11 ms·

'Terminating Internet Access over Piracy Claims Is Drastic and Overbroad'

161 points by gslin 3y ago

aa_is_op 3y ago
Years from now we're gonna look back and realize that copyright industry groups effectively destroyed the internet, and none of us would be laughing about it as we do now.
- tpmoney 3y ago
  I've been thinking recently about what sort of impact two significant changes to IP law might have in shaping things. 1) Copyrights can only be owned by natural persons and can not be transferred. They can be licensed, but the physical creator of a work always owns the copyright. Disney can't own copyright, only it's artists and animators. They have to negotiate a license to distribute with everyone. The idea here is that if an idea continues to have value for a company, then it continues to have value to the person who created it. And if Disney or whoever decides that something isn't worth having anymore, the creators are free to go out and find someone who does value it. Immediate concern here is how messy this gets deciding what anyone actually owns. Do animators own the copyright to a character jointly? Separately? Do they only own the copyrights to their specific drawings and a character is then inherently uncopyrightable? Joint ownership seems obvious, but then how is that any better for the individuals than Disney having exclusive ownership? It only takes one to prevent you from making money on your work. Separate but equal ownership seems interesting, but how much do you have to contribute to get that? Does everyone who ever drew a sketch for Lilo and Stitch now own the IP rights to the entire character? Likewise how would you keep licensing agreements from looking like convoluted versions of modern copyright anyway? I guess that's more on the unions and guilds but if every employee signs a 200 year exclusive license, that's not any different from what we have today really. 2) Trademarks can not be sold. A trademark's purpose is to assure a buyer of the source of a given good. The whole reason we protect them is because if I buy a product with Apple's branding on it, I want to know I got it from Apple, not from "Bob's Fancy Electronics Shack and Bait Shop". Problem is, if you can sell a trademark, you've changed who is actually the source of the good, but the consumer may not know that. Food items make a good example here. "Uncle Roger's Superior MSG" might be a small company, but when Kraft buys them out, it's not Uncle Roger who's selling it anymore, it's Kraft. And Kraft may change that recipe, or otherwise make decisions that Uncle Roger wouldn't. A consumer should know it's no longer "Uncle Roger's Superior MSG" they're buying, it's now "Kraft MSG" and while it might be based on Uncle Roger's recipe, it's not from Uncle Roger and Kraft should have to rebrand it and fight for brand reputation all over again. Zombie brands are another example of this. Whoever is making Craftsman tools isn't Sears and Roebuck anymore, and they're not the same, and shouldn't be sold as the same. Again there are some immediate concerns that come to mind. Part of the value of buying a company is that trademarks carry the reputation of the company. Distinguishing between a change of owners as part of the course of business and a change of owners as in a sale of the whole company is also difficult. I don't think if "Uncle Roger" and "Auntie Helen" split and the 50/50 ownership structure becomes 100% ownership, does that require a rebrand? Probably not, but then what are the limits of this? If Kraft sells Uncle Roger a 0.0001% ownership in Kraft, does that also mean there's no need to rebrand?
  - beej71 3y ago
    With the copyright, multiple creators could work on it with a signed deal saying they'd be paid, but the sole ownership would go to a single person. A profit sharing plan could be put in place if desired.
  - redwall_hp 3y ago
    > Whoever is making Craftsman tools isn't Sears and Roebuck anymore It never was. Sears, even many decades ago, always contracted other vendors to make their products, just like Costco does with their house brand now. The product numbers even used the first three digits to identify the vendor. A Kenmore appliance would be made by Whirlpool, Maytag, LG, Samsung, whatever. It would be a distinct product, with its own exterior design and feature set (rather than just changing a logo). It definitely was worth finding out who made which, to favor manufacturers like LG over Whirlpool. Craftsman was made by the Stanley/Black&Decker/DeWalt corporation for a long time before they finally bought the brand during the final Sears collapse a few years ago. Here's the prefix list for appliances, but there are larger ones for all products: https://www.applianceaid.com/sears-manufacturing-codes.php https://www.applianceaid.com/sears-manufacturing-codes.php I recall seeing references to companies like "Tandy" for some electronic products, which should indicate that this practice goes back well into the 70s and 80s...
  - aleph_minus_one 3y ago
