Yeah, age in no way means wisdom. No offense to her, but my gran's not exactly 'wise' at all.

I'll let this thread continue a bit longer since it has remained a discussion and is of some import if only partially related to Halo CE. However, I hate to sound condescending but seriously... the lack of respect shown by some here for copyright protections is grossly and blatantly hypocritical in light of the constant rants over people ripping and taking credit for other people’s maps and models.

Copyright protections are important they fuel the economy and allow creativity to succeed and flourish and have in the past been protected as much by the law as by the lack of technology to steal copy or reproduce it on a mass scale. The digitizing of intellectual property such as music, movies, software and books and the quantum leap in connectivity of the internet has made it simplistic to violate copyright protections on a scale never before imagined and especially at the personal level since you no longer need large and expensive equipment to copy something and can do it in the privacy of your own home.

The movie and music industry have been hard hit and also have been slow to adapt or change in the face of technology and have lost billions of dollars as a direct result of copyright theft. The argument that they make enough money already is childish and self-serving since who has the right to tell them anymore than they can tell you how much money you should make. The fact remains that there is a problem in that the existing business model is clearly not working as it should, mostly because of individual actions and inexpensive technology, and so far a new model has not yet been devised that will mitigate the losses incurred by the ease and availability of the technology.

I don’t pretend to have an answer and so far even the best minds have not yet devised a solution. So with that in mind why are people surprised by new proposed, if poorly designed, legislation and moves that in effect deny freedoms? That I can answer: because you don’t think about the full issue and only think how it effects your personal wants and desires. ( I told you I would be condescending). People say the words that it is wrong to steal but still download movies, music, books and software that they didn’t pay for. Is it because they feel they are entitled to it? Or that they are rebelling against the man? Or because it is so easy and, hey, everyone is doing it? It that right? Only the individual can make that determination.

The SOPA and PIPA bills were the first attempt to stem the tide and were so poorly devised that they in effect subverted due process, shifted the liability from the offenders to the service providers and would have forced non-governmental entities to interpret and enforce the laws as they saw fit. That is why I opposed it as did many others.

The Megaupload issue is completely different in that it is alleged that they willingly, not by accident and not by the virtue of unmanageable volume, violated copyright laws in a systematic and calculated way and the federal government got involved precisely because it was an international organization where the US civil laws cannot reach. Only time will tell if the seizure and closure were valid and legal or not and since I do not have all the information I cannot draw an informed conclusion just as most of you can’t either, although I am sure you will (I wasn’t finished being condescending).

What I am saying here is that you guys are the ones in the hot seat. You are the ones who will be faced with the consequences of your actions and will have to deal with the impact to your lives because as more money is lost to copyright theft things will change in some way and you guys are the ones who will decide how. There are many scenarios; one is that people use restraint and don’t steal and the models remain the same, another is that a new technology emerges that makes it difficult and expensive to pirate under existing models, or the business models will change like what is happening to software where it will no longer reside on your PC but all be cloud based subscription services. Even the game industry is changing the model with more going to play for free and then incurring micro charges for things in the game. These are all direct results of copyright theft and you have to decide if they are good or bad.

You guys get to decide by your actions and (my last condescension of the discussion) if you want a say in how it will turn out then you have to stay informed on the subject and can’t be so childishly myopic in your view of it. You have to look not at just your wants and desires but past that to all the ramifications of each decision. Freedoms are earned not given and there are costs to them, one is vigilance and awareness. If you are to make informed decisions you first have to be informed. Because really, it is up to you.

tl;dr.. Can you sum it up? Pretty please?

I did and you just proved one of my points.

Take the time to read something that Dennis took his time to write. I highly doubt he typed that for amusement. He has a fair point.

People complain about tags being ripped, yet when someone\thing is trying to stop all 'copying', everyone complains, it may be larger in scale, but same thing in a way.

I just inadvertently ''sum'd'' it up for you. (Kind of)

waiiit.....

Did anyone else just notice a thread name change? :o

Yeah :3

"A Big honor to Dennis"
Edited by ODST_Nick on Jan 22, 2012 at 12:43 AM

Communism.

Oh hey, I just solved the piracy problem 8-)

^^LOL

It's easier to buy a game off Steam than it is to pirate it, and since i have money that i can use myself, i rarely need to pirate anything.
The only things i will pirate are uncensored versions of games banned here (L4d2) and games not on Steam.

I don't think piracy is as "big of a deal" as lots of companies make it out to be. The cold truth is that many people who pirate simply do so because they cannot afford to pay for all the software they would like to purchase. While theoretically this results in virtual losses of money due to piracy, in PRACTISE it does not since these people would simply refrain from buying the "least needed" software if they were forced to choose.

An added benefit to piracy is that it allows those with less money to train themselves in using certain software which benefits their carreers in the future, and in the long term this is also beneficial for the software company since they'll be issueing licenses for all these people who eventually will be using it in their future carreers. Taking away piracy is in a sense taking away opportunity for many talented people.

Obviously there will be exceptions to this rule, but...there's one they fear...FUS KOR TAAAAH!!!!

I already summed it up.

P.S. Pirating sucks. Go legit.

I've never pirated in my life, ever. I have morals, unlike some of you.
Edited by Jaz on Jan 22, 2012 at 07:21 AM

Just so you know morals means you are concerned with right and wrong, not, "I obey the law without putting any thought into it".

