Flip-Mod Posted January 20, 2012 Report Share Posted January 20, 2012 In light of the internet 'blackout', SOPA/PIPA etc, I have just had an interesting debate with a friend regarding the internet and the distribution of information. He works in the entertainment industry (relying on intellectual property as a main source of income). Things like songs, art, movies etc I work in science (relying on the (relatively) free distribution of information). Information that may improve medical care, quality of life etc He says that all intellectual property should be paid for (downloading/copy is stealing, you wouldn't steal a car etc, **which is fair enough**), and suggests that SOPA/PIPA will give upcoming/new artists a larger incentive to produce work (as it would be bought/not ripped off) making more creative opportunities available. I argue that digital information should be available to the whole online community regardless of cost to the proprietor, as it gives culture, community, science and technology the chance to change, adapt and improve at a minimal loss to the copyright holders, compared to the economy it creates in the internet. Furthermore the PIPA/SPPA bill would end up censoring an exaggerated/inappropriate proportion of the internet, limit free expression and the disrupt dynamics of the internet. Considering this forum hosts a vast body of information via a range of creative mediums (videos/pictures/external links etc)i was wondering if anyone had any thoughts on this matter? Cheers Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Muel Posted January 20, 2012 Report Share Posted January 20, 2012 I'm with you to be honest, for the reasons you said. Also, everyone should watch this, shows the true threat of these proposed bills: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Flip-Mod Posted January 20, 2012 Author Report Share Posted January 20, 2012 That was incredible elegant discussion. Cheers Muel, Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Greetings Posted January 20, 2012 Report Share Posted January 20, 2012 Came in here to post that Personally I don't think it's going to happen. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RobinJI Posted January 20, 2012 Report Share Posted January 20, 2012 That TED link's a very good explanation. Personally, it's a stupid idea, and the Americans need to realise they're not the only country in the world. With regards to copying DVD's ect.. Personally I don't think of it as theft, and any adverts claiming it is annoy me, because nothing's actually been stolen. If someone looked at my bike, and decided to make an exact replica of it, then I phoned the police and said someone's stolen my bike because they copied it instead of buying it, the police would laugh at me and tell me to piss off. They're making a product that's easily to replicate, tough shit, that's their fault, and their problem, every other industry just deals with it when someone copies their products as long as they're not selling them for gain. If I invented a product that could be made out of a piece of paper using only some scissors, and then tried selling it, people would just make their own, and my problem would be that I was selling a product that anyone could look at and just make for them selves, they wouldn't be steeling it, they'd be copying it. 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MadManMike Posted January 20, 2012 Report Share Posted January 20, 2012 They're making a product that's easily to replicate, tough shit, that's their fault, and their problem, every other industry just deals with it when someone copies their products as long as they're not selling them for gain. If I invented a product that could be made out of a piece of paper using only some scissors, and then tried selling it, people would just make their own, and my problem would be that I was selling a product that anyone could look at and just make for them selves, they wouldn't be steeling it, they'd be copying it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Muel Posted January 20, 2012 Report Share Posted January 20, 2012 No it won't, the uproar has been too great, it's not been thought about enough first, it won't work anyway, and too many multi-national companies are dead against it. But as he said, next year there will be a revised form of it, and at some point in the future I believe the internet will be censored and policed, and life will return to what it was like 10 years ago, when people copied their mates DVDs. The scary thing is the policing of the every day person. Under this new law, you won't be allowed to upload a photo to facebook without it being OK'd by some suited f**ker in America. It'll get to the stage where if you go ona night out, and upload a picture of you and your wingman climbing up a bus shelter, it'll be removed because bus shelters have advertising boards on them with copyrighted logos, and that won't be allowed. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RobinJI Posted January 20, 2012 Report Share Posted January 20, 2012 I guess that sounds a little more harsh than it's meant to, and I know it's tough for bands starting out and stuff, but I just get annoyed with the big publishing companies ramming it down your throat as if you've just kicked a baby to death. Digital media is easy to replicate, that's a problem, but the ability to replicate a product for free or very little cost would kill most other industries over night. They're doing well as they are all things considered. If they want us to buy it then they need to make it easier to buy the product than copy it, that's why we don't all go, "I like that new ford focus, I think I'll make one", but we do go "I like that song, I'll download it". If they can make it difficult to download, or a downloaded copy worse quality, then it would be easier/worth while for people to pay the 40p and buy the track. The problem the companies have is how do they make it more difficult, and this is their lazy attempt at getting around having to bother in one big area. