Piracy in Windows

[Chregu]

To be honest with you in all the western countries I've lived in they don't even enforce laws against downloading for practical reasons. What people get in trouble for is facilitating the sharing. When you use something like bitorrent downloading the song or movie may not be illegal. What is illegal is you uploading pieces of that song or movie to hundreds or possibly thousands of people.

The reason for this is because if a record label came after you all you would have to do is go to a record store and buy the CD in question and say I already own the CD and just wanted an MP3 of it. Nothing illegal with that. How are they to prove when you bought the CD or DVD?

Go back and look at all the cases you are thinking about. I guarantee the person got busted because they were using some kind of peer to peer software that was uploading to other people... or they had a server that facilitated such activity. And most of the time small fries get in CIVIL trouble for their file sharing activities where as with shoplifting that is always handled in the CRIMINAL courts.

Okay, I do agree. Somehow my brain skipped that we were talking exclusively about downloading songs, somehow I thought about sharing and uploading (not limited to music). In Switzerland downloading of music and movies is entirely legal.

 

[anony_mouse]

No, I was referring to the AdBlock question.

To be honest, I didn't find your answers really satisfied my curiousty. Let me phrase the question in another way. If someone (not you obviously!) uses an ad blocker while accessing this site, should they make a financial (or equivalent) contribution to:
a) the people who rely on this site to earn a living?
b) other users, such as you and me, who don't use an ad blocker?

You have a disturbing obsession with my underwear. Although I was quite the promiscuous type in the late 70s and early 80s, I am quite happily married and monogamous now. Put on some Fruit of the Loom from that period and you'll know why the labels had to go quickly.

Once you had raised the subject, you must have expected such interest! Unfortunately I don't have any 'fruit of the loom' underpants to hand so I'm still in the dark about why the labels had to be removed. Were these labels unusually abrasive, or long and liable to get painfully tangled up with various objects? Was the brand the subject of derision amongst the ladies of the era? Did they feature distracting image?

 

[Chregu]

Could we stop the underwear talk. You're all freaking me out. lol

Please let them go on, it's the most hilarious thing I have ever read!

 

[Citizen X]

...and that's called copyright infringement.

You act as if Chergu has stated that it's somehow ethical to pirate. He never made such a claim at all. In fact, he's stated the opposite.

Chergu, clearly isn't doing that. But you can't deny that often on the internet that semantic difference is pointed out by others in an attempt to make piracy seem less bad than it actually is. Anyway Chergu and I have moved on and are discussing other matters.

 

[Citizen X]

Okay, I do agree. Somehow my brain skipped that we were talking exclusively about downloading songs, somehow I thought about sharing and uploading (not limited to music). In Switzerland downloading of music and movies is entirely legal.

Lol. I think we jumped around a bit and once these discussions get technical you have to start separating out different activities and geographic locations. There are a lot of technicalities.

I am not a lawyer but I think if you own a DVD or CD you can download it off the internet in the US. The problem is you must make sure whatever you use to download it isn't uploading at the same time. To be honest with you I have downloaded things on several occasions. I have downloaded copies of damaged CDs. I've downloaded copies of CDs I forgot at home. If I misplace a CD in my house I will download a copy of it. The thing is I own a copy of the CD already so there is no harm.

The RIAA is going after the low hanging fruit. If you use a good VPN or you only download the chances of them ever bothering you are pretty much zero. But if you set up a computer in your study and are perpetually sharing even 24 songs you could be in for a big six figure civil penalty in the US.

 

[Reflexx]

Chergu, clearly isn't doing that. But you can't deny that often on the internet that semantic difference is pointed out by others in an attempt to make piracy seem less bad than it actually is. Anyway Chergu and I have moved on and are discussing other matters.

Okay. But to be fair to everyone in this thread, we should try to not judge each other based on what some random people on the internet say or do.

