The first conviction of it's kind in Scotland, a 58 year old woman caught sharing 30,000+ music files after having her home raided by the cops in 2008, has been sentenced to 3 years probation and ordered to attend 'cognitive therapy'. http://www.wardblawg.com/scotslawbl...ted-of-file-sharing-as-acs-law-gets-off-hook/ If she stabbed someone instead, she would probably have got off a bit more lightly: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-11576385
This is why I can't understand why people use p2p software and torrents etc. That aside, the sentences they dole out are ridiculous. Someone can kill a kiddie in a drink-drive accident and be jailed for as little as 16 weeks, or brutally rape a young/middle-aged/old woman and be back out on the streets in less than 3 years, yet infringe some big corps copyright and copy some DVD's, Xbox 360 games or music CD's and they throw the book at you and inform the general populace that what you've done is a crime against humanity and is helping to fund Eastern European crime syndicates who in turn are responsible for funding international terrorism, people trafficking and child prostitution. It's all a fucking painfully unfunny joke. The law is fucked in the head :banghead:
Bit of a bump but I buy band's music when I see them for cheap in sales. For the most part I use torrents because I disagree with how most of the artists don't get the money they deserve. Given the chance I'll go see them live or buy their merch.
I understand what you're saying but my point was that with broadband speeds as they are and how cheap that providers like News Hosting and UseNetServer are, charging just $10 a month (£6.70 ish), why anyone would risk p2p and torrents over newsgroups is beyond me. No-one ever got a cease and desist letter after downloading DVD's from alt.binaries.boneless etc, nor have they been to court and been imprisoned or fined and had their PC and everything else confiscated after pulling down a few albums from one of the hundreds of music binary groups.
Ah I get your point now. Usenet is something I've been looking at for a while now. How are the speeds on them. I understand they're are a big increase from torrents but how much so?
Some people may be on Usenet, but I think Mediafire, Megaupload etc. have become the new choice for most people who download music...or anything else really. Why would anyone use P2P anymore after all the lawsuits and crap?
Newsgroups are as fast as your connection allows. Some providers throttle or traffic shape during busy times, usually between 5.00 pm and 11.00 pm, before and after that whatever your max d/l speed is that's what you'll pull down at. For example on a 10 MB line you can get a full DVD5 movie (4.35 GB) in about an hour, a 700 MB .avi takes about 10 minutes. Once you've decided which host to go for all you need is winrar, quickpar, Grabit (a free NG downloading program) or a cracked copy of NewsLeecher (again, a NG downloading program) and Bob's your uncle. Some hosts even offer free trials of between 24-72 hours to let you test them out and if you're with Virgin Media you get free newsgroup access but the list of available binary groups is miniscule compared to what you'll get from a dedicated host and retention (amount of time items are available for download) is a hell of a lot shorter. Some hosts hold files for over 1000 days as opposed to Virgin's retention which last time I checked about 4 or 5 years ago was 10 days. If I'm making it sound complicated it isn't, its a piece of piss. Google and YouTube can explain it all a hell of a lot better than me :nod:
Jdownloader and megaupload give me better than a MB a second. For everything else there's private torrent sites that give me roughly the same. Not sure why anyone would pay for any of this, in this day and age.
not really.......you pay for the speed and the access without relying on people seeding, its always there and alot faster than torrents etc
It's not stealing, it's copyright violation. They are NOT the same thing, but both ARE illegal in most places. Most people around the world feel copyright violation is okay, regardless of what the law says. In some countries, the law reflects the will of the people in that downloading is not illegal.
No, it's stealing. Let me explain my point of view: In real life I'm a content producer. I make movies. I invest my own money in the movies I make; and when someone purchases one of my DVDs or Blu-Ray disks I make money. When someone rents one of my films, I make money. When someone downloads a digital copy, I make money. This money not only pays for my living expenses, but it also pays for the next film to be made. Additionally, the actresses who appear in my films make a percentage from every copy sold. When someone rips one of my films and shares it with the world via P2P or MegaUpload or what-have-you; they are stealing money from me. Money I invested in a product. The time my crew, my talent, my marketing team, my distributor, and I put into the project is rendered worthless. Eventually, if enough people share my product for free, I won't be able to afford to make a product any more and then there will be no product to share. It doesn't matter if you make films, music, games or whatever... time, money, and effort went into that product. It is stealing.
