8 ms·

As an American, I wish we would stop doing this. It isn't effective, and it's a waste of time/resources that could be better spent elsewhere. I'd even argue th

As an American, I wish we would stop doing this. It isn't effective, and it's a waste of time/resources that could be better spent elsewhere. I'd even argue that its counter-effective to progress. Instead of punishing people for making more efficient systems, we should reward them, and try to integrate.

tn13 10y ago
Well, Americans have been saying that about drug war, civil forfeiture, surveillance and many others things for a long long time.
- cdumler 10y ago
  Except that civil forfeiture is extremely profitable enterprise [1]. [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/11/23/cops-took-more-stuff-from-people-than-burglars-did-last-year/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/11/23/cops-...
  - mthoms 10y ago
    So is the drug war. It all depends on where you're standing.
    - dmix 10y ago
      Prisons, lawyers, judges, social workers running drug rehab programs, feds (DEA, FBI), local police, defense industry selling helicopters, airplanes, surveillance technology, etc, etc. An unthinkable amount of money has been spent and made from the drug war for highly questionable ROI to the public. What type of reduction in police work would take place if the drug war was ended today? 20%? 30%? The war on drugs is a job machine. DEA agents fly around like international playboys from the books I've read. Plus international governments get tons of money from the US to run their own interdiction programs. There has to be some level of influence to keep the 'war' going from these perverse incentives.
      - antisthenes 10y ago
        > highly questionable ROI to the public Only if you exclude people working for the public sector from you know, the public. Those things create jobs for voting constituents. That's the main ROI here. Reduction in crime, drug use and increased security are just beneficial, but not necessary side effects of these initiatives.
        dmix 10y ago
        Creating jobs for creating jobs sake is such a terrible justification. Especially because in this scenario (like many others) it's not a controlled economic stimulus but an ongoing money drain. Milton Friedman is turning in his grave seeing this idea become mainstream. These are highly skilled people too: lawyers, judges, and highly technical law enforcement who could be working on dealing with real crimes or protecting honest hardworking citizens. Not futile show trials to appease the copyright industry.
  - redblacktree 10y ago
    For some. Where's my cut?
    - awqrre 10y ago
      Can't civilians exercise their right to seize anyone's cash?
      - phire 10y ago
        Sure, Just like "Citizen's arrest" is a thing, I'm positive "Citizen's civil forfeiture" is too.
        simplemath 10y ago
        Ask the Bundy Clan about that
  - tn13 10y ago
    Government in general a profitable venture for those in government. You have to produce nothing, please no one and you get to decide how much money is your fair share of what others have worked hard to earn.
    - analognoise 10y ago
      So did you make the roads you drove on to work? Impressive. How about the fire, police, schools, environmental protections, consumer protections, and court system? How big is the military defending your patch of land? I admit there are problems, but I'm always amazed when people say the government doesn't do anything, then take a car to work on public roads, listen to the radio (FCC), eat food (FDA), etc.
      - joering2 10y ago
        but whats your point?? he did make those roads... he paid taxes in gas, insurance, purchase of a car tax, license plate tax... all that do indeed sponsor roads he drives on! as of military defending his patch of land, hard to argue. Africa is much bigger than USA -- how much they spent as a continent on defense? Bet 1000th of what US does. Other than that, he might choose to protect his own land with the second Amendment and keep military out of it, no?
        CaptSpify 10y ago
        Sure he sponsored the roads, but the government implemented those roads. Planning, buying, organizing, maintaining, etc are all part of the work that the government does.
        joering2 10y ago
        I still don't get it. Who do you think paid for planning, buying, organizing and the cost of maintaining of all that??
        10y ago
- joering2 10y ago