 

[Reflexx]

Lol. I think we jumped around a bit and once these discussions get technical you have to start separating out different activities and geographic locations. There are a lot of technicalities.

I am not a lawyer but I think if you own a DVD or CD you can download it off the internet in the US. The problem is you must make sure whatever you use to download it isn't uploading at the same time. To be honest with you I have downloaded things on several occasions. I have downloaded copies of damaged CDs. I've downloaded copies of CDs I forgot at home. If I misplace a CD in my house I will download a copy of it. The thing is I own a copy of the CD already so there is no harm.

The RIAA is going after the low hanging fruit. If you use a good VPN or you only download the chances of them ever bothering you are pretty much zero. But if you set up a computer in your study and are perpetually sharing even 24 songs you could be in for a big six figure civil penalty in the US.

I admit that I have downloaded music for old cassette tapes that I owned. I can't even find the tapes anymore... and even if I couldn't I don't have anything to play them with!

Some of then aren't sold anymore. Some I eventually bought on CD again. Some I've bought multiple times and still have lost all my copies through the years.
​

 

[fatclue_98]

To be honest, I didn't find your answers really satisfied my curiousty. Let me phrase the question in another way. If someone (not you obviously!) uses an ad blocker while accessing this site, should they make a financial (or equivalent) contribution to:
a) the people who rely on this site to earn a living?
b) other users, such as you and me, who don't use an ad blocker?



Once you had raised the subject, you must have expected such interest! Unfortunately I don't have any 'fruit of the loom' underpants to hand so I'm still in the dark about why the labels had to be removed. Were these labels unusually abrasive, or long and liable to get painfully tangled up with various objects? Was the brand the subject of derision amongst the ladies of the era? Did they feature distracting image?

Yes they were quite abrasive. The ad campaign of the era was ridiculous. So much so that they put colored bands on the elastic because so many were ripping off the tags.


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[MrWhiteman]

To be honest, I didn't find your answers really satisfied my curiousty. Let me phrase the question in another way. If someone (not you obviously!) uses an ad blocker while accessing this site, should they make a financial (or equivalent) contribution to:
a) the people who rely on this site to earn a living?
b) other users, such as you and me, who don't use an ad blocker?
?

Its no different from switching off the TV while the adverts are on or picking another radio station while the adverts are playing. The money is made for the advertising itself, not for each person watching the advert. Should people who don't visit these websites pay as well? The adverts are there whether people are on the site or not.

 

[Chregu]

Its no different from switching off the TV while the adverts are on or picking another radio station while the adverts are playing. The money is made for the advertising itself, not for each person watching the advert. Should people who don't visit these websites pay as well? The adverts are there whether people are on the site or not.

I don't think that's true.

There is an oft-stated misconception that if a user never clicks on ads, then blocking them won't hurt a site financially. This is wrong. Most sites, at least sites the size of ours, are paid on a per view basis. If you have an ad blocker running, and you load 10 pages on the site, you consume resources from us (bandwidth being only one of them), but provide us with no revenue.

Why Ad Blocking is devastating to the sites you love | Ars Technica

For me it's amazing how people here are so much against piracy, while they try to justify by all means the consumption of content that is financed by ads while blocking these ads. I guess it's a good example how people can be influenced by campaigns. There's no common sense anymore to decide what's good and bad, bad is what people are being told is bad.

Piracy is bad, we all agree on that. Destroying a website's revenue by blocking their ads is not bad, because nobody is screaming loud enough that it is bad?

That's what I call double standards.

 

[MDMcAtee]

It's not double standards. While ars may try to keep those pop up ads,flash ads,and all of the other offensive ads to a minimum,there are plenty of sites that di not. If a site that you visit doesn't ascribe to ars's model,and causes a individual issues with their browsers,then they don't get white listed. What many sites fail to take into account is how many mobile users are visiting and the viewing experience is crappy because of these intrusive adds.

If a site doesn't offer a reasonable premium plan that is add free..then that is their failing,not the individuals visiting the site.

