They are 'shutting' Pirate Bay. Good or Bad?

[Seth]

Looks like the courts in the UK are coming down on the side of the music industry and are going to insist that ISPs block Pirate Bay. Internet censorship or people protecting their living do you think?

I think idiots who think content copyright protection in the digital age is "censorship" are complete fuckwits. Information is not, and never has been "free." You'd know that if you ever invested your labor and talent in creating a valuable intellectual property of some sort that you want to capitalize on to pay your bills only to have it stolen and distributed to everybody for nothing, making it commercially worthless.

I say don't "block" the servers, I say "destroy with extreme prejudice" any server (and anybody operating it) that facilitates this sort of global theft.

[Jason]

I think idiots who think content copyright protection in the digital age is "censorship" are complete fuckwits.

What about regular people who think that?

[Seth]

And here. Anyone use the TOR system out of interest?

What's TOR?

I've seen mention of TOR cache while trying to get torrents for this and that... but that was always redirects and I don't know what it is.

'The Onion Ring'. Its a system using proxies etc to gain anonymity with your internet activity. It would make file sharing untraceable from what I read.

here: https://www.torproject.org/

Makes it incredibly slow because it has to bounce through so many hosts.

Tor is a great way to secure your browsing, or send covert messages, but it's not very useful for large file transfers, it tends to choke up frequently because it doesn't have the bandwidth. I'd avoid using Tor and save it for the legitimate need for web privacy rather than to facilitate theft. If we don't, they will shut down Tor as well someday. And don't think they can't.

[Seth]

I think idiots who think content copyright protection in the digital age is "censorship" are complete fuckwits.

What about regular people who think that?

Ipso facto if you believe that content copyright protection on the internet is "censorship" you're an idiot.

First of all, no private entity on earth can engage in "censorship" of an intellectual property they own. Censorship is purely a government act. All decisions about what to distribute and not distribute made by private industry is know as "an exercise of the right to choose to distribute or not distribute in the marketplace things owned by the company or person."

Since neither you nor anyone else has any right whatsoever to demand, much less expect that the creators of a copyrighted work distribute that work AT ALL, much less without charge to anyone who wants it, there is no censorship going on.

Censorship ONLY occurs when a GOVERNMENT prohibits the CREATOR of an intellectual property from marketing that property to the general public.

[JimC]

As long as the musicians get enough money to pay the rent, plus booze and drugs, all is well...

[Collector1337]

Let's say I download a computer game. If I like it, I'm going to buy it. I get to try it out, but if it sucks, I didn't waste my money on it.

It's capitalism at its finest. A company who produces a quality product makes money and continues to make more quality products. The company who makes a shitty product, doesn't get any of my money and doesn't succeed to make more money and products.

[Robert_S]

Let's say I download a computer game. If I like it, I'm going to buy it. I get to try it out, but if it sucks, I didn't waste my money on it.

It's capitalism at its finest. A company who produces a quality product makes money and continues to make more quality products. The company who makes a shitty product, doesn't get any of my money and doesn't succeed to make more money and products.

But then you get the problem of nobody buying and everybody stealing.

[Svartalf]

Out of 100 freeloaders, how many do you think would actually buy the stuff they download if they had to choose between buying and doing without?

[pErvinalia]

Let's say I download a computer game. If I like it, I'm going to buy it. I get to try it out, but if it sucks, I didn't waste my money on it.

It's capitalism at its finest. A company who produces a quality product makes money and continues to make more quality products. The company who makes a shitty product, doesn't get any of my money and doesn't succeed to make more money and products.

I make excuses like this all the time, and I bet a whole lot of other people make them too. Whether the final reality reflects this is questionable. I don't download very much (and certainly not software products, and only very rarely movies; I mostly download tv shows and music), but even then, I still try and convince myself I will eventually buy it or some other convenient narrative.

[Pappa]

I think they've bent the copyright laws to their limit in order to crack down on on the Pirate Bay. They don't provide downloads to copyrighted material, nor direct links to copyrighted material.

[Hermit]

Information is not, and never has been "free." You'd know that if you ever invested your labor and talent in creating a valuable intellectual property of some sort that you want to capitalize on to pay your bills only to have it stolen and distributed to everybody for nothing, making it commercially worthless.

Which is why the pop-music industry has died, for instance, as soon as reel-to-reel tape recorders were cheap enough to become popular.

[Rum]

I think they've bent the copyright laws to their limit in order to crack down on on the Pirate Bay. They don't provide downloads to copyrighted material, nor direct links to copyrighted material.

Its pointless anyway except symbolically. People who really want to share or get free copyright stuff obviously don't need the Pirate Bay.

[Audley Strange]

Yup a disk drive a shit computer, a usb flash drive and some friends and ye'll be hoistin' for the Spanish Main by sundown. ARRR!

If people are offered free stuff more conveniently and quicker than it is to purchase legitimately, they will go for free. The problem is that the Distribution pricks of Media thought themselves invulnerable, were caught on the hop and rather than come up with a modern solution, were so blase that they didn't worry about it until one day BAM! profit margin failure and panicky demands for reaction from Government sources.

Fuck them. They had it coming.

[Clinton Huxley]

GCHQ copies every data packet coming into Blighty, so they've got one of the worlds largest collections of pirated stuff. Close GCHQ!

[Collector1337]

Warez have been around for a long time.

I don't see record companies, Hollywood, etc. doing poorly.