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Milford Cubicle Posted January 20, 2012 Report Share Posted January 20, 2012 (edited) With regards to copying DVD's ect.. Personally I don't think of it as theft, and any adverts claiming it is annoy me, because nothing's actually been stolen. If someone looked at my bike, and decided to make an exact replica of it, then I phoned the police and said someone's stolen my bike because they copied it instead of buying it, the police would laugh at me and tell me to piss off. They're making a product that's easily to replicate, tough shit, that's their fault, and their problem, every other industry just deals with it when someone copies their products as long as they're not selling them for gain. If I invented a product that could be made out of a piece of paper using only some scissors, and then tried selling it, people would just make their own, and my problem would be that I was selling a product that anyone could look at and just make for them selves, they wouldn't be steeling it, they'd be copying it. Edited January 20, 2012 by Milford Cubicle Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Greetings Posted January 20, 2012 Report Share Posted January 20, 2012 at some point in the future I believe the internet will be censored and policed, This is an interesting point and it's going to happen unfortunately. It's the case with any new big thing - at the start there are no regulations, as it starts to grow and become more popular more regulations are enforced right up until someone gets prosecuted for the first time ever for committing a - let's say online - offence. I'd say it's a bit like when cars first came about. There were no drivers licenses, no drink-drive laws, no regulations about how fast you could go. You could build something in your shed and drive it. Now every aspect of motoring is regulated (not saying it's a bad thing). I don't think it'll ever be as extreme as social networking being monitored for inappropriate content. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Muel Posted January 20, 2012 Report Share Posted January 20, 2012 He speak the troof. It's only like ripping off code from the internets. Everybody does it, difference is no-one cares. People write decent code so people will copy it, which increases their reputation and gets them other work, like doing talks and the like. The music/film industry needs to recognise that they can make this work to their advantage. If a band gives their album away for free, I am far more likely to download it, listen to it, and turn up to one of their gigs. if they only sell it, then I'll never hear them play. Not sure how to apply that to films, but I don't really care, it's not for me to work out. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JD™ Posted January 20, 2012 Report Share Posted January 20, 2012 Gotta say I agree with Robin here. I won't chime in on the laws because I don't have the time or inclination to write an essay on here about it. As a one time musician and someone who spends both his professional and a large proportion of personal time on the Internet, it's clear to me that things should stay open an self policed. Without a free and open Internet, the world would be a far less pleasant place to be. If you make something replicable for less investment (time and/or money) than it is to purchase legitimately, then it will be replicated. That's just a judgement call you make by making that 'something'. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RobinJI Posted January 20, 2012 Report Share Posted January 20, 2012 (edited) I think badly explained would sum it up better I'm not saying piracy is fine, it was more just that it's not really 'theft' in the traditional sense, because you're not steeling something. It's not been a problem in the past, because generally physical products are hard to or expensive to replicate, or doing so takes enough time that you could have earned the money to buy it anyway. But with digital media that's removed, the cost, time and skill to copy them becomes essentially negligible, and so far the industry's stayed afloat by making it worth while not copying them, or making it harder to do so, with new formats, increased quality, additional material and cracking down on the people providing the ability to copy them, but it's essentially a flaw in the product that's causing the issue for them. Edit, Muel and JD beat me to it and summed my point up better. Edited January 20, 2012 by RobinJI Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Milford Cubicle Posted January 20, 2012 Report Share Posted January 20, 2012 He speak the troof. It's only like ripping off code from the internets. Everybody does it, difference is no-one cares. People write decent code so people will copy it, which increases their reputation and gets them other work, like doing talks and the like. The music/film industry needs to recognise that they can make this work to their advantage. If a band gives their album away for free, I am