    > 1) Copyrights can only be owned by natural persons and can not be transferred. They can be licensed, but the physical creator of a work always owns the copyright. Disney can't own copyright, only it's artists and animators. They have to negotiate a license to distribute with everyone. This is, as I understand your idea, the situation that actually exists in Germany in the Urheberrecht. Here, two concepts exists: - Urheberschaft (authorship): the property of being the author and be attributed as such; cannot be sold. - Nutzungsrechte (usage rights): these can be sold
- bboygravity 3y ago
  Who's laughing?
- hcks 3y ago
  Please explain how enforcing their right to be paid for what they sell is destroying the internet
  - MrVandemar 3y ago
    "Sell"? They don't sell anything anymore. You get a licence, revocable at any time. And you keep paying and paying and paying.
    - ThePowerOfFuet 3y ago
      >You get a licence, revocable at any time. And without refund.
  - geon 3y ago
    If I pirate some content, how is that different to them compared to me just not buying it? Should they be allowed to disconnect my internet because I don’t buy their content? The studios can so easily kill all piracy, and they just about did it with Spotify and Netflix. But no, the greed made them split up into a dozen different services nobody wants, and here we are again.
    - awjlogan 3y ago
      Because you are getting something produced by someone for free if you pirate it and you are relying on others to fund your consumption. Take that to the logical extreme: everybody pirates everything. That is _very_ different to everyone not buying it. There is demand for the product and it has a cost to produce. If you steal something from somebody, there is recourse in law. I don't disagree about the greed part, but I guess fragmentation is almost inevitable until the profit margin is driven down to near zero. Shortsighted, probably, but it would essentially require all the producers to back (and therefore yield profit to), one or two Netflix/Spotify type entities.
      - haswell 3y ago
        Taking this to the logical extreme is fallacious. The piracy wars up to this point have already shown that people buy content if it’s reasonably priced, and that piracy in many cases actually increases sales of the original content. The fact that piracy is back in the limelight has everything to do with the failing business models of greedy companies, and is the market reacting accordingly. The fact that there are penalties for stealing physical goods does not imply that just any penalty is fine. The analogy doesn’t work. Removal of Internet access in 2023 is debilitating. Punishments are supposed to fit the crime, and the complete loss of access to what has become a fundamental point of access does not fit the crime. And there’s also the very old arguments that I won’t rehash here about the clear difference between digital copies of content and physical items.
- kitanata 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - johndunne 3y ago
    Not challenging you, just had an eye brow nearly leave my face... I've been coming to HN for years now and genuinely interested in where your angle comes from? I'm missing something and would like to know... thanks
  - christophilus 3y ago
    My guess is that Meta employees are a small minority of HN readership, so I think you’ll need to explain how you think the HN community is responsible. Unless you just mean the tech community at large. But that’s tautological, as the enshittifiers of tech are categorically a subset of the broad tech community.
    - RetroTechie 3y ago
      Lol - kitanata's is funniest comment I read today! But spot on if you think about it. That subset of HN users that work for FAANG, advertising company or similar, are like the sharp edge blade wielded by the business folks. So yeah, in a way parent is right. Not that I'd ever hold it against those HN users. You're (at most) the tool used, not the one wielding it.
      - dasil003 3y ago
        The framing is guaranteed to draw downvotes because many here are doing all they can to resist enshitification, even within FAANG, but unfortunately large corporations will always bend towards profits and the average consumer will always bend towards cheap and convenient. At the end of the day it’s extremely difficult to see what any individual (even the business folks) can really do to effect broad change. Some systemic change would be necessary, but it’s hard to see what changes would lead us in the right direction, especially given the inherent corruptability of incentives in any human-instituted system.
    - jprete 3y ago
- sseagull 3y ago