  ... and its important to say, as experience shows, at this point its sadly irrelevant what average americans say. while OP is right -- this doesn't seem to serve majority, the truth is that the system is rigged and this supposed to serve a few multinational corporations that feel their profits are severely cut due to copyright infringement, meanwhile posting record earnings. it is still mind-boggling to me that this non-US human being doing allegedly non-violent crime will probably end up serving 25 years in american prison (wire fraud is a magic word in LE indictments) for a bunch of bits being configured the way to organize in magnet links that sharing of - as far as I know, similarly to URLs, had been found in courts around the world as a non-infringing act.
  - 2muchcoffeeman 10y ago
    > the truth is that the system is rigged and this supposed to serve a few > multinational corporations that feel their profits are severely cut due > to copyright infringement, meanwhile posting record earnings. Ignore that the system is rigged for the moment. I think it is safe to say these companies really like making more money. I have always wondered why then, they spend so much effort enforcing copyright laws rather than trying alternative methods to solve the problem and make more money. E.g I know a lot of people who have some unblocking service and Netflix. Now they could increase prices for Netflix, so we wouldn't need the unblocking, but that's not on the cards. They would rather spend their efforts blocking me. Is this purely to satisfy contractual obligations? I'd assume that any existing contracts must be in place for such a long time that making changes can't be done for quite a few years into the future and there is no realistic way to amend existing contracts. The contracts would have to cover new productions too. Otherwise, this whole thing makes no sense to me. They appear to be giving up revenue, for no benefit to themselves.
    - chongli 10y ago
      Contracts with regional exclusivity give the content producers something a subscription model never will: a lump sum of risk free, up-front cash. People calling for global Netflix kumba ya with all content available are simply asking for producers to take a haircut.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
biot 10y ago
A person in the US who, for example, wants to watch all but the latest season of Game of Thrones can go to iTunes and, within seconds, purchase and start watching. And it will be in better quality than the torrent which was ripped off some TV broadcast and re-compressed. iTunes is available for both Windows and Mac (plus various iOS) and is super simple to use. And the one purchase lets you either stream or download to any of your devices and watch whenever you want. The very latest content does get artificially restricted due to various business reasons (licensing deals, etc.) and I suspect that will change over time to go to an instant-release model. Ditto for fewer geo restrictions. We're starting to see these changes more and more. For music, there are far more options available: Spotify, Apple Music, Google Play Music, etc. where one low monthly fee lets you play almost anything you want. However, despite all this incredible ease for lots of different media, people still want content for free. Maybe the solution is to combine enforcement with an educational campaign so that people are aware of the myriad legal options available to them.
- nikdaheratik 10y ago
  As an American living in Australia, I'd say your perspective is kind of skewed by the American market. A large number of torrenters aren't cheapskates or thieves but are from outside the U.S. and unable to even get ahold of this stuff due to the way licensing overseas works. Or if they do, it's at 1.5x-2.5x the price. We have a 21st century distribution model tied to a mid-20th century legal framework and business model. It's hard to say what is fair in every case. What I feel is not fair is throwing the book at all of these site owners, especially when the laws are written in the U.S. but are somehow stretched to where they apply to people who never set foot there. In 5-10 years, they could still be in jail while technology remakes itself to the point where either distribution and payment has finally started working gain, or torrenting has gotten to the point where it's nearly impossible to trace the activity to any one person. Neither option seems unlikely, and punishing people now for something that doesn't hurt anyone too much does not seem like it's worth it.
  - blowski 10y ago