As a producer of content yourself I see where you're coming from but for the most part the people who do opt for a pirate version aren't the kind of people who would have bought yours or anyone else's copyrighted material in the first place, be it a movie, a game, an album etc. If an individual is sufficiently interested in a product they will actively seek it out and pay real money for it. The age old argument about lost sales is a bit of a nonsense because if file 'X' wasn't in a newsgroup or on a torrent or ftp site you still wouldn't sell more units because your average Joe downloads on a whim. If he doesn't see it listed anywhere he invariably doesn't know about it so wouldn't have bought it anyway, ergo to state that revenue has been lost is a somewhat erroneous statement. There are exceptions to this obviously. You will always get a hardcore who never buy anything but for the most part these pale into insignificance compared to those who casually download just because it's there. Are these lost sales? Of course not, because they'd never have thought to buy it in the first place.
Just because you say it doesn't make it so. If someone has taken money out of your bank account then that's not piracy or copyright violation; that's fraud. It sucks that people download your stuff for free. I don't necessarily buy into the usual responses, "oh, they'd never have paid for it anyway" or "hey, they probably buy your stuff as well" or any other similarly subjective argument, they aren't terribly convincing and anyway they're besides the point. This is a simple terminological argument. You can argue that piracy is tantamount to theft but you can't say it is theft as that is simply inaccurate. (edit: no offence Consumed, I wasn't meaning to single out your arguments specifically. I should learn not to go to the shops half way through a post!)
I see piracy as stealing potential income. It's like sneaking into a movie. The reason you're doing it is because you want to enjoy the fruits of someone else's labor without having to pay the price for it. Even if someone discovers a title trough searching downloads... maybe they look at a picture of a cover someone posted, or screenshots and it piques their interest so they take a chance and download it. It's the same as if they were in a store and a cover caught their eye, they looked it over and decided to purchase it. That's why we pay big bucks to people who do package design. Like the story of the little red hen. People don't want to help you make the bread, but they'll sure as hell eat it for free. The fact is the matter is that the majority of people don't just randomly download things and hope that whatever it is is good. The don't download 5,000 music files and listen to them sorting out what they like and what they don't. They know so-and-so released a new album, or they like a certain song and they search for it. Same thing goes for pirated movies and games. People are looking for titles they want to enjoy without having to pay for the labor that went into the production. It's a fine way to say "thank you" to producers. I know that most people don't believe it, but it is slowly killing many industries.
If piracy alone puts you out of business, you didn't have a sound business model to begin with. What do you consider dead or threatened industries, out of curiosity?
Any digital entertainment. And while no industry has been killed off by piracy, it does make a substantial dent in sales.
I ''acquire'' with morals if such a thing is possible. If I go and buy a movie from a store I probably won't watch it straight away. If I don't watch it within a month that is my money gone as I can't then return it to most shops even with a receipt (some have a 30 day or even less returns policy) I download films first and I probably won't watch it for a while. But when I do watch it, if I don't like it, I haven't lost out on money so I just delete it - no hair off my balls. If I do like the money I'll search around for a place to get it brand new but cheap. I'll wait for sales. - no ebay so the money is going to the publisher or maker. All I do then is rip the dvd's and store them on my external and keep the disk and case mint in a box under my bed or whatever. tl'dr - given the chance if I download and like a film,game or Music CD - i'll buy it. Do you have an opinion on people making backups?
I see the internet as the radio of today. People listened to the radio for "free", perhaps even taping songs they liked, and when they heard something they liked, they went out and bought the album. The internet is often used the same way - people download a song or movie, and if they like it, they'll often go and buy the CD/DVD/BD. While disruptive to some extent, these new technologies (radio, cassette, VCR, CDR, DVDR, internet) always wind up improving the media market in the long run. It's better for society and the original content creators, if not the middle men. Middle men are not always necessary and need to change with the times... how many vinyl record makers are needed today? How many CD stampers will be needed tomorrow? Those are jobs I don't care about as they were NEVER going to be permanent. Trying to keep the middle men in the SAME job forever is as stupid as preserving chamber pots.
