What is Digg?98 Comments
- mulling, on 10/12/2007, -1/+40Is it immoral to check a book out of the library? Is it illegal to check a movie out of the library?
If you're not profiting from the distribution of material which you don't own copyrights for, you're not a pirate. That makes 'pirate party' a bit of a misnomer, since they aren't advocating redistribution of copyrighted material for profit.
If our country was serious about piracy they'd drop the bogus DRM pretenses and start gunning for the industrial piracy going on in China et al. They're not though, they're worried about macro-scale consumer behavior that's threatening their business models and that's what DMCA and DRM are all about: controlling you. Welcome to the police state, comrade. Do your duty and buy from the cartels. What's good for the cartels is good for America. - etnoy, on 10/12/2007, -6/+38Sorry, you are supposed to say "Arrrrrrrrrrrrr!" (i have too much spare time)
- mulling, on 10/12/2007, -2/+33I think it's ironic that the media cartels have locked up our culture in damn near-permanent copyright and then act surprised when people rise up and use the political process to set things straight.
- digitalbryan, on 10/12/2007, -5/+28I'm wearing an eye patch right now
- kozkos, on 10/12/2007, -5/+25Digital Piracy is the consumer's equivalent to outsourcing:
If companies are allowed to make more money by moving your job to a guy (earning $5 a day) at the other side of the globe, then (in my opnion) you are allowed to cut your cost by downloading/copying any movie/song.
BTW I haven't heard of any shortage of future artists. For the moment it's still considered profitable to become a star. - brandizzle, on 10/12/2007, -2/+21I think the idea is the artists should get it instead of the RIAA/MPAA. & that the music should mostly just be advertising for the shirts and concerts (like it pretty much is now). I think what they expect is free music & then all artists should tour and produce merchandise and get their money from that. But some bands don't tour. Are they just screwed?
Or that actors should get cuts of the movie merch and do sponsorships.
I have no idea how the directors/script writers/producers/etc are supposed to get paid. - Jugalator, on 10/12/2007, -1/+15"It goes beyond communism in stupidity. If people aren't paid for the work they do, why would they do it?"
They'd be paid through merchandise, concerts, etc. (this is what they say anyway) They look at shared music in the same way as songs on the radio serving to promote the artist.
They're also not looking to abolish copyrights, but to revise them to the modern digital world. - silenceHR, on 10/12/2007, -3/+16nobody is forcing industry into DRM, they want DRM so they can lock you down to use their shop, their player and so on. DRM isnt about copyright, its about control.
- lagnut, on 10/12/2007, -1/+14September 17
- kalleanka, on 10/12/2007, -1/+14Well you see, just one year ago it was legal to download music and movies in Sweden.
It's less than a year ago they introduced this law making it illegal to download copyrighted material.
(However, to share and/or distribute copyrighted stuff was illegal even before this law).
So Sweden differs quite a lot from USA when it comes how people look at piracy. The right to download movies and music has been taken away from us, and now we want it back.
In US, you never had this right in the first place, so for you it sounds strange that people are demanding the right to download copyrighted stuff. - silenceHR, on 10/12/2007, -3/+14What's hurting industry are ***** movies. I cant recall a major Hollywood movie i enjoyed watching in last 12 months, its all BS. There are many decent movies out there, but Hollywood is producing rubbish on enormous scale... and piracy is just a scapegoat here.
"Our movies dont suck, its damn piracy" ::roll eyes:: - Jugalator, on 10/12/2007, -2/+12"How can people actually be PRO-PIRACY in politics? I download gigs of copyrighted movies, but I don't go around acting like what I do should be made legal."