  Years from now? I've been mad at this for at least a decade. Look at how much control media companies have exerted over pretty much everything. Look at all the anti-piracy stuff with HDCP, or the DRM stuff in browsers, and how some services don't allow you to watch high-definition streams with some browsers. And unskippable ads on DVDs, ultimately enforced by the movie industry. Also, look at how music files are treated so differently from regular files on iOS. And copyright strikes and demonetization on youtube and others, the Sony rootkit scandal, the list goes on. These people have inserted themselves into every aspect of our digital lives, and (along with advertisers) basically ruin everything or at least make everything more complicated just to protect their revenue streams. Edit: Wait, a decade is only 2013? How did that happen. Make that two decades.
  - beej71 3y ago
    I recall trying to find an HDMI cable that would allow me to stream 4k from my legit Netflix account to my legit Roku to my legit TV... Ffffff--
- ravenstine 3y ago
  As much as I agree that copyright in its current form is a joke, I don't believe it's responsible for destroying the internet. The internet is a wasteland because too many people are on it. It started out as a thing for academics, then became available to non-academics with enough skills to use it (and whom appreciate it), then young people got access to it in school, then smartphones put it in everyone's pocket, and finally we have virtually everyone in every part of the bell curve on it whether they comprehend it or not. The greater the audience, the more the internet is dragged towards the mean. Of course it will no longer serve the same purpose it once did. The original types who were on it early make up less than 1% of the current internet population. Don't get me wrong, copyright enforcement has degraded many things, but the old internet wouldn't be significantly different today if all other variables remained static.
  - partitioned 3y ago
    It was right around the time everyone's grandma figured out how to get a facebook account that it all went to hell.
    - renzobanks 3y ago
      i can second that
    - batch12 3y ago
      This debate predates facebook by a while. Napster came out 5 years prior, and that's when I remember the biggest push from media companies, but there were efforts even before this to limit the free exchange of information.
  - wkat4242 3y ago
    I often wonder if we could start a new sub-internet. Like a wide area mesh VPN. Perhaps something like tor but not so focused on anonymity so it doesn't immediately degrade into the cesspool that tor has become.
    - ravenstine 3y ago
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- geon 3y ago
  ”Destroyed the internet”? Try society.
- Mistletoe 3y ago
  I’d say the ad and privacy machine destroyed the internet by several orders of magnitude over the copyright industry.
  - justinclift 3y ago
    Maybe that attacked it from two different sides at the same time?
- skah 3y ago
  [flagged]
Veuxdo 3y ago
... not really? That's a whole lot less drastic and overboard than serving a jail sentence for piracy, which can and does happen.
- c22 3y ago
  Even a jail sentence isn't very drastic and overbroad when compared to the death penalty.
  - ysavir 3y ago
    Most sentences aren't very drastic compared to the worst possible sentence. But how well lined up are they with the crime?
    - c22 3y ago
      Exactly!
- sp332 3y ago
  In the USA, it's a civil violation, not a crime. You can't go to jail for downloading. Uploading is what gets people in real trouble. Unfortunately bittorrent counts as uploading, which is ridiculous. Some people make a business of piracy and going after those people would be a little more reasonable.
  - aidenn0 3y ago
    > Unfortunately bittorrent counts as uploading, which is ridiculous Piracy laws aside, I don't see why BT counting as uploading is ridiculous; you are aiding in the distribution of the content just as much as if you had setup a public FTP server with the content on it.
wly_cdgr 3y ago
I loathe piracy, but I'm very happy all the same that there is so much money on this side of the argument.
- deaddodo 3y ago
  I loathe that piracy needs to exist. But it's a natural response to greedy media industries. People pirate material that copyright holders refuse to release/rerelease, they steal when popular media gets silo'd behind yet another wildly overvalued streaming service, they pirate so media can reach places corporations deem unvaluable to do so themselves, etc. Piracy was naturally on a decline as streaming seemed to be settling on Netflix + a couple premium/niche providers, in much the way that mainstream music piracy is largely dead today. Now, it's on the rise again as people are tired of being nickel and dimed by Peacock, AMC, Max, Disney+, Prime, Netflix, Hulu, ESPN+, Fubu, CBS All-Access, etc.
  - wly_cdgr 3y ago
    Piracy does not need to exist, should not exist, and should be heavily stigmatized and harshly punished.
    - justinclift 3y ago
      What are your thoughts on Open Source Software?
- swayvil 3y ago
  I demand that you forget these words immediately after you read them. They are my property.
- talent_deprived 3y ago
  Piracy is a socially acceptable term for theft. Theft isn't and shouldn't be socially acceptable.
  - cto_of_antifa 3y ago
zb3 3y ago
Copyright should be finally abolished.
- cnowacek 3y ago
