It came to my attention Saturday morning that this site is stealing content from Freethought Blogs, literally copying every single post we make in its entirety. I learned later that the site is owned by someone named Peter Grant, who is friends on Facebook with many of the bloggers here. I sent him the following email:
I am assuming that you are the same person who runs both http://atheistfeed.blogspot.com/ and http://atheistfeed.tumblr.com/. The latter is aggregating — that is, stealing — all of the content from Freethought Blogs, a network that I own. You do not have permission to copy the content from freethoughtblogs.com and I want all posts copied from our network removed immediately and any use of our copyrighted material to stop. If this is not done within 72 hours, I will be referring the matter to my attorney. Please see this:
https://www.eff.org/issues/bloggers/legal/liability/IP
Ed Brayton
Freethought Blogs
He reprinted that email on his blog, along with this absurd response:
Just received this email. Must say I am disappointed :( Especially now, just following the recent SOPA blackout.
I left the following comment:
This has nothing to do with SOPA. The problem with SOPA is not with copyright, which is good and necessary; the problem is with the draconian measures included in the law to protect copyright, which would cause massive problems for people and sites that have done nothing wrong. This is simply a way for you to distract attention from the issue. This isn’t the government coming down on you to shut you down, it’s an individual — a group of individuals, actually — from whom you are stealing telling you to stop. And your excuses and rationalizations are absurd. I meant what I said. If you do not stop stealing our content, I’ll be taking you to court.
During a private exchange on Facebook, he had equally absurd rationalizations for his theft.
I’m not doing anything. It’s already setup and will continue to funtion without any imput from my side. I setup the Athiest Feed so I could follow all my favourite blogs on twitter, facebook, tumblr etc. I’ve just got it working nicely now.
Brilliant. “I’m not doing anything! It works all on its own! And I just got it working the way I want it to work.” Which means he just got good at stealing from us. And it’s perfectly fine for him to set up an RSS feed of all his favorite blogs so he can read them; what he can’t do is put all that content on his own website so others can read it without ever coming to our site.
He also told me, “I do not respond well to demands.” I don’t really care. This is not the least bit ambiguous. If you want to post an excerpt from what we write here, comment on it, disagree with it, cheer us on, tell us we’re full of shit, no problem. That’s obviously covered under fair use. But you cannot just copy every single post in its entirety on your own website without breaking the law and, quite frankly, pissing me off. And this response on his blog makes me even more so:
It was never my intention to upset anyone. I am only trying to promote atheism, skepticism, freethought etc. I might have considered truncating the feeds from my side if I had been approached in a more respectful manner, but now, after receiving threats, I feel less inclined to.
Oh yes, if we were only more respectful of his violating the law and stealing our content. If only we would show more appreciation of him for doing it. What an asshole. I have already talked to my lawyer about this and he is ready to take action if Grant does not back down and remove the content.
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Pierce R. Butler
January 21, 2012 at 3:46 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Obviously, this goes to show how atheists are immoral and steal things – but also how atheists are mean and censor things.
/sophisticated theology
chriswalker
January 21, 2012 at 3:46 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
And this, ladies and gentlemen, is the mindset that makes companies think idiocy like SOPA is necessary.
gregtitus
January 21, 2012 at 3:47 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Please crush this moron.
Aratina Cage
January 21, 2012 at 4:05 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I asked on Twitter, but since there is a post devoted to it, I had a question about another FTB feed tweeter. I wondered if this Twitter account:
https://twitter.com/#!/freethoughtfeed
is being run by Freethought Blogs or if it is another of Grant’s doodads. This tweet in particular (which spells “Freethought” as “FREEthought”) made me think it might be one of Grant’s also.
Zeno
January 21, 2012 at 4:06 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Atheists can be jerks, too, as Peter Grant amply proves. But jerkiness and atheism are entirely independent. Peter Grant is a jerk because of his behavior, not because of his (ostensible) non-belief. Lots of people can’t tell the difference.
Shut the bastard down.
kerfluffle
January 21, 2012 at 4:20 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
He has appropriate from nearly every atheist blog, not just FTB. Perhaps an email to warn the others?
Glenn E Ross AKA HeartlessB
January 21, 2012 at 4:21 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I’m sorry but this statement removes any claim to rationality that this joker might have held. A rational person does not alter their decisions based on whether someone hurt their feelings. Just because one calls oneself an atheist, or is an atheist, it doesn’t make one rational. It is a good step, but it ain’t the whole shebang.
kerfluffle
January 21, 2012 at 4:27 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Also instead of sending a lawyer after the twerp perhaps you could just send the obvious proof to the site’s host, twitter, Facebook, et al.
damien
January 21, 2012 at 4:31 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
@2 – I’ve been wondering this about SOPA and PIPA for a while, and maybe someone here can clear it up for me: it seems like the main problems that people have with the legislation is the lack of a safe harbor clause and an inappropriately extralegal DNS removal mechanism, a mechanism which would admittedly work less well than a supranational removal via Verisign designation.
So would you be supportive of something akin to SOPA if it provided for a mechanism in which there would be necessary proof of intent before the site could be taken down? Would you support it if it had exactly that mechanism, but the proprietors of those sites were fined for each violation or some other punitive measure?
Because it seems like a lot of this complaining also stems from the notion that all information on the internet should just be free, i.e. exactly what Peter Grant here is arguing. As a worker in a creative field that is suffering greatly thanks to piracy, I applaud the idea behind SOPA if I must simultaneously reject its implementation.
danielrudolph
January 21, 2012 at 4:33 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
@9. It’s not just that. It’s the lack of due process and the fact the US government doesn’t have the authority to take sites down. The Internet is international and the US shouldn’t pretend to own it. Here’s alternative legislation which has been proposed. I see no obvious problems.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_Protection_and_Enforcement_of_Digital_Trade_Act
mal099
January 21, 2012 at 4:37 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
As wrong as he, of course, is to steal your content, I’m not sure if you should really get this upset over it. He does at least link back to the original website, thus at least kind of promoting FTB, perhaps even increasing your traffic (slightly?). Most people who actually use his website (and I don’t think it’ll be too many) will probably actually click the links as, let’s be honest, his site is seriously ugly.
Perhaps you could propose a compromise, where he only posts the beginning words of each post while still linking back? Then he’d still have his feed for all atheist blogs, and you could be sure that everyone would have to come to FTB to read your material. If he doesn’t take the compromise, you can still sue him, of course.
That whole copyright stuff on the internet just always seemed petty to me, is all, but then again, I’ve never created any creative content online, much less made any money with it. So I’m really speaking from a privileged position of someone who never had to care about these issues.
