Still so sure about using Torrents?

http://tech.yahoo.com/news/ap/20090417/ap_on_hi_te/eu_sweden_pirate_bay

Precedent is set, it's only a matter of time. Tick, tock, tick, tock...

Piracy is the crime. It really has nothing to do with Torrents. A torrent is just a highly efficient means of digital distribution when many recipients are downloading at the same time.

There are plenty of legal torrents. It's just easier to find the illegal ones than the legal ones.

The precedent of the court case was that the torrents themselves were the illegal activity. Unless the file-sharing host site has specific permission for every single torrent then it's considered illegal. So places like Final Gear (which has BBC blessing) will be OK, but any places that have unapproved content are going to be in trouble.

The scary part is that even legal torrents might take a hit from this.

Just saying...

illegal or not

fans like this distribution method and prefer content in this manner. Look at the success of itunes. A smart company would work with these people to provide entertainment in the manner that the fans want and slowly move them toward legitimate means of content distribution. An example is Hulu.com, while not a massive success just yet; it is moving people in the direction toward legitimate Internet content.

Actions such as these only show the shortsightedness of the industry groups and will not stop the problem. The movie industry needs to provide the content themselves in a more effective manner and with more bells and whistles than the illegal people. When they do that, they'll won't care about piracy because everyone will buy theirs stuff.

When I started using MP3's back in the day and downloading them illegally, it was because that was the way I wanted the content sent to me. The record companies didn't offer it that way so I went elsewhere. Now you can get DRM free MP3's legit and thats what I do....

These guys need to be smart and not turn off whole generations of potential consumers.

aircooled wrote: Piracy is the crime. It really has nothing to do with Torrents. A torrent is just a highly efficient means of digital distribution when many recipients are downloading at the same time.

Exactly! Torrents are just a tool. They're not illegal any more than blank CDRs are.

I don't use torrents for music, I have the biggest package available at eMusic instead. Like ignorant, given the legal choice, I use it. The amount of crap that came through on Napster and the like was amazing - inaccurately labeled files, poor quality, incomplete, etc.

Good grief, P71, you can be such a piss ant.

Every time this subject comes up, you get your panties in a bunch about the legality of file sharing on the internet.

Guess, what? ANYTIME YOU VIEW A FILE ON THE INTERNET YOU ARE DOWNLOADING IT! Don't believe me? Go look at the files in your internet cache. I'll wait.

So, wouldn't that make viewing the internet a form of file sharing? Does that mean it is illegal?

You do realize that it is technically illegal to modify the emissions parts of your car, right?

Yet most of us still do so.

When you stop standing in a glass house and throwing rocks, come talk to us about this. Until then.....

As for legal solutions of watching media on the internet, Boxee and Hulu are two of the best solutions, Youtube is moving that direction and for music there are a number of solutions available now. All legal and all with decent quality. The cable companies claim they can't do buffet style cable programming. With the advent of the internet, they don't really need to. The cable companies need to just get out of the way and focus on providing the bandwidth.

I think in the long term all the media companies will find out that by pursuing filesharing in such an aggressive manner only hurt themselves in the long run...

Even the Riaa realized they were just pissing people off http://torrentfreak.com/riaa-stops-lawsuits-but-not-the-threats-081219/

Holy E36 M3 on a stick man! What the berkeley crawled up your ass today???

P71 wrote: So places like Final Gear (which has BBC blessing) will be OK

Ooh, so close!

Final Gear links to Mininova for the TG torrents.

The genie is out of the bottle. They can get along or move over. Suing everyone on the internet is going to be like emptying the ocean with a spoon.

Let's do some math. Four guys convicted. 10,000,000 people used torrrents in March. Just March.

That's a great conviction rate. I wonder how much getting those 4 convictions cost? I wonder how much digital media sharing sites cost to create and maintain? Think they cost less than suing 10,000,000 people?

Illegal or not that's how it's going to be.

Also, artists can now sell directly to the consumer. Cutting out the costly middlemen known as producers and producing companies. Bad? To early to tell. I personally like giving my money directly to the artist. Not to a faceless corporation who then shells out 8 cents of a cd sale to the artist AFTER the artist pays back production costs, touring costs, advances on salary, etc.

An editorial about this from John Mellencamp.

P71 wrote: ... Final Gear (which has BBC blessing)...

Does it have BBC's blessing? I ask because BBC blocks foreign IPs from accessing their video streams. I believe they do this because they are tax-payer funded and the tax-payers don't want to provide free programming to the rest of the planet.

My uncle rents a server in the UK so he can stream rugby and football to his stateside PC.

It's not the "sharers" they sued, it was the site owners, a much smaller group. While I agree that going after them will be about as effective as the RIAA has been (and probably take even longer) the whole point of the discussion was that the court ruled that giving people the means to share easily searchable/identifiable files that were copyright protected is illegal.

All past rulings have been that the site is above liability, it was up to the end user/"torrent hoster" to make sure their content was legal, NOT the site operator. Put another way, if somebody tried to sell something they didn't own on eBay it's not eBay's fault, but after this ruling it could be because eBay provided the means.

So in reality this is a lot more significant then all of the past frivolous lawsuits and BS, it actually sets a dangerous precedent. If other courts start to agree with this ruling then free file sharing may be declared totally illegal and ISP's will have to enforce it. Not saying that's what's going to happen, saying that's a possibility because of this suit.

