Blocking Pirating Sites Deemed to be Ineffective

[JAYDEEJOHN]

All the dogooders, those for the lil guy rich folk, who believe in fairness, if they didnt live in mansions, maybe music wouldnt be so expensive and pirating would decrease, just a thought

 

[InvalidError]

[citation][nom]AnUnusedUsername[/nom]One has to wonder why media companies stick to a clearly broken buisness model. There's no sense in releasing any sort of content before it's been paid for, and that's exactly what they do.[/citation]
There is nothing wrong nor fundamentally broken about this business model. People take out loans and mortgages to try getting into business all the time. Some succeed and become rich, others fail and go bankrupt. If you want to convince venture capitalists and risk investor to lend you money, you will often take a chance and make a substantial investment of your own before anyone will accept to help you.

This is the same thing with people making music, movies and software. People have to get started at their own expense before they can find others willing to share the risk. Avatar which is one of the best movies in recent history almost got canned because its production cost exceeded the budget by around 200M$, making it one of the most expensive movie productions ever. Cameron managed to save it because he happened to have many well-connected friends with deep pocket and convinced them to lend some more cash.

Once the finished product is out, you still need to recover all the borrowed/invested capital that went into production, otherwise you make a loss.

Unless you manage to finance your project using pre-orders from day-1, you will always need to borrow (and eventually refund) capital with interests to cover production costs since you have nothing to sell until the finished product is ready.

 

[SAL-e]

[citation][nom]soldier2013[/nom]Here is the thing, these sites have people that are alot smarter than the ones trying to block it. Most of the ones that download it are also alot smarter than your average pc user or RIAA goob that comes up with these plans to target sites. So they will always be a few steps ahead of the ones trying to stop it. Way it is. There are dozens of ways around thru or over any circumvention to block or track. Nature of the beast.[/citation]

Sorry to brake it to you, but you are absolutely wrong. On technical level pirates are much more smarter then RIAA/MPAA, but on business sense hands down RIAA/MPAA wins. You guys don't get it at all. If you think the big boys in music/movie industry don't know that piracy is result of their action you are blindfolded by them. Let me describe their business model.
1. Step one using their cash they establishing all reaching cartel that controls every single distribution channels (like radio, tv, CD/DVD production and now streaming) in the world that matters for them.
2. By controlling the distribution channels they can rob the artists by setting prices they like. You as musician would be lucky if you get paid $0.10 for every copy of your song sold for $1 or more. With exception of the few princes and princesses of that industry you will work like a slave for them.
3. By controlling the distribution channels they can rob every consumer by imposing monopolistic prices.
4. Using their monopolistic profits, they can buy out any politician in the world. The corrupted politician will ensure that your business is supported by legal protection, and passing the cause to the tax payers (aka you).

So, basically you as tax payer are paying to support their empire. The empire is used to generate wealth for the lords, so they can oppress you even more.

And you call them stupid... no they are geniuses.

You want better health care... kill the copyright regime. Notice how much arguments is going on about cutting spending on health care and other social programs, but no problem, we pass law after law to protect small group at huge cause. When we are going to wake up and make our voices heard?

 

[dimar]

The only way to beat piracy is to have quality content at reasonable prices for everybody to use without a second thought. They need to bring internet speeds to to 100 or more Mbps, with no bandwidth caps, and stream blu-ray quality content, as well as lossless studio quality 24-bit 192KHz music, into homes theatre systems and wireless devices. I think the problem is that there's too much greed in whoever controls these markets. Also, if I see a movie in a theater, there must be some kind of discount on blu-ray or DVD purchase!

 

[stickmansam]

They need to make things cheaper. This is why steam sales are so awesome, buy most of my games at $5-$10. If they had prices like this for all major developer/studios and very often, game piracy would be gone. People are not going to risk $60 on a game they might not like, but risking $5-$10 is much easier on the wallet.
Software needs to be cheaper too. The prices for people who only use professional programs occasionally need to be cheaper. Then there will be less piracy (some people will never buy no matter the price). It is insane the prices we pay for some things.
Movies need to be cheaper too. We are paying tons of money for somewhat risky entertainment (Might not like despite the trailers and reviews). I go the the theater to get the big screen (somehwat justifiable) but blu-rays need to be seriously cheaper (which is why I don't buy movies, except for really good ones)

 

[AnUnusedUsername]