Well, one of the arguments of this party is that they think because a huge portion of the population does it, it should be made legal. If not, they'd criminalize a very large part of the population, and that is *not* the purpose of a law. - slantpass, on 10/12/2007, -3/+13Face it, piracy will definitely hurt the current entertainment industrial complex. It may destroy it. There's no reason to deny it. The question is, SO WHAT? I'm sorry for the "victims", but the world changes. Industries get obsoleted. Horse-pulled carriage makers, icebox makers, silent film actors-- they've all lost their livelihoods due to new technology. People's families went hungry. We feel sad for them, but the world moves on. If my line of work gets obsoleted, I will have to find a new job. I don't have the RIAA to try to rewrite laws for my sake, nor do I want it. You have to ask yourself, are we really losing that much if studio heads and label moguls lose the ability to make fortunes hand over fist? Will artists stop making their art if they can't make millions of dollars from overpriced profits, and if they do, did we really want their art in the first place? If movies like Armaggedon and Con Air don't get made, will humanity suffer? If Metallica can't make millions from overpriced CD's, they might actually have to make a living the old fashioned way-- PLAYING LIVE. Oh my gosh! Without copyright law, George Lucas would ONLY have made money from people GOING TO THEATERS. Hmm, maybe he would only have made ten million dollars instead of ten billion dollars. Boo hoo, cry me a river. It's time to face facts. Copyright law was a convenient tool for the last hundred years to create a multi billion dollar industry to suck consumer's money out of their pockets. File sharing, if completely legalized, will tear down that industry and create a new one - one that will probably be better because it will be more democratic. Life progresses, and society moves on.
- jer2eydevil88, on 10/12/2007, -3/+13Piracy may not be right because people need to be paid. But a copyright system that allows companies to extort thousands from dead people and grandmothers isn't right either.
Radical well thought out change is necessary to prevent this major change from damaging the economy on a global basis. I can say that without the dissemination of information between industries we as a civilization cannot develop as quickly. - rileyjt, on 10/12/2007, -2/+12To put it bluntly - the industry uses a poor business model. It costs so little to distribute a DVD across the internet that sites can cover the bandwidth costs via an advertisment. So how come paying $20 for a disc is my only way to purchase this movie legally? The movie companies force you to pay for something you don't want and don't need in order to do it legally instead of embracing a medium that has reduced distribution costs to nil.
I have no problem paying for a movie. I have problems paying for disc manufacturing, shipping it from asia to the US, paying the stock boys at Wal-mart to put it on the shelf, paying the clerks to check me out while I wait in line, etc. This business model is out dated and yet the movie industry insists on using the legal system to protect it. The industry's obsession with absolute control over every step of the process from creation to manufacturing to distribution is absurd and there is no reason for them to legally be granted the rights to that kind of monopoly at our expense. - etnoy, on 10/12/2007, -1/+10@br0ther
Actually, the amount of paying members in the Pirate Party right now exceeds the number of members in the Green Party, the smallest party in the Swedish parliament. Then take the fact that the Green Party has existed 10+ years, and the Pirate Party just since January, and the equation isn't as sure as you say it is.
And the number of members are currently soaring as well... http://www2.piratpartiet.se/partiet/medlemsstatistik
The party compared to other parties: http://www2.piratpartiet.se/storlek (The Green Party is "Miljöpartiet") - MacSuxWindozSux, on 10/12/2007, -3/+12A nation divided over piracy?
Hah! It doesn't matter where you live people like getting videos off the net. It would be nice if we weren't ripped off when buying films, thats why getting them free off the net at reduced quality is still way way better.
It's the same with music why pay to see Britney or Ashlee perform is all they're doing is dancing to their lip synched CD. Its a rippoff.
The only reason they are even pushing Blu-Ray and HD-DVD is to change the DRM scheme and insert locks, and privacy invading features into both the disks and disk players.
Whats this , if they want you cant see the picture on a non-certified content safe screen? Bullocks! If that happens to someone their first thought isnt go and buy a 3000 dollar TV, its break the DRM or flush the video.
Sweden is not divided on Piracy, they just have enough freedom from corruption, and corporation overlording, that they can protect the intrests of the people. Int the united States companies like, Exxon Mobile, GM, Paramount, Microsoft etc. donate enough people into power to call favors when they desire. - farm3r, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9"How can people actually be PRO-PIRACY in politics? I download gigs of copyrighted movies, but I don't go around acting like what I do should be made legal."
Why not? The point of having politicians is making laws, if you disagree with a particular group of laws, and you share this view with many you make a party and change it. - adml_shake, on 10/12/2007, -6/+13It's YAAARRRRR!!!
