I don't understand personal protection acts. It's almost like saying, "Hey look, criminals, a loophole!"

As long as I've lived, as long as you have done nothing wrong, you have nothing to hide. That, as far as I'm concerned, will always be true. If you have nothing wrong, there's nothing to be paranoid about.

Now, if you are doing something wrong... well, then doesn't it stand well to think that you should be reprimanded? When did we all start thinking it was okay to do something wrong? Or that the law should protect those who are doing something wrong?

And let's get it out of our thick skulls that "big brother is watching you". Unless you're doing something horribly wrong, no one cares. You're not that special. Get over it.

the bureaucracy is expanding, to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy...

... i just pirated that quote, guess i can get away with it now

Spotted a minor typo...

now if only something like this would happen to the RIAA..

Some would argue slippery slope...

Ahhh, remember that quote from Civ IV. Don't know where it comes from though...

etrnl_frost: the problem is when what is legal today becomes illegal tomorrow. Thanks to all that personal information you gave up freely, the government knows just who's door to come knocking on. It might seem fine now, but just wait till the government asks you to give up something you feel they have no right doing.

It's easy to overlook such legislation when it affect child abusers and software pirates, but what happens when we get into a China or Iran-like situation, where your basic freedom of speech and expression becomes illegal?

fun game, good quotes, now you can feel free to pirate with out immediate reprimandation.

argh pirates win again ...

So when are you planning on putting the 24/7 webcam on in your bedroom? If you're a consenting adult, you aren't doing anything wrong, How about having a tracer on your car that can let the police know when you exceed the speed limit? That way they can send you the ticket without having to leave the precinct. After all, if you break the law, "doesn't it stand well to think that you should be reprimanded?"

Show me that you live this and I might listen to your argument. The reality is, it's is a weak and unreal argument. There are a multitude of things you do and say in life that are nobody else's business, and it has nothing to do with legality.

I have no problem with extending new powers to government bodies. However, it had better include very strong accountability, otherwise it can lead to enforcement without responsibility where the end justifies the means. That's bad news for everyone except those in power.

Don't let the door hit your ass on the way out.

AWESOME NEWS !!!
Down with the RIAA !!!
Down with the MPAA !!!
VIVA LE REVOLUTION !!!

i swear, they spend less effort going after real pirates these days

The real pirates are harder to catch and are far less than the "regular" pirate. It doesn't payoff for them...

no, the real pirates are plastic, as shown in the picture.

No, no, the REAL pirate is here maddox.xmission.com

The more power you give to the government, the more apt it is to corrupt and abuse it. Have we not already seen this in America? Enough said. If you want to live under a Nazi-like Regime, sure give the government more power...

I for one am very happy these laws are being struck down, The RIAA and MPAA have done more harm then good and deserve to be taken down. Big corporations and government are the cancer of society. Its called greed, corruption and the power of money to subjugate freedom and privacy of the individual... and the cancer exists in all areas, from big pharmaceutical companies poisoning our bodies to telecom companies trying to snoop in our private lives. Glad to see that freedom is finally winning out.

Know what, I have nothing to hide.
If you want to use Big Brother on me, go ahead. You'll see all the pornographic content I see, and you'll learn how to speak 1337 speak in only a hour. You'll also find I openly use torrents to transfer data.
I ain't being stopped any time soon.
(P.S. Canadian law protects pirates. We can upload and download all we want legally. It's just the use of said obtained material is illegal if you don't have the legal right. We have the right to transfer the information. So, back to uploading all my porn.)

Leave maddox alone.
Oh wait, it's people like you he even has a usebase to begin with.
By the way, everyone get the Alphabet of Manliness, Maddox's book, it's pure awesome. I pirated it.

This seems incredibly political and an abuse of government power. Government should be allowed to deny licenses to firms if they don't like what the firms are doing? That could lead to serious trouble, especially if it gets to the point where firms who oppose the government are simply denied a renewal the next time, no one would dare oppose the government or challenge its views. I can't believe the people of Norway have this kind of short sided view.

While it would be nice to believe that governing bodies (ie justice dept, police, etc) are incorruptible and infallible, it is simply not the case due to their human composition (which are fallible and corruptible).

There are plenty of events in history to show this very issue and it is currently being witnessed in Iran and recently in China. There are plenty of people that have done nothing wrong yet they are being oppressed by their own government for a multitude of reasons. Heck, the whole "Why do bad things happen to good people" saying is common in all cultures/societies due to a common understanding of how events in life are not always predictable by a simple formula of "be good and nothing bad will happen to you".

Personal protection acts are there to protect you against the abuse of power by others. As another user mentioned, there's nothing wrong with government power when its accountable and responsible.

For example, if I get hit by a car I can look at the license plate and memorize it but I can't get a name from it and become a vigilante. However, the police can obtain the owner's name. This requires me to report my incident and if the police have enough evidence, they press charges and obtain the owner's name. This should be no different for copyrights. The group should obtain the IP address they claim to be a suspect, provide evidence to a court, if the court deems the evidence sufficient, the ISP is requested to release the subscriber's name through a court order (and not just because the group wants a name).

I don't think many people disagree that state power should be higher than private business.

To be fair, we aren't presented with enough information to make a decent assessment of why the license isn't being renewed. Lawyer's can be dis-barred for malpractice so a firm being denied renewal should be on similar terms.

Given that the answer to this problem (if it can be classified as such) is highly debated, it would be fairly premature to assert that it is wrong to deny renewal to the firm just as it would be premature to assert it is right to renew it. Bottom line, we need more details otherwise you're left with a lot of assumptions to make regarding the firms ethics, behaviour, mandate, goal, etc.