Ed Brayton
January 21, 2012 at 4:44 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
malo99 wrote:
Why would they do that? The whole article is there. And the link doesn’t even say where it’s from, it’s a generic redirect link from dlvr.it.
That would be covered under fair use, as I’ve already told him. Stealing the entire post is not.
Ed Brayton
January 21, 2012 at 4:45 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
His behavior is actually hurting the argument against SOPA. One of the arguments made by those who opposed SOPA, like me, is that it is unnecessary. We have tools at our disposal to dispute copyright violations without going to the draconian lengths that SOPA allows. By refusing to end his own copyright violations, he’s actually making the argument for pro-SOPA folks, no matter how much he thinks otherwise.
F
January 21, 2012 at 4:47 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
All you really need to do is put the information out there, like you have just done, and then let the court of public opinion have its day. It really works rather well.
Pedantry alert:
StealingInfringing.Ed Brayton
January 21, 2012 at 4:48 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Someone sent me a link to this site as perhaps an example of the same thing, but it’s not. The Atheism News Gazette does it the right way, with a short excerpt from the post and a link to the rest of it, all with attribution. That’s perfectly fine. If Grant did that, I’d have no problem with it at all.
damien
January 21, 2012 at 4:55 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
@10 – That’s why I asked if there was a due process mechanism to the site removal system would the opposition remain?
Further, based on an admittedly brief overview of OPEN, I must object to the notion of handing enforcement to the ITC. Copyright infringement is a felony, and thus should be handled and punished like a felony. I personally advocate house arrest and a lifetime internet ban for those people found to be purposely engaged in high-level piracy (not the end users, I advocate making them pay the equivalent cost of the DVD/MP3 for each theft).
OPEN seems again focused on keeping the flow of information free, which is a noble goal, but unrealistic when the information being flown freely is someone else’s property.
Perhaps I feel particularly strongly about this having had piracy affect me personally.
damien
January 21, 2012 at 5:02 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
As an addendum to my previous comment:
Technically the Internet is controlled by the US. We have the main switches where all of the world’s traffic passes through, and we also control the registry and DNS, which is why we could hypothetically force the removal of the domain registry. Unless things have changed in the last 2 years.
There should be much more brutal punishment of those who engage in piracy is the gist of what I’m saying.
However, the larger point here is that I think we should all appreciate the open, Wild West Internet while it’s here, because SOPA and PIPA are the opening shots in what will be the end of all that.
meeotch
January 21, 2012 at 5:04 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Other than the fact that OPEDTA doesn’t roll off the tongue nearly as well as SOPA or PIPA do, or, god forbid, Ed’s Law.
Azkyroth
January 21, 2012 at 5:05 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Yes, actually: the 1% think like Peter Grant and assume everyone else does too.
Daniel Fincke
January 21, 2012 at 5:05 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
The other thing that irritates me about the claim that he is on the side of “free information” is that we already offer our writings to you to read for free. Most of our readers don’t pay us a dime. Is it so much to ask you to be inconvenienced by unobtrusive sidebar ads so that if you choose to inquire about businesses that interest you we can actually get paid for all our hard work on those occasions? Is it so much to ask that when you read us in a feed you don’t strip out those ads through which we make a pittance for our many hours of labor?
Michael Heath
January 21, 2012 at 5:27 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
One of my pet peeves is encountering a person who is so clearly wrong and doesn’t have the character to fess-up. Peter Grant is a piece of work.
When I saw the name my first reaction was whether this was the Peter Grant who was an iconic manager of rock groups, especially Led Zeppelin. That Mr. Grant was far more interesting than this schmuck.
kerfluffle
January 21, 2012 at 5:28 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Amusingly, this blog-post has not been added to atheist feed. So even though there isn’t any input from his side, being called out by name has magically made the post disappear.
Dan Palka
January 21, 2012 at 5:31 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Just curious… if I like a particular post on FTP, I’ll often say “look what’s going on over at FTP” and post a snippet and a link to my blog. Is that okay?
Pteryxx
January 21, 2012 at 5:31 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Did you consider why copyright infringement is listed as a felony in the first place, and whether it’s appropriate that it should be?
matty1
January 21, 2012 at 5:33 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Now I feel bad for using adblocker(don’t even know how to set up a feed), does it help that I probably wouldn’t have clicked any ads anyway?
Pteryxx
January 21, 2012 at 5:40 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
For what it’s worth, if you have scriptblocking and popup blocking enabled, then you can disable adblocking and only see the least intrusive, less risky ads (mostly images). In Firefox, this is running Noscript and Firefox’s own popup control while setting AdblockPlus to permit ads on FTB.
Dan Palka
January 21, 2012 at 5:41 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Speaking of ads, I don’t use adblocker and am perfectly fine with viewing banner ads, but I really hate those popups/popunders for MacKeeper that I always get when I come here.
MacKeeper is notoriously shady software, distributed through some kind of weird multi-level-marketing type scheme, and is considered by most people in the Macintosh community to be a form of malware. All it does is slow down a user’s Mac and install a bunch of extra hidden applications and make popups come out of nowhere, and performs tasks that are either unnecessary or are performed regularly by Mac OS X itself.
I understand we all need to make money, but I’ve blocked those and other sorts of shady ads I don’t approve of my own Mac-centric website and I wish FTP would do the same.
danielrudolph
January 21, 2012 at 5:41 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
@16. I really think the criminal penalties are out of hand already. Downloading a movie on Torrent is worse than punching a federal judge. Besides, we need to distinguish between enforcement against persons and enforcements against websites, especially when the person in question likely doesn’t even own the website. Just because we need to enforce criminal penalties against people (which we already do) doesn’t mean any takedowns of websites need to fall under criminal justice.
Sadie Morrison
January 21, 2012 at 5:42 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Was there ever any doubt of this? In particular I’ve seen extraordinary arrogance from the so-called “New/Gnu Atheists.”
ambulocetacean
January 21, 2012 at 5:52 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Yeesh, what an asshole this guy Grant is. I hate intellectual property thieves. Smack him down!
matty1
January 21, 2012 at 5:53 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
@17
Why is this? Maybe there’s some technical reason I’m unaware of but wouldn’t say China want control of its own version of those things?
Ed Brayton
January 21, 2012 at 5:56 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Dan Palka wrote:
Of course it is. We all do that here every day. I’m happy to have people link to what we write to praise it, criticize it, call us assholes, whatever, as long as they link to it. That is all covered under the fair use doctrine. But that isn’t what this guy is doing.
