5 major ISPs roll out the "six strikes" policy regarding illegal downloads.

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Mikhail Bakunin_sl

shitlord
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Simas_sl said:
The point was that theft does not always require the original to be taken.
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Your example only shows that if you take for granted the idea that information can be stolen at all, but that's circular.

Simas_sl said:
Mikhail, I'm not sure what you mean with your question as to whether information can be stolen. Legally? Most certainly. Philosophically? My short answer is yes, but I have no desire to discuss philosophy.
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The validity of the law is very much dependent upon that bit of philosophy that you're not interested in discussing.

Simas_sl said:
Margins are indeed legally irrelevant. If you would like to show me a statute that takes margins into account when dealing with theft I would love to see it. I also believe they are morally irrelevant
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Why?

Simas_sl said:
At bottom, even if everything you said was accurate - if no one was exploiting demand, instead of a few, if the market was stagnant, instead of stunted, if distribution was essentially free instead of much cheaper after a large initial expenditure or subsidized by the govt -I still wouldn't find the situation dire enough to justify piracy to the point where I would feel sympathy for them.
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Piracy isn't the thing that requires justification. The so-called pirates aren't the ones forcibly impeding other people from doing something.

Simas_sl said:
And of course, we haven't even discussed DVD releases. It's not the case that if pirates refrain from illegally downloading the new GoT episode they'll never have alternative access to it. In a handful of months the DVD will be released, on sale for $25-$35. It's not righteous protest, its impatient entitlement.
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Yeah how dare they copy someone else's copy of a chunk of data rather not buy it from a market it doesn't exist in yet! Unjust!
 
Arative

Arative

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Big Phoenix

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I think its more of the problem of one utilities are always monopolies or at best duopolies if youre lucky and secondly there really isnt a demand to completely open up the internet the way it should be because the people who own the media dont have it open like it should be. In our day an age there is absolutely no reason why publishers/distributors should be the gate keepers to the overwhelming majority of media, regardless how idiotic the cable companies are.

Steam and Netflix are both well polished content delivery methods, but how much triple A content has been released through? None(aside from house of cards), and it shows that this problem isnt strictly related to EA or Viacom being greedy assholes.
 
Gravel

Gravel

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Arative_sl said:
Here are a few articles relevant to the discussion
Time Warner Cable, Verizon Insist You Don't Want or Need Gigabit Broadband
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Man, these fucking people...

Esteves downplayed the importance of Time Warner's top-tier: 50/5Mbps, claimingonly a very small fraction of Time Warner customers opt to receive speeds that high.
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But just before that:

Time Warner Cable's chief financial officer Irene Esteves says the cable company is content delivering most of the country no more than 50/5Mbps broadband (for at least $10 more than Google chargesfor 1,000/1,000Mbps service).
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Gee, I wonder why there's a small fraction of people with your top tier? Could it possibly be that it's overpriced?
 
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Merkins4Brazil_sl

shitlord
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most interesting part is if you buy a higher tier service (business class), than they won't bother you, that should spell out the real motivation.
 
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Simas_sl

shitlord
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Mikhail Bakunin_sl said:
The validity of the law is very much dependent upon that bit of philosophy that you're not interested in discussing.
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No, that's not how the U.S. legal system works.

There's no reason to discuss the matter of sympathy for those who illegally download content with one who does not believe information can be stolen. Perhaps one day your social will be stolen and you'll change your mind.
 
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Mikhail Bakunin_sl

shitlord
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Simas_sl said:
No, that's not how the U.S. legal system works.
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Insofar as the legal system is predicated on the legislative system which is, in turn, predicated on the political system it's absolutely how the legal system. The why's of the law absolutely matter.

Simas_sl said:
There's no reason to discuss the matter of sympathy for those who illegally download content with one who does not believe information can be stolen. Perhaps one day your social will be stolen and you'll change your mind.
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Yes, the harms that can be done to me by a bunch of shittily implemented systems that use SS numbers in a way they were never intended to be used is indeed an excellent defense of copyright law.
 
Big Phoenix

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Simas_sl said:
No, that's not how the U.S. legal system works.

There's no reason to discuss the matter of sympathy for those who illegally download content with one who does not believe information can be stolen. Perhaps one day your social will be stolen and you'll change your mind.
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Think everyone is getting into semantics of how we describe what happens and the actual legal terminology.
 
