"The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it." -- John Gilmore Might have been said already, haven't read the whole thread.
With piracy I find it an interesting middle ground between theft and plagiarism. It isn't necessarily theft in the sense that something is literally stolen (well in a sense, it still is stealing of sorts) and it isn't plagiarism because the copying done is for personal use. There needs to be a new definition of it in law tbh. To me (with loads of salt) it's incredibly disingenuous to apply current law to piracy. You simply can't as it falls right in between plagiarism and theft. The difficulty is that we can't necessarily trace the hurt back to anyone specifically and people aren't necessarily inclined to understand that there are parties who do get potentially harmed from it. Likewise, with people who do pirate, the majority of them tend to buy the things they pirate. I know this is the case with me. Personally I don't have an incredibly large amount of disposable income for electronic media, (I average about 5 video games a year and about 6-15 music albums a year, paltry. No cable service, in fact movies run about 4-5 a year. I spend more on books than I do on electronic media) this doesn't justify piracy, but it definitively helps me decide on good content. Hell I spend much more time reading the damn reviews of everything I buy because I spend money elsewhere. Yes I have pirated, but the thing is, I have also bought nearly everything I've pirated (the exception being the 2nd CoJ which was frankly utter toss). Outside of that, the only other thing I really pirate are old records that I have and want in FLAC. Surely that isn't too bad given the premium I've paid for the record? Individual habits aside there needs to be a more rational and open discussion about piracy. Equating it to theft while valid requires much discussion for the facilitation of punishment. Simply pigeonholing piracy as a form of theft without the discussion raises questions. That is not to say that there are people who are justified in Piracy, but the sheer fact that we do have high quality copies of particular content alone is reassuring for me. Regardless, as far as I'm concerned, there's a correlation between distribution methods and piracy. Game of Thrones is going to be the example here. How does one access it? By purchasing HBO. What's the problem? They pay for things they don't want as well (thank you cable company packages that are entirely irrelevant). Likewise there are limits imposed upon the consumers that are merely artificial and can be rectified but aren't simply because much thought hasn't been put into distributing it. Actually here's another one: Video games in other countries. Most video games outside the US and potentially europe are obscenely expensive. Why? Because it ignores a proportional exchange rate. Or that the publisher simply decides to not distribute the game there. While I do understand that it's very situational if not logical that a business would not sell their commodity to a place that does not offer much if any profit. It raises the question of how does one who wants to legitimately purchase something, acquire it in a place that does not sell it? Or rather sells it at an extreme premium? Well the old answer would be to just go to another country and buy it. Or simply not buy it at all. Now it's: To the torrents! Why? As far as I can see, it happens because it's easy. It's the path of least resistance. There is literally nothing stopping one from doing it outside of being a well institutionalized citizen. And if there are many obstacles in just simply obtaining said object (using is a different story, DRM is a discussion for another time) are there not 2 clear paths? To either ignore it and not obtain it (kudos to those people!) or to acquire it by other means? Think 1900s prohibition. I wonder how this will boil down..
It's called copyright infringement, many laws on the books cover it already, i.e., can't watch a movie with the neighbors, that's infringing, can't watch dvd bd at bars , that's infringing, and on, and on.... What you are doing isn't piracy. It's clearly allowed in US law for you, a purchaser of media, to back up said media regardless of what it is. Cassette, 8 track, 4 track, dvd, cd, bd and on doesn't matter, your backups are thier as to not wear out your original media. You cannot circumvent any technology that stops copying of said media, but you are allowed to back up said media and use the backups freely. Asinine I know. So, now you have your disc with copy protection that you cannot break by law, yet your allowed to back up your disc by law. What are you left to do? helzzzzz yea! download that sucker and have a digital backup!! YEEE HAAwww, but, but, but...do not, let me repeat, do not allow that digital copy your downloading to be uploaded at the same time! that is illegal. Every case in the US for copyright infringement, contrary to media reporting distortion, is for sharing or having copyrighted material in a shared folder. and not for downloading.
