The end of piracy?

[dohupa]

Not exactly groundbreaking news, but don't see any lively discussion in here as of yet. Apparently the US authorities are taking action against so called pirates and considering options to hold accountable major domains such as MegaUpload for copyright infringement.

If you haven't noticed already, the claim that Internet piracy is taking a big toll on jobs plays on all news channels and financial sites 24/7. Having said that, it's a struggle and one has to see both sides of the coin really. We pirates run the Internet basically - therefore all ISPs will go bankrupt should the Obama administration pushes forward the plan to tighten up legislation and also can you imagine where will Cisco stock go then?

However, putting the artist/producer view into perspective - it is reasonable enough to argue that there will be nothing to consume if it's impossible to make money making the content - right?

A pretty hot topic nonetheless and after the latest news regarding the domain seizure, thought like bringing this debate on. We porn lovers may not necessarily be in the middle of it as music & legit movies clearly are; still it affects us equally no doubt.

http://blog.mx510.com/2010/07/09/pir...seizure-by-us/

http://torrentfreak.com/pirate-bay-a...-by-us-100707/

[scoundrel]

There's a related discussion here. Since dohupa is widening the context to international (specifically US) level, I won't merge these threads but I draw attention to relevent debate which might help to avoid duplication on this discussion where the same ground has already been covered.

[snowy25]

My understanding is MU is in Hong Kong, so would not be under any American or British or whoevers jurisdiction. They could ask HK to do their work for them, but I highly doubt HK would. The only file hosts I can see being stopped completely are those based in the countries that are pushing for piracy to stop. If there are some in the UK and US then they will likely be targeted. RS has already won a couple of recent cases and I suspect will continue to do so in the future when foreign govts try to interfere with another countries businesses.

[DTravel]

Video piracy will never end as long as people are willing to spend days or weeks cracking and copying movies and TV shows to avoid paying an hour or two's worth of wages.

[Aubrey]

Cracking movies is more of a game to the people who do it than anything else, isn't it? Some of them, anyway.

[dohupa]

What? A game? We're talking about millions of dollars (billions?) my man. Music, movies, software, computer games, ebooks - the works.

As I type this, peeps all over the globe download the whole Rolling Stones discography within half hour tops. Are you serious?

[L0rdi]

I might download the album for free, but constantly go to the gigs. At least band should be pleased as I give more money straight to them instead of few pennies of royalties. I think old companies should just die (what comes to music) and competitive artists should earn publicity by net and make their millions by doing gigs.

Cut the middleman! Cut the middleman!

[AMON]

The question to ask is, who benefits? We are all aware that the big record companies for all their cries of woe have the cheek to point at the state of the 'poor' artist. The fact is that the artist in many cases will get little or nothing from the money we part with. There is in fact a musicians organisation (led by Billy Bragg) that are against the stifling of downloads. I, myself, will be publishing through an internet publisher, hopefully within the next few months. Where I think the problem lies is in expectations of profit. The upside of the internet, which few companies wish to acknowledge, is that any artists work, whether written, drawn or played has immediate exposure to an international audience and can be downloaded anywhere where a broadband signal can reach whether in London, Moscow, Bombay or the middle of the Arctic. Imagine the cost in sending/advertising work before the web arrived. Without too much detail, my own work will consist of a series of e-books. Because the cost is more in the creation and not in production of hardback copies, the publishing costs would be around 30% I will be easily able to half, even perhaps quarter the price and make a reasonable profit. Of course, some of my work is possibly to be pirated or lost to illegal download, but in a mass global market, I suspect that would be a very small percentage. Many music artists have admitted they make little or nothing out of the record companies for the hard copies but do make money from touring. It is interesting to note that there is an internet company out there offering the latest films and games downloads for £5.99 rental per month.

I suspect this has more to do with the US government making the Internet safe for Democracy and the wallets of their big business donors... The problem is that our own shapeless shower of politicians in London will no doubt surrender to Obama for the same reason!

[victor meldrew]

Piracy will continue, no matter what security devies they come up with, some young kid will find the key and break the code. Piracy has been going on for years. One of my favourite albums, is a bootleg of Led Zeppelin at the Albert Hall in 1970.

[chupachups]

I've said many many times before, piracy will never die

if the authorities crack down hard enough, it will go deep underground. maybe it will no longer be so easy to get hold of pirated material, but it will still be there. think of the VHS days, copies of copies of copies...handed from one person to another, but yet, it existed and thrived. now with digital copying we always have perfect copies, even if we get it in some backroom piracy shop

lets face it, they can't crack down on drugs and eliminate that, so how do they hope to eliminate piracy ?

drm, and other antipiracy measures seems to have been successfully hacked on every platform, its only there to deter the casual pirate

direct download companies will relocate to jurisdictions outside of the reach of the US authorities, which is what rapidshare did a couple of years ago. its pretty funny regarding megaupload if they are incorporated in hong kong, it being a colony of china, which is staunchly anti pornography, going so far as to give out death sentences to convicted pornographers

if the US takes over control of the internet, closing down domains it regards as aiding piracy, the pirates will evolve their own internet, similar to what happened with napster and the subsequent evolution of bittorrent.

Pirates will always find a way

it is interesting the debate about how clamping down piracy would kill US businesses, ie CISCO, ISPs, etc would be faced with bankrupcy when the biggest users of the internet disappear overnight. Due to lobbiests, the US government knows this and as long as one side doesn't swamp the other, and US financial interests are not eroded, the status quo will remain

I also have no sympathy for the music and film studios. The fat cats that run them, and their army of highly paid sycophants, not to mention the "gimme more" actors/actresses/performers.

Don't get me wrong, I love a good ARNIE movie, but is he really worth US$150M per film ? If studios wanted to look at why they struggle financially, they need to look at their outgoings first

Studios do have their uses when promoting artists. How popular was stefani germanotti before her studio started throwing megabucks at promoting her and transformed her into lady gaga ?