  Why do you think copyright should be abolished?
  - logicchains 3y ago
    Because it does far more harm than good. Enforcement of copyright requires all kinds of authoritarianism and infringement upon people's rights to use their own property/devices, which hardly seems a fair trade just for more entertainment media. Especially when there are enough creatives out there who do the work purely for passion that'd we'd never run out of media to consume even if nobody could use copyright to profit from it.
    - carlosjobim 3y ago
      Copyright also applies on media that is not for entertainment or "consumption". Where would the money come from to pay for important news reporting, for example? There are a lot of people in this world who are not hackers and have other needs.
      - logicchains 3y ago
        >Where would the money come from to pay for important news reporting, for example Governments and private individuals already produce plenty of news without relying on income from copyright. The BBC is publicly funded.
        carlosjobim 3y ago
        As somebody who grew up in the time of government-only media, let me assure you that you don't want the world to regress to that. Copyrighted information is better than no information.
catapart 3y ago
Yeah. As they argue, what's going to happen when an isp shuts off service to a hospital due to automated systems put in place to mitigate this ruling? Mistakes can be corrected in due time, but how much damage will be done in the interim? It's so exhausting that we don't just commit to net neutrality. It's the obvious logistical answer to this with direct comparisons in telephone service. Should have been settled years ago, but for some reason were letting the corporate copyright class spend money to slow it down.
- sp332 3y ago
  I don't think this is related to net neutrality.
  - em-bee 3y ago
    it is related in the sense that ISPs have no business or should not be burdened with policing the data their customers transfer. if someone violates the law it is up to the courts to prosecute them and if appropriate deny them internet access. however given that internet access is now as important as a phone used to be, this should practically never happen.
    - tpmoney 3y ago
      It's worth pointing out that society is shifting HARD on the idea that pipe service providers should be "neutral" with respect to the traffic they're carrying. Recent pushes around scam calls and texts have resulted in policies with providers to more heavily screen their customers from the start, requirements for text campaigns to submit their content for review, internal evaluation of traffic for fraud patterns and dropping it before it gets to the end point, enforcement of the "STOP" thing for texts, and even things like STIR/SHAKEN which while not specifically about the content of the message (other than the caller id info) still involves each layer asserting what degree of "trust" they give what they're carrying. Realistically every time you see someone lamenting that telecoms aren't dropping scam callers and texts and policing that better, you're seeing an advocation against net/carrier neutrality.
tiahura 3y ago
I've been caught stealing Once when I was 5 I enjoy stealing It's just as simple as that Well, it's just a simple fact When I want something, I don't want to pay for it I walk right through the door Walk right through the door Hey all right! If I get by, it's mine
swayvil 3y ago
UBI would transform society. No longer would we push to protect income streams that we all know are a bit messed up but hey a man's gotta eat. End this vast circus of crumb-snatching.
sys_64738 3y ago
Internet should be classed as a human right like water and electricity. Unilaterally deciding to terminate access over some allegation that isn't proven in a court of law is draconian to say the least.
k12sosse 3y ago
You wouldn't pirate factorio, would you?
lukevp 3y ago
Safe Harbor in DMCA does say that repeat infringers should be terminated from service. I do think it’s government overreach because for many, you only have one ISP as an option, and cutting you off from internet access is very severely impactful to many. This seems like a court matter directly between the copyright holders and the infringing end user. Perhaps I’m biased in this regard, not really sure how the law shakes out. I will say that Grande was an amazing ISP. I had them for probably 8 years before I moved out of Texas, and my boss for several years was a former Grande employee. Everyone had great things to say about them. One time, our internet went down during a historic flood, and they ended up flying a fiber line across the flooded river using a drone to get service back to everyone. It was entertaining to follow that. I’ve heard they’re owned by someone new now; not sure if they’re still good.
robotburrito 3y ago
Agreed this is overboard. I always wondered what percentage of people would have bought the pirated material given they had no option to pirate it. I have to imagine a large chunk of people pirate things they’d never buy.

