StrangeSox

QUOTE (Tex @ Jan 20, 2012 -> 04:15 PM) Why? If piracy isn't wrong, and doesn't hurt anyone, why support the law? I haven't said piracy isn't wrong. I have said that it isn't that big of a problem.

QUOTE (BigSqwert @ Jan 20, 2012 -> 11:54 AM) SF 24 - NY 20 NE 38 - BALT 16 That is about what I would predict.

QUOTE (MexSoxFan#1 @ Jan 20, 2012 -> 10:36 AM) They may be athletes but they shouldn't be no where near the GOAT atlhlete's discussion. I drive alot and I'm still fat (not huge, but I need to lose 20 lbs). An F1 drivers fitness regime would destroy many athletes. The average heart rate during a 90 minute race is 170 bpm. They have to withstand 3+ g's in turns. Theres a tremendous amount of force transmitted through the steering wheel, requiring a very strong upper body and arms. And you are doing it in 140°+ heat.

QUOTE (Tex @ Jan 20, 2012 -> 11:19 AM) They lend each paid copy once at a time. I'm ok with that for music downloads as long as only one paid copy is being listened to at a time. Libraries do not buy one copy and then make 50 copies for their borrowers. btw No book last through 1,000 borrowers. Libraries are buying multiple copies both on first release and later when their copy wears out. How many copies of cds does Mediafire purchase? But they still lend out books and movies and cd's. That represents lost possible sales. Why does anyone pay for books when they can go to the library for free?

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Jan 20, 2012 -> 10:10 AM) I'd dispute "readily" available. They're available to a pretty small minority of those who (1) know where to find it and (2) make the decision to do get it despite it being illegal/immoral. So, probably 5% of the US internet population. so it really isn't an issue then! Certainly not one that requires changing the nature of the internet. Us laws can't stop overseas piracy. It only restricts us access to it, and even then not really.

QUOTE (Tex @ Jan 20, 2012 -> 11:13 AM) So should we stop prosecuting or stopping piracy? Nope. I've said in this thread I don't see a problem with the mega upload bust.

QUOTE (flippedoutpunk @ Jan 20, 2012 -> 12:07 AM) omg LOL. nascar is not a sport, i guess me driving on the eisenhower for all these years without a single accident and/or speeding ticket makes me an athlete lolololololol /greenletters Racing is a very physically and mentally demanding sport.

QUOTE (Tex @ Jan 20, 2012 -> 06:38 AM) Agreed. But if exact copies were available, who would actually pay for one? And are there any "owners" when it is free? Quite a few people. http://www.the-numbers.com/movies/2008/BATM2-DVD.php http://thepiratebay.org/search/The%20dark%20knight/0/99/0 Should libraries be illegal? They buy one copy of a book and thousands read it. Many even offer digital books now, as well.

QUOTE (Tex @ Jan 20, 2012 -> 06:36 AM) When the free item is readily available, why buy an original? Of course it costs them money. It may not be 100% of all the downloads, but it certainly costs them some. At least some of the people would have purchased the music. How will a new business model work where only one person has to pay for the product? Why should anyone buy an original? It is easy to say it is an outdated business model, but allowing your product or service to be stolen isn't outdated. The compelling counter example is current reality--these things are readily available for free, yet they still generate billions. I also have zero sympathy for industries who fight vehemently against innovation and do everything they can to stop it in order to protect their current positions. Goods are stolen from retail stores frequently. Is the appropriate response security checkpoints and strip searches at mall entry points? Or do we instead go with much less intrusive measures? Again, appropriate responses in scale with the problems.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jan 20, 2012 -> 09:16 AM) If you shoplift a movie from Wal-Mart, it doesn't matter what you would have paid for it. They base the loss and the charges against you on the sticker price. What you would have paid for it is irrelevant as far as the court of law is concerned. This is 100% true and completely irrelevant when trying to assess the actual economic impact of piracy, especially since piracy involves digital copies and not physical goods.

