the phonograph does for the ear”. He called it the Kinetoscope. He was not only amongst the first to record video, he was also the first person to own the copyright to a motion picture.

Because of Edisons patents for the motion pictures it was close to financially impossible to create motion pictures in the North american east coast. The movie studios therefor relocated to California, and founded what we today call Hollywood. The reason was mostly because there was no patent.

There was also no copyright to speak of, so the studios could copy old stories and make movies out of them - like Fantasia, one of Disneys biggest hits ever.

So, the whole basis of this industry, that today is screaming about losing control over immaterial rights, is that they circumvented immaterial rights. They copied (or put in their terminology: “stole”) other peoples creative works, without paying for it. They did it in order to make a huge profit. Today, they’re all successful and most of the studios are on the Fortune 500 list of the richest companies in the world. Congratulations - it’s all based on being able to re-use other peoples creative works. And today they hold the rights to what other people create. If you want to get something released, you have to abide to their rules. The ones they created after circumventing other peoples rules.

The reason they are always complainting about “pirates” today is simple. We’ve done what they did. We circumvented the rules they created and created our own. We crushed their monopoly by giving people something more efficient. We allow people to have direct communication between each other, circumventing the profitable middle man, that in some cases take over 107% of the profits (yes, you pay to work for them).

It’s all based on the fact that we’re competition.

We’ve proven that their existance in their current form is no longer needed. We’re just better than they are.

And the funny part is that our rules are very similar to the founding ideas of the USA. We fight for freedom of speech. We see all people as equal. We believe that the public, not the elite, should rule the nation. We believe that laws should be created to serve the public, not the rich corporations.

The Pirate Bay is truly an international community. The team is spread all over the globe - but we’ve stayed out of the USA. We have Swedish roots and a swedish friend said this:

The word SOPA means “trash” in Swedish. The word PIPA means “a pipe” in Swedish. This is of course not a coincidence. They want to make the internet inte a one way pipe, with them at the top, shoving trash through the pipe down to therest of us obedient consumers.

The public opinion on this matter is clear. Ask anyone on the street and you’ll learn that no one wants to be fed with trash. Why the US government want the American people to be fed with trash is beyond our imagination but we hope that you will stop them, before we all drown.

SOPA can’t do anything to stop TPB. Worst case we’ll change top level domain from our current .org to one of the hundreds of other names that we already also use. In countries where TPB is blocked, China and Saudi Arabia springs to mind, they block hundreds of our domain names. And did it work? Not really.

To fix the “problem of piracy” one should go to the source of the problem. The entertainment industry say they’re creating “culture” but what they really do is stuff like selling overpriced plushy dolls and making 11 year old girls become anorexic. Either from working in the factories that creates the dolls for basically no salary or by watching movies and tv shows that make them think that they’re fat.

In the great Sid Meiers computer game Civilization you can build Wonders of the world. One of the most powerful ones is Hollywood. With that you control all culture and media in the world. Rupert Murdoch was happy with MySpace and had no problems with their own piracy until it failed. Now he’s complainting that Google is the biggest source of piracy in the world - because he’s jealous. He wants to retain his mind control over people and clearly you’d get a more honest view of things on Wikipedia and Google than on Fox News.

Some facts (years, dates) are probably wrong in this press release. The reason is that we can’t access this information when Wikipedia is blacked out. Because of pressure from our failing competitors. We’re sorry for that.

—THE PIRATE BAY, (K)2012

UPDATE: The reddit thread about this essay is also worth reading.

Wow- we have to deal with crap like SOPA because of groups like the Pirate Bay, and now they want to wrap themselves in the flag and claim to be victims?

Jon, You’ve missed the point. The internet compels you to research.

Jon’s right.  Is TPB trying to claim that they create content? I always thought of them more like some seedy guy that told all of the junkies in the neighborhood where all the unlocked cars were. Look, I’m completely against SOPA but this “Pirate” movement as helpful to copyfight as NAMBLA is to the gay right movement.

i don’t think jon missed the point at all.

Continue to have you’re world fed down in the manner they see fit. Perhaps there are a few errors in the way in which our society produces, disseminates, and opens opportunity, and the internet might just be helping.

Jon - shut the fuck up and keep buying dvds that were manufactured by children.

Jon nailed it.. Pirates are incestuous and delusional to compare themselves to Hollywood’s revolt against Edison. At least those violators were wielding screenplays, cameras, production principles, writers, directors, actors, etc. to form a new post-theatrical industry by producing new commercial art.. pirate bay produces what? more delusional pirates.

The Pirate Bays roots lie not in Freedom and enlightenment, but in Neo Nazi sponsored brutalist capitalism. It is terribly disappointing that a great blog like this should somehow be hoodwinked the thinly veiled reality of the naked greed of this organisation.

In this very statement admits that it wishes to emulate all the aggressive exploitation of the hollywood studios and record companies that have happily made their fortunes from the hard work of artists for so many years.

‘Freedom’ is required for them to cut out the middle man and grab the work of others so they can cash in, riding on the coat-tails of the many that are protesting against censorship and a over zealous legislative.