Damn get it right... - spyrochaete, on 10/12/2007, -3/+10If you're doing it for the money you are NOT an artist. Any true artist would be thrilled to have their work distributed on a worldwide scale.
I'm a DJ hobbyist and I give all my original and mixed music away for free. I might be peeved if I found out someone was selling my music as their own, but I'm absolutely thrilled when I find links or copies of my work on other people's websites or forums.
I think it's disgusting that I have to pay a levy on blank CDs. Why the ***** do I have to buy Celine Dion another therapy session every time I burn my own music to a disc? That's like putting a levy on automobiles to pay for drunk driving courses. There are non-infringing uses for blank recordable media and not everyone who uses them is a criminal.
I support piracy 100% but I hate that word. We are sharing our culture with our global peers. We are not removing something from a shelf while keelhauling ponytailed music execs with a broadsword and raping their mothers with the scabbard. The RIAA/CRIA/BPI are the true pirates for monopolizing the music industry and the law and imposing their morality on us by threat of jail and monetary penalty.
PIRATE EVERYTHING!!! P/H/A/C THE PLANET! - digitalbryan, on 10/12/2007, -3/+10When Netscape navigator was released it's licensing policy was basically if you can afford it please pay for it, if you can't afford it use it anyway. What a beautiful concept.
- scstraus, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7The problem with today's media cartels is that most of the money they make don't go back to the artist at all anyway. Less than 1% of your average music purchase gets back to the artist. The record labels squash creativity and create the "same same" pop of today. Why do you think there was so much good music in the 60s, early 70s? The cartels hadn't gained full control yet. We would have far more choice and freedom in our music buying if the record labels didn't exist and we could simply buy online from the artists.
Until that is possible I will pirate ALL my music, simply to piss off the record cartels. Any artist that goes independant and I can buy from them, I will buy ALL my music from them. It's time for the artists to ditch the record companies and go directly to iTunes. ***** the RIAA! - mtnsoccerguy, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8Does anyone know when Sweden has elections? I want to follow this. If it said in the article, I'm sorry. But I'm tired.
- UberMattMan, on 10/12/2007, -3/+9Piracy is just a way for consumers to let the companies know what they want, but the companies don't want to listen. I would use Microsoft's URGE music service in a heartbeat if it wasn't for that dammed DRM. That's why I pirate music, D-R-f^#king-M. iTunes might be the biggest download service, but from the people I know, 90% of the music they listen to is good old, DRM free mp3's (from ripped cd's, borrowed cd's from the library or friends, limewire, etc).
- dacheetah, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7As carpespasm said, the reason this argument makes sense where the stealing expensive clothes one doesn't, is because there is no loss involved. If I steal an expensive item of clothing I otherwise couldn't afford, and wouldn't pay for, the store is now missing an expensive item of clothing. This is stealing, which is illegal, and in most cases immoral. If I steal a DVD from a shop, once again that I couldn't afford or wouldn't pay for, then once again, the shop is missing merchandise, and has to buy more. If I instead go home, and download the movie, that I would not pay for, there is no loss, no-one is missing merchandise, the only thing that someone else has to cover the cost of is the bandwidth of the computer hosting the information, and with p2p software, this is happily donated to others in the same situation. If you wouldn't pay for it if you couldn't pirate it, then there is no loss, and it it not theft in any way shape or form. If you WOULD pay for it, but pirate it instead, the moral implications are different, in that the shop you would buy it from, as anyone who gets royalties etc, are effectively losing money, but even that is technically not stealing, it's just copyright infringement.
Personally I wholeheartedly approve of the pirating of software that you otherwise would be unable to use, be it far to expensive (i.e. Photoshop) or not worth the money they are selling the product for. (I could name some BAD BAD movies, but I'll leave that to your imagination, I'm sure you can think of a movie you wanted to see once, and be it before or after watching it decide it is certainly not worth paying even a fraction of the retail price for.)
