Why is it bad that the Fed is closing down illegal filesharing sites???

same reason its apparently bad to wanna find and get rid of people illegally in this country..i mean the laws are there..but we are bad people for enforcing them?

A new thread was needed? Seriously?

Well I think you're right, but I'd argue that -unlike piracy- immigration is a very complex issue: why do people in the West deserve all these riches while the rest of the world has nothing? But on the other hand, letting everyone immigrate is both impractical and in most cases has negative side-effects. 

You probably should have posted this in the original thread rather than start a new one.  But I am with you, DEATH (not literally though) to all those who steal intellectual property! 

No one "deserves" anything in life, you have to earn it. 

If they were enforcing law without being preferential, I'd be happy.  What you have in western countries is a rapidly expanding power base in copyright and patent based industries.  The big companies have had our politicians bought and paid for for decades now, so they've been steadily expanding "rights" over time.  The original intent was to reward someone for an idea by giving them exclusive control long enough to reach market saturation.  This was when it could take ten years to get your book published and shipped out to the various population centers.  Now, in an age where the time from initial publication to market saturation would take a few months instead, copyrights outlive their authors.

Then there are all the obvious examples of insanity, like whenever Marvel decides to take someone to court over a so called infringement.  IP laws are used as a weapon to destroy competition more often than not.  The utterly inane practice of end user licensing agreements, inarguable in their paradoxical status as a supposedly legal means of altering a sale contract without prior notification.  Anyone honest(actually honest, not just a nice guy) will admit it's a royally fucked situation with the DMCA being in direct violation of the basic contract laws they tacked it onto.  Not that voiding contracts seems to bother anyone in DC...

While it's wrong to avoid purchasing things by using them for free, the system has been butchered by the publishing titans to the point where I just can't feel any sympathy for them.  It's a twisted world, but there's justice in Sony losing sales when they pull shit like installing a rootkit on their customers computers.  I'm all for voting with your wallet, but when Uncle is helping them fuck you over, it's a losing battle thanks to the apathetic masses that are just too stupid to elect something besides a lawyer.

I feel a little bad for pirated companies that aren't actively trying to give their own customers the finger, but then I bought both Gal Civ games and their expansions because they aren't, and not because I found the first one terribly interesting.  I'm not particularly bothered even there though, the existence of a perpetually expanding copyright market proves beyond a doubt that it's still profitable.  If it were to, of all things, actually shrink in response, I might get to the point where I'd start thinking one sided enforcement was something besides a really bad idea.  Currently I'd rather wait and hope all the assholes buying up lawmakers go out of business first.

I figure that will happen shortly after we wise up and kill all the lawyers off, which wont happen till hell freezes over, but wishful thinking is always nice as long as you recognize you're deluding yourself.

Many believe that copyright in its current form is damaging not only to the economy, but also the creative process. That it discourages creation of new content or improvements on old. It makes creating competitive environments much more difficult and/or cost. But that is another discussion entirely.

Now here's the big thing.

The laws being enforced against consumers were primarily drafted pre - 2000. Before civil infringement became widespread. These laws were made to combat gross commercial infringement. Things like bootlegging operations were someone is printing counterfeit copies of media for profit, reselling content with a distribution licenses or commercial use of content without license. Those are situations where 50,000 to multi-billion dollar fines are appropriate.

The US RIAA in the last 3 years have spent 64 million in lawyers fees to collect 1.3 million over several thousand lawsuits and settlements against consumers. They are now being assisted by the federal government for violations that should be civil in nature. The fed should not be the private army of a multi-corporation entity.

To reiterate:

These lawsuits and actions are being taken against consumers that have made minor offenses - and are facing penalties that are several orders of magnitude above any actual damages they may have caused. These are everyday people who are facing legal repercussions harsher than if they stole the actual media.

That is both ethically wrong and a gross misuse of federal  resources and tax dollars.

Edit: faces=facing

Edit2: Cited lawsuit costs with link

Simple Solution:  Buy it instead!  If you cannot afford it, then earn the money somehow to buy it, but never ever steal from anyone.  I would sooner shovel garbage in order to earn something I wanted than to infringe on the rights of someone else. I'll give you a for instance.

