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I was strictly against piracy a few years ago. Nowadays it's a daily activity. What happened?

I realized what the media companies were actually doing, how DRM hurts the people who actually pay for the product and all these enormous sums they force people to pay for a few cases of infringement.

I don't want my money to go to these corporations, that's why I'd choose to pirate over buying today.

That said, my 6 terabytes of content contain no illegal music and just a few large American-produced movies. It's mostly anime, documentaries and Swedish TV. The anime and documentaries I have because I simply can't buy them here. There's no way for me to consume this content legally in a way that I prefer. The Swedish TV I store so that I, one day, can show my favourite shows to my future kids (I'm doing backup on backup), and I'm not even sure if that's illegal, considering I pay TV-license and all.

Well, that's my case, I'm not sure which kind of pirate I am, but I know that as long as the media companies take a large slice of the money that's supposed to go to the artists, and use it to fight against the public, I don't want them to get a single penny from me.

I get that. I have heard of how DRM hurts people and I do know that artists get screwed by their labels. But is piracy really a solution? Are you really protesting or are you using that as an excuse to make yourself feel better? Though the artists do get screwed by labels, piracy also hurts them. I admit that a few years ago I acquired a large collection of movies of music through piracy. These days I feel differently.

This is tricky because I see your point but there also has to be a better solution. I feel like these reasons stifle progress that may solve your problems. Do you think if piracy were curbed a lot then maybe some company would take advantage of a space In the market and somehow let you get content you can't in the US? Maybe even these companies supporting SOPA may do it? Maybe I'm naive. Ive got some reading to do for sure on this. Thank you for honestly answering my question.

I think you're putting the cart before the horse. Wouldn't making more content easily available curb piracy? Look at the examples of Spotify, Netflix & Steam. There's plenty of anecdata about pirates going legal once the legal services are convenient/cheap enough.

Yeah, I agree and I've made that point before. So why doesn't it happen?

Edit: I mean why don't more companies get into it and how can we tell that to the authorities in a way they'll listen to

There's an unwillingness to adapt within the music and film industry. Spotify (and for those who live in the US, Netflix and Hulu) is a great start, and last time I checked, they were dominating over piracy.

The new technologies are competing with piracy. Make a better service, with better conditions than the pirates can offer, and you win the battle.

In the end, the media companies need to choose between using the new technology that's being offered or disappear from the market. By the looks of it, some have gone with the latter option, and that is why we see these anti-piracy crackdowns.

I think skymt got it right. Polls have shown that as Spotify has been growing on the Swedish market during the recent years, music-piracy has declined enormously.

What they did right, was to provide a service that was easier to use than piracy, with the right price. That's the key. It may not get everyone to pay, but it'll get you the large majority.

Now, we're all just waiting for a Spotify-for-movies. There's no Netflix or Hulu over here, as Sweden is far down on the priority-list.

> I have heard of how DRM hurts people and I do know that artists get screwed by their labels. But is piracy really a solution?

In the UK it is a criminal offence to bypass copyright protection measures, but it is a civil offence to download a movie. Thus, it is more illegal for me to go and buy a DVD which I then play on my Linux laptop than it is for me to just torrent it. (Whether anyone bothers to actually enforce these laws is another matter)

> Thus, it is more illegal for me to go and buy a DVD which I then play on my Linux laptop than it is for me to just torrent it.

Huh. I have several hard drives filled up with dvds that I've ripped. I always that it was at least slightly less illegal (if not completely legal) for me to do that than it would be for me to just torrent the content.

On the other hand, I'm in the US, so things may be completely reversed here.

Didn't they declare DVD ripping legal recently in UK?

I tend to buy music and movies where available, then if it's too locked down (blu-ray) I "pirate" a clean copy. The one they should have sold me in the first place.

Sorry, but while I understand the intention, I don't buy the argument that your dislike of the corporations gives you a moral right to have the stuff they've got rights to without paying.

You won't change "the system" by making their "we need stronger laws and stiffer penalties" arguments stronger.

If you don't like the system, refuse to participate in it - even if that means you don't get to listen to the music they sell. There's an enormous amount of legal nonDRM music available, either at "regular market prices", much less expensive than that, or completely free.

I _strongly_ recommend magnatune.com for a strongly artist supporting yet still inexpensive music resource.

Bandcamp, Soundcloud, there's many many ways to get free music online legally.

Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber have every right to choose to sell ownership of their "creative output" to the traditional music industry for whatever deal they can cut - and the new owners really do have every right to control and profit from the subsequent distribution of that music. If you don't like their business model, great - don't buy from them. But don't pretend that makes it ok to download that music.

The more people who buy into alternative music distribution channels, the more likely it is that either a) the traditional music industry will change into something you can choose to support, or b) more musicians will choose better alternatives (where "better" here means "more aligned with your personal ethics/morals/preferences)

Thanks for the Magnatune tip!