far more likely to download it, listen to it, and turn up to one of their gigs. if they only sell it, then I'll never hear them play. Not sure how to apply that to films, but I don't really care, it's not for me to work out. If somone wants to give somthing away to spread there product and get themselves recognised then thats fine, thats just the same as people giving out free tasters or somthing in the supermarket, as a band that would seem like a reasnoably sensible thing to do... Just because nobody really cares about the fact that downloading a song/album/film is wrong dosen't stop it being so. If you leave your trials bike out in your garden and somone steals it it may of been easy for them to do but it dosen't stop it being wrong. Films cost an awfull lot of money to make and is harder for them than music I would of thought as going to the cinema is just the film on a bigger screen whereas going to a gig is a lot different/better than just listening to an album plus cinema's are a rip off so they probably don't make as much money as they could. Obviously it isn't the same as stealing a mass produced product because they put money into making each individual product whereas a film/album is made once and then sold many times but your still taking a sale. Even if you weren't going to buy the film/album your still taking somthing which should of been payed for. Not sure if that makes sense or is a good point I just don't really think it should be done just because its easy. Its can be very easy to kill somone dosen't mean you should do it... (I know that not a relevent example but its on the same principle just taken to the extreme) x Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JT! Posted January 20, 2012 Report Share Posted January 20, 2012 Here's my take on it all. Looking back at music first, the whole thing kicked off back before broadband was available (in the UK anyway) and we were all using 56k modems. I believe Napster was one of the first. The reason that was so popular wasn't just because it was free, it was because it was fast, easy, and more importantly you could get hold of rarer tracks that weren't sold at your local store. This took off even more when mini-disc and cd players were replaced with mp3 players. Problems started when music companies didn't keep up with the demand for this kind of thing, I'm not to clear on the history, but I'm sure it was quite a while after when it was possible to buy songs legally online for not much cheaper than you could go buy a cd in a shop. But comparing that to the infinite selection P2P programs offered and the price tag, it wasn't worth it for anyone. It's only over the last half a decade where music companies have started to get their shit together, offering things like Spotify which is very cheap and offers the same, if not more than P2P programs. Over the next few years, pirating music will become more and more redundant. Eventually more and more people will shift away from CDs altogether making them also redundant which will only lower the cost of MP3's as downloading music is so much more efficient that buying a CD. The same thing is very similar with movies, it just happened a few years later. Pirating movies only started to get popular when broadband connections did. Unlike 3mb songs which would take 10-20 mins with a 56k modem, a 700mb film would take days and would block anyone from calling you all day. When broadband became popular people started downloading movies like crazy. Film companies reaction to this? Nothing. Keep selling DVD's in shops and bitch about it instead of making them available online. This went on for the best part of a decade until things like lovefilm and netflix came along and only just recently weened people away from piracy. So the lesson learnt is people are always going to pirate material if there's no alternative, so the best thing to do is get your arse in gear and offer that alternative. Don't do it quick enough and not keeping up with the times will force a underground society of piracy until you do. So now that we have these services, and movie and music piracy isn't too much of an issue, the modern day version of this is youtube. Youtube does have means of stopping copywrited material in two main ways, one good and one bad. The good one is that they'll have an agreement with whoever owns the rights, they'll throw up some adds and the person who owns the rights will get money from ad revenue. This is good because it allows youtube to be the means of allowing this clip to be extremely easilly viewed as opposed to it not been availabel on the internet anywhere and the rights owner reaps the benefits. The bad thing that happens is that it's removed from youtube forcing people to either not see the clip or to find it pirated somewhere else. If these right owners don't want their material on youtube all the best to them, but to not make it available by any other reasonable means is where the problem starts. TL;DR The reason we have piracy is not necessarily because it's free, but because there's no other reasonable alternative. This is the problem, cracking down on piracy will do nothing if an alternative isn't put in it's place. SOPA and PIPA is like someone getting shot, but they cover the wound but leave the bullet in. It will do nothing. All it means is instead of going to youtube.com you'll put the IP address in your url bar instead. It just makes it a tiny bit more inconvenient for you. Pirating a movie is not like stealing a car! Must be the worst simile I've ever heard. Music isn't stolen, it's copied. When you steal a car, someone loses that car. When you pirate music, nothing is lost but potential earnings, and I use the word potential very loosely because people assume that if someone pirates a movie, if they couldn't have done that they 100% certainly would have bought it. The majority of the time this isn't true. I would never have bought Photoshop, or Microsoft office, and I would have never bought/rented 95% of the movies I've pirated. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matt Vandart Posted January 20, 2012 Report Share Posted January 20, 2012 I agree entirely Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Milford Cubicle Posted January 20, 2012 Report Share Posted January 20, 2012 Well I just think that even though it may be easy downloading somthing that the person that created it is selling be that music or film its still wrong and it being easy to do/hard to stop isn't really an excuse to do it. x Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RobinJI Posted January 20, 2012 Report Share Posted January 20, 2012 (edited) Well I just think that even though it may be easy downloading somthing that the person that created it is selling be that music or film its still wrong and it being easy to do/hard to stop isn't really an excuse to do it. x Oh yeah, I'm not saying it's absolutely fine, it's 'wrong', what I'm saying that it's not theft, and that trying to completely ban the free distribution of digital media is a loosing battle that seems like the easy way out of evolving to fit a changing market place. Industries evolve, it's what they do, whether it's right or wrong is irrelevant, it's happening. It's like the way I'm vegetarian, I find the idea of eating meat 'wrong'*, but I can't expect Lions to stop eating animals in case it hurts their population, it's the pray that adapts so it doesn't get eaten, not the Lions that stop eating them. *For the record, I'm not really opposed to eating meat, I've just always been vegitarian and the idea of not being seems weird to me now. Edited January 20, 2012 by RobinJI Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
monkeyseemonkeydo Posted January 20, 2012 Report Share Posted January 20, 2012 Well I just think that even though it may be easy downloading somthing that the person that created it is selling be that music or film its still wrong and it being easy to do/hard to stop isn't really an excuse to do it. Uh huh. However, if it wasn't so frickin' easy to download illegal shit I wouldn't do it. Because it's easy I have no qualms about doing it on a small scale. In my mind it's very nearly a victimless crime. I guess it's really hard to feel sorry for SyCo, Sony, Universal Pictures etc. when they're not exactly struggling to make ends meet. I know there's the whole 'small/developing' artist shiz but I'm too far removed and have too little interest in that side of things to give two hoots. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MikeCottTrials Posted January 20, 2012 Report Share Posted January 20, 2012 I'm with you to be honest, for the reasons you said. Also, everyone should watch this, shows the true threat of these proposed bills: In a nut shell, that guy is impressive at making a presentation. He's totally right of course, never been so convinced in my life Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JT! Posted January 21, 2012 Report Share Posted January 21, 2012 Well I just think that even though it may be easy downloading somthing that the person that created it is selling be that music or film its still wrong and it being easy to do/hard to stop isn't really an excuse to do it. It's always morally wrong to download something illegally. But for me personally if something just isn't available it makes it much moral for me to download it. Personal example. I downloaded a very shoddy pirated copy of 'Is It Bill Bailey' which contained some of the funniest shit I've ever seen. Eventually I found a better pirated copy. As it wasn't available to buy on DVD I uploaded some clips to my youtube account. They were taken down when they became much stricter a year ago and you still can't even buy the DVD anywhere! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matt Vandart Posted January 21, 2012 Report Share Posted January 21, 2012 (edited) I think it bodes very unwell for us all Oh yeah, and f**k the 'musicians/artists' overpaid wankers the lot of em anyway Edited January 21, 2012 by Matt Vandart Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pete.M Posted January 22, 2012 Report Share Posted January 22, 2012 I like the comparison made between the invention of cars and the internet. With the example of cars the world was able to change and adapt to this new form of transport. I know that comparisons cannot really be drawn between cars and the internet, so perhaps I'm missing the point here. Something that solves so many problems will only create more. I guess this is inevitable. However, should the internet change, or should we change the way we think in order to suit the internet? The hardest option is likely the correct one. Point = missed. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dann2707 Posted January 22, 2012 Report Share Posted January 22, 2012 You wouldn't download a car. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JT! Posted January 22, 2012 Report Share Posted January 22, 2012 You wouldn't download a car. 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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