Haven't got the time right now to delve into the deep legal and moral arguments, but Ill mention this. In brief, I believe modern copyright laws are a huge barrier to creativity and development. Here's one example why: Imagine a poor student in an impoverished Indian village is trying to complete his stem cell biology thesis. He cannot afford a particular text on his subject, so instead he pirates it through a site like library.nu (*was* an online library of ebooks). Now then, even though his use is strictly non-commercial (done purely for learning and understanding), he is technically breaking IP laws and depriving the publisher of a potential profit by downloading a digital copy of that book. But what if that textbook helped him understand a key aspect of biology which thus sparked him to make a new discovery in stem cell research which leads to a cure of diabetes? The high price that publishing companies enforce means that vast amounts of resources are unaffordable to a great number of people who would otherwise benefit and contribute meaningfully to the sum of human knowledge if they had access to it. This example applies more effectively to the problem of international patenting laws which also restrict development and creativity. It means that some clever guy in Pakistan can't make a better drug because he can't get access to the drugs make-up due to the patent of a big pharma company in the States (or he can but has to pay royalties which he can't afford), which exploits the patent laws for its own profit, not for any greater good of society. Or alternatively, it means some wiz kid in the UK can't make Photoshop better because he can't access the code, which is protected by patent. On the other hand, what if you pirate because you don't agree with the existing copyright laws? What if you don't agree with the restrictive and ridiculous DRM systems which means that I can't burn the film I just bought through Zune to a DVD so that I can play it downstairs on the big TV instead of in my room? Instead I'm forced to watch it on my Xbox or pc, even though I'v paid for the product in one medium. Another point I want to discuss is this: it's been said in this thread that if you don't like the price of a product, don't pay for it, and certainly don't 'steal' it (make a digital copy for yourself, which potentially deprives the owner of profit). But the problem with this is that it presupposes two things: 1) that individuals or private companies have a right to charge whatever they want for the products they sell, and 2) that these products have come from a clear blue sky, completely developed without input (material and conceptual) from the public. I'd obviously challenge both those assumptions and will expand what I mean when I have more time.
I certainly can't argue with this typical example of a torrent user (the one in five billion straw man)... There are 70,000 ebooks available at no cost to your non-existant person in India in the library where I work alone. And that's just one, small private university. He can also take classes for free from Stanford online now, something he couldn't do back when the arcane and outdated laws were written and relavent. Your analogy then goes to assume that if everyone had free access to all materials, that all those materials would exist as they had when they were produced under a completely different set of circumstances. I have seen this discussion before. It is the new form and argument for socialism who's classic definition was "controlling the means of production" but since that has been proven to be fundamentally flawed, it has been adapted to "controlling the product of production". In both cases, it totally disregards the laws of economics regarding how people respond to incentives. This post hoc argument where conditions are changed once something is found to be desired and it's value is questioned completely ignores all the factors that established it's value.
Yep, I know this doesn't apply to most music/film/software piracy, but I don't doubt there's vast numbers of people in developing countries and in the West that can't access research and resources because of the high prices set by publishing companies. The reason why people pirate music/games/films/software is more to do with price and DRM.
I think that eddie just showed that they can. In fact, there is so much freely accessible scientific literature available on the Internet that it's impossible to keep track of it all. iTunes University alone is a gold mine. Said struggling student is being taught at a university, I presume? Through his student email/web account he can access any journal that his university has a subscription with --generally thousands. It really is a non-issue.