From their site:

"For just $15/month, you get unlimited music downloads in a variety of MP3 and lossless formats as well as unlimited online music streaming. Our library of 15,000 songs (1100 albums) [...]"

They have free downloadable one-hour example podcasts at http://magnatune.com/podcasts/ for all genres.

Right now I'm expanding my musical horizons by listening to a diversity of internet radios, using streamripper to save the songs in mp3 format with the correct title so that I can look up the artist name when I hear a song I like. I can then hunt for other songs from the same artist. Also see the small python program at http://www.michielovertoom.com/hobby/somafm-playlists which I wrote to download some playlists. I prefer raw stream URLs over obscure webbrowser-based radio players.

I may not have made it clear in my post, but I have never downloaded music illegally for two reasons:

1) Spotify entered the market about the same time as I started sharing files, and that was good enough for me

2) I mostly listen to music that artists choose to distribute for free

I have also bought a few albums from Bandcamp.

The prevalence of piracy is a separate issue from any damage caused by piracy. Even if piracy is rampant, the damage caused by it isn't enough to prevent the entertainment industry from showing record profits. Some comedians' careers have been made by people uploading bootleg videos of their performances to YouTube. As such, I don't believe the entertainment industry's vicious and destructive response to piracy is at all warranted.

A similar, but weaker, argument can be made in the case of counterfeit jerseys. A sports jersey is meant to show affiliation and identification with a particular group of people. Maybe people should be able to demonstrate that identification "unofficially."

Study finds pirates 10 times more likely to buy music: http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/apr/21/study-finds-pira...

Wisely, the study did not rely on music pirates' honesty. Researchers asked music buyers to prove that they had proof of purchase.

The government should not be able to take things without a trial in a court of law.

That's the essence of it, right there. This is especially troubling, for those of us who aren't American, because the US is claiming ownership over all .com, .net, and .org TLDs, and thus considers it just fine to seize the domains of foreign sites. So as a Canadian, with no say whatsoever as to what laws are passed in the US, I am nonetheless bound by them and can have my business property seized if a foreign government doesn't like what I do, with absolutely no ability to defend myself in court or seek redress for wrongful seizure.

That's horseshit.

Agreed. I don't see how anyone can argue with that. You're right. But doesn't it bother anyone that torrent sites that are pretty well known for providing access to pirated content (whether a link constitutes infringement is not the issue here) are hiding behind freedom? I feel like they shouldn't be on the front lines of this. They're going to hurt and make us look bad more than they help. Maybe if some well known people or companies took the lead on this it would make the whole opposition look better and give us more credibility. TorrentFreak is exactly the kind of site that is the poster child they use to claim these measures are necessary. They should hang back and be quiet, right? If I'm wrong I'd like to know. I read so much about this and I thought my position was solid but now I'm wondering.

TorrentFreak is a news site, much like Ars Technica or zdnet. Yes, they focus on torrents, but they themselves can in no way be claimed to be offering infringing content (even if you believe a .torrent is covered by copyright).

Yes, I agree with you that the general public may be dismissive of what they say due to their championing of a technology largely used for copyright infringement. It certainly is a PR issue. That said, TorrentFreak is not really in the business of trying to convert skeptics. They're a site that specializes in preaching to the choir, much as boingboing does. There's a legitimate place for sites like that. They get the knowledgeable masses fired up about opposing bad legislation and illegal government seizures, which is never a bad thing.

As for torrent sites in general 'providing access' to pirated content, that's a pretty fuzzy area. Google itself offers a torrent search [1]. Are not they, too, 'providing access'? Where do you draw the line? Yes, sites like thepiratebay are well-known for their brazen encouragement of piracy. That does not, however, mean that they are guilty of copyright infringement. My concern with making simple links illegal is that it breaks the Internet. It imposes upon site maintainers the responsibility to ensure that no links on their site direct people to content that the US Government deems unlawful, which is crap.

When we accept facilitation of a crime as a crime unto itself, we are conferring upon the authorities the trust that "facilitation" will not be overly broadly interpreted. I don't think we can do that, given the USG's behavior. Thus, I resist any attempt by them to claim more power to decide what content is and is not acceptable.

[1] http://www.google.com/cse/home?cx=003849996876419856805:erhh...

Maybe it's time people start taking local TLD seriously then, redirecting from .com/.net/.org to safer places.

They all sound so '90s anyway.

Local TLDs just kick the can down the road, as now you're beholden to the whims of some other government. The only one I trust at this point is .is.

How do you feel about arrests?

Don't much like those either. They use arrests as a way to harass innocent people, hence the phrase, "You can beat the rap but you can't beat the ride."

How do you feel about oranges?

An arrest is chiefly an investigative tool, accompanied with (ideally) a legal proceeding that presumes innocence. Civil forfeiture is nothing like that.