QUOTE (DrunkBomber @ Jan 20, 2012 -> 03:00 AM) There is absolutely no way to determine who the best football player of all time is. Every position has a completely different role and theyre judged by completely different skill sets. ^^

QUOTE (Tex @ Jan 19, 2012 -> 09:48 PM) The same people who never would have considered walking into a store and shoplifting a CD will easily accept or download a pirated copy. It is virtually anonymous. Yes, there are thefts in every business, would you expect a store to just roll over and say, here take what you want? Why do we treat a digital download different than say a car? Imagine if a car thief said he would have bought that Mercedes G series but Mercedes was trying to make too much profit so he stole it instead? The business model may be flawed based on today's technology, but simply allowing people to steal your product isn't the answer. Digital copies don't actually cost someone money directly. Stolen physical product does. Breaking the internet and draconian copyright laws aren't the solution to outdated business models.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Jan 19, 2012 -> 07:24 PM) How many didnt? You're basically arguing that Hollywood makes plenty of money so it's ok. About 20% of total dl's. I'm arguing that their lost revenues aren't worth the measures they would enact.

QUOTE (Palehosefan @ Jan 19, 2012 -> 04:32 PM) Wayne Gretzky is the only other athlete that I would argue with MJ on the greatest ever. It's hard to match Michael Schumacher's dominance in F1 racing.

Again, I don't have issue with the existence of copyrights and the desire of copyright holders to protect them. I do have serious issues with current copyright law (mainly length of time) and the penalties associated with violating them (thousands of dollars in fines for downloading a movie). I have zero sympathy for the RIAA and the MPAA given their history on this issue and their insistence on putting out increasingly terrible products. And I have an even bigger problem with an industry trade association getting the basic functioning of the internet re-worked so that they can turn the DoJ into their own enforcement agency at zero cost to themselves. I do not see convincing evidence that the current situation is something that should or can be fixed. eta pretty cool article on the subject http://digitalcommons.law.uga.edu/cgi/view...ext=fac_artchop

QUOTE (Tex @ Jan 19, 2012 -> 05:09 PM) I agree. However, you could keep rolling this back all the way to free so I'm not that certain it is relevant. It's very possible that you have this backwards--that people do not want to pay $20 for an album but would gladly pay, say, $5 or $10. The same for new movies. It's very possible that you have this backwards--that people do not want to pay $10 for an album but would gladly pay, say, $3 or $5. The same for new movies. It's very possible that you have this backwards--that people do not want to pay $5 for an album but would gladly pay, say, $1 or $2. The same for new movies. It's very possible that you have this backwards--that people do not want to pay $1 for an album but would gladly pay, say, $.5 or $.25. The same for new movies. It's very possible that you have this backwards--that people do not want a pirate download for an album but would gladly download a free copy from the official source. The same for new movies. That's actually a continuation of the same economic principle which is basic supply and demand. Where the RIAA's claims fall apart is the assumption that everyone who downloads an album with a retail price of $20 would otherwise have paid $20. In reality, many of those downloaders do not represent any real demand at that $20 price level and thus the RIAA hasn't truly lost any revenue since the "theft" was a digital copy.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Jan 19, 2012 -> 05:11 PM) The profitability arguments don't really fly these days. Maybe back in 2001 when all this stuff was really coming to a head (with music anyway) and you didn't have the memory capabilities we have today. Back then you might have downloaded a few albums and then grabbed a copy of the CD so you could listen to it on the road or something. But nowadays everything can be digital and you can take it anywhere you want to go (via a flashdrive, memory card, smartphone, external hard drive, etc) Are we really naive enough to think that if I'm watching Lost or The Dark Knight off a torrent (in 1080p, 5.1 quality...not some s***ty grainy version) that I'm going to then go waste 25 bucks on the blu-ray copy? Or after I finish a book on my e-reader i'm going to get the hard copy? Yes, there have been a few examples where smart entertainers (Radiohead, Louis C.K.) have scrapped the backing of a major media company and offered up their stuff for a cheaper price on their own dime. But those are special circumstances. 95% of copyright holders can't do that. How many copies of The Dark Knight have been sold even though high-quality Blu-Ray rips were available to torrent?