    I'll give some more examples of use cases where the torrent system serves users better than the legal distribution, but has nothing to do with money. My wife is Brazilian and I'm British, so we're trying to bring our son up as bilingual. Trying to find legally distributed mainstream kids films dubbed in Portuguese is incredibly hard. Sure, you can buy them in Brazil... and then they don't play on hardware in the UK. Neither Netflix nor Amazon Prime have them. Meanwhile, a quick search on a torrent download site gives me access to hundreds of mainstream films dubbed in Portuguese. Torrents allow me to watch anything, anywhere, with minimal hardware. I don't need to buy DVDs or DVD players. I don't have to work out which subscription I need to use to watch the latest episode of a program. I have downloaded torrents for which I already own the Blu-ray DVD, but it's in a box somewhere and I can't be bothered to find it. So yeah, there are lots more use cases for torrents than just wanting to be a cheapskate.
agumonkey 10y ago
Uber did develop a more efficient system by stepping on legal lines and gray areas. They did have troubles after a while but not in the same way. Somehow network distribution has no 'economic' values to the eyes of authorities. I'd love to see some stats, in my mind p2p sharing wasn't growing, even going down Compared to the 2000-2010 era since people have other means to share and content (spotify, soundcloud, ...) and the novelty has faded. I do profit from it from time to time to reach for very old clips, lives or albums that you cant find. It doesnt really hurt business if they dont sell it.
- swiley 10y ago
  Spotify actually does use peer to peer distribution although it's not open source.
  - danr4 10y ago
    I believe they stopped p2p distribution [1] [1] https://torrentfreak.com/spotify-starts-shutting-down-its-massive-p2p-network-140416/ https://torrentfreak.com/spotify-starts-shutting-down-its-ma...
  - JelteF 10y ago
    They don't anymore [1]. CDNs simply got too cheap to have a warrant a more complicated setup, that did not work on all their clients. [1]: https://techcrunch.com/2014/04/17/spotify-removes-peer-to-peer-technology-from-its-desktop-client/ https://techcrunch.com/2014/04/17/spotify-removes-peer-to-pe...
99127912 10y ago
Indeed, we should. Comrade Page, comrade Brin, I'd like to have the Google software stack. IP rights are an outdated concept and the collective has decided that Google's stack belongs to the people. Besides, everything is just bits! If you represent the whole monorepo as a single integer, denying people access to it would be akin to patenting a natural number!
- malka 10y ago
  There are indeeed illegal numbers
  - analognoise 10y ago
    Yes, but only with context. The numbers by themselves are of course just numbers.
- Shivetya 10y ago
  you could say that from the actions that occur in France if not the EU that is how they view it across the ocean. Become the best search engine only to be told you cannot favor your own services, if that is not an indirect declaration you are now a public service I am not sure what would be
  - jobigoud 10y ago
    It's not public service, it's regulation? You can do what you want as long as you conform to certain rules. For example we have private electricity providers, but the prices are regulated and capped. Private companies can't just do whatever they want when it concerns things we consider to be people's fundamental resources.
- 912831921 10y ago
  As always, the freeloaders are flagging the thread whenever too many pro-copyright comments appear.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
zouhair 10y ago
Effectiveness has nothing to do with it. America is now just a simple goon to its corporations.
mSparks 10y ago
am i the only one to walk away from this story thinking there must be a better way to handle large transactions than banks and cryptocurrencies.
- Segfaulter 10y ago
  Gold and diamonds?
  - mSparks 10y ago
    also not without its problems. but yes. something like: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-gold https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-gold outside of the US. seems plausible.
jamaicahest 10y ago
Are you actually suggesting US companies compete on a free and open market, with consumers deciding which services and products deserve to survive based on the quality and price of the service/product? Then they might risk failing as a company just because consumers didn't like what they had to sell. Well I never! /sarcasm
HoopleHead 10y ago
>>>As an American, I wish we would stop doing this... You can't really blame America. They've decided their jurisdiction extends to the entire planet. And, rather, than argue the point, the rest of the world just bends over and adopts the position. When faced with such supine sycophancy, why would America not keep acting this way? I have utter contempt for Poland on this [and similar] case/s. What a contemptible lick-spittle, a once fiercely independent nation has become!
- CaptSpify 10y ago
  That sounds a lot like victim blaming. "They never said no, so what we did was totally fine!" Yes, other countries should say no to us more, but that doesn't absolve us for being a jerk.

