Don't kill the messenger, but here is a real scenario.
My "friend" used to use megaupload, filesonic, and other services to watch all his tv content every night, and even paying for a megaupload account (never putting any money back to the creators of content). It was really convenient and the price was right. Now without it, even in the last few days, the pain point has shifted enough that he started buying the seasons of shows he is interested in on itunes. (giving a cut to the creators)
There was a point even a year ago that he could get the latest film on piratebay so easily that there was no point going to the theatre. Now it seems a little harder to find the releases, or at least more inconvenient, so my friend has gone to the movies a lot more.
Now I personally get the whole internet freedom side of things, but at the same time I have seen my friend screw the content creators out of their cut because some middle man made it a lot more convenient to get the content.
I get the idea that some people have used these services for personal content, but if the business model of a service is _primarily_ around the sharing of copyrighted content then something should be done. And especially if the service pays the uploader based on how popular the stolen content they upload is.
At least in my friends case, he spent $100 on itunes in the last day, _only_ because megaupload was not there, and there was enough pain to look for another source.
If there are millions of people out there like my friend, that is a lot more revenue for the creators/studios.
And no, I'm not a troll from the film industry. This is just a real observation.
Your observation is correct, but I'd interpret it differently: The answer should not be to ban MegaUpload.
The answer must be to provide legal services that are at least as convenient as MegaUpload.
There's a huge market of people who pirate content not because they're unwilling to pay for it, but simply because it's either impossible or extremely inconvenient to get legally.
> The answer must be to provide legal services that are at least as convenient as MegaUpload.
One thing that makes this hard in reality is that ANY service where people have to pay means people have to SHOP. Which means they have to make decisions about what entertainment products to buy, and at what price. And since these are "experience goods" you can't judge them until you've paid for them. In my book, that means means this particular type of "shopping" REALLY sucks.
So the fact that "shopping-just-sucks" (and especially for experience goods) is the TRUE friction that any hypothetical as-easy-as-Megaupload services need to overcome. A big draw of Megaupload (I say this never having heard of it before this week) is you can consume whatever you want and there's no downside to a bad choice.
So I'm not sure how any alternative service avoids the Shopping For Entertainment Products Sucks Syndrome unless they get some reasonably-priced all-you-can-eat plan that makes a lot (80%?) of commercial content available under one roof.
I don't see any reason why media companies don't offer their content on subscription. You wouldn't have to shop then. You just pay your 10 or 15 bucks a month, and you can watch whatever the content provider releases.
"my friend" would be happy to have BBC content on subscription, but all "he" is left to do is use easynews.com subscription for downloading. He would be happy to pay that to the content owner instead. But the content owner doesn't want that.
I think an easy answer to the "shopping sucks" problem is to sell them cheaply. If I can buy one episode of, say, House of Lies for $1, I'll give it a try and if it sucks, it didn't cost enough for me to care. This is more or less what AllofMP3 did, and it was great - the music was cheap enough that I'd happily take the risk of some of it being crap. It's similar to Apple's App Store as well, for that matter.
Content distributors are maximizing the profit from their products. Licensing them to streaming services before sales from Blu-ray/DVD level off would be lost money. A hit movie BR/DVD release will easily make $5-10 million/week selling half a million or more copies each week. Netflix can barely offer that to license a movie for its millions of subscribers for a year -- they're only charging $8/month per person after all and that has to pay for rights to every movie in the library.
Once they do get to the point where it makes sense to license the movie again, Apple might pay extra for an exclusive so they won't license it to Netflix too, or vice versa. You can expect streaming libraries to suck in certain ways, like time between movie release and streaming rights, for a long long time -- until consumption patterns change on a large scale -- because that's what maximizes profit.
I understand what you are trying to say, but strongly disagree. iTunes is ridiculously easy to setup and use. Paying cable + DVR box is ridiculously easy to pay for and use. People are just incredibly selfish and feel entitled to free stuff.
A few select services (Netflix, Steam, uhh that's it?) are more convenient than piracy. Piracy rate on a $1 iTunes games is often 50 to 90 percent. It doesn't get any cheaper or easier than that.