161 points by gslin 3y ago

Years from now we're gonna look back and realize that copyright industry groups effectively destroyed the internet, and none of us would be laughing about it as we do now.

tpmoney 3y ago
I've been thinking recently about what sort of impact two significant changes to IP law might have in shaping things. 1) Copyrights can only be owned by natural persons and can not be transferred. They can be licensed, but the physical creator of a work always owns the copyright. Disney can't own copyright, only it's artists and animators. They have to negotiate a license to distribute with everyone. The idea here is that if an idea continues to have value for a company, then it continues to have value to the person who created it. And if Disney or whoever decides that something isn't worth having anymore, the creators are free to go out and find someone who does value it. Immediate concern here is how messy this gets deciding what anyone actually owns. Do animators own the copyright to a character jointly? Separately? Do they only own the copyrights to their specific drawings and a character is then inherently uncopyrightable? Joint ownership seems obvious, but then how is that any better for the individuals than Disney having exclusive ownership? It only takes one to prevent you from making money on your work. Separate but equal ownership seems interesting, but how much do you have to contribute to get that? Does everyone who ever drew a sketch for Lilo and Stitch now own the IP rights to the entire character? Likewise how would you keep licensing agreements from looking like convoluted versions of modern copyright anyway? I guess that's more on the unions and guilds but if every employee signs a 200 year exclusive license, that's not any different from what we have today really. 2) Trademarks can not be sold. A trademark's purpose is to assure a buyer of the source of a given good. The whole reason we protect them is because if I buy a product with Apple's branding on it, I want to know I got it from Apple, not from "Bob's Fancy Electronics Shack and Bait Shop". Problem is, if you can sell a trademark, you've changed who is actually the source of the good, but the consumer may not know that. Food items make a good example here. "Uncle Roger's Superior MSG" might be a small company, but when Kraft buys them out, it's not Uncle Roger who's selling it anymore, it's Kraft. And Kraft may change that recipe, or otherwise make decisions that Uncle Roger wouldn't. A consumer should know it's no longer "Uncle Roger's Superior MSG" they're buying, it's now "Kraft MSG" and while it might be based on Uncle Roger's recipe, it's not from Uncle Roger and Kraft should have to rebrand it and fight for brand reputation all over again. Zombie brands are another example of this. Whoever is making Craftsman tools isn't Sears and Roebuck anymore, and they're not the same, and shouldn't be sold as the same. Again there are some immediate concerns that come to mind. Part of the value of buying a company is that trademarks carry the reputation of the company. Distinguishing between a change of owners as part of the course of business and a change of owners as in a sale of the whole company is also difficult. I don't think if "Uncle Roger" and "Auntie Helen" split and the 50/50 ownership structure becomes 100% ownership, does that require a rebrand? Probably not, but then what are the limits of this? If Kraft sells Uncle Roger a 0.0001% ownership in Kraft, does that also mean there's no need to rebrand?
- beej71 3y ago
  With the copyright, multiple creators could work on it with a signed deal saying they'd be paid, but the sole ownership would go to a single person. A profit sharing plan could be put in place if desired.
- redwall_hp 3y ago
  > Whoever is making Craftsman tools isn't Sears and Roebuck anymore It never was. Sears, even many decades ago, always contracted other vendors to make their products, just like Costco does with their house brand now. The product numbers even used the first three digits to identify the vendor. A Kenmore appliance would be made by Whirlpool, Maytag, LG, Samsung, whatever. It would be a distinct product, with its own exterior design and feature set (rather than just changing a logo). It definitely was worth finding out who made which, to favor manufacturers like LG over Whirlpool. Craftsman was made by the Stanley/Black&Decker/DeWalt corporation for a long time before they finally bought the brand during the final Sears collapse a few years ago. Here's the prefix list for appliances, but there are larger ones for all products: https://www.applianceaid.com/sears-manufacturing-codes.php https://www.applianceaid.com/sears-manufacturing-codes.php I recall seeing references to companies like "Tandy" for some electronic products, which should indicate that this practice goes back well into the 70s and 80s...
- aleph_minus_one 3y ago
  > 1) Copyrights can only be owned by natural persons and can not be transferred. They can be licensed, but the physical creator of a work always owns the copyright. Disney can't own copyright, only it's artists and animators. They have to negotiate a license to distribute with everyone. This is, as I understand your idea, the situation that actually exists in Germany in the Urheberrecht. Here, two concepts exists: - Urheberschaft (authorship): the property of being the author and be attributed as such; cannot be sold. - Nutzungsrechte (usage rights): these can be sold
bboygravity 3y ago
Who's laughing?
hcks 3y ago
Please explain how enforcing their right to be paid for what they sell is destroying the internet
- MrVandemar 3y ago
  "Sell"? They don't sell anything anymore. You get a licence, revocable at any time. And you keep paying and paying and paying.
  - ThePowerOfFuet 3y ago
    >You get a licence, revocable at any time. And without refund.
- geon 3y ago
  If I pirate some content, how is that different to them compared to me just not buying it? Should they be allowed to disconnect my internet because I don’t buy their content? The studios can so easily kill all piracy, and they just about did it with Spotify and Netflix. But no, the greed made them split up into a dozen different services nobody wants, and here we are again.