tn13 10y ago

Well, Americans have been saying that about drug war, civil forfeiture, surveillance and many others things for a long long time.

cdumler 10y ago
Except that civil forfeiture is extremely profitable enterprise [1]. [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/11/23/cops-took-more-stuff-from-people-than-burglars-did-last-year/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/11/23/cops-...
- mthoms 10y ago
  So is the drug war. It all depends on where you're standing.
  - dmix 10y ago
    Prisons, lawyers, judges, social workers running drug rehab programs, feds (DEA, FBI), local police, defense industry selling helicopters, airplanes, surveillance technology, etc, etc. An unthinkable amount of money has been spent and made from the drug war for highly questionable ROI to the public. What type of reduction in police work would take place if the drug war was ended today? 20%? 30%? The war on drugs is a job machine. DEA agents fly around like international playboys from the books I've read. Plus international governments get tons of money from the US to run their own interdiction programs. There has to be some level of influence to keep the 'war' going from these perverse incentives.
    - antisthenes 10y ago
      > highly questionable ROI to the public Only if you exclude people working for the public sector from you know, the public. Those things create jobs for voting constituents. That's the main ROI here. Reduction in crime, drug use and increased security are just beneficial, but not necessary side effects of these initiatives.
      - dmix 10y ago
        Creating jobs for creating jobs sake is such a terrible justification. Especially because in this scenario (like many others) it's not a controlled economic stimulus but an ongoing money drain. Milton Friedman is turning in his grave seeing this idea become mainstream. These are highly skilled people too: lawyers, judges, and highly technical law enforcement who could be working on dealing with real crimes or protecting honest hardworking citizens. Not futile show trials to appease the copyright industry.
- redblacktree 10y ago
  For some. Where's my cut?
  - awqrre 10y ago
    Can't civilians exercise their right to seize anyone's cash?
    - phire 10y ago
      Sure, Just like "Citizen's arrest" is a thing, I'm positive "Citizen's civil forfeiture" is too.
      - simplemath 10y ago
        Ask the Bundy Clan about that
- tn13 10y ago
  Government in general a profitable venture for those in government. You have to produce nothing, please no one and you get to decide how much money is your fair share of what others have worked hard to earn.
  - analognoise 10y ago
    So did you make the roads you drove on to work? Impressive. How about the fire, police, schools, environmental protections, consumer protections, and court system? How big is the military defending your patch of land? I admit there are problems, but I'm always amazed when people say the government doesn't do anything, then take a car to work on public roads, listen to the radio (FCC), eat food (FDA), etc.
    - joering2 10y ago
      but whats your point?? he did make those roads... he paid taxes in gas, insurance, purchase of a car tax, license plate tax... all that do indeed sponsor roads he drives on! as of military defending his patch of land, hard to argue. Africa is much bigger than USA -- how much they spent as a continent on defense? Bet 1000th of what US does. Other than that, he might choose to protect his own land with the second Amendment and keep military out of it, no?
      - CaptSpify 10y ago
        Sure he sponsored the roads, but the government implemented those roads. Planning, buying, organizing, maintaining, etc are all part of the work that the government does.
        joering2 10y ago
        I still don't get it. Who do you think paid for planning, buying, organizing and the cost of maintaining of all that??
        10y ago
joering2 10y ago
... and its important to say, as experience shows, at this point its sadly irrelevant what average americans say. while OP is right -- this doesn't seem to serve majority, the truth is that the system is rigged and this supposed to serve a few multinational corporations that feel their profits are severely cut due to copyright infringement, meanwhile posting record earnings. it is still mind-boggling to me that this non-US human being doing allegedly non-violent crime will probably end up serving 25 years in american prison (wire fraud is a magic word in LE indictments) for a bunch of bits being configured the way to organize in magnet links that sharing of - as far as I know, similarly to URLs, had been found in courts around the world as a non-infringing act.
- 2muchcoffeeman 10y ago
  > the truth is that the system is rigged and this supposed to serve a few > multinational corporations that feel their profits are severely cut due > to copyright infringement, meanwhile posting record earnings. Ignore that the system is rigged for the moment. I think it is safe to say these companies really like making more money. I have always wondered why then, they spend so much effort enforcing copyright laws rather than trying alternative methods to solve the problem and make more money. E.g I know a lot of people who have some unblocking service and Netflix. Now they could increase prices for Netflix, so we wouldn't need the unblocking, but that's not on the cards. They would rather spend their efforts blocking me. Is this purely to satisfy contractual obligations? I'd assume that any existing contracts must be in place for such a long time that making changes can't be done for quite a few years into the future and there is no realistic way to amend existing contracts. The contracts would have to cover new productions too. Otherwise, this whole thing makes no sense to me. They appear to be giving up revenue, for no benefit to themselves.
  - chongli 10y ago
    Contracts with regional exclusivity give the content producers something a subscription model never will: a lump sum of risk free, up-front cash. People calling for global Netflix kumba ya with all content available are simply asking for producers to take a haircut.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

biot 10y ago

A person in the US who, for example, wants to watch all but the latest season of Game of Thrones can go to iTunes and, within seconds, purchase and start watching. And it will be in better quality than the torrent which was ripped off some TV broadcast and re-compressed. iTunes is available for both Windows and Mac (plus various iOS) and is super simple to use. And the one purchase lets you either stream or download to any of your devices and watch whenever you want. The very latest content does get artificially restricted due to various business reasons (licensing deals, etc.) and I suspect that will change over time to go to an instant-release model. Ditto for fewer geo restrictions. We're starting to see these changes more and more. For music, there are far more options available: Spotify, Apple Music, Google Play Music, etc. where one low monthly fee lets you play almost anything you want. However, despite all this incredible ease for lots of different media, people still want content for free. Maybe the solution is to combine enforcement with an educational campaign so that people are aware of the myriad legal options available to them.