The worst result will be that governments will use the smug defiance of these idiots to ever increase the screw on lawful and well intended internet services… like this blog.

Don’t make the terrible mistake and let yourself be taken in by the new ultra-capitalism just because they hand you a few sweets. You WILL pay, eventually.

I can’t wait for The Pirate Bay to get shut down.  If you want to see a movie, just rent it or buy it.  JOBS depend on you, the viewer.  You are entitled to NOTHING for free.

Here’s a good top-down look at what Pirate Bay is pantomiming .. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4wb1CPsB18

I searched ‘Neo Nazi Brutalist Capitalism’ in google, the first result was…

http://www.detoxorcist.com/satanism-and-the-far-right.html

I think that speaks for itself.

Fine.  So they want to make a point.  Why not address the issue of creating on-demand content for free?  Who pays for it?  Is the assumption films are just marked up for the hell of it?  I’m not understanding the banter to sell stealing.  Also, I am against SOPA here; Pirate Bay is not advancing any cause.

I’m with Jon on this. Pirate Bay can claim to be advocates of free speech all they want and they can ally themselves with the users that use their tracker for legitimate purposes until the cows come home but let’s not pretend that they’re some kind of innocent victim when someone decides to use the tracker to seed an entire HD season of Game of Thrones or whatever Kanye West tracks leak to the internet before the album comes out. They are the problem and getting all sanctimonious on our ass isn’t going to help their case.

Does anyone read articles anymore?  Diversity and access is what enables culture to flourish.  The FBI shutting down sharing sites demonstrates that the original pirates now own the government and want control of the internet too.  I do not depend on pirate bay, but I do rely on streaming and sharing sites to access culture not available from Hollywood.  For as we know Hollywood itself killed culture when it refused to pay its writers.  So the argument against piracy for the sake of paying artists is a specious one anyways.  It’s about corporate profit at the expense of intellectual freedom. 

You don’t have to be a pirate to resist corporate internet control.  It is helpful, however, to have to have your eyes open to the final stages of the empire: capitalist totalitarianism.

Have fun there, guys.

There is very fuzzy logic here. I am far from siding with Hollywood, but there isn’t equivilance between that industry and TPB. Firstly, the move to California, as the article says, was due to a patent on the MEANS of production, not the CONTENT, which is largely originated by Hollywood itself. TPB do not create content, of course, they pass it on. They do discredit the anti-SOPA cause somewhat.

This is a stupid story. The real reason for SOPA has notion to do with Pirate Bay. It has to do with censorship of freedom of speak! Not sharing copy’s of movie’s, music, etc….

Be First:
The American movie industry started of the intelligence of a great american invention Thomas Edison, he did to them what they are doing to us today
“Composed of all the big film companies and known as the Edison Trust, the MPCC monopoly eventually became such a hindrance to producers and filmmakers that they fled the East Coast and headed to California. Far enough away from Edison’s Menlo Park, N.J., headquarters, they were able to make movies without fear of harassment from the trust. Hollywood was born. So, sure, the motion-picture industry owes much love to Thomas Edison for being a complete jerk.

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1981000_1980999_1981124,00.html #ixzz1jx0XIs40”

Be Smarter
By fleeing to the West Coast and creating a new entity “Hollywood” they were able to ignore the “legal US patents” owned by Thomas Edison and his Trust.  If anyone wants to confirm US Patent Charter for 1890 and voice that Thomas Edison patents was not being violated, stolen and not compensated by the people in hollywood, please provide proof.  last time i checked a US Patent is valid in every state of America.

Cheat!
Hollywood has and will always take someones else’s ideas (foreign or domestic) change it around enough to make it theirs and keep all the profits for themselves.  because they hide themselves behind layers and layers of legality (that they created) they are allowed to get away with it because they support majority of the lobbyists and those lobbyists care nothing for the american people because they are not voted into position by the american people.

What a load of sanctimonious horseshit! Hey “Pirate Bay” come back to us when you’ve actually created an original piece of content, or at least financed one. 

Comparing Disney’s use of public domain stories and music as source material for Fantasia (I think they still had to pay the animators and the musicians guys!) with file-sharing is pretty simple-minded.

And the argument “hey the man wants to force feed you shit and did you know they make a profit out of it so why not get it from Pirate Bay for free!”
just…  makes my brain hurt.

Honestly, these guys would make themselves look a lot better if they just said, hee hee we’re crooks, look at all this stuff you can get here for free, come and get it before we’re closed down!

@Iara: “For as we know Hollywood itself killed culture when it refused to pay its writers.”

Care to elaborate on that one?

tl;dr version: Haters gonna hate.

I use TPB, IRC, and other sources for many things. I support them and am a fan. If you want to refuse a refund for a horrible made movie that cost the audience 400% to 900% more then it should then I will reserve current right to watch a movie for free before I decide to buy a ticket for the experience or DVD/Blue Ray for my collection. If multi-million and multi-billion dollar companies have no shame in charging inflated prices that sometime exceed 5000% of cost for their software I will have no shame in cracking that software. When you spend $900 US for an operation system that only come with 30 day trials of programs that should be standard on computer systems in the 21st century I will choose to download them instead.