[citation][nom]InvalidError[/nom]There is nothing wrong nor fundamentally broken about this business model. People take out loans and mortgages to try getting into business all the time. Some succeed and become rich, others fail and go bankrupt. If you want to convince venture capitalists and risk investor to lend you money, you will often take a chance and make a substantial investment of your own before anyone will accept to help you.This is the same thing with people making music, movies and software. People have to get started at their own expense before they can find others willing to share the risk. Avatar which is one of the best movies in recent history almost got canned because its production cost exceeded the budget by around 200M$, making it one of the most expensive movie productions ever. Cameron managed to save it because he happened to have many well-connected friends with deep pocket and convinced them to lend some more cash.Once the finished product is out, you still need to recover all the borrowed/invested capital that went into production, otherwise you make a loss.Unless you manage to finance your project using pre-orders from day-1, you will always need to borrow (and eventually refund) capital with interests to cover production costs since you have nothing to sell until the finished product is ready.[/citation]

That's not exactly true for media, because they really don't have anything to sell once development is complete (Movie theaters and the remaining market for "real" CDs and Vinyl being exceptions).

Sure, it also costs more to develop and design, say, a car or a piece of furniture than it does to mass produce it once it's ready. But with any "real" product,, 99% of end users can't produce it at a reasonable cost, so there's a reason for production to be centralized and users have a reason to buy from another producer. This isn't the case for media, as copying data requires no factory. You simply can't sell something everyone can produce for nothing and expect no one to undercut you.

Thus why media needs funding BEFORE it's released to everyone, or as part of being released to everyone (i.e. advertising or a subscription service like Netflix). Once it's created, it's going to be available to anyone who wants it no matter how hard you try to prevent that, so you can't rely on selling copies.

Honestly, we may run into the exact same problem once good 3D printers become mainstream. Only with those, EVERYTHING can be produced cheaply. That could trigger a huge shift in how our economy works though, far beyond the minor piracy debate we have now.

 

[jerm1027]

Argh, no blockade shall keep me from sailing the open seas mattes!

 

[panini]

[citation][nom]alidan[/nom]i love bringing this up, but photoshop. its only a major product because of piracy. the only reason it got big was everyone used it, and because of that businesses went with what everyone knew. photoshop costs 700$ new and 250$ for student. cs5 = 650$cs4 = 683$cs3 = 550$cs2 = 400$cs = 380$ 180 if you are ok with open boxphotoshop 7 = 440$ 144 open boxphotoshop 6 = 500$ 65 open boxand i cant even find anything older than that on amazonfor home use, the only one that is priced reasonably is 6but 6 is so old that im seriously doubting if it could even work on a modern computer. some things will never be reasonably priced...[/citation]

Photoshop is expensive not because the CD is expensive. The research and effort to produce the software itself cost Adobe hundreds of millions of dollars. Hypothetical Situation: If they estimate a million people are going to buy PS, and the software cost them $500M is R&D then they will need to make each copy more than $500 each.

Pirating isn't going to lower the price of digital content, it's just going to lower the quality. Now, considering the hypothetical situation, PS isn't going to invest $500M into R&D next year. They will just put less effort into the product.

This is why games are getting 'worse' and AAA titles are becoming less popular. Cheap < $10 games are what people actually buy. When games like Skyrim are making less than they used to because piracy is becoming more popular, these AAA titles will begin to disappear or move to consoles. Such is the way of business.

 

[Guest]

ptb. fer yer win.
(insert win-troll face here)

 

[chocostain]

Court officials will lose at technicality.

Speaking of which, piratebay isn't really advertising piracy. Though the name is very provocative, what it's aim is for users to be able to share files through torrent. You can compare this with multiply, facebook, google drive and such. It's just that files are displayed for easy access to the public.

Is it piratebays fault that people upload files for others to use? No.

So it's the members that are advocating piracy for uploading files that are with copyright.

We should all be responsible and respect what others have worked so hard to achieve and make.

It's time we value other peoples intellectual property.

Think before you click.

This is the reason behind our generations decadence. Instead of thinking something new, we just wait for others to create them and simply copy what's already there.

 

[jalek]

I predict this will have zero effect on anything. At this point, the federal government operates on the recording industry's behalf and doesn't even need prodded. They still shut down whole shared servers with piracy notices, affecting potentially hundreds of sites at once while targeting a dozen.

 

[3ogdy]

I know a lot of people who would rather PAY for HARDWARE that would allow them to fully enjoy PIRACY rather than pay for the CONTENT they get. So yeah, I find that as being an honest statement.
Even if they sell a miraculous software for nearly free, I still wouldn't buy it. Why? Because I'd rather spend money on physical stuff like HARDWARE which improves my PC's performance rather than get software. I never even considered upgrading to a fully legal Windows 8 version from a pirated Windows 7 copy(something which is allowed and which is worth quite an insignificant amount of cash).
So screw you SOPA, PIPA,FISA or whatever.
Piracy will live on and become more powerful than you could ever think of - the harder you try to take it down, the faster the pace at which it will grow. Again, I'd PAY for hardware to get anything for free rather than pay for the products I get.

