Posted on 10/04/2004 10:10:02 AM PDT by ProtectOurFreedom
Actually what hollywood really should be afraid of (beside a Bush victory) is the mass renting of dvds which are very easily copied, usually in less than 10 minutes.
" guess it comes down to this:
Are intellectual propery laws just? Are copyrights just? I mean, it's one thing to call taking a fruit which you haven't paid for a theft, and then taking something else intangible, like a file, theft. When you take a file, no physical entity has been removed from the producers -- they have their masters.
"
Those are excellent questions, and they are answered in the Constitution. Some disagree with the copyright laws, and there is a venue in which they can be changed. Anyone may lobby the legislature for such changes.
As it stands today, it is illegal to make such copies. The correct response to that, if you disagree, is to work to change the laws to allow you to copy any movie, recording, or whatever, as much as you want.
As someone who has created intellectual properties, I can assure you that the master copy is not the product. The product is a copy of that master copy, whether it be a book, a magazine article, a piece of software, a recording of music, or a movie. If I have the exclusive right to make such copies, through the copyright laws, then your unauthorized copy is as much a theft as if you stole my master copy from me.
As I said earlier, you can do as you please. Just don't ask for my respect if you do steal copyright works. I doubt you care about my respect, but there it is.
"Should the colonists who violated acts of Parliament have all been fined, imprisoned and their goods confiscated?
Should Congress be accountable for violating the Constitutionally imposed limits on copyright?
And while we're at it, should the colonists have all been hanged for taking up arms against their king? That was illegal too."
As for your first question, a war was fought over these issues. Many died. They were willing to fight and die over the issues you raise. Are you planning a war over copyright? Are you willing to fight and die over copyright issues.
Question 2: Congress is always accountable. Every two years, we elect an entirely new House of Representatives and one third of the Senate. If this issue is important enough to you and others, then work to elect legislators who agree with you.
Question 3: It's the same as question 2. Again, are you planning to go to war over your "right" to make illegal copies of a movie. If so, then go for it. If not, then stop breaking the law until you get it changed.
Can't you just use a proxy server to avoid detection?
bump with no comment
BitTorrent is effectively "unstampable" for two reasons.
The first and largest is that the RIAA/MPAA have only been able to stamp out Napster/Morpheus, et al because they have shown in court that the primary purpose of those networks is to infringe copyrights. BitTorrent, on the other hand, has been around for quite a while and was simply designed as an efficient tool to move large files across the Internet without overloading a single server. It has a huge number of legitimate users and is heavily utilized in the Open Source community. It's true that people DO use it to infringe copyright, but the RIAA/MPAA will never be able to show that infringement is its primary purpose. Without that, their cases will fail.
The other reson any lawsuits will fail is the lack of any real NETWORK. Unlike Napster, Gnutella, and the other file swapping applications, BitTorrent doesn't let you search for MP3's or video files across the network. You have to locate a download on your own and download the torrent file, which will allow you to connect to people sharing THAT FILE ONLY. It's not an efficient way to locate pirated films and music, and doesn't qualify as "file sharing software" under any of the currently accepted legal definitions.
If anything, the RIAA/MPAA will have an easier time controlling BitTorrent downloads than with previous file sharing tools. Because BitTorrent doesn't allow people to share their file lists or search for specific movies, BitTorrent pirates have to rely on websites and chatrooms to locate the torrents they want to connect to. Killing piracy simply requires them to shut down the websites directing people to the pirated material...something already covered by current law that they don't need a lawsuit to accomplish. If they find a webpage with illegal torrents, they just need to C&D the websites host and shut it down. That'll keep BitTorrent piracy out of the mainstream while preserving it for legitimate users.
Question 1 asked you whether the colonists should have been brought to justice for violating the law, ie. acts of Parliament. You addressed another question entirely, a question that wasn't asked and that addressed the practical aspects, not the principle that you've been arguing from.
