How Many 'Significant Blows' Against File Sharing Will It Take For File Sharing To Actually Decrease?
from the we're-still-waiting... dept
Back in 2006, we started noticing how every raid or every legal win against some sort of file sharing operation resulted in the RIAA, MPAA or equivalent organization coming out with a statement about how this was "a significant blow" against unauthorized file sharing (they normally used this misleading or incorrect terms "piracy" or "theft"). But, we were beginning to wonder, just how many "significant blows" does it take to make a difference? Since then, there have been many, many, many such claims of "significant blows" and absolutely no evidence that it has had any impact whatsoever.TorrentFreak is noting that a bunch of sites that were recently raided or lost lawsuits all seemed to bounce back within days, which really seems to highlight that for all of these "significant blows" -- it doesn't appear that the word "significant" really means what the entertainment industry appears to think it means....
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Filed Under: denial, file sharing, significant blow
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Re: Drugs, man
Jobs, obviously. It has nothing whatsoever to do with drugs.
Clearly, the BS on filesharing is going to go the same way for another 30 years or so.
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Re: Re: Drugs, man
Actually the legacy content companies only have ~10 years before they fail. The collection companies have about ~12 years. ACTA is going to take 7-10 years to fully implement, if its not destroyed by the various EU agencies and agreements, WIPO, various countries constitutions, the G20-G50 etc.
Not much of a chance of a "Drug war" Scenario. More like a bunch of bad laws that will need to be constitutionally challenged.
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Re: Re: Drugs, man
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Re:
They are constructing subs that are fully functional these days and in the future they will be all GPS guided according to an insider on the video reports.
I think those drug traffickers will be the first to enter the business of automated vessels with anti-piracy technology for evasion and security they could become legit, who would it thought of that :)
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TPB
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The blows need to be harder....
But seriously they keep fighting a battle they can't win, when the big wigs at the corporations stop whining about not making money and show that they are not making money because of any "illegal" activities then I'll give them the benefit of the doubt; the problem is they keep making money and rising prices and paying "artist" for multi-million dollar services/products that people are not willing to pay for. Make your products more accessible and people will stop "stealing".
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Re: The blows need to be harder....
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as many..
I am now sending out invites to all friends and acquaintances to my private Rapidshare locker with ALL the current movies now playing.
Thank you for teaching me about Demonoid, Torrentday, Rapidshare and of course TPB.
I might even charge for access in the future. Catch me if you can :)D
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Re: as many..
Did you read a couple posts back? include Free "VPN" into your bag of tricks.
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Re: Re: as many..
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/_HBNxjjR7u8/
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You keep using that word...
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Re: You keep using that word...
I was just going to post it myself.
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Re:
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Re:
But how do you know that you have not just driven the file sharers on to using other, much much harder to track facilities like file lockers, swapping hard drives, private ftp servers, etc...
Torrent filesharing's time may up, but that does not mean that filesharing will stop.
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Re:
Peak drug use...
Peak oil production...
Peak oil consumption...
The only thing that has already ocured is the peak of this country.../sad
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Re:
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There's a hole in the bucket of drops.
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that which doesn't kill file sharing only makes it stronger
file sharing doesn't just bounce back, it comes back with a vengeance. every time TPB gets knocked down, it stays down for less time, and the same is true for other sites as well.
with each raid file sharing gets more popular and more political. god forbid someone actually gets hurt or killed in all of this, the galvanizing effect could be unstoppable.
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I hate to be the party pooper, but...
We still know it's wrong.
I do it, you do it, it's fun and easy and without it we would never, ever fill an iPod, but we can't deny that every time we download an MP3 or a movie, we know that somewhere, a butterfly loses its wings.
I don't agree that every file downloaded is lost revenue, because at least half of the stuff we grab is stuff we wouldn't buy anyway (it's the "if it's free i'll take it mentality), but each one of us DOES grab stuff we would have paid for if not for the "free" alternative.
So let's keep some perspective, shall we? We may mock the RIAA and MPAA, but who among us can claim that we are entirely without fault?
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Re: I hate to be the party pooper, but...
Me? I have never used a file sharing program to download an unauthorized work. I abide by the wishes of those content creators, even as I explain to them why I think they're wrong.
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Re: Re: I hate to be the party pooper, but...