 

[Zeal514]

Most things that I pirate, I would never buy. I just pirate them for fun, shts and giggles, playing around with a new program etc. etc.

IMO, the only way to stop piracy, is to develop ways to make the copyrighted material easier to get, when paying.

For instance--

I can get a pirated movie, up and running much easier than I could get a non-pirated movie up lol.

I Actually bought Nortan Anti Virus last year, because I couldn't be bothered to figure out the cracking process, just purchasing the program was worth the time I would spend trying to crack it. This applies to everything, getting free music is alot easier than downloading off Itunes, since Itunes places so many restritctions on you, its like fck that Imma just go frost wire and make my life easier.

 

[spectrewind]

//snarky

"New research coming out of Boston's Northeastern University suggests that the strategies of the music and music industry that target the blocking of websites that host copyrighted material is not an effective anti-piracy measure."

Wow... It took a university to figure out something a 12 year old could determine after discovering how DNS works? Yay, popular academia!!

And in other news... Water is found to be wet.

 

[bitrocket]

"They said that copyright holders should not focus on the seizure of domains, but on blocking their ability to process payments from users, which could prove to be much more effective. "

No problem. More sites will use Bitcoin to show them the finger.

Bitcoin is like bittorrent, but not for files, but money. It's a virtual open source cryptocurrency with a decentralized structure that cannot be shut. This is a totally new alternative to the world ponzi fiat currency of the banksters. Corrupt banksters can inflate the fiat currency and stole our money thru this when ever they want.

They already tried to attack file sharing sites thru Paypal. Here's a link.

PayPal Assault On File-Sharing Sites Makes Business Case For Bitcoin
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jonmatonis/2013/01/09/paypal-assault-on-file-sharing-sites-makes-business-case-for-bitcoin/

 

[valkain]

Here are prime examples of why Piracy is rampant

Game Industry:
Square Enix: "We just released Chrono Trigger for the IPhones and Android Phones! Hurray Buy it NAO!"

Users: "Great! Take my monies! Whats new and what do we get?"

Square Enix: "We introduced a new UI into the game to make it touch compatable, we added DRM, made all existing content a DLC, and require it to check in. So long as you use it with a data plan or on wifi,, you will enjoy our 'new' game"

U: "... well what about about new playable content?"

SE: "There was no need to add more, it's awesome as is and no different than the Play Station version or Nintendo DS version."

U: "Do I at least get a demo to see if I even like the new interface?"

SE: "No"

U: "So.... let me get this straight. As a legitimate customer, I am slapped with a DRM, a questionable experience with a new UI, cannot use it offline, am required to download existing content...."

SE: "Yes, but it's Chrono Trigger!"


Ugh, it so disgusted me. I bought other SE titles that didn't require downloading content, and I broke their shitty DRM using DRM blocking programs. I bought it, why am I not allowed to use it when I travel on an airplane?

I found CT online, tried it, found the UI to be to crappy to be worth buying. I love Chrono Trigger on on my old SNES. If I do want to buy it and have a portable experience. I will need to buy a used Nintendo DS somewhere and a used copy of the game. But oh wait! Publishers are against the reselling of used games and etc as well.

Movie/TV Industry:
I want to watch Game of Thrones. I don't have cable TV because I don't need 700 channels of shit when there are only 2 channels I might be interested in for 2 hours a week. Since i have no cable TV, I can't subscribe to HBO. HBO makes GoT available online to HBO subscribers. Ok, here's my money, let me just subscribe to you online. What? You won't let me until I get cable TV? WHY?!!!! TAAKE MY FUCKING MONEY ND LET ME WATCH IT!

No? I need to wait until it comes out on DvD/BD? Then there is no damn point when everyone I know of is talking about the latest frigged episode and just letting me in on all the god damn spoilers. I know about the episode before I even watch it.

Your choice is either pirate it, pay out the nose for excessive services you won't use, or ditch all your friends and coworkers because you need earplugs and blindfolds so you never hear, or read about any spoilers.

The industries need to wake up. Take my money and give me what I want. DRM is not going to stop piracy so why are you punishing your customers? Social Media is rampant and it won't prevent me from hearing a spoiler as I turn a corner around work. So why won't you take my money and let me watch it at the same time everyone else? I don't want to pay comcast $100 a month on top of an HBO subscription to watch 4 hours of tv a month.