/rant - slantpass, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6Sorry dude. I feel for people who lose their jobs. And yes, a lot of little people would be unemployed by full legalized filesharing, there's no denying it. But millions of people in thousands of industries have lost their jobs due to technological advances. What makes you, in the entertainment industry, so special? What puts the "entertainment janitor" above the "vacuum tube janitor" or the "film camera janitor"? The only difference with you guys is, you have a monolithic industry association fighting to turn back time and halt progress for you. Meanwhile, the rest of us, when society changes, we adapt and learn new things. Yes it's bitter, but must realize and accept that the world is advancing for the better. I was in the aerospace industry, but with the end of the cold war and concentration on terrestrial technology instead of outer space, I had to make my way to electronics and medical devices. Sorry, but your "argument", which unfortunately the RIAA and friends have been using nonstop to drive their PR compaign, is simply wrong and frankly insulting to all the rest of us.
- carpespasm, on 10/12/2007, -3/+8his point is that he's getting to watch the movie/ listen to the music when he would otherwise be unable to. it's not a lost sale to the mpaa when he downloads a movie he couldn't have bought. it's not a lost sale to them when he watches it over broadcast tv either. if he sees it and really likes it, he might save up to purchase the movie when he would have not bothered to buy and watch the movie.
- UberMattMan, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7From the very end of the acticle:
"It's not the problem of the pirates, he tells me later, to figure out how to compensate artists or encourage invention away from the current intellectual property system -- someone else will figure that out. Their job is just to tear down the flawed system that exists, to force the hand of society to make something better." - BaldMonkey, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7Then how come most studies show that file sharing has low or no negative effect on the sales. Some studies even show that filesharing has the opposite effect, that it increases.
I know that I have found artist and movies through my filesharing that I would never heard or seen otherwise. And my CD and DVD collections are constantly increasing.
These are some of the articles and reports that I've found and read on the subject. Please show me some that proves that file sharing is hurting the media industries, because until some one proves it I'm not buying it.
http://www.unc.edu/~cigar/papers/FileSharing_March2004.pdf
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A34300-2004Mar29?language=printer
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-898813.html
http://w1.nada.kth.se/media/Research/MusicLessons/Reports/MusicLessons-DL5.pdf
http://w1.nada.kth.se/media/Research/MusicLessons/Reports/MusicLessons-DL4.pdf - MrMxyzptlk, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6Hollywood could save itself a lot of cash if they started refusing to pay multi-million dollar salaries to actors who don't deserve it *cough*Tom Cruise*cough* and went with lesser known and more talented performers. And I bet box offices would go up if they came up with some original, interesting screenplays instead of remaking the same crap over and over again.
I'm not a fan of watching movies for the first time through a lousy camcorder rip, but if I've already paid my ticket price once or twice and want to watch a favorite scene without waiting several months for the DVD, I'm not going to feel terribly guilty about it. Nearly every single time I've downloaded a recent release, I end up buying the DVD for the better video quality, 5.1 sound, and special features down the road.
ABC and Cartoon Network (through Adult Swim's site) have the right idea when it comes to TV shows. Offer them online for free, throw in a few commercials, and you've got a much more reliable way to determine the popularity of your programming instead of depending on the Nielsen ratings. - Alchemeron, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5But progress has to be accommodated anyway, says Kaarto. "You have to change the map, not the world."
Excellent article. - Furioshonen, on 10/12/2007, -5/+9Pro-Piracy seems to be a bad name, shouldn't it be Pro-Freedom of Information, or Pro-Sharing instead? It seems to me that under the Law, File "Piracy" is neither theft nor Copyright infringement. A theft is defined as claiming someone property for your own, which results in the original owner being deprived of property, which copy or sharing files is not. On the other hand, Copy Right infringement, happens when copy written material is sold without consent of the author. If I allow you to copy my stuff without charging you for it, under the law, it's legit. Which is why the record companies haven't brought any copyright arguments before the supreme court. They would lose, like they did back when VHS was a big controversy because of the copying features in those.
- 15thPD, on 10/12/2007, -10/+14I'm with jarland on this one. I pirate A LOT of movies and music, simply because I couldn't afford it otherwise. Without pirating these movies, I would never see them. Why should I miss out on them simply becauseI don't make as much money as some people do?