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Re: Re: I hate to be the party pooper, but...
You're probably just covering your ass. Why else would you be soo interested in this war unless it affected you personally?
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Re: Re: Re: I hate to be the party pooper, but...
When violating copyright is as simple as having a radio turned on or even singing "Happy Birthday" at a friend's birthday party, it is no wonder most people violate copyright on a daily basis.
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Re: Re: Re: I hate to be the party pooper, but...
"Me? I have never used a file sharing program to download an unauthorized work."
Reading FTW.
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Re: Re: Re: I hate to be the party pooper, but...
It should be a fair fight, right? On one side you have a group so out of touch that they said the VCR is like a serial killer and on the other side is hundreds and hundreds of millions of people.
Well, if it is a war then it shouldn't be too hard to find out who's winning, and I'll give you a clue, it ain't the bad guys!
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Re: I hate to be the party pooper, but...
Who lost what where?
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Re: I hate to be the party pooper, but...
Say, 5 cents a track, 10 cents a TV episode and 50 cents a movie?
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Re: Re: I hate to be the party pooper, but...
Find a way to stream that directly to people's TV's (Xbox/PS3 perhaps?) and people will pay for it. They'd need a mobile app as well or people would still pirate the show to get it on their iPod or Blackberry or whatever. The problem is the industry would never do this, they would charge too much and want to charge for each separate device to have access. Hence pirating will continue.
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Re: I hate to be the party pooper, but...
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Re: I hate to be the party pooper, but...
it doesn't matter. it can't be stopped.
right or wrong, it is going to happen and it's time for the content industry to wake up to that fact.
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Misprint...
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A solution
It's a win all around!
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Re: A solution
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Re: A solution
It is a significant blow, because if the *IAA stops a person file sharing that is like $150,000 profit by their math.
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Re: Re: A solution
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fair prices?
At $1 a song, it would cost $1500 to fill your (early model) iPod. People would say "fifteen hundred bucks?? I can't afford that!" As if the point of the iPod was for your to be able to fill it on your budget.
Just because we have massive storage does not in any way mean we should have the right to fill it cheaply. if you can't afford $1500 to fill your iPod, then you just don't fill it. Big deal.
Personally, I think $1 a song is very, very fair, especially considering this is the cheapest we have EVER been able to buy music for (25 years ago a vinyl single cost $1.50). It would be nice to have discounts down to .50, but overall, if you're arguing that $1 is too much, then you're too cheap, or feel some inexplicable right to volume music that fits your budget.
It's just a fact of commerce that there are some things we can't afford. If you want more, you work harder, make more money and buy more (or trade for it, make a deal, buy it used, etc).
Five cents a song is an insult to the artist.
On the other hand, I agree that Apple should be shot for raising their prices of select (i.e. currently popular) music to CD levels (upwards of $15 for some albums), this is a big step backwards.
Ironically, the music industry is in the process of LOWERING the prices of CDs to $10, a move they should have made ten years ago.
I think $10 for a CD is very fair; counting for inflation, that puts an album at less than it cost in the days before CD ($7-8), or exactly where it always should have been.
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Re: fair prices?
Anyway, you missed my point entirely. I am simply saying that you don't compete with free by being expensive.
If you think that filling a $100 iPod should cost $1500 then you are crazy. Your choice is getting $50 (say) per iPod or nothing. If it were my business then I would go for selling a lot of $50's worth rather than zero $1500's worth. But, hey that is your choice, not mine.
Is anyone really anyone offering you $1500 to fill an iPod?
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Re: Re: fair prices?
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Re: fair prices?
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Re: fair prices?
There, you can fill your "early model iPod", for less than five cents a song.
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Re: fair prices?
Who the hell listens to music on CDs? Why are they still selling CDs??
And $10 for a CD? If there are more than 10 songs on that CD, then it's *more expensive* to buy the album online than the CD in stores-- that means adding plastic **lowers** the price. The world has gone mad.
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Re: fair prices?
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You keep saying that word...
I went and downloaded a copy of this movie FOR FREE just so I could quote it (ok I actually own it on DVD...VHS...I just wanted to be ironic...) yay The Princess Bride
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Blows
I think that the **AA organizations should start researching the torrent and P2P distribution and start using it like itunes and amazon just all the songs in a search engine(similar to those used on grooveshark, and/or many of the torrent sites) and then let the public make its own download speeds.