Brownian
January 21, 2012 at 5:57 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Phew. Good thing someone left an opening for you to shoehorn that one in.
slc1
January 21, 2012 at 6:04 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Re Ed Brayton @ #13
I don’t see the need for any further legislation at all. Under the current statutes, the Justice Department didn’t seem to have any trouble in shutting down Megaupload and having its top executives arrested and incarcerated.
eleusis
January 21, 2012 at 6:15 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
@22 kerfuffle
Check again, even this post is (rather amusingly) now on the site.
Ed Brayton
January 21, 2012 at 6:16 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I’m pretty sure I said that there was no need for more legislation. In fact, I’m sure I did.
Michael Heath has it right. Grant is clearly in the wrong. This isn’t remotely ambiguous. But his ego won’t let him admit that. He wants me to hold his hand, pat him on the head and tell him how much I “respect” his generosity. Not gonna happen. He’s gotten exactly the respect he deserves, which is none.
lwpetersen
January 21, 2012 at 6:34 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Just contact tumblr and google’s blogspot (for tumblr: [email protected] attn. copyright in the subject). I had to deal with a tumblr user who stole a copyrighted photograph of mine. After a couple of e-mails tumblr removed the content from the infringing site immediately all within an hour of me finding out the photograph was taken. They will most likely remove the account if it’s all freethoughtblog’s material.
Compuholic
January 21, 2012 at 6:40 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
You are totally right in your demands.
I usually dislike it when people immediately threaten legal action. Most of the time a friendly (or at least neutral) reminder should be sufficient. If the person wants to get cocky, one can still threaten to use the heavy artillery.
Although I have to admit: Copying the entire content of a website to publish it on your own is pretty impertinent.
nigelTheBold, Abbot of the Hoppist Monks
January 21, 2012 at 6:52 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
damien:
It’s not just the due process mechanism that’s problematic. There’s also the shifting of responsibility to service providers. As it is, it is up to the copyright holder to remain vigilant against infringement; and, the culpability rests strictly with the entity performing the infringing action. Both SOPA and PIPA extend culpability to the service provider, and so forces the service provider to actively protect the individual interests of copyright holders.
This is impossible, of course. The service provider would necessarily assume everything infringes someone’s copyright. They’re in a no-win situation.
There’s far more to SOPA/PIPA, but combine that with the fact that the entire thing sidesteps legal arbitration, and it’s clear it’s designed to basically hand the various *AA groups the entire internet. Anything that looks like competition, they’ll smack down.
That’s all we need. An internet that looks just like a typical Hollywood movie, and sounds just like every manufactured superstar.
damien
January 21, 2012 at 7:00 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
@31 – It’s for a technical reason that I can’t really explain very well, but there is a reason for it.
@28 – I agree that the end users are punished unequally. I say that they should be fined $25 for each movie, $7 for each TV show and $2 for each song, plus a share of the costs of investigating them. The end users shouldn’t face jail time.
Those who facilitate piracy ought to be under house arrest and be banned from internet usage, even on their phones, for a set amount of time. Additionally, I personally think they should be fined the same amounts, but based on how many downloads they facilitated. Would it suck to host a website where a million people illegally downloaded a movie? Yes, yes it would if it meant you were going to owe $25 million.
The point, however, is that I agree the users ought not to be punished as severely as facilitators, but there must be punishment all the same.
slc1
January 21, 2012 at 7:10 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Re Ed Brayton @ #36
My mistake, my comment @ #34 should have cited danielrudolph’s comment @ #10.
feralboy12
January 21, 2012 at 7:11 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
That Peter Grant was notoriously protective of his band’s copyrights, to the point of checking record stores and removing any bootlegged albums. He died in 1995; maybe it’s for the best that he didn’t live to see the full growth of the internet and online piracy.
And I’ve seen tons of religious people who think saying “I’m an atheist” is extraordinarily arrogant. So I’ll just file your statement in the appropriate receptacle.
(flush)
pelamun
January 21, 2012 at 7:30 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I’d also like to know more details about 31.
It’s true the internet started in the United States, but I thought there have been gradual steps towards internationalisation like in ICANN etc.
I read a report somewhere that most of the internet traffic in China is on Chinese sites anyways.
Regarding DSN: what about the other TLD, especially those from EU countries? If the EU doesn’t already have rules in place, I’m sure they quickly would enact EU-wide regulations to anticipate the influx of internet companies from the US if a bill like SOPA should be passed. (Of course the EU has its own problems, like ACTA, but this is nowhere as extreme as SOPA)
Tsu Dho Nimh
January 21, 2012 at 7:35 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
@23 – A snippet and a link if definitely OK.
A snippet, a comment about why you think it’s interesting and a link is even better.
slc1
January 21, 2012 at 7:44 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Folks, let’s get real here. It is totally impossible for the file sharing services like Rapidshare, Fileserve, Filesonic, Wupload, Hotfile, etc. to police their servers for copyrighted material. As a for instance, Rapidshare stores in excess of 100 million files on their servers.
The reason why the feds went after Megaupload was because that outfit is accused of soliciting copyrighted material, encouraging their members to upload copyrighted material and, when a complaint is filed by the owner of the material, stalling about deleting it. None of this is true of the other services. In particular, I know for a fact that Rapidshare will delete files in response to a complaint immediately without an investigation as to whether the complaint is legitimate.
The moguls in Tinseltown and the music recording industry want the file sharing services to do their detective work for free. It seems to me that it is up to them to search out and cause such material to be deleted. They have access to the same search engines that everybody else has (e.g. Google, Yahoo, Bing, Filestube, Filecrop, etc.). IMHO, SOPA and PIPA were nothing more then an attempt by said moguls to put the file sharing services out of business, just like they attempted to put the manufacturers of video tape cassettes and recorders out of business in the 1980s without having to go through due process. Former Senator Chris Dodd should be ashamed of himself for shilling for these assholes.
Ichthyic
January 21, 2012 at 8:00 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
In particular, I know for a fact that Rapidshare will delete files in response to a complaint immediately without an investigation as to whether the complaint is legitimate.
which in an of itself is nightmarishly bad from a rights standpoint.
what on EARTH do people think would happen if something like SOPA was passed??
is everyone so happy to piss all their hard fought for rights away?
when did the burden of proof end up being back with the accused instead of the accuser?
it’s fucking beyond tragic.
Ichthyic
January 21, 2012 at 8:03 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
It seems to me that it is up to them to search out and cause such material to be deleted.
exactly.
if they have enough money to lobby both houses of congress, and fund a 20-nation major bust on an entire file-networking system, they most certainly have enough money to pursue their rights, themselves.
still, they’d be far better off spending that money GIVING PEOPLE WHAT THEY WANT, at a reasonable price, instead of trying to destroy rights and the internet in a mistaken attempt to preserve the profits from already established distribution networks.
