What has America done today....shame

Hey, that's America for ya! It's not the best place in the world, but it certainly isn't the worst either! xP

Now how 'bout them butts, sir?

That was eye opening.

I know. I've signed several petitions against this sort of thing. Like when the UN was voting on whether or not to go for it in the UK, the petition got thousands of votes, which made most of Europe vote against. Of course, knowing the government, they'll probably go ahead with it anyway and say they're not.

This guy again...

I'm torn on our spying program, personally. That aside, as someone with a career and whose own services cost money and that I refuse to do for free, I cannot justify stealing something be it online or in a brick and mortar store. I mean, yeah, just because a movie might suck doesn't mean I get to consume that product for free. I'm sure most people find "Twilight" to be shit, yet it sells like crazy. I'm a bleeding liberal, but this is one subject I seem like everyone's conservative dad on. The mentality of "its online, its not hurting anyone, it'll most likely suck, I can have it for free" is what keeps spurring the government and entertainment industries to continue hurting the consumer with nonsense like SOPA and DRM.

I'm not excusing the entertainment and tech industries from utilizing Uncle Sam to pass anti-consumer laws. That being said, I don't think theft is excusable. I also take issue with the fact that this subject of internet-based piracy has somehow evolved into a privacy issue. That's like walking into a store and bitching that there are cameras that can see you shoplifting a blu-ray disc and once you're arrested, claiming that the store violated your civil rights with the security cameras.

In the end, the government has overreached what is ethical. Anyone would be a fool to presume that other nations are not doing something similar. We just happened to produce a citizen who found it awful enough to tell the world about it. That being said, as far as "privacy to use the internet as one sees fit", I think its just a bunch of pirates that are more concerned with getting caught downloading the entire library of "Breaking Bad" rather than actually giving a damn about their civil rights. If one's civil rights are truly the concern of all of this, then excellent. Scream from the top of the hills against the government's intrusions. However, if its just because no one wants to pay $20 for a blu-ray or $60 for a game, then... I find it a bit difficult not to say that pirates, terrorists and espionage haven't reaped what they've sown and just screwed us all in the process.

>I'm torn on our spying program, personally. That aside, as someone with a career and whose own services cost money and that I refuse to do for free, I cannot justify stealing something be it online or in a brick and mortar store. I mean, yeah, just because a movie might suck doesn't mean I get to consume that product for free.

Strawman.

The main reason piracy is so prevalent has nothing to do with the quality of media, but more to do with just how utterly broken Copyright law is.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tk862BbjWx4

Strawman? That was a pretty clear reason. I guess that one will fall under agree to disagree. This opinion is not directed at those who agree that copyright law is broken. I agree 100% with that. My comment was directed towards those that feel entitled to steal something just because they think it isn't worth the price. Those are the people who I feel don't have an argument.

I agree with the absurdity of our copyright laws. Unfortunately, its become increasingly difficult to make that argument when it appears that the loudest voices in the entire argument are just complaining that they cannot consume all media for free.

Other than that, agreed 100%.

You know what confuses me? It's not okay for one person to buy a DVD, rip it, and then share it with thousands of people on the Internet — without the publisher ever seeing another cent beyond the initial DVD purchase — right? So what makes it okay for an organization to buy single copies of DVDs on a massive scale, put them in a big building and lend them to thousands of people for free — again, without the publisher ever seeing another cent beyond that initial DVD purchase — and call the whole racket a "public library?"

I mean, the consequences are the same, thousands or millions of people get to watch a movie without paying for it. Why do people feel entitled to just go to the library because they think it's not worth paying for?

Well why I cannot speak for a public library or the ethics (or frequency) of "borrowing media" from one, my reference is to the end consumer for personal ownership. By all legal technicality, renting something from a library, Redbox, Netflix mail, iTunes, game consoles, brick and mortar stores, etc. the royalty has already been paid. What you're arguing all rolls back around to how our copyright laws are fundamentally flawed. You do have a point with the library, but again, the royalty has already been paid which turns the argument back on flawed copyright laws. My argument is just stressing against the tired old entitled concept that certain individuals have decided that they deserve free products and circumvent payment to take them. Then they cause lovely things like DRM and other anti-consumer inventions that just fuck the law-abiding end user that legally paid for something... just so some entitled stranger doesn't have to.

But shouldn't we all be entitled to everything? I mean, if you look at the missions of public libraries — providing free access to information to as many people as possible — then The Pirate Bay is kicking their asses at it. It's a public library without the inefficiencies of waiting lists and a scarce inventory. That shouldn't be a bad thing.

Seriously. Who the hell decided we should be living under an economic system where unrestricted access to every book ever written is a bad thing? This goes way deeper than copyright law being flawed.

But. As it turns out, people still pay for stuff. Yeah, you see all these numbers of like 90% of people pirating a game or whatever. And yet the developer still makes a living. You know who would kill for a 90% non-payment rate? Buskers. That guy playing the guitar in the park, he would kill to have only 90% of people walk by without throwing a tip into his guitar case. On a good day, something more like 99.9% of people will "steal" his performance. Compared to the vast majority of artists in the world, a 90% piracy rate is fucking spectacular. And there are a ton of people making perfectly respectable middle class incomes despite the fact that only 90% of people are torrenting their work.

So, yeah, barring abolishing capitalism and moving into a Star Trek postscarcity economy or whatever, public libraries aren't actually hurting artists all that much.

Well, I think we could argue the concept back and forth all day long. While I don't fundamentally agree, I believe we both at least agree the system itself is flawed. I get what you're saying, though. As a bit of disclosure, my stance on piracy has been molded from experience with real life people that have healthy and some very prosperous disposable incomes that never buy anything, yet have a great deal of the same products we're discussing. That also in itself turns back around to the point you're trying to make. I just think if you can afford it, especially fruitfully, there is a certain degree of wrong going on. But that in itself may be an entirely different argument =)

Yeah, I tried to do a donation-funded web series and plenty of people who could've afforded a measly dollar didn't give anything. It's really annoying. But then again, I barely got any exposure, and it's not like I have a huge fan base that knows and loves me. It takes a LOT before a stranger is willing to open their wallet for you. But if you've made a name for yourself, people will give you money no problem. Obscurity, not piracy, is the biggest problem.

That's part of why I'm trying to unionize indie artists, set up a system where the successful ones promote the up and coming ones, we all contribute to a common "brand recognition," pool our PR clout, and basically try to take some of the luck and randomness out of the equation on whether you "make it" or not. Because, really, it's basically all luck right now.

But trying to get people to pay by guilt-tripping them or threatening them with legal action never works. You. Have. To. Make. Them. Like. You.

Not to mention, patent laws fall into the same absurdity to me.

Day after SOPA? Damn, actually really sad the kiwis could get strong-armed like that. Granted, Kim Dotcom comes off as kind of a douche, but he's only one of many many people with sites pirates merely use. It wasn't like he was hosting The Pirate Bay.

Dodd is fucking scum, he was scum as a Senator, and now he's evolved into the scumlord king of lobbyists. Anything that pisses off Dodd, I'm for.

Dodd is a scumbag and so is Lamar Smith, the San Antonio Republican that introduced SOPA in the first place.

Hollywood is probably more frightened of FurAffinity than they are of piracy. At least if you're pirating their stuff, it's still their stuff. But we've created our own pop culture. We're too busy making our own shit to sit on the couch and watch their shit.

This is why SOPA was going to break the Internet entirely, and make stuff like FA or YouTube financially impossible. That wasn't an accident. They are losing a monopoly on our attention and they want it back.

I wouldn't have gone to watch DBZ Evolution even if the company paid me to go and watch it lol