  - awjlogan 3y ago
    Because you are getting something produced by someone for free if you pirate it and you are relying on others to fund your consumption. Take that to the logical extreme: everybody pirates everything. That is _very_ different to everyone not buying it. There is demand for the product and it has a cost to produce. If you steal something from somebody, there is recourse in law. I don't disagree about the greed part, but I guess fragmentation is almost inevitable until the profit margin is driven down to near zero. Shortsighted, probably, but it would essentially require all the producers to back (and therefore yield profit to), one or two Netflix/Spotify type entities.
    - haswell 3y ago
      Taking this to the logical extreme is fallacious. The piracy wars up to this point have already shown that people buy content if it’s reasonably priced, and that piracy in many cases actually increases sales of the original content. The fact that piracy is back in the limelight has everything to do with the failing business models of greedy companies, and is the market reacting accordingly. The fact that there are penalties for stealing physical goods does not imply that just any penalty is fine. The analogy doesn’t work. Removal of Internet access in 2023 is debilitating. Punishments are supposed to fit the crime, and the complete loss of access to what has become a fundamental point of access does not fit the crime. And there’s also the very old arguments that I won’t rehash here about the clear difference between digital copies of content and physical items.
kitanata 3y ago
[flagged]
- johndunne 3y ago
  Not challenging you, just had an eye brow nearly leave my face... I've been coming to HN for years now and genuinely interested in where your angle comes from? I'm missing something and would like to know... thanks
- christophilus 3y ago
  My guess is that Meta employees are a small minority of HN readership, so I think you’ll need to explain how you think the HN community is responsible. Unless you just mean the tech community at large. But that’s tautological, as the enshittifiers of tech are categorically a subset of the broad tech community.
  - RetroTechie 3y ago
    Lol - kitanata's is funniest comment I read today! But spot on if you think about it. That subset of HN users that work for FAANG, advertising company or similar, are like the sharp edge blade wielded by the business folks. So yeah, in a way parent is right. Not that I'd ever hold it against those HN users. You're (at most) the tool used, not the one wielding it.
    - dasil003 3y ago
      The framing is guaranteed to draw downvotes because many here are doing all they can to resist enshitification, even within FAANG, but unfortunately large corporations will always bend towards profits and the average consumer will always bend towards cheap and convenient. At the end of the day it’s extremely difficult to see what any individual (even the business folks) can really do to effect broad change. Some systemic change would be necessary, but it’s hard to see what changes would lead us in the right direction, especially given the inherent corruptability of incentives in any human-instituted system.
  - jprete 3y ago
sseagull 3y ago
Years from now? I've been mad at this for at least a decade. Look at how much control media companies have exerted over pretty much everything. Look at all the anti-piracy stuff with HDCP, or the DRM stuff in browsers, and how some services don't allow you to watch high-definition streams with some browsers. And unskippable ads on DVDs, ultimately enforced by the movie industry. Also, look at how music files are treated so differently from regular files on iOS. And copyright strikes and demonetization on youtube and others, the Sony rootkit scandal, the list goes on. These people have inserted themselves into every aspect of our digital lives, and (along with advertisers) basically ruin everything or at least make everything more complicated just to protect their revenue streams. Edit: Wait, a decade is only 2013? How did that happen. Make that two decades.
- beej71 3y ago
  I recall trying to find an HDMI cable that would allow me to stream 4k from my legit Netflix account to my legit Roku to my legit TV... Ffffff--
ravenstine 3y ago
As much as I agree that copyright in its current form is a joke, I don't believe it's responsible for destroying the internet. The internet is a wasteland because too many people are on it. It started out as a thing for academics, then became available to non-academics with enough skills to use it (and whom appreciate it), then young people got access to it in school, then smartphones put it in everyone's pocket, and finally we have virtually everyone in every part of the bell curve on it whether they comprehend it or not. The greater the audience, the more the internet is dragged towards the mean. Of course it will no longer serve the same purpose it once did. The original types who were on it early make up less than 1% of the current internet population. Don't get me wrong, copyright enforcement has degraded many things, but the old internet wouldn't be significantly different today if all other variables remained static.
- partitioned 3y ago
  It was right around the time everyone's grandma figured out how to get a facebook account that it all went to hell.
  - renzobanks 3y ago
    i can second that
  - batch12 3y ago
    This debate predates facebook by a while. Napster came out 5 years prior, and that's when I remember the biggest push from media companies, but there were efforts even before this to limit the free exchange of information.
- wkat4242 3y ago
  I often wonder if we could start a new sub-internet. Like a wide area mesh VPN. Perhaps something like tor but not so focused on anonymity so it doesn't immediately degrade into the cesspool that tor has become.
  - ravenstine 3y ago
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
geon 3y ago
”Destroyed the internet”? Try society.
Mistletoe 3y ago
I’d say the ad and privacy machine destroyed the internet by several orders of magnitude over the copyright industry.
- justinclift 3y ago
  Maybe that attacked it from two different sides at the same time?
skah 3y ago
[flagged]