I fucking hate what the publishing industry has become.
Azkyroth
January 21, 2012 at 8:03 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Yes, because we’re not going to get any better at dealing with actual copyright infringement than we already are without burning the internet to the ground. This extra shit is basically a different form of rent-seeking being used as a trojan horse.
erk12
January 21, 2012 at 8:09 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
#20
For some reason it’s not obvious to some people that “available for free” is not the same as “public domain”, I don’t know why. I once saw a situation where a Jackass copycat group found an artists skull picture on Google and then used it as their logo, and had shirts printed up with it. The artist informed them and they immediately agreed to stop, but they truly thought they weren’t doing anything wrong. It was a shock to them.
There must be something that goes on in some (most?) people’s heads where they think that if they didn’t pay money for content, they can do whatever they want with it, and it’s OK.
Azkyroth
January 21, 2012 at 8:16 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Why?
Filesharing is different in a number of ways from what’s being done with FTB here. In particular, there are good reasons to expect that filesharing will improve profits – people who download content and decide they like it may decide to buy it, creating a net increase in income for the copyright holder; people who download it, don’t buy, and weren’t going to anyway cause a net decrease in income to the copyright holder equal to the $0 they spent not buying it in the first place. The only people who cost money under this scheme are those who would have bought the content in question, but now won’t because they can download it, and filesharing overall only costs the copyright holder income if the last group outnumbers the first – and unless you’re a Complete Monster like the puppetmasters behind the MAFIAA seem to be and can’t imagine that anyone with any principles or sense of fairness or responsibility exists, there’s no particular reason to assume that’s the case. In fact, what I remember reading repeatedly was that when Napster was originally introduced, record sales increased until the industry bent over backwards to present themselves as an entity to which no reasonable person would want to give money if it could be helped.
(On the other hand, unauthorized sale of copyrighted material is considerably more pernicious – people who have downloaded and liked a few songs are decently likely to buy the album they come on, if they can afford to, but people who have already bought a CD are much less likely to buy it again simply because it wasn’t from the “right” party. Peter Grant’s violations work on a similar principle.)
I think the motivation for the industry’s freakouts over it has far more to do with a sense of “MY TOY! YOU CAN’T PLAY!” and a desire to remain in control than any kind of rational response to a revenue problem.
slc1
January 21, 2012 at 8:17 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Re Ichthyic @ #46
The file sharing services really have no alternative other then to delete files upon a complaint. They don’t have the resources to investigate each and every complaint and get into a back and forth with the complainants over whether or not it is legitimate.
johnfromberkeley
January 21, 2012 at 8:25 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Unbelievable. Ignorance abounds.
slc1
January 21, 2012 at 8:28 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Re Azkyroth @ #50
Relative to videos, particularly with HD or Blu-Ray movies, the files stored on, say Rapidshare, are ripped from the source using freely available software and are stored there invariably as mkv files. The mkv files, although of high quality, are of lower quality then the actual Blu-Ray files stored on Blu-Ray disks as they are usually much smaller (typically 8-12 Gigs for a 1080p movie, as opposed to 25 Gigs or more for the actual movies that can be rented or purchased.
tacitus
January 21, 2012 at 8:51 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Rapidshare is a special case, since they have already changed their practices in response to past suits and criticisms, but one glance at the comments coming out of the “scene community” in the last couple of days — those who upload the copyrighted material those other cyberlockers you list — shows just how much more dedicated and efficient they have become, all of a sudden, in tracking down copyrighted material and repeat offenders. There have been mass file deletions, and several rewards programs have been summarily closed down.
Regarding the Megaupload case, here’s a very interesting analysis of the evidence the DoJ claims they have against the MU team and it’s potential ramifications:
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120120/00373617487/megaupload-details-raise-significant-concerns-about-what-doj-considers-evidence-criminal-behavior.shtml
ambulocetacean
January 21, 2012 at 9:00 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Damien #40,
Of course they should. Theft is theft. Receiving stolen goods is receiving stolen goods.
If you can go to jail for stealing CDs and DVDs out of shops you should go to jail for stealing them off the net. It’s exactly the same thing.
speedweasel
January 21, 2012 at 9:00 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
“But honestly Monica”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooks_Source_infringement_controversy
carlie
January 21, 2012 at 9:06 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Nothing he is saying even makes sense. If he wants an RSS feed, those things already exist in a way that does not violate copyright.
nigelTheBold, Abbot of the Hoppist Monks
January 21, 2012 at 9:12 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
ambulocetacean:
Copyright infringement is not the same as theft. They are two totally different crimes. Theft is the unlawful taking of physical property. Copyright infringement is use of duplicable works in an unauthorized manner. They are two totally different crimes and should not be confused, misinformation campaigns by certain copyright-holding corporations notwithstanding.
Ichthyic
January 21, 2012 at 9:21 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
If you can go to jail for stealing CDs and DVDs out of shops you should go to jail for stealing them off the net. It’s exactly the same thing.
Imagine, if you will, a place where the only way to buy a CD is if you are a resident. outsiders are not even allowed into the store.
Think that might generate some interest in piracy?
Now, what do you think the best way to deal with that piracy would be:
-Arrest the whole world that wants your products, but you won’t sell them to them, not even at a reasonable price.
-Open your stores to outsiders, and sell your products at a reasonable price.
yes, it sounds stupid, but in fact, THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT CONTENT DISTRIBUTORS HAVE DONE; they have blocked online access to even purchase access to things like TV episodes, entire music catalogues, etc etc.
and instead of simply growing the fuck up, and actually providing a useable service that most online users would flock to, instead they try to penalize the whole fucking world for their own intractibility. Got a better idea on how to distribute that content? Too bad, they own all the distribution rights, and will KICK YOUR ASS for even trying to distribute the material in a sane and profitable manner, illegal not even being the issue!
so, no, it is NOT as simple as it is being made out to be.
again, I have to say that a nice simple essay that summarizes the position well was done by this guy:
“The Content Industry Should Focus on Innovation Instead.”
Ichthyic
January 21, 2012 at 9:26 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
. They don’t have the resources to investigate each and every complaint and get into a back and forth with the complainants over whether or not it is legitimate.
you’re missing my point; my point is, it should never have been the responsibility of the Internet providers to investigate the complaints to begin with.
the onus should always be on the accuser to do their own research.
this is the way it works with EVERY OTHER CRIME.
but somehow, we have given up our rights in favor of expedience… for lazy bastards that don’t want to pay for their own investigations, but force the accused to do it for them.
sorry, but that would be exactly like me accusing you of stealing my car, and then forcing YOU to prove you didn’t.
ambulocetacean
January 21, 2012 at 9:29 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Nigel the Bold,
Both are offences of dishonesty that cause financial loss to the people who produce and/or (legitimately) distribute the works.