 

[Chregu]

It's not double standards. While ars may try to keep those pop up ads,flash ads,and all of the other offensive ads to a minimum,there are plenty of sites that di not. If a site that you visit doesn't ascribe to ars's model,and causes a individual issues with their browsers,then they don't get white listed. What many sites fail to take into account is how many mobile users are visiting and the viewing experience is crappy because of these intrusive adds.

If a site doesn't offer a reasonable premium plan that is add free..then that is their failing,not the individuals visiting the site.

Great, I think it's more than fair to decide for yourself if the advertisements on a site is appropriate or not. But instead of just avoiding the homepage if you think it's too much, you still consume its content, you even use technical measures to avoid the ads and get the stuff for free.

It's like saying: Well, if a game is good I buy it, but if it's not I just pirate it, they could have decided to make a better game or sell it for less!

 

[fatclue_98]

If something is listed as free and there is nothing in the T&C that specifies otherwise, the piracy argument is invalid. However, if it's plainly stated that to receive the free goods or services you must register with the site or something similar, then I'll buy it.

As someone else mentioned, it's like muting the commercials or taking a dump to avoid them. TV stations don't require viewers to watch commercials to see their programming.


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[Chregu]

If something is listed as free and there is nothing in the T&C that specifies otherwise, the piracy argument is invalid. However, if it's plainly stated that to receive the free goods or services you must register with the site or something similar, then I'll buy it.

As someone else mentioned, it's like muting the commercials or taking a dump to avoid them. TV stations don't require viewers to watch commercials to see their programming.

I'm glad to have you back, I almost thought you were serious with your announcement to ignore me.

Well, as long as nobody takes this to court we don't know whether it is really legal or not. However when adblockers are becoming more and more common, this could be a real scenario soon.

At least Google already started to fight against them: Google Play Bans Ad Blocking - InformationWeek

Also, as long as the TV commercials run on TV the station gets paid. It doesn't matter whether you, as you describe so figuratively, thanks for that by the way, do something else. However if you block ads on websites, the website won't get paid.

And there are actually quite a few sites, mostly news papers, that started to charge for full access, mostly because of adblockers.

I'm not asking you to look at ads on homepages, you can mute them, you can ignore them. I'm not asking to stop using adblockers, as I said, it's not illegal, nobody will stop you. I'm just asking the question why it's okay for you personally to cut a business' winning in this case, but it is wrong in another case.

I don't understand your reasoning and you didn't provide me with a single good argument why you think this is okay.

Or let me ask this question: Is the only reason you think pirating is bad the License Terms pop-up?

 

[fatclue_98]

I've never said it's ok one way or the other. Pirating copyrighted material is wrong here or in Mars. As I mentioned previously, if there's nothing in the T&Cs stating mandatory ad viewing, there's nothing wrong with blocking them. You can't compare the two because one carries a copyright and the other doesn't. There are international laws that govern copyrights. I'm not aware of any governing body for ads.


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[Chregu]

I've never said it's ok one way or the other. Pirating copyrighted material is wrong here or in Mars. As I mentioned previously, if there's nothing in the T&Cs stating mandatory ad viewing, there's nothing wrong with blocking them. You can't compare the two because one carries a copyright and the other doesn't. There are international laws that govern copyrights. I'm not aware of any governing body for ads.

So, I understand your reasoning like this: It's okay to make a business earn less as long as it's legal, however it's wrong as soon as it's illegal.

I think there's no argument against this, I'll keep my troubles understanding the rational behind it for me now. This hasn't been a real exchange of thoughts anyway.

Personally have already subscriptions for some sites that changed to a paying model because of the adblocking issues, I have no problem paying for more. I however hope that nobody using adblockers will complain when the "free" internet is suddenly not so free anymore.

 

[Laura Knotek]

It looks like everyone has discussed all possible angles and viewpoints on this topic, so now it is closed.

Thanks to all for your participation.