When you link everyone together, especially the underground and the average 'non-copyright infringing consumer' your speeds will be instant, or actually limited by ISP connection, rather than random and never constant. The service would just have to be easy, and force the files to be sharable.
Torrents and illegal downloads are also often taken as both the same. I share over 50 torents at any given moment. All of them are GPL, GNU, or Creative Commons liscened...Its free to use the internet, for now at least...
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Re: Blows
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Re: Blows
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Re:
Yeah, that's worked how well so far?
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Re: Re:
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The Party Pooper
Like I said, just because we do it doesn't mean we should pretend it isn't wrong. And if you need to convince yourself that file sharing is a right and you DESERVE all the free music and movies you can download, then you're deluding yourself so you can ease your conscience.
Seriously, can anyone out there who file shares REALLY tell me they're not doing anything wrong?? At least own up to it. I've downloaded a ton of crap - for free AND paid - and sometimes I point to my huge collection of 3,000 CDs and say "i've paid my share," but it's just a joke. I know when i download an album without paying for it it's wrong.
Am I criminal the way the RIAA would have it? No, but it's still not right.
You may not like to hear my point of view, but I defy anyone to show me how I'm wrong.
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Re: The Party Pooper
It's only obsolete legacy organizations like the MAFIAA and artists and creators who haven't yet learned that they don't need them anymore that force an artificial scarcity into an environment where no natural scarcity exists.
No loss occurs in the digital realm because the artist/creator still has their original, they can still promote it, monetize it, etc. What we download is merely a copy, or more accurately, a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy... etc.
We merely are getting the product for its true natural price, not the artificially inflated and wrong price pushed upon it by others. Money can be made in the related true tangible and intangible scarcities as Mike so often shows us here, but it's stupid and wrong to keep charging for an infinitely available product that WILL be shared for free regardless of whether you want it to be so or not.
The only smart thing to do is to take advantage of that free distribution and promotion rather than try in vain to destroy it. The only thing the MAFIAA will accomplish on that path is their own bankruptcy in the end, and it will be their fault, not ours.
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Re: Re: The Party Pooper
These things just don't spring forth from the internet fully formed. Also, you can go on all day about how if you didn't download it you never would have paid to have seen it. However, your argument is flawed because where you wouldn't have paid many more would have if they didn't have the option to download it for free. Pirating stuff costs entertainment companies profits they're entitled to for producing the product.
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Re: Re: Re: The Party Pooper
No one, no one, no one is *entitled* to a profit. If I make a sweet little sculpture from bird shit, I'm not *entitled* to a profit because I created it. I have the chance to make a profit if I can give someone a reason to give me compensation (via money, sexual favors, fame, Trident Layers gum, etc) for my effort.
In summary, thinking like yours is what is making the creative world go right to shit.
PS- Would you like to purchase a sculpture I made from bird shit? C'mon, I deserve to get paid.
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Re: Re: Re: The Party Pooper
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Re: The Party Pooper
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Re: The Party Pooper
I can tell you that I file share and, no, I don't believe I'm doing anything wrong.
What I can't tell you is that YOU don't think I'm doing anything wrong ... if you haven't figured out yet that morality is entirely subjective, you should look more closely.
I think copyright as its structured today is ENTIRELY wrong, and possibly ALL forms of copy-rights are wrong -- I can envision accepting copy-rights as "right" ONLY IN THE CASE that they ACTUALLY "Promote The Progress" ... but I'm becoming more convinced everyday that there is no way to structure them so that they do.
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How did they know it was small?
They didn't, once they got the capability to see what people were really doing they got scared because the reality was something like 80% of the people didn't really buy stuff they got it from other sources and it has been like this for ages.
Another thing amusing is the delusion that sharing will go away if they fight hard enough. Think about it, millions of people probably billions in all corners of the world are doing the same thing, they don't share the same culture, the same beliefs, the same ethics, the same dogmas, the same race but the one thing they all share is "sharing", that is not an immoral behaviour, that is not something wrong, is a natural thing that happens spontaneously and anything against it feels wrong it threatens the survival of the species and for that reason it will never go away.
Those people trying to fight it will discover what 7 billion people can do in no uncertain terms. That is a mass of people no one should be trying to fight against.