There is an author on this site that makes the finest skins I have ever seen, or will ever see, and this person sells some of their work. This person has a wife and two children at home to support, lives at the poverty level and cannot work a regular job.  Within one day of releasing a new skin, it is all over the Internet on illegal sites being made available for free download. Heck, it even happens to me quite often! Is this right? Absolutely not!

Some people depend on the meager income they make from selling their work in order to live, and people who illegally post copyrighted material on other sites in my opinion are lower than than lowest life form on this planet.  They are the scum of the Earth, and I hope they rot in hell! 

I am desperately trying to find a reason as to why this thread was needed, instead of posting in the previous, dedicated thread.

Wonderful, now how about the guy with the rootkit CD's he can't transfer to his computer without cleaning the crap back out of the OS afterwards?  Then there's the ones that just don't work on a lot of drives.  All of my music is on my computer, all of the music on my computer came off a physical CD I popped into the drive to put it there.  It's a rare event when I actually use a CD.  If I were less observant of my surroundings, and slightly more into modern rock and classic, I could have a bit of a problem accomplishing that feat.

Sob stories, no matter how real and how frequent, don't make the state of things anything but fucked on both sides of the equation.

This is a joke, right?  Neither thread actually serves anything but a momentary distraction.

If something is useless, why can't they be useless in bulk?

...and your point is?

Quite possibly that your average consumer doesn't like getting screwed over by large companies and would rather laugh as they fail than be treated like a potential criminal instead of a customer when they buy products legitimately.

Edit: expounding

To be a bit less inflaming, Most large companies simply do not understand today's common consumer culture. The business models they use are aging and tend to give false impressions of revenue loss while missing many sources of revenue growth.

We live in an age where any publicly available content can be accessed with only a modicum of difficulty. If you are in the business of selling content you must learn how to attract customers that have free access to your content.

Some people will never, ever buy your content - they make up a large section of infringers. Others will always buy from you - even if they can get it for free(either due to being law-abiding or through brand loyalty) they make up a large section of your customer base.

The third type are people who will buy from you if they see a good value. Many of these people will pirate your content if they are not happy with it or just decide not to buy it. These people make up a very large section of your customer base. There have been several studies showing that the same people who pirate are often your largest customers. They pirate because you no longer sell an old version, movie or song. They pirate because they can't play a single player game without a internet connection. They pirate because using the legitimate copies has hurdles or hoops or elements they find undesirable or feel adds nothing to the product that they simply don't have to deal with with a pirated copy.

Suing or prosecuting them only guarantees that they will not buy from you, and their friends and family may not either. They may have bought hundreds or thousands of dollars of your content, and planned on continuing to do so. If these were isolated cases prosecuting would be a good idea. However there are quite literally millions of people that do this. Heavy handedness will eventually undermine any hard work you do.

Remember people are people, not automatons. They have complex motivations for their actions, even when selfish; their reactions are much more complex. As a businessman its your responsibility to find the most profitable way to get money from them. Browbeating is a good way to get the finger even when you are in the right - and all that really matters is money, right?

Because it creates repetitive threads in the general forums?

Ok, so lets say someone with a severe mental handicap can't earn anything so he shouldn't get anything and should die in a gutter? Now I'm with you that noone deserves the right to copy someone elses IP without his/her consent but this is just ridiculous.

How did the people in the West earn these things? Being born in America or Europe is just the luck of the draw, how did they earn that right? Anyway this is all just semantics on immigration anyway.

Hardcore gamers play a lot of games, consequently they also pirate a lot. These same pirates however also buy a lot of games(whether for an online component or brand loyalty) because these people just play more games than the average customer.

Are you entitled to steal games because you also buy a lot of games? 

I choose the link to see the other forum post and was not only entertained to find that I could post there but that I found one of your hiding spots when you're not posting here. (meaning Jafo, lightstar, doc, etc.)

*edit* sh#t, feel like a newbie all over again, is there anywhere where the forum structure is explained, bet not but thought I'd ask anyway.