nikdaheratik 10y ago
As an American living in Australia, I'd say your perspective is kind of skewed by the American market. A large number of torrenters aren't cheapskates or thieves but are from outside the U.S. and unable to even get ahold of this stuff due to the way licensing overseas works. Or if they do, it's at 1.5x-2.5x the price. We have a 21st century distribution model tied to a mid-20th century legal framework and business model. It's hard to say what is fair in every case. What I feel is not fair is throwing the book at all of these site owners, especially when the laws are written in the U.S. but are somehow stretched to where they apply to people who never set foot there. In 5-10 years, they could still be in jail while technology remakes itself to the point where either distribution and payment has finally started working gain, or torrenting has gotten to the point where it's nearly impossible to trace the activity to any one person. Neither option seems unlikely, and punishing people now for something that doesn't hurt anyone too much does not seem like it's worth it.
- blowski 10y ago
  I'll give some more examples of use cases where the torrent system serves users better than the legal distribution, but has nothing to do with money. My wife is Brazilian and I'm British, so we're trying to bring our son up as bilingual. Trying to find legally distributed mainstream kids films dubbed in Portuguese is incredibly hard. Sure, you can buy them in Brazil... and then they don't play on hardware in the UK. Neither Netflix nor Amazon Prime have them. Meanwhile, a quick search on a torrent download site gives me access to hundreds of mainstream films dubbed in Portuguese. Torrents allow me to watch anything, anywhere, with minimal hardware. I don't need to buy DVDs or DVD players. I don't have to work out which subscription I need to use to watch the latest episode of a program. I have downloaded torrents for which I already own the Blu-ray DVD, but it's in a box somewhere and I can't be bothered to find it. So yeah, there are lots more use cases for torrents than just wanting to be a cheapskate.

agumonkey 10y ago

Uber did develop a more efficient system by stepping on legal lines and gray areas. They did have troubles after a while but not in the same way. Somehow network distribution has no 'economic' values to the eyes of authorities. I'd love to see some stats, in my mind p2p sharing wasn't growing, even going down Compared to the 2000-2010 era since people have other means to share and content (spotify, soundcloud, ...) and the novelty has faded. I do profit from it from time to time to reach for very old clips, lives or albums that you cant find. It doesnt really hurt business if they dont sell it.

swiley 10y ago
Spotify actually does use peer to peer distribution although it's not open source.
- danr4 10y ago
  I believe they stopped p2p distribution [1] [1] https://torrentfreak.com/spotify-starts-shutting-down-its-massive-p2p-network-140416/ https://torrentfreak.com/spotify-starts-shutting-down-its-ma...
- JelteF 10y ago
  They don't anymore [1]. CDNs simply got too cheap to have a warrant a more complicated setup, that did not work on all their clients. [1]: https://techcrunch.com/2014/04/17/spotify-removes-peer-to-peer-technology-from-its-desktop-client/ https://techcrunch.com/2014/04/17/spotify-removes-peer-to-pe...

99127912 10y ago

Indeed, we should. Comrade Page, comrade Brin, I'd like to have the Google software stack. IP rights are an outdated concept and the collective has decided that Google's stack belongs to the people. Besides, everything is just bits! If you represent the whole monorepo as a single integer, denying people access to it would be akin to patenting a natural number!

malka 10y ago
There are indeeed illegal numbers
- analognoise 10y ago
  Yes, but only with context. The numbers by themselves are of course just numbers.
Shivetya 10y ago
you could say that from the actions that occur in France if not the EU that is how they view it across the ocean. Become the best search engine only to be told you cannot favor your own services, if that is not an indirect declaration you are now a public service I am not sure what would be
- jobigoud 10y ago
  It's not public service, it's regulation? You can do what you want as long as you conform to certain rules. For example we have private electricity providers, but the prices are regulated and capped. Private companies can't just do whatever they want when it concerns things we consider to be people's fundamental resources.
912831921 10y ago
As always, the freeloaders are flagging the thread whenever too many pro-copyright comments appear.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

zouhair 10y ago

Effectiveness has nothing to do with it. America is now just a simple goon to its corporations.

mSparks 10y ago

am i the only one to walk away from this story thinking there must be a better way to handle large transactions than banks and cryptocurrencies.

Segfaulter 10y ago
Gold and diamonds?
- mSparks 10y ago
  also not without its problems. but yes. something like: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-gold https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-gold outside of the US. seems plausible.

jamaicahest 10y ago

Are you actually suggesting US companies compete on a free and open market, with consumers deciding which services and products deserve to survive based on the quality and price of the service/product? Then they might risk failing as a company just because consumers didn't like what they had to sell. Well I never! /sarcasm

HoopleHead 10y ago

>>>As an American, I wish we would stop doing this... You can't really blame America. They've decided their jurisdiction extends to the entire planet. And, rather, than argue the point, the rest of the world just bends over and adopts the position. When faced with such supine sycophancy, why would America not keep acting this way? I have utter contempt for Poland on this [and similar] case/s. What a contemptible lick-spittle, a once fiercely independent nation has become!

CaptSpify 10y ago
That sounds a lot like victim blaming. "They never said no, so what we did was totally fine!" Yes, other countries should say no to us more, but that doesn't absolve us for being a jerk.