Question 2 asked whether Congress should be held accountable. You advise holding them accountable with our votes, but that hasn't borne fruit. Every successive Congress continues to violate the 1st Amendment re constitutionally imposed limit on duration of copyright. This is a clear pattern of criminal activity. Am I correct in judging that you advise us to continue trying to adjudicate this with a measure that has never worked? What is the point in doing that?
Question 3 you answer the same way as question 1.
In case you haven't noticed, file sharers (consumers) have gone to war economically. Congress and the courts have failed to protect us from the industry's trade abuses, so we are adjudicating the matter ourselves -- just as our forefathers broke the law to defend themselves against England's trade abuses.
But you don't need to answer these questions, MM. You've already conceded that you would tolerate an artist robbing his label in retaliation for being cheated by them. Last time I checked, that would be illegal too. According to the law, being robbed does not legally entitle you to rob the robber. So I already know how far your adherence to "principle" goes. You embrace the exceptions that please you -- just as I do.
"You've already conceded that you would tolerate an artist robbing his label in retaliation for being cheated by them."
I have conceded no such thing. I merely asked if you were one of those who were harmed by those practices.
As for my answers to the two questions about colonial America, I answered fully. Had we not gone to war with England, then such lawbreakers would have been arrested. They chose to wage war instead, and won. Had they not won, then they would be obligated to follow the laws or face the consequences.
Should they have been arrested? Certainly, under the laws of the day. Instead, they founded a new nation, with its own set of laws. That is the alternative. It worked great.
As for the congress, I have no more to say about that. The mechanism exists to replace the entire Congress. Use that mechanism or not. It's up to you.
Essentially, this is all a silly issue, except that it involves illegal actions. You can spend considerable time downloading copyright material illegally, or you can spend some money and buy your own copy. I prefer doing things legally. That way I never worry about being fined or worse. It's also the right thing to do, and I do try very hard to do what's right.
Bit Torrent sucks. You are limited by the speed of the other person.
Newsgroups is the way to go!
"Clause 8: To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries; "
Here is the relevant Clause:
Copyright is not for an unlimited time. Therefore, the Clause remains active. And there you are.
"Works Originally Created on or after January 1, 1978
A work that is created (fixed in tangible form for the first time) on or after January 1, 1978, is automatically protected from the moment of its creation and is ordinarily given a term enduring for the author's life plus an additional 70 years after the author's death. In the case of "a joint work prepared by two or more authors who did not work for hire," the term lasts for 70 years after the last surviving author's death. For works made for hire, and for anonymous and pseudonymous works (unless the author's identity is revealed in Copyright Office records), the duration of copyright will be 95 years from publication or 120 years from creation, whichever is shorter."
And here, from the Copyright Office, are the limits. Why so long? Because such works are the property of the author, and may be bequeathed to surviving heirs.
Eventually, however, it all goes into the Public Domain. There IS a limit, so the Constitutional limit is preserved.
And in doing so (asking if I was one of these cheated artists), you implicitly justified thievery on the part of the artist. No other interpretation of your remark would make any sense, unless of course, you were asking me that question out of idle curiosity -- were you?
Even if a file sharer is not one of those artists, he may well be one of the millions of cheated consumers and the justification would be the same.
All parties to this controversy are law breakers, every one of them. The industry, the Congress and the file sharers. In this area, rule of law has failed. That much has been clear for the longest time. Historically, whenever that happens, adjudication is had by other means, in this case, economic warfare.
AZUREUS will give them a fit. Especially with XCOPY 321 Xpress to copy the coded videos. Not advocating it - stealing is stealing - don't do it.
Doesn't sound like you have it configured correctly. I had to de-tune my client because it was utilizing just about every Kbit/s that it could get from my ISP (I was downloading Red Hat Linux and some other OS apps at 2.3 Mbit/s and uploading at 425 Mbit/s for long stretches of time, making webpages take 2-3 minutes to load.
Educate yourself.
Educate yourself.
BTW, some have posted some very legitimate uses for BIT TORRENT, so RIAA don't go nutz. There are numerous anonymizers that preclude IP reading and the ISPs are loath to give out customer info. Have fun guys. No one advocates stealing you prescious crap.
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