Oh and fiat, get off your high horse. If you're really willing to call somebody a piss ant over having a different opinion then you need to move to a country that's not free. Go suck it.

ZOMG!!!! They got FOUR people!

When I download movies and there are hundreds of thousands (as in 250,000 or more) peers I'll be shaking in my digital boots. We're all going to have our internets taken away!

When they come for the torrent sites I'll just start using whatever the next big thing is. Just like napster, limewire, and newsgroups, torrents won't be the last word in getting stuff for free. This stuff is never going to stop and all the various big media associations can do is thrash around and try to take as many people as possible down with them during their fall to obsolescence.

Torrents are just one tool for file distribution. For legal means, it's great. For illegal means, it's great. But there are always other options. Hotline anyone? How about good old fashioned IRC. There's even some genius who figured out how to store files in TCP/IP packets. The illegal file sharers will always find a way, it's a cat & mouse game. That doesn't make it right, but closing the highways just because bank robbers drive on them is a little stupid. Think I'll go home today and seed some Linux distros and maybe Project Gutenberg.

The media companies (mostly the RIAA, of course) are claiming that, if music is available for free, then nobody will pay for it. For a counter-example, go check out the bottled water aisle at Wal-Mart.

P71, that's an interesting point. This opens Google up for liability if it sticks - after all, it's easy to find illegal material with a single search. Of course, it's one decision in a Swedish court. It may simply shut down any search engines based in Sweden, and could very well be shot down at higher levels anyhow. One court decision doesn't change the world.

P71: You know you can be irritating, or at least come across that way at times. Basically you get me riled up and I don't know why, maybe it is the way you construct your sentences and I read something in to them, who knows.

I will say that most of my message was meant as tongue in cheek, sorry if it didn't come across that way. (should've used smiley's, sorry )

Keith wrote: P71, that's an interesting point. This opens Google up for liability if it sticks - after all, it's easy to find illegal material with a single search. Of course, it's one decision in a Swedish court. It may simply shut down any search engines based in Sweden, and could very well be shot down at higher levels anyhow. One court decision doesn't change the world.

Ah yes, G2P. "Index of" "Parent directory", right click, DownThemAll, go to bed......

It's OK fiat. Just no more insults without a wink, OK?

Keith, I know it's just a little court in a foreign country, but that's how court opinions/ruling and laws get rolling. Once a precedent is set it takes decades to "change the course" (see abortion, segregation, slavery, etc, etc...).

But it's not a final decision. It could easily get overturned at the next level. One decision by one judge isn't quite equivalent to overturning slavery. Remember, apartheid also started up with one country...and that didn't turn out so well.

The dumbest thing the RIAA ever did was shut down my.mp3.com. That had the potential to really open up legitimate digital music, and was a nice bridge between CD sales and digital sales.

by attempting DRM in a very draconian way.. Sony screwed itself...

http://news.cnet.com/Will-Sonys-DRM-nightmare-affect-future-policies/2009-1029_3-5947274.html

There's a lesson here for marketers.. Use the market desires to your advantage... do not perceive them as attacks.

Holy lack of content load batman! What is that site ignorant? It loads up all of the ads and links, but the main article doesn't show.

most households in the UK that have a TV pay an annual tax per tv per household or something along those lines. This is how the BBC gets away without having any commercials over there. We had a whole chapter about this in one of my advertising courses this semester. I think it's cool, but I enjoy commercials every now in then as they are a break from the action which allows you to go take a piss, get a drink, etc.

Anyways, how can they prove it's a loss in billions? Just because I downloaded a movie doesn't mean I would have went and paid to see it in a theater or rent/buy it to watch at home. It means it looked so E36 M3ty that I wouldn't ever bother to pay or watch it in the first place. If I deem a movie "good" I will pay up in some fashion, whether it be at the movie theater, Red Box, or Net Flix.

P71 wrote: It's not the "sharers" they sued, it was the site owners, a *much* smaller group. While I agree that going after them will be about as effective as the RIAA has been (and probably take even longer) the whole point of the discussion was that the court ruled that giving people the means to share easily searchable/identifiable files that were copyright protected is illegal. All past rulings have been that the site is above liability, it was up to the end user/"torrent hoster" to make sure their content was legal, NOT the site operator. Put another way, if somebody tried to sell something they didn't own on eBay it's not eBay's fault, but after this ruling it *could* be because eBay provided the means. So in *reality* this is a lot more significant then all of the past frivolous lawsuits and BS, it actually sets a dangerous precedent. If other courts start to agree with this ruling then free file sharing may be declared totally illegal and ISP's will have to enforce it. Not saying that's what's *going* to happen, saying that's a *possibility* because of this suit. Oh and fiat, get off your high horse. If you're really willing to call somebody a piss ant over having a different opinion then you need to move to a country that's not free. Go suck it.

theres already precedent in the US about that. they tried to sue vcr manufacturers because they allowed people to copy movies. guess who won that one? i'll give you a hint, it wasn't the media companies.

P71 wrote: Holy lack of content load batman! What is that site ignorant? It loads up all of the ads and links, but the main article doesn't show.

its a collection of links to other articles.