You can draw a legal distinction but not a moral distinction, and you can’t say that one hurts people while the other doesn’t.
Intellectual and artistic labour is labour, and people who produce intellectual and artistic works have as much right to be paid for their labour as anyone else.
Ichthyic
January 21, 2012 at 9:33 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
To compare:
Ed actually had all the evidence needed to accuse Grant of plagiarizing the site; he gathered it himself, and even wrote letters for clarification.
He didn’t accuse Grant of plagiarism, shut his site down, and then tell grant he had to prove he didn’t plagiarize the site in order to restore it.
this is exactly the way the MPAA want things to work: the onus would all be on the defendant to prove their innocence, AFTER they’ve already been charged and tossed in jail!
sorry, that’s just wrong.
ambulocetacean
January 21, 2012 at 9:39 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Ichthyic,
Are you saying that just because companies are greedy and/or not making shit available when and how you want it that it’s OK to steal it?
thomasfoss
January 21, 2012 at 9:45 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
This is what gets me:
Ur doin it wrong. Like, there’s a service for precisely what he’s describing: feed readers. I use Google Reader to read a whole bunch of different blogs, including many of the FtB crew, but it doesn’t repost them publicly. If Pete wanted a convenient way to read all his favoritest blogs, there are oodles of places he could go without violating any kind of fair use policies. That he’s decided to do something else smacks of either gross ignorance or entitled assholism, and I’m inclined to think the second.
There’s an easy link to Blogger’s “report a violation” page from his blog, but I’m not sure if that’ll help with the feed on Tumblr.
Markita Lynda----Happy New Year, everyone!
January 21, 2012 at 9:51 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I’d better step over there and see if he’s stealing from my site, too.
nigelTheBold, Abbot of the Hoppist Monks
January 21, 2012 at 9:54 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
ambulocetacean:
Oh, most definitely. I have published works both fiction and non-fiction. I’m certainly glad I’ve been able to profit off my ability to write, and I understand the possibility of loss of income due to copyright infringement.
I disagree. The legal distinction points to a moral distinction as well.
Take this case, for instance. Peter Grant is not profiting from this in any way, that I can see. This makes this case notably different from actual theft, in that the person breaking the law isn’t directly profiting. Then, as speedweasel points out in #56, there are cases that are exactly the opposite: the infringing person profits, but does not take money away from the author. That is still infringement.
Duplicable works are substantially different from material goods. By their very nature, the crimes concerning them are both legally and morally distinct. That does not make them any less of a crime. Don’t get me wrong: I’m not apologizing in any way for Peter Grant’s behavior. It is still both morally and legally wrong. I’m just against the casual conflation of the two. The distinction may be no more than that between manslaughter and murder, but the distinction is real nonetheless.
Ichthyic
January 21, 2012 at 10:01 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Are you saying that just because companies are greedy and/or not making shit available when and how you want it that it’s OK to steal it?
don’t be an idiot, of course I’m not. I’m quite disappointed that you think that’s the point I was making there.
what I’m saying is that if they want to STOP PIRACY, the best way to do it is to provide an appealing alternative.
It’s obvious to me that the MPAA has never really been interested in stopping piracy.
and, in the meantime, so many people are focused on SOPA, that they can’t see that the way innocence and guilt work in the US has ALREADY been compromised, severely.
sad.
carlie
January 21, 2012 at 10:05 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I don’t either; it’s not as if there’s no precedent. I can go to the local art museum for free and look at a Jackson Pollack painting, but I can’t walk in with a camera, take a picture of the painting, and then sell prints of it. He knows darned well what he’s doing.
Markita Lynda----Happy New Year, everyone!
January 21, 2012 at 10:08 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Hmph. He has search disabled so there’s no easy way to find a particular post.
tacitus
January 21, 2012 at 10:20 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
One example from this very evening. I don’t have cable TV, but I wanted to tune into one of the news channels to see what they were saying about the South Carolina primary. Only Fox News had live streaming coverage over the Internet. I would have preferred CNN, but they would only give me access if I already had cable TV. I would have happily consumed MSNBC or CNN’s coverage, including all their ads, over Fox News, but there was no option.
Likewise, HBO and ESPN make some of their content available over the Internet, but only if you’ve invested at least $50/month in a cable TV package (more for HBO). I understand why they do this–to protect their profits from the bundled cable packages the monopolistic cable companies force upon their customers–but in an era of instant gratification (enabled, in part, by the TV industry itself) they have to be more willing to meet the public halfway, and criminalizing millions of Americans isn’t the answer.
I think in the end it will happen — it has done with music, and it’s beginning with TV and movies — because that’s the only way the TV and movie industries are going to beat back this massive tide of copyright infringement.
Pteryxx
January 21, 2012 at 10:25 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Boing Boing’s Cory Doctorow has been following this copyright industry stuff for years. Example:
http://www.boingboing.net/2011/07/20/suppressed-report-on.html
tacitus
January 21, 2012 at 10:38 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
You know, if the FBI’s figures are correct, Megaupload made $200 million on $500 million worth of copyright-infringing material.
If a cowboy outfit of dubious legal standing can earn 40 cents on the dollar from RIAA and MPAA copyrighted material, then how is it that they can’t come up with a way to do the same, if not better?
Pteryxx
January 21, 2012 at 10:39 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
@tacitus, thank you for that Techdirt link! Here’s a new follow-up which is even more interesting:
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120120/15060817494/busta-rhymes-backs-megaupload-says-record-labels-are-real-criminals.shtml
Markita Lynda----Happy New Year, everyone!
January 21, 2012 at 10:46 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Every FTB post for the next few days should be titled “Peter Grant, copy thief, is a _____” and just fill in the blank creatively and profanely.
slc1
January 21, 2012 at 11:07 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Re tacitus @ #54
1. The article doesn’t address the government’s claim that the Megaupload folks solicited copyrighted material, encouraged members to upload copyrighted material and it only peripherally addressed the claim that Megaupload was dilatory in removing files after a complaint. They also clearly went after Megaupload because they had servers in Virginia. It will be more difficult to go after other services that don’t have any servers in the US.