You see, I live in country where iTMS is available since maybe two months (Poland). Since then, I've spent some money on music - maybe $20 or $30, but I don't think that really matters - and that was the first time I actually paid for music. Before that, there were few times that local start-ups tried to fill this gap in this market, but they inevitably failed - mainly because they content sucked, but also because it was inconvenient as hell.
You see - that thing is happening all over again with TV Shows and Movies. As far as I know, there's no legal way for me to watch latest episodes of shows that I like. There just isn't. I would be happy to pay $5 or maybe even $10/month and be able to stream HD episodes to my PS3, without having to deal with eztv.it, RSS feeds, rtorrent and all this crap. I really would. But I can't. I simply can't.
Now, for movies it's another thing - I think I can buy/rent movies from iTunes, but they're just too expensive, compared to what movie ticket or DVD costs - Apple (or any digital-media store that I know of, for that matter) doesn't adjust their prices to different markets (hell, they even show prices in Euros, which we don't use!) - and unless something magical happens to our economy, I doubt it'll ever take off over here.
Well, except there's lots of content not available on iTunes and friends or only with ridiculous delays. I'm just not waiting 6 months for a movie for no obvious reason when the torrent is a mouse-click away.
When there's no kindle-compatible version of an ebook I want (which sadly happens more often than not) then I grab the torrent.
It may be ignorant and "illegal", but I consider it voting with my wallet.
I can't say I feel bad about it because I happily do buy the content when and if they let me. My first stop for media is always iTunes, amazon and various local eBook sites, and I'm glad every time I don't have to resort to searching a torrent.
I'm sure I'm not the only one with that "shopping strategy".
"I'm just not waiting 6 months for a movie for no obvious reason when the torrent is a mouse-click away."
You could also try really hard and find better things to do with your time. It's just a movie, not dialysis. You won't die if you don't see it RIGHT NOW.
While there is a large black market of people pirating content, it is unclear as to whether that market would be willing to enter the legal market at any price point.
Improving the distribution system is not a source of explosive growth, rather, it is I disagree with your assertion that the content industry is requisite for mere survival industry. There's no potential for explosive growth because piracy is an income problem, not an internet problem. Cracking down on file-sharing sites will not solve the problem because the illegal activity merely shifts elsewhere. Improving distribution systems will not solve the problem because free is still cheaper than not-free.
Improving distribution systems will not solve the problem because free is still cheaper than not-free.
I disagree. Yes, there are many people who pirate because they can't or don't want to pay. But I believe there's an equally large group of "casual pirates" who only do it for content that they can't (easily) get otherwise at all.
This latter group may be relatively small in the US because you have a whole range of online content providers (NetFlix et al). But it is definitely huge in europe and other countries where said services are not available or only in crippled form.
The point I'm trying to make is....shifting the pain point. In this example itunes has been shifted past a particular persons pain (time/cost) point to be a convenient legal solution.
Good point on the non availability in certain regions. At least my experience with itunes is that they are improving the service to lower that pain point in those areas too. You could not get certain content in canada a while ago, so the alternative was to find it on other sources, but as itunes adds more content in more other regions, this pain is reduced and it becomes the convenient service more and more.
You could not get certain content in canada a while ago
Canadians should be so lucky. You still cannot get most content in most of the world. No Netflix, no Hulu, no Pandora. iTunes has a meagre selection, and that which is eventually released here, comes half-a-year late and overpriced.
I'm Australian, but this experience is shared by most people who live in not-the-US. The content industry still has a world of distribution failings to address before their customer-hostile anti-piracy flailing becomes justified.
I give that arrangement until your friend realizes he can only shift his content onto 5 devices, at which point his content is lost forever. Or when his hard drive crashes and he realizes he can't re-download tv episodes.
Personally, I value my money too much to spent $100 to "rent" tv shows. My pain point is being able to own the things I buy. Until then, it's bittorrent until the bluray comes out, then buying that.