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Re:
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Party poop
A magazine may cost $5, although the paper it's prionted on costs what, a quarter? So why isn't a magazine twenty five cents? Because most of the $5 goes towards paying the reporters, editors, rent, etc. No one argues they have the right to recoup that cost in the price of the magazine.
But if that same magazine goes digital and the cost of distribution and each "copy" is essentially zero, ok, sure, the price per issue should drop, but don't they still have a right to charge maybe $2 or $3 to pay all the same people and rent that's required to create the content?
How is it any different with music, where the majority of the cost goes not towards the physical price of a CD, but towards the cost of making the album, promoting it, etc.
We can argue till the cows come home how much money is actually spent on that and what a fair price truly is, but zero?
Really?
Free music is great to promote and album, and scarce goods should be used to recoup what the falling price of music can no longer provide, but the idea that ALL the music should be free will always be an absurd notion.
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Re: Party poop
Now tell me how is that free?
The music is the bait for all those other things, how is a fishermen going to fish without putting the bait in the hook?
It has been more than a decade since I bought any CD(the last one was Metallica - Garage Inc. 1998), wanna know why?
Because I don't like people treating me as a thief, the DRM from sony was the last straw for me, and they gave me no reason to start buying again, I will not patron those people or entities.
Now I don't even need them as alternatives has surfaced that are good enough to meet all my needs and they are all free. The music industry is going down, although music will survive and flourish for the rest of the human existence.
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Re: Party poop
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Re: Party poop
Free music is essential to promote the artist, free music is the water that grows the crop from which money is made.
Madonna is not in any charts lately but she is huge making money machine.
Decades watering and tending to here crop of fans is her retirement guarantee that they will crowd stadiums everywhere to see here and now they have the money, they grew up and are working and they can pay for it. They were hooked by the music when they were broke, young and stupid and now go in droves to see her, to buy pieces of her in the form of merch, she got the power over her image.
And so are those country musicians that make into the millions in revenue just from live gigs.
You are saying there is no money in it for giving away the sounds for free? You are not a good manager if you believe that.
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Free music
And the radio paid royalties.
Today, we still have radio, both over the air and online (I have purchased many tracks played on Pandora).
The only difference now is when you hear that song, you can either go to iTunes (or Amazon) and buy it for a buck, or you can try and find it for free.
Just stop trying to convince anyone that, when you find it for free, you don't realize you're doing something wrong.
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Re: Free music
LooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooL
There is nothing wrong with listening to music for free it has been done since forever and just recently people are trying to make it look illegal.
People still got to buy merch, tickets, cd's and even digital tracks that they don't need too.
Like popcorn in theathers that someone have pointed out in an article on Physorg.com that shows high priced popcorn actually is beneficial to the public because it allows the ticket price to stay low, in the same line of reasoning other stream revenues high priced make up for the free music that is used as a bait to build a fan base that will sustain that business.
If you don't water(music) the plants(fans) the plants don't grow they die and you have nothing to make money off of it period.
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Re: Free music
Why? Because he understands that music/movies cannot be priced high anymore, he understands that he can collect more money from billions of people in small charges then he could get away with one big price tag that would only appeal to a fraction of the population(20/80 paradigm).
Google make billions charging .0005 cents, the financial industry actually make more than Google and they charge even less. Why is the dumb managers from those other industry can't see that by putting a high price they are reducing not only their costumer base but the ever important concept of recurring revenue?
If you price things high people don't buy it again, they find ways to keep the thing and mantain it, people want rebuild their collections over and over again in time interval of decades is just stupid people give up and that is lost revenue.
If the price is low and it is targeting 80% or more of the population and they don't feel it then you got a winner, those people will carry you through anything.
$1 dollar is painful, $ 0.0005 people don't even think about it, they just plunge all their money and they stop winning about loosing anything or having the service ended, parents don't mind their children buying $0.0005 cents music but they do mind them buying $1 buck songs. Besides it also capture a large amount of the population that otherwise would not buy anything and in the end since people don't keep track of what they spend a large portion of people would end up spending more then $1 dollar per month.
But of course you wouldn't understand this concept would you?
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Re: Re: Free music
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Re: Free music
Which is totally wrong and hopefully ACTA can make it illegal for "artists" to do this.