Places like TPB “steal” hundreds of dollars from companies that make billions off of people that only make hundreds dollars a month/year.

When I was a kid I made “mix tapes” on cassette tapes for my friends. I recorded entire albums to a tape to share with my school friends and they with me. It was not stealing it was sharing. I owned that tape. I bought it from the music shop and could do as I pleased with it. If I wanted to burn it in a fire, smash with a hammer, give it as a gift, or copy it and share it with a friend I could, because I owned it. But today these billion dollar companies will have you believe that doing any of that today is illegal because by purchasing their products you are only buying the right to listen to it, but nothing else. That is wrong.

Copy Rights have always pertained to the copying and SELLING of intellectual properties. Selling, like in bootleggers, street vendors, and the like. People who make a profit buy selling things that are not theirs or they do not hole the rights to. Giving it away or sharing is not the same. Sharing is just that, sharing. Not profiting.

Until the greedy companies that make billions and billions come up with a solution that does not censor the internet, that does not rape and plunder the wallets of the common consumer or worker, I will continue to find ways to download and share anything I OWN with anyone that wants to see, here, or use it. 

Using billions of dollars to buy lawmakers, to pass a Bill, to make a law, to make illegal is not the same as passing a law that is in the best interests of the countries peoples.

“Tom says:
@Iara: “For as we know Hollywood itself killed culture when it refused to pay its writers.”

Care to elaborate on that one?”

@Tom, see; Birth of Reality Programming in America.

The word “sopa” in Greek means “be quiet” and pipa is a) an instrument for smoking tobacco and b) a blowjob._ nice connotations, too;)

Among the first to record film, not video. I would suggest fixing that.

@ A man, here you go. All fixed

http://i.chzbgr.com/completestore/2012/1/19/ad493174-176e-4898-a60b-b3df69ee3c50.jpg

If movie studios put their content online so you could watch their entire catalog, it would change the entire Web overnight. You could watch every Russ Meyer film back to back. Chronologically, alphabetically, by exploit. It would be amazing. You could send URLS to your friends as a way to create a virtual film festival. You could click a by now button and download the movie file or buy the DVD.

The fact they do not do this and the current box office receipts (historic low—nobody is going to movies now) shows the studio heads are completely out of touch with reality.

That’s one of the many reasons why places like TPB exist. If each studio had their own Hulu, we could see films, they could figure out a way to make a reasonable profit on each viewing and we’d all win. This will never happen because studios are too greedy and stupid to ever do the smart thing.

Meanwhile Amazon makes tons of cash renting movies and selling them to people and studios are trying SOPA and PIPA as last gasp ways of preserving their long broken system.

Disney used TOTALLY public domain fairy tales that were hundreds of years old. Mary Poppins is one exception and he went to great lengths to gain the author’s permission to make the film. I’m against the bill but your arguments aren’t very strong. Also your grammar is terrible. Peoples’ needs an apostrophe. Complaining has no T in it… etc.

It’s amazing that there is a whole generation of people brought up thinking they have the right to steal from working people so long as those people are artists, musicians, software designers, or in the entertainment industry. You are stealing from the tech crew, the lighting guys, the costumers, the set mechanics- why do you think you are entitled to other peoples work without paying for it? Can I steal candy from the corner store and blame them because they haven’t made it easier to have the candy come straight to my house? Its the logic of over-entitled children.

go to Reddit on this essay for some worthwhile comments you suckers of corporate Cock!

@ Jon

“...over-entitled children”
Some body watches Fox news. That’s one of their catch phrases. Careful, if Murdoch get’s wind of you using their copyrighted phrase he might sue you.

i cant believe how some people are still blind to the fact that all the social convulsion of the last years is in fact result of the acceleration of knowledge and the change from a industrial to an information society, you cant stop internet and the redefinition of ALL our concepts of knowledge, property and frontiers.
corporations, goverments and politicians are diggin their grave doing what they can to stop the society evolution, but that change is inevitable

Let this be a lesson: when left and right, dems and gop, put aside their differences, work together and come to bipartisan agreement, you get stuff like The Patriot Act, the TSA, PIPA and SOPA.

When Washington is cooperatively, happily, quietly and busily doing “the people’s business”, clench your cheeks tight, cause we’re all in for a right proper buggering.

In other words, gridlock is good.

I must admit, I’m completely blown away by the bass-ackward & ill-informed standpoint of most of the comments on this article.

Stay strong, Pirate Bay. The world needs more freedom fighters. Keep up the good work and never let the MAFIAA win.

How many times do I have to pay for a copy of Wizard of Oz or Casablanca or Citizen Kane?  Nearly everyone involved in those films are long dead.  Pirate Bay and Megaupload and many others are, in fact, doing what Hollowwood did 100 years ago.  Most Studio heads are concerned about remaking the same movies now, rather than taking risks with real writers.. or even bothering to pay the people who actually create the movies.  They sit on their asses , making “decisions” to re re release Shitty movies - and charge quite abit for it.

There is a growing list of excessive greed these douchebags. How many more examples of pure greed are required before we realize its too much?