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Simas_sl

shitlord
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Mikhail Bakunin_sl said:
Insofar as the legal system is predicated on the legislative system which is, in turn, predicated on the political system it's absolutely how the legal system. The why's of the law absolutely matter.

Yes, the harms that can be done to me by a bunch of shittily implemented systems that use SS numbers in a way they were never intended to be used is indeed an excellent defense of copyright law.
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khalid

khalid

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Im not sure bringing up the silly marijuana laws are a good defense of whether we should feel morally bad about piracy.
 
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Simas_sl

shitlord
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Mikhail Bakunin_sl said:
Idareyou to explain the relevance of that video. (protip: You should not indulge me. This will not go well for you.)
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It's pretty simple really. Gosh, you know your concepts are really interesting Mikhail, but unfortunately for you, there are laws against stealing information and data.
 
khalid

khalid

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Then why in the fuck are you even in this thread? No one disagrees there is a law against it. Who are you arguing with?
 
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Simas_sl

shitlord
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khalid_sl said:
Then why in the fuck are you even in this thread? No one disagrees there is a law against it. Who are you arguing with?
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You have to follow the whole thread man. I started by writing that I didn't have sympathy for pirates. Many people disagreed, commenting on how fucked up the media providers are. While I agree the media providers can be shitty and shady, I felt many of the comments about media providers overstated the situation (no competition vs. little competition etc), and said as much. Then, I wrote that I didn't think the situation was bad enough to justify piracy, instead I think those claims are rationalizations. It is my view that most people illegally download because its easy and there are likely to be little to no consequences.

After discussing those issues with Deathwing, Lithose, and others for a while, Mikhail quoted something of mine and questioned whether it was even possible for data/information to be stolen. I wrote that it was. Mikhail then jumped down the philosophy rabbit hole. I wasn't interested in discussing philosophy stuff.

And here we are.
 
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Mikhail Bakunin_sl

shitlord
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1
You do understand the connection between the whole "sympathy for pirates" thing and whether or not (and to what extent) copyright law is ethically valid, right? I mean you call it a "philosophy rabbit hole" but do you actually get why that's not true?
 
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Simas_sl

shitlord
1,196
5
Mikhail Bakunin_sl said:
You do understand the connection between the whole "sympathy for pirates" thing and whether or not (and to what extent) copyright law is ethically valid, right? I mean you call it a "philosophy rabbit hole" but do you actually get why that's not true?
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I do.

I'll try to explain what I mean by the philosophy rabbit hole. Two people, Al and Bob, are discussing theft. Al asks Bob whether theft is immoral and Bob says yes, always. Al then asks Bob what about a starving person stealing food to eat. Bob isn't sure. They have an interesting discussion.

But then Caleb comes along. Caleb says theft is never wrong because there is no such thing as property. There's no such thing as property because there's no such thing as ownership. After all, what does it mean to own something, Caleb asks. It means you have a right to it, says Bob. But what is a right, asks Caleb. Now they're down the philosophy rabbit hole.

You strike me, not from this thread alone, as a Caleb. I had those discussions in college and they can be fun in a coffee house face to face, or in a class room with a professor to moderate the discussion. I find them dreadful online, where every sentence is quoted and used as the launching point for another tangent, where even grounded discourse is routinely taken out of context or misunderstood, and where those arguing rarely seem to make a good faith effort to engage others charitably.
 
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Mikhail Bakunin_sl

shitlord
2,199
1
Simas_sl said:
I'll try to explain what I mean by the philosophy rabbit hole. Two people, Al and Bob, are discussing theft. Al asks Bob whether theft is immoral and Bob says yes, always. Al then asks Bob what about a starving person stealing food to eat. Bob isn't sure. They have an interesting discussion.

But then Caleb comes along. Caleb says theft is never wrong because there is no such thing as property. There's no such thing as property because there's no such thing as ownership. After all, what does it mean to own something, Caleb asks. It means you have a right to it, says Bob. But what is a right, asks Caleb. Now they're down the philosophy rabbit hole.

You strike me, not from this thread alone, as a Caleb.
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That's nice. The whole point about intellectual property is that it's distinctly different from other sorts of property in a way that makes the discussion even LESS flighty than the "starving person stealing to feed themselves" discussion you've indicated could be interesting. It's much LESS distance to climb out on that limb to make the argument that I'm making (however far I have climbed on it before).
 
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