It's something wrong!
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Re: Free music
Wrong difference, the only difference from today and yesterday is that today copyright owners can see the size of the sharing community, which they couldn't before.
People always shared, even in the ex-USSR people shared Michael Jackson when it was a capital crime to have goods from the capitalist pigs or didn't you heard the stories about how big a fan base he had there?
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Re: Free music
People grew listening to those things and now it is wrong, a crime and bla bla bla.
Fine give nothing, just don't expect good will from the other side either.
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High priced popcorn price dynamics.
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We all share DVDs. I myself have bought one DVD in 2010. With that DVD as collateral, I have managed to watch 26 different movies for free through trade with other people who also bought one DVD in 2010. 27 actual sales from 27x27 viewings of the sold content. And that leaves out spouses and children. I have done no wrong and didn't even need to leave my home. Stop me if you can.
You can't stop that which is sharable from being shared. Make it unsharable, and you also drastically reduce it's value. Want to see biometric security tied to media to prevent sharing? Get ready to sell media for 1/100th of what you'd get now.
$0.10 cinema releases and $0.01 per song is what they're effectively pushing for, even though they don't seem to realize it yet.
Want me to go to the theater rather than downloading? Maybe check the price of corn before you have the brass balls to charge $9 for a $0.67 tub of popcorn. Maybe you missed that 7-11 on the corner? Because a 44oz soda is worth less than $1. $4.50 at the theater... I have to wonder sometimes if these greedy bags of douche actually think we can't do basic math all on our own.
Your make believe maths are fail. Your marketing is fail. Make a decent product and sell it at a reasonable price and people will pay for it. For all other instances, See also: Internet and/or FREEM.
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As many as it takes
As many as it takes would be the correct answer..
Do the police "give up" on trying to catch robbers because even though they might catch a big time robber (and significant blow), or a ring of thieves. They do not stop there, they keep going, they know, as everyone does.
That this kind of thing is ONGOING, it will ALWAYS be there, and ignoring it will not make it go away..
They do not stop trying to find murderers, just because there are a never ending line of them.
Same with drugs, you argument is that if someone else is willing to sell drugs, busting the person who is presently selling them is of no use.
Well it IS of use, it stops that one person, and give a message to the next person that he may be the next one busted..
Fortunatly the law is not soft of laws and rules just because you dont happen to agree with them..
Its up to you to be mature, moral and ethical enough to acknoledge that the law is the law, and until it is no longer the law, like it or not you have to abide by it.
This also goes back to you saying that takedowns are ineffective, therefore using other more effective techniques is a good idea..
Taking away the people who are sharing the files is more effective than taking away the sites that provide that service.
So that is what they will do,, and ARE doing...
Much to your disgust,, being disgusted by properly enforcing the agreed upon laws, is something I find odd.
Yes lets have a society that says "if enough people break the law, then everyone can break the law". that will work.. for about 10 seconds.
and if you feel that strongly, about this "bad" law, go into politics, get the popular vote from your people, get elected, and DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT..
otherwise you just come acress as someone whining about not getting their way.
how you are right, and hundreds of years old international laws are wrong..
so how many significant blows ??
As many as it takes, and probably then some...
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Re: As many as it takes
Why is he doing that?
Because he got tired of putting good people away.
Actually breaking the law in mass pays off at least in the case of squatting in the U.S. that tried to enact laws similar to the U.K. but people didn't respect that and after 20 years politicians gave up and gave people squatting some laws.
BTW in the U.K. Margaret Thatcher tried to put in place the tax per head we all know how that ended.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_per_head
People probably could do what the Japanese prime minister did there in 2005.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koizumi_Children
You think if the industry annoy the whole population there will be no consequences?
Sweden is living proof that things change, when the laws change and they are not in your favor will you keep that same atitude?
"THE LAW IS THE LAW"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6X9FTY3bv6k
Fine the law also changes.
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Re: As many as it takes
I'm particularly anxious to see the "then some..." part, I would love to see that happen.
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Re: As many as it takes
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Re: As many as it takes
Its up to you to be mature, moral and ethical enough to acknoledge that the law is the law, and until it is no longer the law, like it or not you have to abide by it.
Good thing the US Founding Fathers agreed with you.
"When in the course of human events it becomes necessary ..."
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