Frogboy Frogboy

Take that file-swappers!

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Take that file-swappers!

A big blow to parasitic companies..

http://news.com.com/Supreme+Court+rules+against+file+swapping/2100-1030_3-5764135.html?tag=nl
from WinCustomize Forums

Today was a big win for those of us who value intellectual property.  Companies like Grokster and Kazaa and others who profit off of enabling people to conveniently steal software, music, videos, etc. are now on notice thanks to today's Supreme Court ruling on the issue.

The Supreme court found that peer-to-peer providers are indeed liable for how users make use of their network.  I for one am pretty pleased with this outcome on a number of levels.

A few years ago, Napster took the world by storm. Its developer was hailed as a visionary and the company became a household name.  But many developers, including us, were pretty unhappy with the whole thing. Automated piracy is not revolutionary or innovative.  Many companies (including Stardock) had thought of such file sharing concepts in the past but did not invest in them because it would be difficult to keep people from pirating.  But companies and individuals with fewer scruples not only went forward with such ideas but profited greatly from them and won both fame and fortune.

These companies exist, IMO, purely to profit from people pirating other people's work.  Perhaps these guys will find real jobs now and earn money honestly.

The Supreme Court wrote:

"There is no evidence that either company (Grokster or StreamCast) made an effort to filter copyrighted material from users' downloads or otherwise impede the sharing of copyrighted files," Souter wrote. "Each company showed itself to be aiming to satisfy a known source of demand for copyright infringement, the market comprising former Napster users."

While the court will, in future cases, need to clarify some of the elements of its ruling, I think this is a big win for people who create intellectual property.  I don't have a huge angst about piracy per se, but I have a lot of angst about companies in the business of profiting from it.

78,769 views 215 replies
Reply #201 from WinCustomize Forums Top
far be it for me to assume your intellectual capabilities bichur

I agree.
in order to be dazzled one would need to be capable of understanding what exactly it is one is being dazzled by in the first place, non?

No.
when the sentence you refer to is qualified by an 'if'.

Your assumption is still incorrect.
your own presumptions regarding my intentions however do little but reveal your own inadequacies.

Since I presumed nothing, see above.
it would seem your actual capacity to misunderstand is at odds with your claims

As some might say. For others, depends on how you look at it.

On the good hand me hears a tsking... so:

Laws against theft are good
Reply #202 from WinCustomize Forums Top
[quote...it's now time for YOU to move on.  Your responses are becoming more pointedly antagonistic.
why.. so it is admin jafo. if my replies have been received as antagonistic then it only in response to the narrow minded and bigoted way in which yourself and others have comported yourselves.

however i do thank you all for the pleasure of having the opportunity of watching grown men look.. well rather foolish. my friends have all been rather amused as no doubt any reader that can make a distinction between your own facile arguments and what is obviously a more complex issue. i think the text speaks for itself. which is nice, non?
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Reply #203 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I love it when others dig a hole for themselves that they have no hope in escaping from.
Reply #204 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I love it when others dig a hole for themselves that they have no hope in escaping from.


Reply #205 from WinCustomize Forums Top
OK, everyone....back on topic or we'll have to close it and move on....
Reply #206 from WinCustomize Forums Top
but that would take inclination on my part cougent and what motivation is there to be had in explaining to a man that cannot tell the difference between an argument and a flame, that seeks to argue both sides of an issue and still be taken seriously and hears only what he wants to hear and disregards the rest. perhaps your own self-description is the limit of your perceptive capabilities in this discussion.


flame away, you just keep reinforcing my point of view even while trying to dispute it... talk about being on both sides of an issue! Are you John Kerry in disguise?

"I voted for the 40 million, before I voted against it." - John Kerry, 2004
Reply #207 from WinCustomize Forums Top
[quoteLastly, would you mind answering a few questions... since you have admitted that the profile info is not you...


1. do you use filesharing to get music, movies, software?
information wants to be free cougent - but then you already knew that.


2. are you young?
old enough to recognize a room full of moral prigs cougent


3. do you produce or create any music, movies or software?
i'm a student cougent. when it comes to music, movies or software the world's my oyster - which is nice, non?


4. do you give it away or do you try to sell it for profit?
i do so love to share cougent don't you - no.. i suppose you don't that's.. why that's your loss, non?


A simple "No, I will not answer your questions" would have sufficed.
Reply #208 from WinCustomize Forums Top
As I stated long ago, technology is a constant changing thing. Anti-P2P technology does not yet currently exist because the P2P technology was not an issue to be dealt with by "Anti" technology until just recently. However, that is no longer true. Anti-P2P technology is under development by the corporate world for the basest reason of all... money! The first company that develops a technology that stops / blocks P2P from happening at the technology level (irregardless of users opinion or intent) will become the next "McAfee" or "Norton" of this new technology.

Currently, it is more difficult, but not impossible, to stop P2P with port blocking and firewalls. This requires a great deal of time and administration and has not thought to be cost effective in the past, but as bandwidth usage escalates within the corporate world it is beginning to be considered.