2. Most of the time, movie files are stored as multiple linked rar files, ofter with names that bear no relation to the name of the movie, and are, in some cases, password protected. Unless the file sharing services are going to just delete all rar-ed files wily nilly, the effort required to seek out sites where the passwords are to be found and unpack at least the first file (e.g. 1.rar), the effort to detect copyrighted material will be very considerable. This is, apparently, what Hotfile has been doing for some time as virtually all movies that Google and/or Filestube say is available on that service have been deleted.
3. I just downloadied a movie in 16 linked rar parts which is stored on multiple file sharing services and is password protected. Since it is 30 years old, I have no idea as to whether it is legal or not. The name of the file is f64ay9r, not very informative, although a Google search does turn up the movie title.
tacitus
January 21, 2012 at 11:07 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
@Pteryxx: thanks for the new link, but I’m not sure I buy the reasoning in this article. Yes, getting paid directly from people downloading your music certainly sounds like a decent business model, but at the rates MU typically paid ($35 per 1000 downloads at most, often less) that’s only about 3.5 cents per download, whether it’s a track or a whole album. I suspect an artist still gets at least that much from a $0.99 download off iTunes.
They were planning on a new service — MegaBox — which would no doubt pay better, but that was still in the beginning stages, as compared to the rest of their enterprises.
I agree that it could be a business model worth exploring, but I doubt this will help MU defend against accusations of widespread and calculated copyright infringement.
ambulocetacean
January 21, 2012 at 11:18 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
NigelTheBold,
Just to be clear, I wasn’t talking about Peter Grant or SOPA or any other individual case.
I was talking about the apparently widespread misconception (and self-serving rationalisation) that online piracy is a victimless non-crime.
But I still don’t buy the “moral distinction” thing. Intent follows the bullet, as they say in Law & Order.
You don’t have to profit from a theft to cause someone else a loss (or to prevent them from making money to which they’re entitled, if you’d rather frame things that way).
In the Peter Grant case he might not profit from what he’s doing but he could prevent Ed and the other bloggers from getting ad revenue that they otherwise might. Obviously, since that is the point of Ed’s post.
That case might not have taken money out of the author’s pocket, but by the very act of republishing her work without paying her she was denying her a payment that was due to her. The author is still ripped off.
How? A thousand times, how?
Icthyic,
Believe it or not, I try not to be.
I would have been disappointed if that was the point you were making. But the point you seemed to be making was that copyright holders are to blame for the fact that people are stealing shit.
No doubt there are many ways in which they could make stuff more accessible and increase their own revenue at the same time. I wasn’t talking about that.
I haven’t expressed an opinion on the merits of industry strategy or SOPA legislation any more than I’ve expressed an opinion on whether shoplifters should have their hands lopped off in the Riyadh town square.
Pteryxx
January 21, 2012 at 11:33 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
@tacitus:
A Major Label Artist Makes 8 Cents On a 99-Cent iTunes Download…
I can see where artists might forego iTunes in exchange for retaining full rights to their own work, not getting screwed into debt by exploitative contracts and so forth.
marklavington
January 21, 2012 at 11:43 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
The cheeky bastard is now asking people to subsidize his time in college if they like his “stuff”:
“Money for nothin’
For five years, I’ve been putting out some decent stuff — or so I think — here at The Barefoot Bum. I’ve never asked for anything before, but I have become an impoverished college student. So, if you like the content, feel free to buy me a book. Thanks!”
dingojack
January 21, 2012 at 11:58 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
marklavington – so where do you want me to post your nice shiny copy of “US Army, Technical Manual, TM 9-4110-257-14, OPERATORS, UNIT, DIRECT SUPPORT, AND GENERAL SUPPORT MAINTENAN MANUAL FOR REFRIGERATION UNIT, MECHANICAL, …” ? :D
Dingo
Infophile
January 22, 2012 at 12:53 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
@79:
That’s actually a reposted post from someone else who was (probably) creating their own content.
@77:
First of all, because of the virtually-zero cost of “manufacture” and distribution (and if you play your cards right, you can even get the consumer to help foot the bill for distribution). All of economic theory (with the exception of some very recent work) is built on the assumption of scarcity. The more there is of a product, the lower its optimal price is. However, if you can make an infinite amount of a product, the standard math doesn’t work – it would imply that the proper price is “free,” but this makes you no money. But this is really a side point, and not the concern here – it’s the concern of people who want to develop a business model to make money off of duplicable products.
Of concern here, let’s look at the moral issue. First of all, let’s look at classical stealing. If you steal a loaf of bread from a merchant, there are two harms caused by it:
1. The merchant loses one loaf of bread. If they have to pay $1.50 per loaf, they’re now out $1.50.
2. The merchant is deprived of the potential profit they could have made from selling that bread. If they sell loafs at $2.00, they’re now out a total of $2.00 (if the sale can be assured, otherwise it’s less).
Now, let’s say that it’s possible to duplicate a loaf of bread for free. If you do this, then harm 1 no longer exists, but harm 2 remains. So, in this case, the merchant is out $0.50 at most (if you otherwise would have bought the loaf).
So, first of all, if goods can be duplicated, the harm caused by theft is less. Less harm should typically lead to less punishment (though not zero punishment). One could make the argument that in this case, a fine is a more appropriate punishment than jail time. If the crime is particularly widespread, this may in fact be necessary to keep the government from running out of money by imprisoning 20% of the population.
But let’s add a couple confounding factors. What if the merchant would never sell to you in the first place? What if you’re black, and no merchant you could ever get to would sell bread to a black person. If you duplicate the loaf of bread in this case, what harm is done? You aren’t taking anything away from the merchant, nor are you depriving them of potential profit (as they wouldn’t have sold it to you anyway). Should it still be illegal in this case? This is the situation mentioned earlier in this thread, where in many places it is absolutely impossible to purchase certain goods.
kermit.
January 22, 2012 at 1:15 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
ambulocetacean: If you can go to jail for stealing CDs and DVDs out of shops you should go to jail for stealing them off the net. It’s exactly the same thing.
You think downloading a file is is the same as stealing a disk from a store? Really?
Suppose the person downloading didn’t know it wasn’t an approved outlet, or wanted to see/hear/read the file but never had any intention of buying the original? Seems a lot like reading a library book instead of buying it from the bookstore.
I see a spectrum of behavior here, only one end of which is clearly theft. I am listening to internet radio right now; I have sometimes captured an hour or so of music and listened to it in the car. How is this different from tape recording off the air, as was common twenty or forty years ago?
If I loan a book to a friend to read, is that theft? Suppose I make a copy of it and he reads that – what’s the difference? Of course it would be stealing to mass produce copies and sell them.