Veuxdo 3y ago

... not really? That's a whole lot less drastic and overboard than serving a jail sentence for piracy, which can and does happen.

c22 3y ago
Even a jail sentence isn't very drastic and overbroad when compared to the death penalty.
- ysavir 3y ago
  Most sentences aren't very drastic compared to the worst possible sentence. But how well lined up are they with the crime?
  - c22 3y ago
    Exactly!
sp332 3y ago
In the USA, it's a civil violation, not a crime. You can't go to jail for downloading. Uploading is what gets people in real trouble. Unfortunately bittorrent counts as uploading, which is ridiculous. Some people make a business of piracy and going after those people would be a little more reasonable.
- aidenn0 3y ago
  > Unfortunately bittorrent counts as uploading, which is ridiculous Piracy laws aside, I don't see why BT counting as uploading is ridiculous; you are aiding in the distribution of the content just as much as if you had setup a public FTP server with the content on it.

wly_cdgr 3y ago

I loathe piracy, but I'm very happy all the same that there is so much money on this side of the argument.

deaddodo 3y ago
I loathe that piracy needs to exist. But it's a natural response to greedy media industries. People pirate material that copyright holders refuse to release/rerelease, they steal when popular media gets silo'd behind yet another wildly overvalued streaming service, they pirate so media can reach places corporations deem unvaluable to do so themselves, etc. Piracy was naturally on a decline as streaming seemed to be settling on Netflix + a couple premium/niche providers, in much the way that mainstream music piracy is largely dead today. Now, it's on the rise again as people are tired of being nickel and dimed by Peacock, AMC, Max, Disney+, Prime, Netflix, Hulu, ESPN+, Fubu, CBS All-Access, etc.
- wly_cdgr 3y ago
  Piracy does not need to exist, should not exist, and should be heavily stigmatized and harshly punished.
  - justinclift 3y ago
    What are your thoughts on Open Source Software?
swayvil 3y ago
I demand that you forget these words immediately after you read them. They are my property.
talent_deprived 3y ago
Piracy is a socially acceptable term for theft. Theft isn't and shouldn't be socially acceptable.
- cto_of_antifa 3y ago