That's not a fair characterization of iTunes' restrictions. You can use purchased movies and TV shows on up to five computers, and ten 'associated devices', but Apple TVs don't count towards the ten. The content is never 'lost forever', you can always deregister one or (even if you no longer have access to them) all of your devices to register a new one.
[edit: you can also - although this is fairly recent - redownload an unlimited number of times to registered computers, devices or Apple TVs]
But this is just a threshold issue. What does the difference in cost have to be for you to rent vs buy.
Let's say it's $60 to buy a season of a show on hard media that you can watch as many times you want and yes, you own something that will collect dust for a life time. Perhaps you can resell it, but that just means your initial cost was lower and you in a sense rented it for the difference in price for that time period.
Now if the cost to rent is say $20 for a season would that be worth hassle free experience of the content? How about $10, $5? At some threshold the value vs cost starts to make sense.
This isn't a morality tale. This is the story of someone who was willing to pay in either case simply giving his money to the entity that made accessing the content easiest.
When Megaupload disappeared that entity became iTunes. The moral of the story is, if there is one, that the legal services are getting close, but they haven't quite made it yet. There is room for improvement, but reason for hope.
> And especially if the service pays the uploader
> based on how popular the stolen content they
> upload is.
This should be reworded. As I understand it, they weren't limiting payment to only users with stolen content. It's just that the stolen content was probably the most popular.
Similarly, if the internet were banned your friend will buy DVD's.
The lesson learned here is simple. Your friend will pay for the most convenient way to get his movies. The answer for movie studios is to use their resources to create the most convenient way not kill those more convenient than theirs.
I'm curious how this affects the overall economy, not just the studios. What would your friend have spent that money on otherwise (obviously a Mega account was a lot cheaper)? Who is now $100 poorer because iTunes+studios are $100 richer?
Via morningstar.com, in 2010 Apple had 65,225,000,000 in revenue.
Total operating expenses for 2010 were $7,299,000,000, just 11.2% of revenue.
Executive compensation was $148,424,291. That is 2/10ths of 1% of revenue. That is just for the the top five execs and Jobs only took $1 in compensation. Still I don't think it is accurate to say that a 'significant' cut of revenue goes to 'the executives'.
the lesser IMHO would be consumer who spent that money on anything else than entertainment, so if it wasnt beer or drugs, then it was better spent money
For many people outside of the US there is no legal alternative. iTunes/Netflix/Hulu/Zune are all very limited in the countries they serve. You can buy music (and apps) almost everywhere but for some reason buying video is limited to only a few countries in Europe.
And given MU was shut down with existing laws, there is absolutely no need for something like SOPA to shift this pain balance, yet I'm sure we'll here about them again. Much easier to legislate that pain than innovate around it.
Okay, this is one example. I personally don't know any such person. The question is not: "can you come up with an example of the MPAA/RIAA/FBI collusive measures working?" It's: "will it really make any difference overall?"
So I may be a 30 something professional who's resources vs cost point is that I don't need to look for crappy versions of files. My time is much more valuable, but I believe that everyone is not like me. My contention is that if you took a sample of the younger population, or perhaps less affluent population you would find that their pain threshold is at a different time/cost level.
To which one can say SABnzbd + Sick Beard. Not only do you get exactly what you want in desired quality, you have to spend little to no time looking for it, at least as far as TV shows and movies go.
It's not very convenient to go back to transferring files to clients via email. Now that files can be 4GB or more it's a real problem in fact. This culture of fear the US is creating is damaging business and work.
This is just not realistic in most cases. It's hard enough to get people to understand "Click on the FileSonic link". Normal people do not have Bittorrent clients installed. I'd try FTP before Bittorrent.
Most people are used to install software when it is just "download, open, install". When installed, it associates with .torrent files and it is effectively as easy as clisking a link.
Most companies forbid bittorrent traffic because it saturates the local intranet, especially on wifi networks. And because they perceive bittorrent to be illegal.
OK, thanks very much for the recommendation, I will try that. I never even considered using bittorrent for 1 to 1 file transfers. Does require that clients are willing to use bittorrent, which won't always be the case but it's good to have options.