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Jan 19, 2012 -> 05:26 PM) I'll add too that I think the MPAA and similar organizations are looking to the future here. At some point people are going to stop going to movie theaters. This is not true, imo, because there's always compelling reasons to go to a movie theater to see a quality movie. I'd rather go to the theater than watch it at home, generally speaking, if it's a movie worth watching. The reality is that decent movies, let alone good ones, are few and far between these days since the movie studios insist on cranking out crap remakes and sequels and ideas-done-a-million-times. If the quality is there, people will pay. This is empirically true. We moralize against theft would be one reason. I could very easily cancel my Netflix and Hulu subscriptions and torrent everything, but I don't because I am morally opposed to that.

QUOTE (Tex @ Jan 19, 2012 -> 05:12 PM) How can they make profits and allow piracy? I have yet to figure out a business model that allows for a company to make money while allowing someone to pirate their work. It's not like they haven't been very profitable over the last decade. That Cato article links to a study that estimates the deadweight loss accounting for something like 80% of pirated downloads--meaning that only 20% of downloads represent someone who may have been a paying customer.

Balta brings up a great point here: http://www.soxtalk.com/forums/index.php?sh...p;#entry2537157 Soxtalk could be completely shut down and scrubbed from all Google searches etc. if a company who owned a copyrighted article copied in full to this forum requested it. edit: I've also read, from numerous sources, that this wouldn't actually do anything to seriously stop piracy. It'd be about as effective as the War on Drugs, with less bloodshed but still huge disparate impacts on everyone but the RIAA/MPAA.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Jan 19, 2012 -> 04:54 PM) Possibly? s***ty movie/tv show/picture/book or not, if you made it and get the copyright and someone else steals it and puts it out there for free, that's wrong and you have a legitimate gripe to complain about someone stealing from you. And I agree 100% that SOPA/PIPA go too far, but that's why I think ultimately the bill will only have the foreign site stuff in there. That'll appease the "internet industry" since they won't be at the whim of copyright holders to be 100% certain that their sites are clean from any reference to some infringing material. Edit: ugh, i really gotta check my grammEr before hitting post. I'd have to dig but I believe impact studies have been done that show an increase in overall sales. Either way, my point (which I completely failed to actually make!) was that their gripe in relation to their desired solution is laughable. from the Cato article: They b****ed and moaned with the advent of VCR's. It would destroy the industry. Instead, it boasted sales and spurred an entirely new one (home video). They need to adapt with technology, not severely alter its fundamental structure because they want more profits.

QUOTE (Tex @ Jan 19, 2012 -> 04:51 PM) I'm not certain how to calculate the loses. I think it is a fact that a lot of people would do without if they couldn't pirate a copy. That's an econ 101 conclusion and it makes their claims disingenuous.

QUOTE (Tex @ Jan 19, 2012 -> 04:48 PM) Something should be done about piracy, it is unfair to content producers and will ultimately hurt consumers who value quality new content. It's very possible that you have this backwards--that people do not want to pay $20 for an album but would gladly pay, say, $5 or $10. The same for new movies. If the RIAA and MPAA hadn't been such dinosaurs and completely resisted digital supply going back to Napster, they wouldn't be in these positions.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Jan 19, 2012 -> 04:45 PM) I don't know that it's "unnecessary." Despite my hatred for the big media companies, they do have a legit gripe with overseas servers/domains pirating their stuff and posting it online for everyone to see for free. They possibly have a legitimate gripe. Their gripe does not support the extreme measures that SOPA/PIPA would put into place. Chris Dodd, now CEO of the MPAA, compared it favorably to Chinese control of the internet. They're crying poor because they (RIAA & MPAA) keep putting out terrible garbage that people don't want to pay retail for and conflate every download as a loss at full retail price. http://www.freakonomics.com/2012/01/12/how...he-u-s-economy/ http://techliberation.com/2006/10/01/texas-size-sophistry/ http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/how-copyrig...s-con-congress/

QUOTE (iamshack @ Jan 19, 2012 -> 12:13 PM) Whether it's open or not...I would have loved this in college and law school.....for the prices students currently pay for textbooks, they could buy a new ipad every year loaded with the books already on there... completely kills off the used book market.