The only way piracy could be called stealing, is if I could actually buy these things. I'm not stealing, just borrowing. I'll pirate a movie, watch it, and most likely delete it the next day. - Osjpr, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Ok, there are a lot of lemmings here bleating about the evils of piracy as if it is fine the current situation with RIAA and the MPAA suing everyone, calling their customers thieves on a regular basis and not adapting to changes in the entertainment marketplace. There are too many, "Yeah, but" people who resist because they're jealous of empowering solutions.
This party will NOT cause an armageddon. Get over it. - Cyberdactyl, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3"Efforts to sink the word's largest BitTorrent tracker have backfired into political scandal, and spurred even more downloading."
Put that in your pipe and smoke you RIAA music industry mafia knucklebusters. - coolmojito, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I love the concept of a political party that promotes file sharing. Given the immense power of the MPAA and RIAA, we need balance.
- BaldMonkey, on 10/12/2007, -3/+6So if the movie industry is doing so bad and no one goes to the movies anymore, how come Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest was able to break the fudging box office record.
- h0kiez, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4"Other diggers are claiming that artists would make money off of tshirts, etc"
They'd make money from touring, not T-shirts...big difference. Most big artists can make six figures in a single night on tour while they'd be lucky to make a million or two from a multi-platinum album.
" Artists need the corporations because they couldn't distribute the content on their own. With the Internet, content can be distributed with very little cost, but it is more difficult to become popular without corporation support, and it is difficult to get rich quick."
I think that may not be the case anymore. There are already several examples of bands that are where they are because of the internet, not the RIAA. I'm not sure where things would end up if all this material were "free", but I'm interested to find out. Hey, maybe we'd end up with more music from people that wrote and performed it just for the music, not for the money. That could be quite a good thing. - FzArEkTaH, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I read through most of the comments, I myself am pro pirate (arrrrg!) - and some of the points you guys make are amazing! Why isn't there something like this in the USA? I'll GLADLY be a paid member of that political party - and look at digg - and other sites similar - if someone could organize this - it would be easy to reach the demographic you want. I'm all for it sign me up!
- Jugalator, on 10/12/2007, -3/+5"Pro-Piracy seems to be a bad name, shouldn't it be Pro-Freedom of Information, or Pro-Sharing instead?"
It's only a bad name to those looking at piracy as bad :-) Seriously, what the party is trying to do is to make the word less negatively loaded. Something that was done with "gay" for example, which is now not as loaded anymore. Well, at least in Sweden. They picked this word because that's what most people recognize it by, and they want to reduce it as a word useful to attack pirates with. - losvedir, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Absolutely. I wish I could mod you up many times and had a few line breaks to your comment.
The RIAA/MPAA industries are becoming (already are?) obsolete. I don't want my government jamming through laws (e.g. DMCA) to protect a dying industry just because that dying industry is tossing in tons of money to the legislators. - slantpass, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Yeah, unfortuntaely in the history of this debate there are a lot of "halfway" arguments that turn out to be contradictory, and the RIAA, MPAA, etc love this. I think statements like "I like downloading, but I understand artists need to be protected", and "Piracy isn't really illegal" and "The industry isn't really getting hurt" are well meant, but just confuse the issue.
To be consistent and to clearly see the benefits to society, you have to face some "radical" facts, facts that people in Sweden seem to be getting enlightened about. I'm hoping that the US will eventually realize these too:
(1) Copyrights do not protect Art, they protect the ability of Distribution corporations and a few artists to make obscene riches instead of small riches. True artists will make art no matter what, and there will always be a way to make a decent living-- just not the unfathomable wealth current laws allow them now. And on the programming side-- good, complex software that humans need will still get written whether Microsoft can make a billion or not, and it'll be more robust and cheaper.
(2) Let's just admit it, pirating is illegal-- but not because it is the moral equivalent of stealing, rather because it breaks current, outmoded, arbitrary copyright laws. Copyright laws that have protected Distribution Monopolies for a century. Everyone intuitively knows that manipulating publicly available data in the privacy of your own home has nothing to do with stealing, no matter how much Metallica tries to word it that way.