Well, I'v been to university and I know how difficult it can be to access certain books and resources without paying through the roof or waiting ages for the university to process a book request from another partnered library. Plus I prefer to have a book in ebook format (pdf or djvu), because I can search for the parts I want much more quickly. Even with access to various online libraries, they are not always up to date with the most relevant and recent studies. So it's not just about price here; it's about availability and convenience as well as price. Read this article if you want to understand where I'm coming from: The disappearing virtual library This quote from the article sums up the point I was making:
To take it one step further because I have first hand knowledge on this subject is that if this student could prove that he could produce results in such a field in such high demand, there is a strong likely hood that student could get a full scholarship at, minimum a mediocre university, at best a top university here in the States. The University near me has a large population of Chinese and Indian students who came from desperate circumstances but are truly gifted in certain areas of study. This ability to bring gifted students from around the world is driven by a process consisting of people who are compensated for their productivity in a wide range of facets. But now I'm taking it way off topic.
Mildly off topic, but for what it's worth, my university had things in ebook form, but they refused to lend more than five copies of any given ebook out at a time. It was, and may still be (I've not been there for two years or longer), the most ludicrous system I ever encountered. If it was because they gave you an ebook reader, I could understand, but no - It was time locked files you could only access on your login on a university machine, which were only really available for a few hours a day (The network was being overhauled, and there were time restrictions on computer usage, being limited numbers of them..). I understand they were planning to allow access through the uni student portal, but the time allowance would remain. Excuse the off topic!
If it gives you any hope, that is changing over the academic world. Restrictions are loosening up and there are legitimate means of working around those limitations. I have loaded several awesome books on my iPad by pulling the books in chunks of 3 pdf chapters and then rebuilding the book back into one document. It's laborious and, I admit absurd, but it's legitimate in terms of use. I don't think that it is off topic because it is indicative of how copyrighted material is being legitimately being made more and more available if you are willing to maximize use of what is properly available. e-Library collections deal with the same hurdles that game developers and movie distributors do, you have a huge number of individuals with different terms of use that they have to negotiate. But it is getting better and better.
Well that raises even more questions. (Btw, I knew the whole copyright infringement law aspect) What I guess I wanted to point out was that there isn't much education on the damn thing. All they say is copyright infringement is bad. Yet here's the hitch, if you cannot replicate something for profit, but they allow you to for your own use, is this not by definition a law that is vague and unclear at best? It brings up the question, if these backups are not being used as profit isn't it technically permissible? And while it's being distributed what's to say it's just backups? And here we have that ambiguity once again. If I turn off my uploads am I actually infringing on the law? Or am I just obtaining another backup? Mind you this is all a game of semantics but if what you assert is true (which there is validity in it) then all the lawmakers did not expect this to happen at all. As to copyright laws in general? My only issue is the ludicrous length of it. Reduce the damn thing to about 20 years. Or just award it to the best implementer (similar to how weapons are approved in the US). I'd at least find a bit more innovation with that method.
You might not have seen my post reacting to TPB's statement, so I'll respond to it again here: How is this censorship? Perhaps very fundamentally you could say it's censorship. The government is preventing your access to something which it doesn't want you to access. That does fit the bill. However, the situation changes when you consider that your access is being denied to prevent you from illegally obtaining copyright infringing material. Still censorship? If so, how does it differ from, say, child pornography being blocked? With no legal right to access something in the first place you can hardly call it censorship when it'd denied to you. Though again I'd agree that the blocking The Pirate Bay was an ill-informed decision. As TPB accurately stated the site itself does not spread copyright infringing material, it only links together people willing to share it.
Wtf... How is blocking a site that links to torrents of tv shows or movies the same as child pornography? What is with these ridiculous analogies on this thread. First off, there are many situations in which accessing TPB and downloading something linked there would *not* be copyright infringement, e.g. acquiring a backup of a DVD set you already own/acquiring free-to-air television/open source software/creative commons content etc. Secondly, even if there are links to material that potentially infringes copyright, it's not the government's or ISP's job to act on behalf of private companies, who have the legal option to fight TPB in the courts. Australia's ISP Internode just won a court battle against the Big Entertainment companies at the highest court in the country (which means it's not even subject to appeal anymore) that validated ISPs as not being responsible for what their users access. They are a carrier service, equivalent to the postal service. Any legal infringements are dealt with on a case-by-case basis in which the wronged party must go after the transgressor individually, not the entire infrastructure that's utilised. It's like saying road builders should be responsible for any accidents that occur due to driver error. This kind of daddy-government mentality really disgusts me, and often 'protect the children' is the first argument people use as hyperbolic rhetoric to justify this BS approach to the problems that are intrinsically a part of 'policing' the internet. CP is actually not dealt with effectively by internet filtering (as most of it is deep web/TOR P2P) - the most effective countermeasure against child pornography are the police teams that hunt down individual users and producers.