I also think that artists should be rewarded for their work, which is why I am not very sympathetic to the record studios (are they still called that?). I stopped buying CDs around 1995 when I realized that I could get new, legal, and good quality CDs for $5 (e.g Vox Records) while mainstream record companies were charging $16-$18. I know they weren’t paying $10 commission and more to the artists.
We have the book “Ember” on our home bookshelves. Our daughter liked it, so we’re borrowing the other two of the trilogy from the library. We have a long tradition of treating books like this, and music. But the intellectual property rights of the corporations and the lawyers have gotten to the point where our culture is held in thrall to the greedy. Lat I looked, “Steam Boat Willie” was not yet in the public domain – wouldn’t want to discourage those animators from making more like that!
Sure, many of the file sharing youngsters are just greedy little twits. But it’s not the artists who lose out with the new technology. File sharing – done properly – is their best hope for a fair shake. How much did they get as royalty from the each CD sold – perhaps a dollar? If they sold their songs online for a quarter each they’d make more money.
It’s the fat cats who control the contracts, and who used to control the sound studio (now replaced by a thousand dollars of recording gear), the manufacturing (what does it cost to duplicate a file?), the advertizing (YouTube, Facebook, etc.), and distribution (trucks and stores are replaced by a $400 server). The suits are trying to reverse this process by bribing politicians; they’ll fail of course, but can do much damage in the meanwhile.
I pay NetFlicks in order to watch the occasional movie, and I listen to free internet or broadcast radio. Fuck the record companies; they have a long tradition of treating the public and the artists like dirt.
Modusoperandi
January 22, 2012 at 1:20 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
*Pbbt!* I’ve been stealing from this site (and from scienceblogs before that) the whole time, for my site ‘icameupwiththisallbymyselfwithnohelpfromanyoneandanybodywhosaysotherwiseisadirtyliar.com’
matty1 “Now I feel bad for using adblocker(don’t even know how to set up a feed), does it help that I probably wouldn’t have clicked any ads anyway?”
I use a content blocker, so all I see is the ads.
scl1 “The name of the file is f64ay9r, not very informative, although a Google search does turn up the movie title.”
With all the great wealth of art and knowledge at your fingertips you pick an 80s slasher flick?
ambulocetacean
January 22, 2012 at 1:27 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Infophile,
The musicians don’t have to buy instruments, hire a recording studio and spend time making music that they could otherwise have spent in paid employment?
Screenwriters don’t spend time writing scripts and production companies don’t have to pay for actors, directors and equipment? Apple doesn’t have to pay to run the iTunes store, Ed & co don’t have to pay to run FTB?
The cost of manufacturing and distributing artistic and intellectual works is a long way from being next to zero.
It’s not a side point; it’s the point.
Should someone who steals a $1000 car get less punishment than someone who steals a $100,000 car? What if the $1000 car was the only asset a poor person owned and the $100,000 car belonged to a billionaire?
You haven’t proved that by a long shot.
And what if somebody — or a million people, or 10 million people — steal a movie online that they would otherwise have bought on DVD? Then they’re also ripping off the people who make the DVDs and the DVD cases and the stores that sell them, be they amazon or bricks-and-mortar stores.
What the fuck are you talking about? The fact that music/TV/film companies have different release dates in different parts of the world?
Not the same as racists refusing to sell to black people. Sophistry fail. And a pretty offensive one at that.
dingojack
January 22, 2012 at 1:40 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Infophile – point two: If one steals the loaf of bread the merchant is out by $1.50 because he is losing the money he has already paid to the baker. The sale price is the merchant recovering the losses already made and is only a potential value*. [/nitpick]
The problem with the ‘loaf of bread’ analogy is that one needs to eat to survive. Has a merchant the right to deny food (and allow starvation) for profit?
But clearly, in this case, one dosn’t need watch a movie or listen to music to survive.
Dingo
—–
* the merchant could then go to his insurance company and claim that the bread was special, magic bread that he could have sold for a gazillion dollars. The insurance company would say ‘well yes, possibly you could, but the actual value lost on your books is one loaf of bread at $1.50, here’s your payment’.
BTW: Is it possible to insure against intellectual property theft?
Paul Coddington
January 22, 2012 at 1:44 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Daniel Fincke “Is it so much to ask you to be inconvenienced by unobtrusive sidebar ads…”
As an aside on this topic, FTB has started using annoying pop-ups/unders, which is disappointing.
BTW Anyone know how to get these comment boxes to action the arrow keys? It is really hard to navigate in these things.
ambulocetacean
January 22, 2012 at 1:50 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Kermit,
Yes. Explain to me why it isn’t.
Oh puh-lease! How often do you think that happens? Anyway, if you buy stereo speakers off the back of a truck “I didn’t know they were stolen” doesn’t tend to work too well as a defence.
Writers get public lending rights payments that are based on how many copies of their books are in libraries. To make stealing shit “a lot like reading a library book” you would need to have a Public Stealing Rights scheme that paid people based on how often their shit was stolen. I would be all for this, especially if it was paid for by fines levied on the people who steal stuff.
Yeah, right on! Fuck the fat-cat record companies! I’m sure the musicians will understand that we’re really supporting them by stealing their work.
It’s the artists who lose out from piracy, aka people stealing their work.
That’s not what we’re talking about. We’re talking about people stealing their shit, so instead of making 8 cents a song they make 0 cents a song.
Energy companies are fat cats. Should we all steal electricity? Breweries are fat cats. Should we all steal beer? Oil companies are fat cats. Should we fill up at the service station and drive off without paying?
All this professed concern for the artists while ripping them off is sanctimonious, self-serving bullshit.
I understand where it comes from. “I’m a good person, so if I’m doing it it can’t be bad, so let’s see if I can think up some shit to support myself.”
But guess what? Stealing shit is wrong. People who steal shit and then try to justify it are even bigger assholes than people who just steal shit and don’t deny the fact that they’re thieves.
Trickster Goddess
January 22, 2012 at 2:11 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
@69 Markita Lynda,
You can use Google’s site search feature to limit your search to one specific website. In the search box type:
dingojack
January 22, 2012 at 2:12 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Amubocetan – “Anyway, if you buy stereo speakers off the back of a truck “I didn’t know they were stolen” doesn’t tend to work too well as a defence”.
Ummm… no. The prosecution has to prove their case, that’s their burden.
Dingo
johnfabiani
January 22, 2012 at 2:21 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
People seem quite upset. Forgive my ignorance, but what is the harm in this exactly?
dingojack
January 22, 2012 at 2:25 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
ambulocetacean – “Writers get public lending rights payments that are based on how many copies of their books are in libraries“.
Really? Including those held in libraries of deposit? So in order to get paid a author could write a hundred books (with a run of two) and the publishing company would be legally required to pay the author for every book published? Really?