(3) Make no mistake, as with all industries facing change or obsolescence, the CURRENT Industry would be severely hurt by legalized file sharing. Guess what- that's life. A lot of little, hardworking people will suffer -- just like thousands of other industries where people have lost their jobs and society has moved on. One industry should not be regarded as special and allowed to barricade technological innovations that will benefit the rest of society. The innovation here is distribution-- we can now distribute information much more efficiently and cheaply. This benefits people. In place of the old industry a new, better industry will emerge- one in which the general public decides what gets distributed, not a few moguls in their penthouses.
Unfortuntaely, the fight against the Industry is huge, because it encompasses all information corporations. But I'm hopeful in the power of internet enlightenment. - johneffort, on 06/06/2008, -1/+3That's a very interesting view.
I tend to agree with it, though I think it will take years to see this happen. - williamdyer, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2The Pirate Party is named that for a reason. To throw that word back in the faces of the industry lobbyists.
- williamdyer, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Calling content sharing "piracy" was a bit of propaganda by the RIAA/MPAA. Naming your political party "Pirate" is just sticking your thumb in their eye, and they deserve it.
- baskus, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Look at it this way.
It's easier to download a movie illegally than to buy it. That's an example of an industry that doesn't want to change. They just want to continue the same old way with their sucky business model.
If they had any brains they would make their movie/tv-shows available cheap on their websites, then someone might buy it.
It's all their own fault. - digitaldivider, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4the last time I illegally downloaded a program, was well, yesterday (I needed a copy of spinrite) I don't use torrenting to download tons of illegal content daily, I mainly use it to download fansubbed anime that takes forever to make it to these shores, and costs an arm and a leg for horrible subbing and voice acting once it does make it over here.
- slantpass, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4Great comment. Art that is driven by money is at best hit or miss. For every U2 there's a Vanilla Ice. For every Apocalypse Now there's an Armageddon. A world where artists make art for the sake of art, not money (what a concept!) might actually be cool. But is it even sure that something like Lord of the Rings would never get made? The unthinkably vast profits have completely twisted our points of view. Let's look at that a moment. It cost, what, $300 million to make the trilogy. The 3 movies made, according to imdb, about $2.9 billion in the theaters. That's before all the DVD, toy, and paraphernalia sales. Now assume file sharing wipes out all DVD sales, and say 75% of moviegoers don't go because they would rather wait for the "free online version" on their little laptops (which of course is ridiculous because the theater going experience is still important, but being conservative...). Let's see-- Peter Jackson and New Line still make $325 million in PROFIT. Now granted it's only a cool 300 million instead of an obscene 3 billion, but I think movies like that still get made. Plus, you can't bitorrent the Legolas action figures, there's still plenty of other cash cows around. Bottom line is, art will survive whether the obscene profits are there or not, and the art that comes out may be a lot better than you think.
- donkeydigg, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3I'm sorry, I have to agree with BaldMonkey. I can't see how pirating hurts the movie industry. Honestly, when you see how much stinking money they usually make in the first few days after a movie comes out in the theaters alone, DVD sales are just a supplement to the income they've already made from the box office, advertising partnerships, merchandise sales, etc.
The same goes for TV shows. Remember the day when their only income was from advertising? That was before they started bringing their series out on DVD, which is just a supplement to their income. If they don't make enough money from ads, how did they survive back then? The ones who produce those shows get paid money from the advertisers whether people watch it on tv or download it from the internet, unless you want to show me statistics proving that piracy hurts Nielsen ratings, because that's what it's all about, folks.
[If the movie industry is so worried about the bottom line, why not consider paying the actors a little less.] Oops, did I actually say that out loud?
@rm999
I disagree completely that free music would result in bad music. Take a look at the bands who are now giving away their music for free. Look at all the people on macjams.com or podsafe music network (http://music.podshow.com) who don't make a penny off of their music. Most of it isn't as good as what you'd find in your local music store on cd, but hey some of it's pretty good. - williamdyer, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Hear hear!
Before the phonograph and film projector, there was no market for mass reproduced performances. With the Internet making copying so easy, maybe the time for that market's existence has passed.
There is no law that says a market must exist forever. Making criminals out of common people exhibiting normal behavior is no way to run a society. -
Show 51 - 95 of 95 discussions
Digg is coming to a city (and computer) near you! Check out all the details on our 
© Digg Inc. 2009
— Content created and posted by Digg users is