We should all be completely embarrassed by this. It's the most ridiculously childish thing I have ever heard and it damages the reputation of the entire BitTorrent community.
With people like this leading the community, it's fate is disaster.
I am now proud to say I have never used BitTorrent. I know it's a great protocol, but it is in fact, one of the most criminal things on the internet and behavior like this is completely disgusting and morally corrupt.
BitTorrent is _not_ illegal, go do your homework! The BitTorrent protocol can be used for activity that is illegal in some countries. So can more or less every other traffic protocol as well.
Are you being serious? Do you really believe I don't understand that BitTorrent is not illegal?
It is the USE of BitTorrent that is illegal or, more precisely, the majority of users of BitTorrent are using it to commit crimes and I would argue that the elimination of BitTorrent would be a net positive to the world.
Well, I don't know you so I can only base my assumptions on what you wrote in your comment. And what you wrote looked like a very common misconception about the technology in question. So, yes, I was being serious.
You have to understand though, that BitTorrent was invented to enable the quick and easy sharing of large files, i.e. movies, music, and software. It was known from before the first line of code was written that the primary use would be to steal content.
It was never about legal activity. It was never about making the world a better place for anyone except those who want to parasitize the world more efficiently.
Yes, there are some legal uses of the protocol.
An analogy could be guns. Guns were designed from the start to kill. Some countries ban guns. Some countries have a constitution making them legal. Yes, I agree, it's not the gun that kills, it's the human, but when illegal behavior enabled by the product so vastly outweighs the legal activity, we should, as a society, recognize the damage it is doing and simply stop using it -- by choice -- not law, but merely an ethical decision about how to create a better world for producers and consumers of intellectual property, including the IP you may one day create and many already have.
I showed someone who had a role creating That 70's Show some of the content from the show on Youtube and she was impacted in a physical way. I saw her body slump and a dramatic sense of loss come over her.
When I saw that, I understood much better how people are hurt by content theft. We think it's being over dramatic to say that people's jobs are lost and revenues are lost and the risk/reward balance shifts to the negative for society due to copyright violations -- but it does.
It's wrong and it's bad for the world. Am I not guilty of copyright voilation? Yes, I am. I have done it. I also recognize that people are going to violate my rights as a content producer -- there are bad people in the world and I am and have been one of them, though as I mature, I am understanding more and more the value of honesty and hard work and real loss associated with those errs in my ways.
People who take risks to make people's lives better should be rewarded. Should they be rewarded to the extent they are? Perhaps not. The record industry and Hollywood, et al, could use a bit of a flatter organizational structure and find efficiencies that could allow them to produce content and distribute it more cost effectively, but that doesn't make stealing their property right and definitely not legal.
This is the problem with BitTorrent and this is why we should simply stop using it to steal.
"when illegal behavior enabled by the product so vastly outweighs the legal activity, we should, as a society, recognize the damage it is doing and simply stop using it -- by choice -- not law, but merely an ethical decision about how to create a better world for producers and consumers of intellectual property, including the IP you may one day create and many already have."
So, I should stop downloading the latest version of my favorite Linux distro via BitTorrent as "an ethical decision about how to create a better world for producers and consumers of intellectual property, including the IP you may one day create and many already have"?
Outrage, justified or not, does not make illogical arguments any more valid.
I clearly said, "This is the problem with BitTorrent and this is why we should simply stop using it to steal."
So you argue against what I said by using an example of something that is not stealing -- even after I acknowledge legal things can be done with BitTorrent. That is called "straw man." Instead of addressing my points, you invent some other point to support your case.
And then you call me illogical.
You and everyone here knows I'm right. Doesn't matter how much karma I lose. The fact that I'm losing karma only proves my case. The BitTorrent community is irrational.
You clearly said... exactly what I quoted. And then much later, at the very end, clearly said... what you just quoted. It's not my problem if you can't stick to a consistent viewpoint throughout a post.
"Instead of addressing my points, you invent some other point to support your case."
So when I quote exactly what someone says I "invent" points?
"You and everyone here knows I'm right."
I'll have none of that bullshit.
"The fact that I'm losing karma only proves my case."
I'm sorry but I just have to ask this as well... If the majority of the BitTorrent community are criminals, what reputation is being damaged by the Pirate Bay guys, and why are you so worried about it?