zb3 3y ago

cnowacek 3y ago
Why do you think copyright should be abolished?
- logicchains 3y ago
  Because it does far more harm than good. Enforcement of copyright requires all kinds of authoritarianism and infringement upon people's rights to use their own property/devices, which hardly seems a fair trade just for more entertainment media. Especially when there are enough creatives out there who do the work purely for passion that'd we'd never run out of media to consume even if nobody could use copyright to profit from it.
  - carlosjobim 3y ago
    Copyright also applies on media that is not for entertainment or "consumption". Where would the money come from to pay for important news reporting, for example? There are a lot of people in this world who are not hackers and have other needs.
    - logicchains 3y ago
      >Where would the money come from to pay for important news reporting, for example Governments and private individuals already produce plenty of news without relying on income from copyright. The BBC is publicly funded.
      - carlosjobim 3y ago
        As somebody who grew up in the time of government-only media, let me assure you that you don't want the world to regress to that. Copyrighted information is better than no information.

catapart 3y ago

Yeah. As they argue, what's going to happen when an isp shuts off service to a hospital due to automated systems put in place to mitigate this ruling? Mistakes can be corrected in due time, but how much damage will be done in the interim? It's so exhausting that we don't just commit to net neutrality. It's the obvious logistical answer to this with direct comparisons in telephone service. Should have been settled years ago, but for some reason were letting the corporate copyright class spend money to slow it down.

sp332 3y ago
I don't think this is related to net neutrality.
- em-bee 3y ago
  it is related in the sense that ISPs have no business or should not be burdened with policing the data their customers transfer. if someone violates the law it is up to the courts to prosecute them and if appropriate deny them internet access. however given that internet access is now as important as a phone used to be, this should practically never happen.
  - tpmoney 3y ago
    It's worth pointing out that society is shifting HARD on the idea that pipe service providers should be "neutral" with respect to the traffic they're carrying. Recent pushes around scam calls and texts have resulted in policies with providers to more heavily screen their customers from the start, requirements for text campaigns to submit their content for review, internal evaluation of traffic for fraud patterns and dropping it before it gets to the end point, enforcement of the "STOP" thing for texts, and even things like STIR/SHAKEN which while not specifically about the content of the message (other than the caller id info) still involves each layer asserting what degree of "trust" they give what they're carrying. Realistically every time you see someone lamenting that telecoms aren't dropping scam callers and texts and policing that better, you're seeing an advocation against net/carrier neutrality.

tiahura 3y ago

I've been caught stealing Once when I was 5 I enjoy stealing It's just as simple as that Well, it's just a simple fact When I want something, I don't want to pay for it I walk right through the door Walk right through the door Hey all right! If I get by, it's mine

swayvil 3y ago

UBI would transform society. No longer would we push to protect income streams that we all know are a bit messed up but hey a man's gotta eat. End this vast circus of crumb-snatching.

sys_64738 3y ago

Internet should be classed as a human right like water and electricity. Unilaterally deciding to terminate access over some allegation that isn't proven in a court of law is draconian to say the least.

k12sosse 3y ago

You wouldn't pirate factorio, would you?

lukevp 3y ago

Safe Harbor in DMCA does say that repeat infringers should be terminated from service. I do think it’s government overreach because for many, you only have one ISP as an option, and cutting you off from internet access is very severely impactful to many. This seems like a court matter directly between the copyright holders and the infringing end user. Perhaps I’m biased in this regard, not really sure how the law shakes out. I will say that Grande was an amazing ISP. I had them for probably 8 years before I moved out of Texas, and my boss for several years was a former Grande employee. Everyone had great things to say about them. One time, our internet went down during a historic flood, and they ended up flying a fiber line across the flooded river using a drone to get service back to everyone. It was entertaining to follow that. I’ve heard they’re owned by someone new now; not sure if they’re still good.

robotburrito 3y ago

Agreed this is overboard. I always wondered what percentage of people would have bought the pirated material given they had no option to pirate it. I have to imagine a large chunk of people pirate things they’d never buy.