I do realize there are still other cyberlockers up, but it seems highly possible they are all going down soon, disabling service to the US, or will be severely feature limited.
Sendoid is an on-demand peer to peer transfer system. It makes transferring any size file between two people as simple as clicking a link!
Where do my files go?
Directly to the recipient. The peer link provided after selecting a file connects the recipient directly to your machine. Files never touch or pass through our servers.
They say it's also AES encrypted. I've never used it personally, just heard of it before and I remembered it now.
Why are you going back to transferring files via email? Are MegaUpload and "filesonic.com" the only methods of transferring files other than email or something? Ever heard of Dropbox?
And what is to say that Dropbox doesn't get the fear and disable sharing too? After all, if a user is sharing a file, they could be pirating a movie and for that Dropbox could be shutdown.
Dropbox has one protection against that, they have very small public share bandwidth quotas per file. So a single file can be downloaded by a dozen people, but not a hundred.
This makes it very ineffectual for the type of wide-spread piracy other file hosting services are subject to.
Dropbox sharing doesn't always suit me, especially when I need to sent really big files to clients, these files tend to linger and take up Dropbox space.
Dropbox is brilliant for teams working together though.
An interesting take on the file sharing service that I've used occasionally is http://justbeamit.com/ which opens a direct connection between you and the recipient. If you close the window before the file is transferred, the transfer gets cut. It may not be great for large files because of upload speeds, but it can be quicker and easier than Dropbox for transient one-offs.
Reminds me of this little service I used briefly before the Napster shit hit the fan. For the life of me, I can't recall the name, but it was a directory of links (mostly MP3s at the time) and the client appeared to be a SMB client which connected directly to individual PCs for files.
Man, I wish I could remember the name of that program.
Hell, if this file-sharing take-down shit keeps up, we'll end up on USENET again. Better yet, TOR will finally go mainstream.
rapidshare is a Swiss company, and the law is less crazy over here.
but for corporate file sharing, i would recommend renting a VPS and organizing some simple SSH-based copying with FileZilla, for example. Or some HTTP-based sharing if you want.
well, to be precisely true, Sharereactor was run by a Swiss guy, and it was indeed torn down by the police. But the guy did not get in jail:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ShareReactor
but Sharereactor was designed for exchanging movies illegally, whereas rapidshare tries to be different :)
In my happy, isolated world, this has long been done through scp/git. Of course, I understand that this does not scale, has some issues and won't work for technically uninclined people. But it's still an option in certain cases (e.g. for college students).
Why not get an S3 account, upload the file, make it public, and share the link? Amazon will charge you a few cents for it, or maybe even nothing if you stay within their free tier.
The services that are reacting to Megaupload are the ones that we all know operated exactly the same -- with actual knowledge of infringement, removing only links instead of files, not disabling accounts of infringers, etc. Every underground media and software sharing forum has thousands of links to these handful of services with identical business models. There are even "multi-upload sites" that let someone distribute their file to all these services at the same time.
They should be scared. What they're doing is illegal in 168 countries. They're not complying with the letter or the spirit of laws like the DMCA that would limit their liability.
I don't think your quote really applies in this case. Megaupload is being prosecuted for plain old copyright infringement, under the Copyright Act of 1976, nothing new. If you want it to be legal for a site's owners to upload DVD rips and pay other users to share them, then that's the law you need to attack.
Your compliance claim, to me, is absolutely false. I've dealt with both Megaupload and Filesonic with DMCA requests. Megaupload not only disabled them promptly but went a step further and would remove links to identical files that I hadn't even found yet (and would tell you about it).
I just checked and I've sent 15 DMCA requests to Filesonic and had them all removed within 24 hours.
Yes they comply with DMCA complaints on the surface. No that's not enough to run this kind of business above the board. What you see in file sharing forums are the same people uploading large amounts of pirated media to these sites, DMCA complaints trickle in over the next few days/weeks, and then the very same people "re-up" the files to the same sites and post the new links in the same thread. Over and over.
