[2005] Response from Pirate Bay to Apple on Intellectual Property Dissemination
static.thepiratebay.se
static.thepiratebay.se
The Apple exchange doesn't appear to be a particularly notable standout, really. Gr8pop Ltd is far more amusing because there is some back-and-forth, but still there's not much to see beyond profanity and entertainment value (depending on your viewpoint).
He moved the entire team out of Apple's offices so that they could work without interference from the powers-that-be, who would have blocked his efforts once they realized how much his new "inexpensive" computer would compete with their existing push to sell a $10,000+ Lisa.
Macintosh was very much a big "F.U." to the Apple of the day, from a remote jurisdiction where the usual rules didn't apply. PirateBay is very much a big F.U. to the IP industry of today, from a remote jurisdiction where the "rules" are applied slowly and incompletely.
Like any analogy, there are hits and misses, but I see irony in a company that exists today because of someone's pirate disruption of the entrenched system sending a cease-and-desist to other disruptors. Another way to put it is that Apple isn't dancing with the one they brought to the Ball.
I don't agree with some of the practices of the copyright holders; and agree that copyright law is somewhat outdated and needs revisiting. However, I equally have trouble with distribution of material such as that described in correspondence above (an unreleased version of Mac OS X), a product that employees have worked hard to create, and don't accept the "information must be free" argument/mantra.
Others opinions?
An unreleased version of Mac OS X clearly falls in the first category. OS X has always been distributed without crazy DRM schemes, for a fair price, and without any hidden gotcha's that cripple it's utility. I would never pirate it.
For music, I've switched from downloading everything to paying for Spotify. I have no need for cabinets full of shiny silver discs, and I don't feel like paying for crappy songs I don't like just because they happen to be on the same album as the one or two songs I was looking for. Spotify fits the bill for me, so I don't have to pirate anymore.
For movies, it's a whole different story. I don't have a Blu-Ray player (I have a PS3 but it sucks for watching video because of the noise), so buying discs to see high-def movies is out. Nine times out of ten, the movies I like are not your typical Hollywood blockbuster crap, so I can't even get them on Blu-Ray anyway. I built my own HTPC running XBMC because it's a million times better than any device I can buy in a store, which means I prefer to have my movies in a common, unprotected video format. No legal alternative exists that provides those, so I download each and every movie I want to see.
The day a commercial service is available that has not just Hollywood blockbusters but also foreign/ arthouse/ classic or niche movies, and allows me to play them on my own device, for less than $10 a movie (or e.g. $30 a month for all you can eat), I'll sign up immediately.
Some might say I have no entitlement to make any demands as to the way the content I want to consume is distributed or how much I have to pay for it. This is actually a fair point, but the producers have no entitlement to get my money either. Because I try to be fair to producers and artists by legally buying content when it is available under such terms I can justify paying for it, I don't feel bad about pirating everything else at all. It's not even illegal where I'm from anyway (at least not for music and video, software I stopped pirating long ago).
edit: spelling