I too can’t begin to fathom the logic of the pirate bay haters. they didn’t cause the huge power grab of sopa/pipa. if anything they have drug big media into the 21st century. dare I say, without Napster, supernova, TPB, and mininova none oft you would have hulu, Netflix, spotify or the iTunes store. they just wouldn’t exist. I think they deserve a huge thank you from everyone who enjoys flim or music.

just my 2 cents

I don’t watch Fox. but I do work with children.
As Hollywood continues to lose money to thieves they have to focus on movies that will create the largest level of profit to recoup the loss from theft- so we see crappy movies designed to appeal to the broadest possible numbers of consumers- remakes, sequels, things-blow-up-go-boom action movies, and other dreck. You, the thieves- are partially responsible- why should the studios crank out more risky, original, thought-provoking movies when they will likely take a loss on them? Those are the sorts of movies the studios put out when profits are coming in- not when they are losing money by the bucket-full to kids who think they deserve everything for free. This goes for music as well- the major labels can take the hit, but the indie labels that put out boutique music get screwed- those are musicians that can use the money. The corporate heads of these major labels and studios are always going to get paid excessively well- your stealing from them will never, ever, affect that. Unlike all the working people at the studios who are not movie stars or CEO’s. Funny how your solidarity with the working class disappears the second it might interfere with your entertainment consumption.

...the fuck? Are astroturfing crowds following wherever this is posted?

The Pirate Bay is a distribution method. It was never responsible for creating anything.

In another time, distribution costs made it prohibitive for art and for artists to reach audiences. That corporate hegemony is what TPB (and the_hundreds_of sites like it) disrupt.

Shutting down TPB (and its ilk) is an act of censorship for the;

-self-published content (short films, band EPs, poetry, religious books, political books),
-remixed music and video,
-fan-subbed Anime,
-and public domain works that it contains.

There are things like bootlegs and out-of-print works, which do infringe copyright, but as Mutant-Sounds demonstrates, putting these online and letting people share them is important for re-establishing viable markets for the artists.

Look at the music that saw reissued releases last year. It speaks for itself.

Do you think Louis C.K.‘s new video would have done those numbers without his fans word of mouth, sharing his earlier works online?

Research shows that, as an audience, pirates are among the industries best customers (research that led Sweden to legislate that piracy was a non-criminal act last year).

How many pundits couch their discussion of SOPA/PIPA with “everyone agrees that piracy is wrong”. Fuck that. Online, there’s an audience of 2 billion people, yet they’d rather figure out how to bleed more money from their dwindling audiences, sell us DRM products, maintain regionally locked distribution networks, and become judge, jury and executioner of the Internet?

Evolve, motherfuckers.

@jon

you’ve got to be a shill. no one could possibly take you seriously because you try to polarize the discussion to the point where it desintegrates into rhetorical nonsense.

let me get this straight, Hollywood makes shitty lowest common denominator movies to maximize profit because of piracy….  not because its a business that wants to maximize profit? come on. really? so now the pirates are responsible for the cookie cutter mediocrity that passes for creativity, not the greed of the studios.

copyright has been perverted to the point it has lost relevance and now is just a tool for the powerful to wield. when copyright is reformed to a more balanced state it will be subject to much more sensible dialogs. sadly, this probably will never happen.

sopa and pipa are really just blatant power grabs by the government using piracy as a convenient boogy man. “for the kids”, anyone remember that? control of information is the endgame. a handful of corporations already control everything you are exposed to….. except for the internet. that’s the endgame. you’ll be programed from the cradle to the grave.

now please calm down and discuss things like a grownup. well, nevermind that, you seem like you already drank the cool-aid.

Imagine, if you could make a film or a piece of music without regard to copyright? I mean just think about it. You could cut n paste and remix themes and stories, use them as a jumping off point and end up with something that is very original. But if you tried that now you’d be screwed. Disney remixed fairy tales and Grimm’s stories. Where would they be without them? Some of these old tales are our heritage, just like Elvis’s songs would be, if the copywrong on them hadn’t been extended to after the human race expires. We have now in hollywood’s movies, a great set of examples of the dearth of imagination and inspiration that you get when you remove all previous life from the stories. How bland can you go?

Congratulations- you realized that businesses are out to make a profit. Kudos. The studios can only put out so many movies a year, but sometimes put out artsier, edgier films that are mostly going to be a financial write-off because they add cache’ to the studio if they do well, help groom promising directors and screenwriters, and can sometimes freakishly break out into real success(think Memento, say). When the studios are losing money they are not going to invest in these movies. They will save the money and only invest in what they imagine are sure-fire hits- the previously mentioned remakes and sequels. You avoid thinking about everybody else a thief like you hurts- the everyday people who work in the business who get paid less as profits go down- the working people you rob because you think you are entitled to free entertainment, the musicians who struggle to play music and pay bills, and the indie labels who barely get by to put out music they are passionate about.
I’m a not-too-old punk guy, and it never would have seemed right to me after I saw a show to go home and rip off that band by stealing their stuff online. I knew that 45 I bought put gas in their car and food on the road to the next show. Likewise all the weird arty movies that came to the nearest city- I always felt like those guys were always one movie away from having to teach or make commercials, so I wanted to give ‘em my money. Now somehow people like you think the bands and the labels and studios owe you? For what? You produce nothing. You create nothing. You only consume. And you don’t even support the work you consume.
Think about what you say before you type. It helps. Tell me why working people in the entertainment industry deserve to lose work, raises, royalties and jobs because you are such a delicate special flower that their hard work should go to you for free. Because “Breaking Bad” season 2 was so hard to get? It’s crazy, but in the past, people thought walking to a local music store and plunking down a few bucks was not so hard. I wanted to support people whose work I liked. Bizarre that people think that entertainment is something “owed” to them. And as long as you need to steal porn or download whole seasons of new cable shows, the studios are going to be drafting draconion legislation to stop it- laws that affect everybody, and threaten real freedom on the internet. Is your need to steal other people’s work so vital that you are willing to have internet freedom threatened for everybody?
Why do working creative people deserve to have their work stolen, and why do you deserve to steal it from them? Again, why does your supposed solidarity with working people stop the second it threatens your need to watch free movies? Answer?