To be protected by the safe harbor laws in most nations you need to not have actual knowledge of infringement. If files in someone's account are being flagged on a regular basis, you have a hard time arguing you don't know what they're doing anymore. The indictment against Megaupload says that there's physical evidence of exactly this occurring -- the site owners know that much of their traffic is from users uploading pirated content, even looking into their file lists, yet they reward these users instead of blocking them.
Is there a legal requirement to shutdown the account as well ?
Or is it enough under the DMCA to just remove files/links?
Common sense does not apply if you are not forced to do something by law. (loophole)
My argument was that if an account is repeatedly uploading files that are flagged as infringing, then it becomes hard to argue that the ongoing infringement is not apparent to the service provider. So it's not a direct requirement to close accounts, but an effect of the law nonetheless:
> Under the knowledge standard, a service provider is eligible for the limitation on liability only if it does not have actual knowledge of the infringement, is not aware of facts or circumstances from which infringing activity is apparent, or upon gaining such knowledge or awareness, responds expeditiously to take the material down or block access to it.
And as the Megaupload indictment showed, these sites are not taking efforts to stay unaware of what their users are doing -- they're looking into their accounts, seeing that the top shared files are DVD rips and commercial software, then rewarding these users instead of removing the content. That's illegal.
it would be very interesting to watch whether FBI/officials will go only after Megaupload (big fish) or they will make a case out of each and everyone who had their account and illegal uploads hosted there.
That'd be nearly impossible. To build a case against each user, they would have to:
1) Identify potentially infringing files of sufficient value to constitute criminal copyright infringement
2) Identify accounts that uploaded those files
3) Verify that the account holder is a US citizen (jurisdiction)
4) Track down where that user distributed the links in order to collect evidence proving:
a) The infringement was willful
b) The infringement was of commercial advantage or private financial gain
5) Obtain a court order for each account to subpoena the identity of the account associated with the ISP of the uploader's IP address
6) Track down the current copyright holder of each potentially infringing work, and verify that the person identified was not licensed to reproduce or distribute the work (i.e. don't sue the label marketing agent for uploading a demo copy of their artist's song)
1. if someone stored plenty of movies that were "shared" within Megaupload network, it would mean they got the copy online (ergo illegally). even if you rip a digital BluRay disc twice, its impossible to get the same filesize/hashtag if its encoded (not a bit by bit copy).
2. dont see a problem with this one.
3. lets skip this one; a UK student is almost on its way for breaking US law and be deported to US, so juristiction doesnt matter anymore -- especially if you can narrow your search down to people who hold hundreds of files.
4. I think once you prove the file was downloaded from a different IP than your (owner) then its enough of an evidence. you uploaded from California, bunch of guys downloaded in Europe. Unless you can prove you went to Europe and lived in all the cities download took place from, you are cooked.
a/b) your infringement does not have to be willfull AND you dont need to make money off of it to be charged with owning illegally obtained files.
5. dont see problem here either. the justice system has all the time and money to persecute.
6. with a 5 or 6 biggest hollywood studios it shouldnt be a problem, should it?
> your infringement does not have to be willfull AND you dont need to make money off of it to be charged with owning illegally obtained files
At this point it's clear that you haven't actually read the copyright law of your country. Merely having illegally obtained files is never criminal in the US. Not under USC Title 17 (our copyright act) or the amendments (NET Act of 1997) that weakened the requirements of the financial gain clause. Without these elements, "owning illegally obtained files" is a civil matter only. A federal prosecutor has nothing to charge you with.
Why waste peoples' time debating law when you don't know what the law is?
We can debate the merits of file sharing and, IMHO, there are real arguments on both sides, but I'll make the claim that there clearly ought to be a line drawn at people charging money/basing business models on the access to copyrighted files that they don't own the copyright to.
To argue against that, you have to go after the larger notions of copyright and IP laws as a whole, just as dangrossman said.
edit: I'm not sure why this is being voted down – but I'd ask for you to respond rather than just voting down comments you disagree with – discussion seems much more valuable than moderation.