I am so worried about it because I understand the risk involved in creating a digital product with value and the loss of reward to society caused by leeches who choose to enhance their lives at the expense of a creator's benefit.
I think the more telling answer would be to the question, "Why /aren't/ you worried about it?"
'I think the more telling answer would be to the question, "Why /aren't/ you worried about it?"'
I don't have any stats or studies, but given that I sell a digital product I've been very keen on what to do (or not) about possible unauthorized copying. What I've determined from reading comments and blog posts from other software makers is that if you sell a decent product at a reasonable price, most people are good about paying.
Granted, "decent" and "reasonable" are squishy terms, but overall it seems more practical, and profitable, to offer something of value than to pile on the digital restriction management and battle ubiquitous distribution tools.
Treat people well, and they treat you well in return. Not always, but good enough.
If that's the case, then we should also eliminate HTTP because the good chunk of HTTP users are using it to commit crimes by going to BitTorrent websites.
Whether or not something is illegal doesn't make it unethical or morally corrupt.
In any case, I do not consider copying or sharing information to be "stealing" and "disgusting". Whether or not it hurts the livelihood of programmers, artists, or anybody else is immaterial. They were are not in fact, deprived of anything except potential revenue.
If society do not see musics as valuable enough to fund, than so be it. Men have no obligation to fund anything that they do not see fit to be produced.
You have not addressed why is it the right of producers to make a living making despite of the fact that other men do not saw fit to patronize the producers.
The consumers are in fact patronizing the producers by consuming the product the producers create. Not paying what the producer asks in exchange is the "wrong" part.
The free market says that the producer can ask what it wants in exchange for the product. If the consumer doesn't want to pay it, the consumer should not consume it. Consumption without paying does not mean the consumer does not believe the product has no value. Obviously it has value if the consumer consumes it.
Patronizing required paying the producers, which did not happen. They did not found it valuable enough to pay for expensive goods. They just happens to find an unofficial illict source of goods.
That's just tough luck for producer on the free market. The producers did not produce enough justification for the consumers to sponsor them.
It is one thing to ask for people to pay for your product that you sold from your online store, it is quite another to demand payment on the whole supply chain of which you have no part in creating beyond being the source of the materials.(seeding, listing, describing, etc)
I'm not kiba, but I share those sentiments. Nevertheless, I do pay for things in some cases. I paid for OS X, for example. Long ago, I paid for copies of SuSE and RedHat.
The principle that sharing is not theft is much deeper and more important than whether I downloaded from iTunes or thepiratebay. If we don't get past this, the future will be mostly reinvention of the past, in the manner of GNU reimplementing Unix.
We need to move to a culture where content creators understand that it's up to them to charge for content directly, and that they cannot control what people do with that content once they've sold it.
If the users of BitTorrent created products of equal value to the products they steal with BitTorrent, then perhaps it may be considered sharing, however, the vast majority of BitTorrent users create nothing and consume everything.
That is not sharing. That is stealing.
Consumers should reward producers for production. Any other system is doomed to failure and BitTorrent creates those in any market for digital products.
It's really super simple. The fact that this community would down vote me for expressing such logic is all the more reason to believe that "hackers" need not be rational.
Theft is the depriviation of men's property, not of potential profit.
The copying and digital distribution of work cannot qualified as stealing because there is no property being stolen. Nobody is depriving anyone of their ability to watch, copy, sell, and modify these movies.
This is very simple logic. The fact that you wish to deflate these actions of copying and distribution with stealing is disingenuous.
It has been established so many times on this board that copyright infringement is NOT stealing that I would recommend against even bothering to have this argument. You're right, the other argument is disingenuous.
You are talking about messing up a tool that is used to perform economic calculation. Intentionally introducing calculation chaos into the economic system is a far different issue from who should have the right to copy, modify, and distribute digital goods.
It is obvious I would condemn counterfeiting as abusing the monetary system.
Yes, but a currency system based on intrinsic value would solve that problem, and have other beneficial effects as well, such as curbing runaway inflation (well, except that that's really the same problem, just official instead of unofficial counterfeiting).
With people like this leading the community, it's fate is disaster.
I am now proud to say I have never used BitTorrent. I know it's a great protocol, but it is in fact, one of the most criminal things on the internet and behavior like this is completely disgusting and morally corrupt.