@uncle buck

i think you meant holland. its very illegal to file share in sweden.

http://www.thelocal.se/35746/20110824/

http://www.thelocal.se/38244/20111230/

@jon

except for the last quarter the movie industry has enjoyed record profits. every year is a new record if i recall correctly. so how is piracy killing them? please turn your browser off, it’ll keep you from looking silly.

Why do working creative people deserve to have their work stolen, and why do you deserve to steal it from them? Again, why does your supposed solidarity with working people stop the second it threatens your need to watch free movies? Answer?

why do i deserve to steal? my need? wtf are you talking about? you seem to be getting more and more belligerent. are you drunk?

Capitalism is, in some sense, proving incompatible with technology that can deliver content, entertainment, whatever for free.  So-called artists not getting paid may be unfortunate, but that’s an economic problem.  The solution isn’t to curtail widely available technology.  There has to be an economic shift on par with the bourgeois revolution that introduced modern commerce.  SOPA is like an uninspired, corporate/state-sponsored Ned Ludd, desperate to smash the machine.  If passed the legislation might achieve some initial “success” but it is bound to fail over time.  And is anyone really shedding a tear as we watch the slow but steady fall of free-market fascism?

TPB’s English is better than your Swedish.

Thanks, Jdbpongo

Jon, the livelihood of creatives has been a long way from the contracted, outsourced, pump-and-dump output the publishing industry has been concerned with.

We have the benefit of enough hindsight to say that the types of ‘deals’ the industry offers are quite unburdened by the best interests of the artists.

JDBpogo- You won’t answer, will you? Your sense of entitlement apparently also precludes you from trying to think logically, follow your arguments through to completion, or not contradict yourself. I can’t spoon-feed logic to you, nor is it worth my time to do so when you will just switch to an unrelated tangent, try to be funny, or drop the argument when you get called out- that’s what trolls do. You won’t answer the question because it say’s too much about who you are and what you believe- the internet has made it easy to steal movies and music and software, and you feel entitled to whatever you can steal, so you will. You feel no shame about stealing, and the thought of the working people you hurt doesn’t bother you in the least.
Technology has moved faster than the business models of the entertainment centers. That is true. That does not make it okay to steal from them, or anybody else. We are not talking about stealing bread during a famine- we’re talking about ripping off a DVD or album. At the end of the day you could live without having stolen that album or movie, but for the people that create the art it means real money.
I will try to break this down so easy that even you can understand.
Why do working creative people (actors,writers, musicians, tech, crew, support) deserve to have their work (movies, games, music)stolen (ripped from the internet without paying), and why do you(non-paying consumer) deserve to steal(rip it) it from them (the afore-mentioned creative people) without payment? Put down the beer-bong and focus. Again, why does your supposed solidarity with working people stop the second it threatens your need to watch free movies? You deserve free stuff why exactly? Certainly not for your critical thinking skills.

The same arguments against online file sharing or - if you prefer - piracy can be, and more to the point, actually WERE made against video rentals.
One person paid for the copy, then distributed it to others, not for free like Pirate Bay, but for a profit, at the (supposed) expense of the studios.
The entertainment industry actually tried to block video rentals when they first started, just as they originally opposed VCRs, cassette recorders, disc burners, et al.
Personally, I have NEVER bought a copy of a movie in my life.
I’ve always either rented them, checked them out from the library, or recorded them off tv, so to argue that I would be robbing the studios of money if I were to download them online is ludicrous.
(I also stopped going to theaters years ago when they became cramped little boxes filled with rude assholes, so it wouldn’t cut into ticket sales, either.)