Upvoted. I'm with you, and don't understand this seeming 100% pro piracy attitude. I am 100% against piracy in every form, but also 100% against aggressive government involvement in nearly everything. But if people are blatently stealing or providing a platform based around theft, they deserve to be punished. And governments are the only system of punishment that exist. SOPA and insane laws are not the answer of course but I don't understand this sad Hacker News trend where people downvote anything they disagree with. Downvoting is meant for trolls and irrelevant posts.
don't understand this seeming 100% pro piracy attitude
I'm thinking it's at least partially an "enemy of my enemy is my friend" attitude. Megaupload was about to launch a music distribution service for indie musicians, MegaBox, that, due to Mega's popularity among non-technical users, would have been a significant threat to the major labels, iTunes, and Amazon MP3. They were also fighting Universal to defend their Mega Song. Copyright is out of control, the public domain is stagnant, so maybe some people think that anyone fighting the copyright establishment is worth supporting.
Another part may be that some people here survived their teenage years on downloaded music and developed their skills using pirated software, and would never have become programmers/designers/hackers without it. Maybe they feel like the excessive force shown to combat piracy is like an indirect way of the government and major copyright owners saying, "Your career is illegitimate." It's an attack on their identity.
Fortunately for the world, individual identity is not dictated by random online commenters.
P.S. A number of your comments on this thread have been inflammatory. You've been here long enough to know there are better ways of getting your point across.
Insane laws like SOPA and worse are the only possible answer if you want to enforce copyright. Nothing less than full blown constant network surveillance would work.
Supporting copyright as it's defined by law and not supporting laws like SOPA is an oxymoron.
I mentioned in another thread that this is the most sensible way to handle this, because there's no way of knowing whether some of the links to identical/deduplicated files were legitimate. My previous comment: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3489054
Right now the law says that a service provider must take down or block access to the material. Taking down only links (whether they're HTTP links, or pointers in a software app, etc) pointing to the material does not meet that requirement -- the material is still there, and it's still accessible through the other links.
So while it would be sensible to only remove the one link that you were notified of, if there are others, then by not taking them all down the service provider does not gain the safe harbor protection of the DMCA and remains liable for copyright infringement. Right now, as a non-lawyer reading the DMCA, it looks to me like any storage service that dedupes files is required to remove the file (from everyone's account) when any link to that file is reported, even if the other accounts have permission to store that file.
I feel like this should probably be a grey area to be sorted out in court, if not a reasonable codification into law.
But as I understand it the wording of the DMCA can be interpreted to mean that you must remove all links to the file, regardless of whether or not some of those users had the legal right to distribute while others didn't.
I think the quote while dramatic, is pertinent, in that it describes a slippery slope. Significant change might not be immediate, but this could be the beginning of a gradual erosion.
I agree. I think taking them to court is reasonable, whether they will be convicted of anything is up in the air. It sets precedent that SOPA is not needed, and is not a precedent that can be extended to p2p sharing or anonymous search linking (neither of those activities are provable as conspiracy or racketeering, which is what I think is going to stick in this case).
There are HUGE problems with copyright and IP law, and those also need to be fixed. The damage caused through the corrupting of those laws has been far worse than copyright infringement.
Can we please not do this? The Megaupload employees were conspiring to commit piracy. These weren't trumped-up charges. They were accused, among other things, of attempting to copy Youtube 1 for 1, and knowingly conspiring with users and sites dedicated primarily to pirated content.
It seems a little banal to compare all this to, you know, genocide.
There hasn't been a trial yet. I doubt you have any inside information on the activities of megaupload. In the US, justice demands a presumption innocence in criminal cases.
I was distrustful of Megaupload and its ilk long before the government made these arrests and filed charges, but I will wait until they've actually won their case in a court of law before I'm going to accept those charges as fact. I hope more people will do the same.
Hopefully there will not be a trial. In order for a trial to occur, they have to be extradited. Nearly all extradition treaties require that the alleged conduct also constitute a crime under the laws of the jurisdiction that is being asked to extradite them (in this case, New Zeland). Showing that may be difficult to do, and if they cannot do it, they will be set free and cannot be arrested again on the US warrant in New Zeland.
These guys have some serious legal firepower. I sincerely hope they are able to defeat the extradition request.