Once again, I feel the need to ask:

"Why is every comment that speaks even the slightest bit negative toward piracy downrated here?"

Instead of making a blanket statement (ie. "why do all men cheat"), specifically raise a comment you feel was unfairly rated down and ask why. It may be more productive.

giving how many loop holes are around to keep the worlds super corrupt politicians out of prison, this tiny loophole to steal copywrite material is a pinprick compared to the anal raping that this world has done on its citizens. The ONLY way you'll see pirating slow down is when we stop getting raped at the retailer and when we stop getting raped by employers and our governments. GOOD LUCK WITH THAT. It will NEVER happen, just like stopping pirating.

is it not obvious? yo ho ho and a bottle of rum! arrr!

Fair enough.

I felt that it was such a consistent pattern here that simply asking the question in general form was good enough.

I can see why you used the statement "Why do all men cheat?" as an analogy. To disprove the validity of that statement, all one has to do is simply point out an instance of a man that does not cheat to disprove that, which is quite easy to do. The same thing goes with my comment.

During my combing of previous articles, I did find a few comments that spoke of it in a negative light with a positive rating, but it seems that, more often than not, those that speak of it in a negative light are downrated.

Here's an example of one comment that I thought was downrated simply because it spoke negatively about piracy:


marcus_br 06/18/2009 11:38 PM
Hide
Insert quote. Report --5+

nachowarrior :
"We do not wish to censor the Internet but we do want the possibility to make a living on what we create." what it really means:"We don't know what the public REALLY wants or how to deliver it to them properly so we're going to sue the shit out of everyone, spending more on lawsuits and lawyers than we'd ever actually 'lose', and we all know that there is no way to quantify POTENTIAL profits, so we will just sue them for what we'd charge multiplied by how many times we know it was downloaded even though it's an astronomical amount of money and the sales numbers would be unprecedented in the industry... ever"you're welcome for the translation of all these useless law suits.



We can retranslate that to pirate language too:

"Since you don't know how much you're losing and i MIGHT (but will almost never) buy it anyways, i'll keep downloading it. You're not losing as i'm not going to buy it anyways...just entertain me for free.
If i'm short on cash...i'm sure you'll excuse me, i have bought that one $9.99 software...i think i can download this $900 software now for free.
But iff i'm doing ok on the bank account...i may as well buy one of the products after complaining about pricing and having downloaded and used a dozen of others...maybe i'll buy Photoshop after using for free DreamWeaver, Illustrator and the whole suite. Maybe i'll complain about the price and won't. You evil corporation...charging whatever you want for the product YOU develop.".

Thank you for clarifying, I brought it up because there were only 2 posts on this discussion that were down-rated and 1 was more about personal protection acts and the other was about a 'typo' so I didn't understand where your finding came from.

I agree with you that obnoxious comments from opponents of 'copying' get down-rated far more often than obnoxious comments of supporters, but I beg of you not to confuse the issue with assuming that its juvenile behaviour. You'll also notice that racist, sexist, petty, hateful, etc comments are also downgraded and clearly not out of juvenile behaviour but because it is generally deemed as unacceptable.

The biggest reason I can give you is because of what both sides of the issue are looking for. One side is looking for revolution while the other is looking for justice. I would argue that the majority of the time the issue falls on deaf ears because people tend to listen more to the attitude of the message rather than the message itself, consequentially, a lot of stereo-types and assumptions are made along the way by many readers which ultimately hampers the possibility for constructive debate.

The side that's looking for revolution is upset over the resistance of big corporations to adapt more economical solutions for the distribution of entertainment media. The advent of the internet, consumer recordable media, file sharing, etc. have made it increasingly easy to distribute material across large distances with little cost associated with it (there is a large cost involved but its divided among a large community which is so large that it makes the cost to each person minuscule). This in effect widens the public's access and exposure to art and entertainment in the very same manner that information is easily accessible on the internet. However, the latter isn't subject to as much dissent over its benefit as the former is (the majority of people believe easy, free, access to knowledge/information is a good thing). This group doesn't feel that file sharing is a negative act for the same reason that people don't feel that access to free knowledge/information on the internet is a negative act either. I won't go into the supporting reasons for the above as I'm sure you've encountered many strong arguments (as well as poor) from this side of the camp.

The side that's looking for justice is upset over the issue that material is being distributed without direct financial benefit to the artist or copyright holder, reflecting an 'injustice' towards their efforts of producing their product. A large concern is raised over the industry's ability to generate revenue should the public refuses to obtain their products through the delivery channels currently being provided by the entertainment industry.

Pit both sides against each other and you can understand the animosity that carries on between the two sides when accusations and judgments are made, especially those judgments whose roots lie within the moral realm.

I'm of the mindset that trying to persecute either side is a waste of resources as there is valid concerns being made on both sides. To me the solution would be for the industry to engage with the community in a way that continues to provide them (artists/distributors) with revenue while offering an economical delivery channel for the public.

The issue is one similar (albeit different at the same time) to the bottled water industry. Imagine if bottled water was the only way to obtain drinking water. Today, people are outraged by the fact that bottled water makers ask for on average of $2 for 591ml of water, which is common knowledge as being grossly overpriced. If the only way to get water was by purchasing bottled water at that price, I guarantee you that you would see communities of people starting to build wells and capturing rain water, adding filtration systems, etc. and sharing it with their community in an effort to avoid paying for an overpriced commodity. The community would argue that there is a whole infrastructure available for the cheap distribution of water. If the industry refuses to adapt, you can see how animosity would build between the two groups.