Read the bit from December, 1977:
http://www.entmerch.org/press-room/industry-history.html

Then check these out:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Corp._of_America_v._Universal_City_Studios,_Inc.

http://digitalconsumer.org/faq5.html#vcr

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_Taping_Is_Killing_Music

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_Home_Recording_Act

https://w2.eff.org/legal/cases/betamax/

one last thing, then i’m done for the night.

for big media, this isn’t really a fight against piracy, its a fight to control the new distribution channel. read tim wu’s “the master switch” it clearly illustrates exactly what is happening now and lays out a historical timeline of how this happened to all new communication mediums. the ‘AAs want the internet to become a consumption based media accessed through locked down consumption devices (iPad, kindle type). please read cory doctorow’s article on the subject. he’s much more eloquent then i.

http://boingboing.net/2012/01/10/lockdown.html

the u.s. government is more than happy to go along with this as they get ultimate control.

if all of this was really about the artist the major record labels would have paid royalties to canadian artist:
http://torrentfreak.com/copyright-infringing-record-labels-settle-for-50m-110531/

sarkozy, who brought copyright craziness to europe and the idea of web surveillance, would not disregard it totally when it comes to himself: 
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,503245,00.html

http://boingboing.net/2009/10/08/nicolas-copyright-sa.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/feb/24/nicolas-sarkozy-party-compensates-mgmt

and that shining light of human rights and democracy, sweden, wouldn’t feel the need to monitor and archive all cross border communication. be it data or telephony.

http://www.thelocal.se/12334/20080610/

i know this is off topic, but it seems to be where were headed.

this isn’t about piracy. its about control

@jon

who the fuck ever said i pirate anything. my fucking god please just shut the fuck up until you can speak rationally about this.

NOW i’m going to bed.

“... a more honest view of things on google…”

Hahaha. Those TPB morons are funny.

There comes a time in every internet commentator/ troll relationship where we reach an impasse. There’s nothing I can do for that can make up for bad education, intellectual deficits and/or general trollishness, and there’s nothing you can do to add to the conversation but ignore my arguments copy-paste other people’s answers instead of your own. Repeatedly claiming to not understand what people are saying or refusing to answer questions is not, in itself, an actual
rebuttal. It’s a stalling tactic trolls use when they can’t or won’t answer questions. I do like that you switched positions at the end- now you are not in favor of stealing media online? Bravo- you failed to hold a consistent argument for even a single thread on the same subject.

@Uncle Buck
“Are astroturfing crowds following wherever this is posted?”

I think you nailed it.

Glad to see a good robust debate about this - In stark contrast to the what the CLA in Scotland are getting away with, under the radar so to speak. Put a colleague in prison and get rich -

http://www.scotsman.com/news/163_100k_for_nhs_copyright_whistleblowers_1_1795580

The shape of things…...

This really is a fascinatingly polarized discussion. I would absolutely agree with @Jon and others if I believed that online file sharing actually took any money away from any artist ever. Rather than theft, I think it should be viewed as free advertising. There are bands selling tickets to shows every day to people who are only there because they learned of the band through online file sharing. And come on, what sort of punk gives a shit about merchandizing anyway? If you don’t love making music (or feel passion for whatever art you do that you seem to think you deserve monetary compensation for) then do something else with your time.

jdbpogo /Max Beta—Cory Doctrow and alike are science fiction writers who are riding the wave of debate on this for their own discourseful / profit motive. But hardly prophetic evangelists imho.

Regarding comparing what is happening today to what you probably saw on ‘Steal This Film’ or whatever is not entirely true nor fair. At least in the video rental case they created a for-profit distribution channel (VHS/DVD) that could then recompense studios in the long-tail of distribution (post theatrical release). Bittorrent failed to design for a revenue model to begin with because it was designed to be ‘generic’ and not commerce friendly therefore but pirate-friendly. And now that a trade and service mark is enforce for torrent distribution only Mr Cohen gets to benefit from any studio partnering opportunities with his protocol or distro platforms like Vuze that have tried to straddle the Pirate / commercial media divide more, um, morally. That said there hasn’t been any effort by the pirate bay and alike to share revenue or be accountable for number of titles ‘distributed’ through their systems or referenced however they want to split hairs about it.

Support an end to piracy in foreign lands! (BTW - I use PB, oink back in the day, indietorrents today, open source torrents, demonoid, etc) but in retrospect and true moral reflection I would support a pro-SOPA or PIPA world because these sites haven’t made me a better person I feel and have only led to attrition against very robust (before Internet and anarchy) business models that anyone could join (like a Circus) if they wanted to acting, directing, writing, you name it. Today .. not so much. How do I know? Cuz I’ve lived with production people and music business people around Hollywood for the past 5 years.

I also find it ironic that people like Kit Knox (who leads Akamai now technically) used to run in the early-mid 90s a giant warez distro BBS in San Diego County called Warez America with Jason Taylor who is now the technical lead of Facebook, before Internet Protocol picked up and they want on to start ConnectNET. Total faggotry man.

It’s amazing how people can be trained not only to see things in a bizarre way, but also to believe that way is the obvious and only way to see things.

Most people have some concept of ownership. There are philosophical issues with that I don’t want to go into, but generally people believe that if you own something you can do what you like with it.

So modern copyright law comes along and says that you can’t. That someone can sell you a thing, but they still own it, and they get to tell you what you can do with it. Like an company selling you a bicycle, but telling you that if you let someone else ride it, that’s stealing.

You own every part of the bike - the pedals, the hood, the handles, the wheels, the frame - you can take the bike apart and not find a single piece that you don’t own. And yet, you own every part of the bike except the part that would let you lend it to other people. They still own that part, and you’re a thief if you use it.