Probably almost every video on Youtube is owned by the video creator. When you upload a video to Youtube, you still own the video and you're granting Youtube a revocable license to use it
(see section 6 of the Youtube EULA, https://www.youtube.com/static?gl=US&template=terms). In addition, Youtube enters commercial licensing agreements for much free and paid content.
Youtube videos aren't public domain just because they're on the Internet! No, you can't copy and host data you don't have the license to. And recall that these videos belong to little guys as well as big ones.
I think there is a disconnect here between whether "1-to-1 copy of YouTube" is referring to the content on YouTube or just the general implementation/interface/idea of YouTube.
And you're going to hold that against them a century later? It also sounds like the patents they were "pirating" were owned by an illegal cartel. As then as today, one man's pirate is another's freedom fighter.
Dropbox exclusively monetizes the uploader of the file, not the downloader.
Megaupload, filesonic etc. actually pay the uploaders who upload attractive pirated content that attracts downloaders who can then be monetized aggressively for faster or no-wait downloads.
Neither of those business models explicitly condones piracy. YouTube and Flickr also reward users for popular content. There is nothing inherently wrong with that, and it's entirely legal - as long as you comply with DMCA and don't knowingly contribute.
Megaupload and FileSonic were my source of The Daily Show episodes. I don't live in the US, there isn't any other way I could watch it. It used to be on cable (sony) but not anymore. I used to have a SSL tunnel and a plus account on Hulu to watch some series, but then I got tired of maintaining a VPS.
I don't go to theaters. I think it's a stupid waste of time for a bad quality experience. I watch tons of movies on pay-per-view, but the list I can choose from is 5-10 movies long. Netflix here is also limited to a few titles. I record a lot of series, but some of them are incomplete or translated.
There is no other option to me. I need to be a pirate if I want that content. I tried way too many times to get MPAA to accept my money, but they don't want it.
Good thing is that I've been discovering some really cool stuff made in Europe (specially France) (and they accept my money for their content!!!).
EDIT:
I also need to make Itunes believe I'm in the US in order to buy the stuff I want. I can't use my credit card, so I buy gift cards using some "illegal" websites. This is pathetic.
Does it disturb anyone else that the government is basically using the threat of very questionable prosecutions to scare people that were at least purportedly adhering to US law into essentially shuttering their businesses? I've read the Mega Upload indictment. It's pretty weak, and could easily apply to YouTube. If innovative businesses that believe they are following the letter of the law must live under constant threat of arbitrary criminal prosecution that will destroy them whether or not they are ultimately acquitted, it's going to have a serious chilling effect on our economy.
it always amazed me reading youtube sell blurbs again and again how instead of raiding it and closing for obviously at least 3/4 of content being illegal and persecuting owners, they got bought by a multibilion company with Board to execute and stockholder to answer to. And now they are heroes for the deal they pulled off. I dont find the difference between original youtube owners and megaupload owners business-wise.
A lot will depend on the MU case in the USA they got on of the best lawyers you can buy for money. And we will see what kind of rabbits he can pull out of his hat.
On the other hand the hydra effect will come as it always will be. And there are countries in this world the FBI cant go after the people ( Russia / Mainland China etc. ). Data will just move from one to another datacenter if servers get confiscated.
And everyone could see how much money can be made out of this sector. If the content industry does not abandon their old business model they can witch hunt forever.
TBP is a prime example for this they have thrown a lot at this problem and the site is still operating.
use FileSonic for downloading copyrighted material, I was wondering myself how long it would be before FileSonic either shutdown or disabled sharing entirely.
I'm sure there are other "scene release" sites, but this is one in particular that I've been aware of for a long time.
Filesonic joins the Internet Watch Foundation to combat online criminal content.
They join over 100 companies from across the world in the fight against online child sexual abuse content."
Omg, this IS how they are going to push through the piracy laws!!
-- We'll scan everything you have. We'll monitor everything you access. We'll sniff, everything you. All this, to protect our corporate children.
Yes, they'll make anyone fighting those laws look like a pervert. Erase all traces of credibility from their opponents, and to make the political cost of fighting this enormous.