Years ago, many people downloaded on high speed corporate lines all day long from Napster, until network admins closed the ports and stopped the practice. Most corporate users of W2K or XP are not given administrative access to their workstations and therefore cannot install the Kazaa (or similar) clients. If they do have the ability to install it, their are numerous "scrubber" software packages that run on the network that will identify and remove or disable it, and alert the admins that user XYZ has unauthorized software on his workstation. BitTorrent by its very nature is network intensive, it will be stopped at the network level. Will all this happen today, No. Am I arguing both sides of the point? No. I am being realistic. This problem will be dealt with, it will not be accepted as commonplace no matter how widespread it is... because it is only widespread TODAY. Tomorrow is yet to be written and may be quite different than anyone plans it to be.
Reply #209 from WinCustomize Forums Top
all this doesn't belong on a SKINNING site forum.....
there are too many threads about stupid things like..."hey it's my birthday"
or "g-mail is bad" or whatever....I DON'T CARE....i come here to enjoy skinning
so talk about that, show your skins and ideas...as for the rest, go 'blog'it somewhere or something...
Reply #210 from WinCustomize Forums Top

all this doesn't belong on a SKINNING site forum.....

If you don't want to read it....don't read it.

IF something is deemed 'unsuitable' it will be removed, have no fear.

[word to the wise ... the author of this News Item pays the piper and calls the tune]....

Reply #211 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Discussions on intellectual property are definitely valid on a skinning site.
Reply #212 from WinCustomize Forums Top

BTW..

1) The person who owns a thing has the right to decide how that thing is used and distributed. That is a basic principle of intellectual property rights. Remove those rights and you remove the incentive for people to create it.  I

f I could not hope to get paid for the intellectual property I create, then I would have to find a different job. Contrary to what some people think, someone "else" would not step up to the plate.  It simply doesn't get created. Anyone who has been involved in software long enough has seen countless examples in which new types of software and content don't get created once the ability to make a living creating it has been removed.

2) This court ruling wasn't against the pirates. It was about FOR PROFIT companies who made a living enabling other people to pirate. If the principle reason someone uses your product is to do something illegal, then you are liable for that.  Hence, there's a big difference between say selling knives and guns (which are generally not used for illegal reasons) and selling say a magic key that opens every door in the city.

Reply #213 from WinCustomize Forums Top
So what you are saying is that middle age people with disability or illness should get things for free.

If you'd read the rest of my comment you'd have seen I didn't say I thought of it as a "should". I said in my case, in my life, I weighed the options and decided that doing without was not going to help anybody very much, if at all, since it wasn't a question of whether or not my decision was going to affect anyone's gain or loss. It was a lose/lose proposition for them. If I WinMxed a music creation program, the maker would not get paid. If I did NOT WinMX it, they would ALSO not get paid. However, on my end, if I did the former I would have something healthier to do with myself than staring at TV or websites all bloody day. If I did not, I'd have "done the right thing" but the rewarding feeling one is supposed to accrue from doing the right thing was...not very satisfying. In fact it offered me nothing at all.

My situation is my reason, in other words, not my excuse.

This said after reading your other article about this, in which you make it clearer that your main beef is with people making money from this, I am not as set apart from your ideas as I'd thought. The programs I use have no adware, no paypal collection box, etc. and if they did I'd go find ones that didn't. Here, for me, it becomes a question of motivation and also of degree. I do this because I want to create music/noise/whatever you'd call it, which I do not sell. I don't believe it ruins art to sell it, but it often does ruin the creation process behind it to think of the saleability of the result before creating it, and while creating it. So this self-restriction against selling what I do was there to begin with.

Everything I say here, incidentally, applies only to myself for the simple reason that I don't know enough about the situations of others to say anything about them. i can extrapolate by empathy and understand the frustration of a creator who DOES sell his or her work and finds people stealing it. Maybe you'd even find it particularly odd that I should feel the way I do, having lost a huge portion of the art and music created in my youth to a couple of thieves at a gallery it was shown at. But had I copies of these paintings, good ones, I'd not have cared at all, only been flattered someone wanted to have it so much.
Reply #214 from WinCustomize Forums Top
After reading all 5 pages of this article, I must say it's been an interesting ride.

I think the situation is simple and not as complex as people like to make out. BiTTorrent, P2P is being used primarily to dstribute digital media, i.e. movies, television, software, music, e-books, whatnot illegally.

The problem I feel is the cost of things these days.

You goto the store for a CD and you're looking at $20 a pop. And when you only want one or two songs... well sure there's itunes, and Tower Records in the mid 90s let you even choose songs to custom craft your own cassettes, I don't know how many remember that it was rather shortlived, but nice. I knew about it because I worked there.

If i want to see television in America, and I'm in Taiwan I find out about Bittorent pretty fast, it's the only way I'm going to see an episode of Desperate Housewives, or what have you. Farscape season in boxset DVD costs $120 each on Amazon.

It's insane!

So bittorent, and p2p becomes not only tempting, but the only option available other then perhaps becoming a devout or orthodox in religio X and not watching television or movies at all... but come on, how many of us live like that?

Solution? Lower consumer prices on all products and perhaps the temptation to cirgumnavigate the laws won't be so great.

Just my thoughts.

For Vasqo, quit treating everyone in such a condescending manner, you sound like a fool with a dictionary.
Reply #215 from WinCustomize Forums Top
The fact remains that stealing is stealing is stealing. In response to the 40 year old disabled with a liver disease, just because you are sick, poor, or disabled does not entitle you to get something for free. You're advocating software welfare. Welfare started out as a good idea which was abused and now is a damn expensive joke. Get a grip on reality, if you want pay software and can't afford it, don't blame it on software developers who (gasp!) Actually want to make a living doing something they enjoy/are good at. I guess you think that if you shoplift meat it's ok because you're poor/ill/disabled. Well, it's not because then the price goes up for people like me who have to earn their money and pay for our damn food. Software is not a necessity of life that I know of, so either make do with free or get off the computer.