Most people would find this strange and intrusive, yet this sort of semi-ownership has become the norm for media. Yet people who have been raised with it are often quite comfortable with this double standard, and regard people who think otherwise as morally deficient, as thieves.

Maybe some of those people are just looking for a free ride, but many of them just don’t subscribe to this weird idea that you can sell something and then tell people how they can use it.

There are two problems here. It’s sort of a ‘swallowed a spider to catch the fly’ situation. Copyright legislation is the spider, it’s presented massive opportunities for abuse, blackmail and racketeering, distorted the legislative process, taken away basic and useful functionality from the internet, and been used mostly to benefit publishers at the expense of artists - when it was originally drafted to protect artists from exploitation by their publishers. The Pirate Bay presents solutions to some of those problems by offering a free distribution model which circumvents copyright.

What they don’t address is the fly, the problem the spider was meant to catch: The question of how artists should be compensated. That’s a separate issue, a much more important issue, and one that gets ignored completely when people start yelling about ‘stealing’. The name-calling is a distraction from the real issues, sometimes a deliberate and malicious one.

There are various proposals and methods in use to reward artists. The UK library system gives a small amount of money to the author every time a book is lent out; such a system could easily be adapted to downloads and provide for the needs of authors and consumers. Not so good for publishers, though. There are many, many other options available, and many ways we could reform copyright to keep the basic idea while not allowing it to cripple innovation and free speech.

People also solve the problem on a personal level, setting their own rules - the most popular being “if you like it, buy it.” This has a strong moral basis. If you hated a movie and don’t think it should exist, it’s wrong for you to then contribute funds to the making of more movies like it. If you loved a movie, it’s equally wrong - not to mention foolish - not to contribute if you can. An argument can be made that purchasing blindly is as immoral as pirating blindly, if the goal is to foster innovation and the result is that innovation is crowded out by schlock.

The Pirate Bay are hyperbolic and selective about the facts, but that doesn’t make them wrong any more than name-calling makes anyone else right. The real issue is not whether infringers are thieves, but the underlying question copyright seeks to address: Promotion of innovation in the arts and science, and the need for such innovation to be fairly rewarded.

Grant .. going to stop you right there in your conjecture early. A bike is sold, but can a bike be copied effortlessly and resold or redistributed at least? NO. So please, STFU and go away with your utter bs.

Although I couldn’t make my way through all of the longer posts, I think most if not all of the commentators are missing some of the key issues with respect to MagaUpload, SOPA, PIPA and The Pirate Bay.

First issue? I don’t the FBI and other nefarious TLAs running around as the World Police, enforcing US laws overseas. That would make the US government even more of a proxy for big US corporate interests (such as oil and defense contractors) than it already is. You might counter, “Well How will Hollywood and the record companies protect their intellectual propery?” and the answer (of course) is, ‘dunno, they’ll have to deal with the new reality somehow, I guess’. (Though Apple seems to be doing quite well SELLING tracks for 99 cents, so maybe that tells you something.)

Second? It’s a new world out there. Prior to the 20th century, the idea of copyrights didn’t really exist. The copyright as we’ve known it was a short-lived artifact of the newly emerging media such as vinyl records and printing. The new media-less distribution methods are inherently difficult to handle with the old notions of copyright, so it’s clearly silly to try to close down the whole internet in order to preserve what is essentially a Dodo bird.

BS Caller: The thing about an analogy is that it shows two different things in order to illustrate a fundamental underlying principle. If it shows two things that are the same, it’s not an analogy, just a pair.

You’re right, a bike can’t be copied effortlessly. That’s the point. People thoughtlessly apply a different standard to properties based on how they can be used.

The underlying principle here is that people have a basic understanding that you should be able to use the stuff you buy however you like. A bike can be ridden, so it follows that if you own a bike you can ride it.

Yet a CD, equally designed to be played and copied, is sold with a stipulation on how it should be used - because being allowed to decide how to use your own property in this case would be inconvenient for the publisher.

I’m not anti-copyright; I just see it as one solution to the problem it was designed to solve, not as a fundamental moral law of the universe.

You’re begging the question: Yes, a CD can be copied and redistributed effortlessly. So what? Why does that make it okay to take away the property rights of the person who bought it?

The difference between us is that I have an answer to that question. You don’t think an answer is necessary.

“You’re begging the question: Yes, a CD can be copied and redistributed effortlessly. So what? Why does that make it okay to take away the property rights of the person who bought it?”

Exactly. Of course, it might even be reasonably argued that, “a CD isn’t a bicycle so the usual laws about ownership shouldn’t apply in this new digital world” but, as far as I’m concerned, it’s the big companies that have acted as if this question doesn’t need answering, and that they have the right to dictate to the planet how stuff can be used.

In other words, maybe we want a world in which copyrights are enforced to include all digital copies of media. Great. That gives Hollywood a lotta cash to play around with a crank out new entertainments. But we should definitely be thinking about HOW to construct that world (and what ownership rights we want to give up) and not merely let big companies dictate to us how it will be. So far, that hasn’t happened, and the specific form that SOPA and PIPA have taken prove that all of the legislation is being foisted upon us rather than coming from the ‘99%’.