Like somebody else said: welcome to the mayor leagues.
Ouch. This is gonna hurt their profits a lot, for the last year they've been one of the top filesharing sites used by pirates. It will likely bankrupt them. Having to shut down because of a lack of profits is way better than being sent to jail though.
Nothing. That actually is a method that's been used by "evil doers" in the past. The government had been monitoring email correspondence using Carnivore. What they found was that instead of sending emails back and forth, a shared inbox was being used, and information was simply being communicated using progressive edits of email drafts. It lived on a server, so it was available for discovery ... but since nothing was flying back and forth, it took awhile before it was detected.
What equally stops someone from simply logging in using those account details, deleting all the files, or simply changing the password? Feels like whack-a-mole to me.
it probably will with aggressive advertising all over various file sharing portals and clients like newsbin that make downloading easier than using napster. only entry barrier left is that you have to pay for it but there are already services out there that provide ad financed usenet access.
Indeed, it is interesting that the focus is on these web-based file download services, yet NNTP services like GigaNews (http://www.giganews.com/) continue to make money while falling under the radar. And let's face it -- most of their traffic probably directly comes from pirated material from alt.binaries.* groups. These NNTP services even boast large retention times for binary groups and offer anonymous VPN access.
I'm confused. On the account creation page, it says that you can have private and 'password-protected' files. Is this still true? Is the sharing that they disabled for files that had no password (i.e. publicly accessible)? Or have they just not updated that page yet?
If you can still send files with a password, then this still be an alternative for 'sending large files to clients.'
Are there any semi-reliable sources for world wide internet traffic available? Between this and Megaupload, I guess there should be a measurable dent...
I asked for a full refund on my lifetime membership.
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I subscribed to filesonic when sharing of links were allowed. I am no longer interested to have this account if there is no sharing of links allowed. The functionality of the service that I signed up for has signifcantly reduced. Thus I would like a refund of my subscription fees. Since my membership was for Lifetime $149. I would like a full refund of this amount please.
Why seed a torrent day and night, linking your actual IP to the infringement act, when you can just upload a file to a bunch of file sharing services on a cafe's wifi and post a link on a forum? If your goal is to illegally distribute files without getting caught, real P2P seems like a suboptimal choice for now.
I don't know of a single VPN service that doesnt keep logs, they might not log the sites you visit but they all log which customer has which IP at which time.
I trust my VPN-provider when I ask them explicitly if they keep _any_ logs at all, and they reply no. They are not required to do so by law (yet, at least), where I live.
They way I see is that people who upload pirated content to those websites aren't doing for a cause. They do it because they earn "points" when the file is downloaded by a free user. Then, they can use those points to create premium accounts, that can be sold easily.
People won't really care. They just use whatever is easiest for them.
When central storage sites are shutdown other mechanisms will be used for sharing. But why bother as long as it works? You're not locked into a particular site, so there's no reason to use other approaches just because something might happen.
My "friend" used to use megaupload, filesonic, and other services to watch all his tv content every night, and even paying for a megaupload account (never putting any money back to the creators of content). It was really convenient and the price was right. Now without it, even in the last few days, the pain point has shifted enough that he started buying the seasons of shows he is interested in on itunes. (giving a cut to the creators)
There was a point even a year ago that he could get the latest film on piratebay so easily that there was no point going to the theatre. Now it seems a little harder to find the releases, or at least more inconvenient, so my friend has gone to the movies a lot more.
Now I personally get the whole internet freedom side of things, but at the same time I have seen my friend screw the content creators out of their cut because some middle man made it a lot more convenient to get the content.
I get the idea that some people have used these services for personal content, but if the business model of a service is _primarily_ around the sharing of copyrighted content then something should be done. And especially if the service pays the uploader based on how popular the stolen content they upload is.
At least in my friends case, he spent $100 on itunes in the last day, _only_ because megaupload was not there, and there was enough pain to look for another source.
If there are millions of people out there like my friend, that is a lot more revenue for the creators/studios.
And no, I'm not a troll from the film industry. This is just a real observation.