Q: is there a listing of the forums that are supported by SD?

Death to me! we don't need shops selling things we do as hobbies 99% of the world is gonna be entrepenure and you can get real original on ways to make money out of fans without 35000 albums at the rate of 10 - 20 dollars a cd.   amen!

-jeremy Sr.

Make an album art book or pay site for the record company or something smart not charge 10 to 20 dollars a cd and expect (our market for music is so small) us to be happy when there are only 100 bands being sold becuase the market seems big at that price.

100 bands at best buy and 350,000,000 people in america!

No one "deserves" anything in life, you have to earn it. get it randomly. And if you randomly get a lot of wealth you have to decide what your responsibility is in how you use that wealth.

Also 350,000,000 Americans buying 35,000,000 records at 10$ a piece is just ideotic.  A best buy size store that sold music at 1$ an album would be better than making less music profitable and every soul have to buy every album they have. -Jeremy Sr.

Can't believe it but I have to agree with LightStar again.  I was raised that if ya want something work and save the money, then buy it.  Rich, the west isn't rich anymore, its the middle east and China thats rich.  We will be a third rate country with Nukes in a few years.

Light star is out of touch.   Entrepenure ship is the future of the country not keeping the traditions of old buisiness that need improving. -Jeremy Sr.

Yep...just as soon as we start paying the bill for our "Change"

@lifekatana and Tasunke.

You guys ARE aware of the fact that the vast majority of "the people of the West" are working hard every day just to barely get by? And that there is a growing proportion of the "o so rich westeners" who lives beneath the poverty-line?

I am always suprised that a lot of people obviously still think of "the West" as a place where the rivers are full of milk and the honey runs down the streets. Until these same people actually immigrate to "the West" and find out that they have to work extremely hard if they want to have food on the table and a roof over their head, provided they even find a job. Just as in any other place of the world.

I don't deny that we still have a good life when compared to people being born in some of the more unfortunate third-world countries, but pointing a finger at the "rich" west and crying "give me" and "why have you and we don't" won't really improve the situation for anybody (as recent history and all the billions pumped into the third-world countries during that time has shown). Pointing the finger at their own (often corrupt) governements on the other hand might do the trick.

In the context of pirating that would translate into: Just because you can't afford the newest fad-game the very moment it is realeased (note that you obviously can affort the newest hardware to run this newest game, as well as the fast internet-connection to illegally download it so you are obviously as rich as most "westerners") does not mean you are discriminated against. Either wait until it is on sale (most of the time no more than a few months), which also has the advantage that most of the bugs are patched and that the game actually works as initially announced, or just save up the money for it ("the people of the west" do that as well, you know!).

As to the point that AgentNihilist and others made; I agree to a large part with you. I have been in the unfortunate situation myself where I was actually forced to download a pirated version of my legally purchased game (or in some lesser cases only the no-DVD patch for it) just to be able to play it on my laptop which is not always online (and which I want to keep that way). Which of course puts me in a uncomfortable situation. On the one hand I am grateful to the pirates that they provide me with the means to play the game, on the other hand I am aware the the vast majority probably downloads the game just because the don't want to fork out the money but feel entitlet to have everything they wish for anyway.

I believe a change in thinking is needed from both the commercial as well as the private side. Stardock and a few other smaller companies have made the first step, but now we need to show them that their trust and their willingness to make this first step will be rewarded. Downloading their games illegally betrays that trust and might either financially destroy those smaller companies or turn their attention to the less than savouriy business practises of larger game companies (no names needed here, we all know them).

You *are* aware that a LOT of people (most in fact) work very hard (myself not included) and only a small percentage have anywhere near a decent living.

Meanwhile I and a small percentage (world population wise) of others CAN work hard and make a decent living.

Anyways, there are other people that work hard all their lives and have hardly anything. Obviously I am not saying that people shouldn't work hard, but some people are able and willing to make a decent living through hard work yet don't have the opportunity due to randomized location of birth. Its more what family you are born into than where you are born, but both matter.