I think his point was that a site that links pirated material is not the same as child porn. The latter is censored because it is deemed prohibited material; the former is blocked because it is copyright protected. Of course it is not illegal to download the material if you already own a legal copy, but there is no way to check, is there? Moreover it is the government's job to enforce the law. It's why we have police and public prosecutors and stuff.
I'd argue that you've got your terms round the wrong way - child porn is often 'blocked' and TPB is 'censored', primarily because TPB facilitates access to information in a way that society deems useful or at the very least, a 'grey area', whereas child pornography is content that society deems absolutely harmful. It also depends of course, on how the law is enforced. Attacking internet infrastructure is a poor and inefficient way of enforcing the law, and in the case of Australia's high court decision in favour of Internode, even the government has realised this. Asserting you cannot be sure how the content downloaded from TPB is used (as backup etc) is in no way a justification for censoring the website; again, it is the daddy-government argument that takes away from individual liberty in exchange for perceived 'safety'. Everyone's likely heard of that famous Franklin quote...
No. Censorship is the suppression of speech or other public communication which may be considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or inconvenient to the general body of people as determined by a government, media outlet, or other controlling body. Censorship is all about the content, not the copyrights. This block is not about safety. Nobody is suggesting that your face will melt, your eyes catch fire and your children will end up crying over your smouldering corpse if you download a pirated movie. This is purely about legal protection of copyright. People cannot be trusted to be honest. It's why you lock your door at night, and only shop online with sites that have a secure transaction system. You wouldn't trust people to not take your money if they are not entitled to it --why should anyone else? And to all you students complaining about access to books and journals: dude up. I did my degrees in a time when there was no web, no Google Scholar. You searched for your literature in Citation Indexes: tomes like massive phonebooks, page by page. Any journals or books I wanted I had to borrow from the library, or request through inter-library loan, and copy on an old Xerox. I managed. You don't know how good you've got it.
+1 I think if I was studying now I'd find it so much easier to do research because teh interweb is so much better developed than it was back then and stuff is not only easier to access, it's also infinitely quicker. And regarding the subject at hand, is anybody aware (by virtue of the other thread, now closed) that this ISP-level block is a mahoosive fail-dot-com and it's basically media hype about absolutely nothing? Telegraph Headline yesterday: TPB right now, on Virgin broadband (with a secure URL) - fully searchable and not in the least bit "blocked"... I'm not trying to promote TPB... just making sure everybody knows what's actually happening here.
I suspect you typed "define: censorship" into Google as your phrasing verbatim copies one definition provided in that list, which is perfectly fine, but there are a variety of slightly differentiated meanings there. Nonetheless, I do agree to a large extent with that specific denotation, but I don't see how TPB doesn't fall under the category of 'public communication' or 'speech' that is determined 'inconvenient' to the government (primarily because lobbyist groups for Big Ent make it so). Censorship also carries the connotation of restricting potentially useful information (as it may be 'inconvenient', e.g. recreational drug information/euthanasia etc) - that's the sort of category I'd put TPB into. No need for straw man arguments ('access to books and journals... you don't know how good you've got it') based on personal anecdotes - many people have been in the exact same position of not having access to e-learning infrastructure, including myself, but I don't see how that is any justification for attacking freedom of knowledge, or free access to learning materials (which were the points originally brought up).