I'd love to get into a huge debate here about Capitalism not having a way to handle digital goods (infinite supply), and overall being in a state of collapse anyway, but I already know full well that such time would be wasted on most of the members of this site :3

Morals have to to with what a person determines is right and wrong. If they determine that piracy is right, they still have morals; they just don't have the same morals as you. And just because their morals are different, doesn't make them any less valid.

If there is one thing i'm sure of, its that many of us in America are in for a big surprise in the near future. It will no longer be unclear that the intent held by lawmakers is not within the majority. Thus, it will seem our democracy has vanished into thin-air, when in reality, it's been pulled like a rug beneath our feet. The last thing our government needs, is more authority. The fact that piracy is even considered a problem, in disrespect to so many real issues, shows the irresponsibility of the whole governing body, in its conversion to communism.

LOL

You obviously don't know anything about Communism if you think THATS what the US government is headed for.
Edited by SeL on Jan 22, 2012 at 08:29 PM

What? That makes no sense to me. Did you mean "You obviously dont know anything about Communism if that's what you think the US gov't is headed for"?

I highly agree with what you said here. Game companies often cite the number of digital copies illegally downloaded as lost revenue, when really, a large number of those people wouldn't have bought the game if piracy wasn't option.

Another added benefit of piracy, in terms of music, is that it can expose you to stuff you normally wouldn't have the opportunity to listen to. For example, a few years ago I downloaded a torrent The Glitch Mob, a electronic music group. I liked it so much, I bought everything legitimately, and since then have paid full price for the extended bundles of their new releases. Piracy has brought to spend more money on music than I normally would have, and on groups that deserve it more.

I think, and hope, that piracy will eventually take down the infrastructure that already exists. This just means the end to giant media corporations like Warner and Disney who sell bad content like Justin Bieber, after using their fortunes to prop them up with advertising and auto-tune. We will move to a new system where people are not required to pay for multimedia, but will do so out of respect for the producers of that content. The current music and movie industry has barely evolved since it began, and soon it will be phased out for an age where we don't need record labels and recording studios to create content.

If any of you think that the US government is headed towards communism, OR that communism or its equivalent is actually the best option, then you are completely misguided... Piracy definitely is a problem, and in a perfect world there would be none, but with digital copies of software and media so easy to create, it stands to reason that there will be illegal distribution of said copies.

SOPA and PIPA are both made with good intentions at heart, specifically the protection of copyrights and intellectual material. But the laws were also written in a way that gives the government way too much control and influence, and also requires too much of site owners and operators.

Is that what you think, or what they'd want you to think :]

I wouldn't say it if every misguided attempt at creating a communist or socialist state hadn't failed miserably over and over again. Its history bro :P

Trying to censor the Internet is like trying to feed a newborn Scotch whiskey.

Doesn't matter how beautiful of a thing it may be in theory, the fact is, it only works in theory, it has never worked in real life, and it will never work in real life.

It's all because people don't know how to spend the money they actually possess and instead create debts that they know they can't pay. Economic collapse is directly linked to human greed.

That is exactly why it doesn't work and never will work, exactly what you just said, besides the negative economic policy and the complete destruction of any incentive to live, it gives a chosen few the power to control everyone else, and in the process allows human nature to take its course and completely destroy what ever tenuous balance may be achieved during its inception. Thus, it never works. I would rather be free to do what I wish with my life, than to be bound in such a system, and so would many, many other people.

This just in, the system that has never been tried is only a theory?

The USSR was socialist, Nazi Germany was Socialist, China is run by a Communist party, but isn't truly Communist either. So really spewing that out doesn't really carry any weight as an actual reason why it's bad, sorry!

Umm, it only ever actually works in theory, none of these examples are of an actual working communist or socialist system as defined by the definition of communism and socialism. Neither ever have worked, and never will work.

Read my post again because you seem to have misunderstood what I said Bobble.

Also I'm not entirely sure what Tiel is saying, in a Communist society you wouldn't necessarily have to have a designated job.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_each_according_to_his_ability,_to_each_according_to_his_need


Edited by SeL on Jan 22, 2012 at 09:06 PM

I guess I didn't make myself clear enough, Communism and Socialism as they are defined in a dictionary have never actually existed, and are in fact a theory. There have been many attempts at achieving said systems, but none of them have actually functioned as defined.

Does that clear it up?

This has gotten way off the original subject. - locked

That's not what it says though, it says you should contribute the best way you can. Admittedly it could mean anything from doing what the society thinks is the best way you can contribute, to what you think is the best way you can contribute. Some elements of Marxism suggest that there shouldn't be any compulsion to work, so that people will contribute to the society because they want to, instead of because they're forced to in order to survive.

Some would argue that humans are inherently lazy, but I would claim that that's completely untrue. This, and every other modding website on the face of the planet are proof to the contrary, where people are working and contributing, even though there's no monetary reward in it for them. The list can go on, from people doing volunteer work, to people donating money to charity. This behavior occurs everywhere, even in Capitalist societies where attempts are made left right and center to suppress the positive aspects of humanity.

SOPA was the sick lovechild of greed and Capitalism, there's really no reason why discussing solutions to the problem doesn't belong here.