Em “.. gives Hollywood a lot of control.”.. how about it gives any artist, producer, scientist, or creator in the world big or small, commercial or indie-commercial—a hell of a lot more class-power to wield against global piracy.
And if the scientist wants to be altruistic he can ALLOW people to their work as Jonas Salk did in a world that thought him foolish not to patent it. Instead he proclaimed it un-patentable! The same can be done today even in the most draconian of copyright conditions (which PIPA and SOPA DO NOT REPRESENT IMHO) using Creative Commons or just contract law in general—give it away if you want and are smart enough to arrive at original / remixed knowledge (content).. otherwise bow down to the forces and methods of capitalism.

@peter herz

i know who cory doctorow is and what he does. i really don’t think that you can brush aside his viewpoint because he has written science fiction. did you read his article i linked to? or did you just disregard and move on? preconceptions intact.

what you said about bit-torrent is completely untrue. don’t many software companies use it as a distribution platform? steam for example. it is super easy to lock a torrent down to a tracker that is only accessible with a valid passkey. therefore monetizable. bit-torrent has been so vilified now that it will never become what it could have. all that wasted potential.

That is because software has copyright controls built into it. Incumbent video technologies (pre & post Internet-era) like TV and DVD systems don’t have the advantage of having unique /dynamic security schemes (i.e. decss).. they have to agree and stick to one thing that will likely get circumvented sooner or later and thereby create a gaping externality that can’t easily be technologically patched unlike a software creator utilizing a torrent channel. Yes, film companies could and I believe have so far (see waxy.org?) distributed their own film torrents which contain their own DRM. But Bram supposedly has the inside track on that game now was my only point. I just meant you can’t create a ‘bit torrent’ brand or service mark .. wasn’t implying that solutions couldn’t be contrived. It certainly was designed more pirate-friendly than creator-friendly I think or appealed to pirates/software companies more, or maybe just is agnostic as I think you’re saying.

Forgot to mention jdbpogo .. that just because you can lock down a torrent doesn’t solve the analog loop problem and thereby piracy intrinsically. If SOPA / PIPA fails then vendors like Flash and Apple will continue to lock down even more their protocols.. instead of making piracy easy like it is today with new media. So I think SOPA / PIPA would actually cause tech / media to relax a lot since they now can bring down foreign pirate aggregation which they couldn’t before. These federal provisions have no implications on domestic piracy however, you can still torrent using decentralized/trackerless means similar to gnutella back in the day as long as you’re doing so domestically and not internationally.

drm doesn’t work. the pirates get around it and it just ends up being aggravating to your customers. lose the drm and it all works fine. all media can be found online already so there’s no point in drm at all.

There are lots of valid opinions on both sides of this issue, and a lot of really stupid points. 

Yes, Big Media has enjoyed a stranglehold over the people for decades upon decades, and there has to be a breaking point,  but the idea that ANYONE thinks they’re doing something NOBLE by pirating media is laughable at best, in my eyes delusional.

I stole a copy of Pro-Tools once because the version I actually paid for was an insulting pile of garbage, so I don’t feel bad about it. In fact I feel a certain amount of vindictive pleasure. But I’m not going to go around saying that I’m HELPING the problem.  That would just be stupid.

Just saying what I said about torrents wasn’t untrue just omitted the cases you said were possible. I didn’t say they were desirable.. but if a film company wants stronger DRM control like a software company (i.e. has latest Propellerhead Reason even been cracked yet—Wibu-Systems has wicked security and will continue to get better?) then its currently in their hands without the help of laws (aka technology ) But they mainly pretend its not in their hands and that piracy is uncontrollable without legal help. That is because they’ve (film / music biz) have been working with lawyers far longer than they’ve worked with new media tech.

Correcting author on above comment starting with “Just saying what I said about torrents wasn’t”

posting as me now? “just saying what i said….. that is because they’ve (film / music biz).....” please use your own handle pherz.

but as i said in MY LAST POST drm has no place in the future of distribution. if fails on every level. the hacckers will crack it and your customers will hate it. after that BT works as a distribution platform.

I am the real jdbpogo .. I am anonymous! DRM will live on and on until the poor are broke as dusk. jk who cares what all you think you’re all wrong and won’t determine anything more than the average American voter determines a president. Sorry to end your pirating delusions of grandeur. And I corrected myself you fuck before you replied. So please go away and pirate your mom now. lol

pirate my mom? maybe after i’m done assfucking yours

wow you guys are idiots.  way to ruin a somewhat legit dialog

To the people who keep using the argument that these “pirates” are taking jobs from creative and hard working people I would just like to say; I am one of those creative and hard working people that work for a large studio. I can say with out any doubt that our jobs are secure. That is to say they are as secure as they were before online sharing. Thank you for the boast but please do not speak for us. We are doing just fine. No one I know or work with now or in the recent past have lost a gig or a job due to any going-ons on the internet. It is what some might call [hyperbole]. The only force that threatens my work and the work of thousands of others are those wishing to break up our unions. If you want to fight for us (and speak for us) then please focus your attention on the corporations and populations that want to union bust. Thank you.

I do apologize my auto corrector changed politicians to populations.