“To make stealing shit “a lot like reading a library book” you would need to have a Public Stealing Rights scheme that paid people based on how often their shit was stolen.”
So every time someone reads a library book that book is stolen, really? Nobody, ever, returns a library book?
Dingo
dingojack
January 22, 2012 at 2:44 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
johnfabiani – The issue is that authors are not getting compensated for the time and effort they put into writing/composing/creating a work. Or perhaps the issue is should an author keep getting paid for a work even though they have already been compensated for their time and effort by the publisher?
Dingo
—–
BTW Ed – you’ll be recieving a bill for my time and effort for commenting (AUD20.00 per hour). :D
tacitus
January 22, 2012 at 2:57 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
It’s all very well proclaiming that illegal copying/downloading is as serious a crime as outright theft, like shoplifting, but society in general simply doesn’t see it that way, and never has.
I was a teenager when personal computers became affordable — I bought myself a BBC Micro (I’m a Brit) when I was 17 years old, and still living at home. Within a few months, I had bought two or three games for the computer, and accumulated another dozen or so pirated games. This was before the Internet, so I got them through my network of friends and acquaintances, but the principle is the same.
Thing is, I was taught by my parents that stealing was wrong, and aside from a moment of madness one day when I shoplifted a 15 cent eraser (!) on the spur of the moment (yes, and it was a huge deal for me at the time, I was a good kid) I had never stolen anything. My parents would have been mortified if I did, and I would have been severely punished for it.
Yet, they knew I hadn’t bought some of the games I was playing on my computer, and aside from some mild parental disapproval — i.e. they would rather I didn’t tell them about it — there were no consequences or punishments meted out.
The same thing occurred more recently with a relative of mine. All three of their kids (now grown) amassed collections of hundreds of music tracks through illegal downloads off the internet, and have watched all kinds of TV shows and movies for free via illicit download sites and torrents. The parents are law-abiding citizens who would have punished their children severely if they had as much as stolen one physical CD from a local music store, yet they both knew that their kids possessed hundreds, if not thousands of illegally copied music tracks. What did they do about that? Again, nothing, except express their disapproval and tell their kids that they preferred not to know. None of the material was confiscated, and no sanctions meted out.
And apart from the occasional case, like when a Texas judge beat his fifteen year old daughter up with a belt for downloading a few impossible-to-buy-any-other-way video game music tracks (remember that?), piracy of games, music, and movies, by teens is treated nowhere near as seriously by their parents as the equivalent amount of shoplifting would be — it’s not even in the same ballpark. Many of those kids will end up being legit consumers of that material once they have money of their own to spend, but their attitude that piracy isn’t anywhere near as bad as theft remains.
Maybe that’s wrong, and downloading should cause as much moral outrage as outright theft, but the reality is that it is not treated that way at all, and if you started punishing downloaders the way we do thieves, then there would be an outcry so loud that it would have to be halted immediately. It ain’t going to happen.
Debates on what to do have to begin with that reality, otherwise you will never find workable solutions to the problem of illegal downloads of copyrighted material.
Ichthyic
January 22, 2012 at 2:58 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
But the point you seemed to be making was that copyright holders are to blame for the fact that people are stealing shit.
Ok, now I’m convinced you’re deliberately TRYING to misread what people are saying to you.
try again?
how about this:
you have a car. someone steals it. I am your neighbor. You accuse me of stealing it.
with the accepted rules of guilt and innocence we have long fought for, it’s not up to me to prove I didn’t steal your car, it’s up to YOU to prove I did.
there’s this shit called evidence, remember?
The way the MPAA and corporations have changed this:
you have a car. someone steals it. I am your neighbor. You accuse me of stealing it.
You can now have the cops arrest me, throw me in jail, and then somehow ALSO expect me to prove my innocence.
If, after this, you still cannot grasp what I am saying, and what has gone so horribly, HORRIBLY wrong with how copyright issues are being pursued in the US (and it’s been happening for decades now), then I truly weep for you.
andyo
January 22, 2012 at 3:01 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
ambulocetacean, you either did not understand at all Ichthyic’s comment or you are being disingenuous. You think people who download tens or hundreds of movies would have bought all of them if they could not? Many of them? Any of them? The answer is so obvious that the onus is on you to provide evidence that most people who download copyrighted material for free would have bought it if they could not.
Do you think that someone who P2P’d a couple dozen songs should be hit with a $1.5 million fine? Not even the RIAA thinks that it’s the same as stealing the CDs, but for different reasons altogether?
tacitus
January 22, 2012 at 3:01 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
FTB makes money from the advertising displayed on this site. This Peter Grant person allows people to read the entire contents of this site elsewhere — i.e. without seeing the advertising that helps pay for this site.
Therefore there will be a measurable monetary loss suffered by the owners of FTB and their bloggers, if such behavior is allowed to continue.
andyo
January 22, 2012 at 3:02 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
on my comment #95
should have been a statement, not a question.
Ichthyic
January 22, 2012 at 3:11 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
FTB has started using annoying pop-ups/unders, which is disappointing.
it’s not a decision of FTB; it’s a decision of the major online ad pushing companies, that FTB subscribes to.
you have 3 choices:
- ignore it and get used to irritating ads and occasional lapses that allow dangerous scripted malware to run through those ads (has happened with this SAME adfeeder at least a dozen times in the last 2 years)
-Send an email to Ed to get the addy of the adfeeder company he uses, and then write an email to THEM to complain about their horrifically bad ad banner management system (and it is horrifically bad)
-Use Adblock Plus, and never, ever see another ad, ever, and protect your computer from malicious code at the same time (and make things run faster). Corollary to this, is that you should also then consider sending Ed some cash to help cover the costs of running FTB.
I go with the last choice. I refuse to patronize the particular ad service that unfortunately almost all blogs these days use, but of course this means I have to fork over a few bucks for sites I like. Seems fair, even though I’d prefer the blog owners to research their ad feeders a bit better, and work harder to find ones that:
-don’t use cookies and keyword tracking
-don’t use pop-up/under ads.
-allow the site hosts to directly choose which banners will rotate on to their sites (and that means EACH banner, not from a “group”)
-allow for immediate redress when banners are fed that contain malicious code (that’s more for the site owners than the users).
I haven’t looked in a few years, and maybe the adfeeders have all conglomerated and been eaten up and there is no more choice, but it used to be the case that there were at least a dozen or so ad feeders that could meet those easy requirements.
If it is the case that there is no more choice, then add THAT to my list of reasons why I will continue to use adblocker.
Pteryxx
January 22, 2012 at 3:22 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
*sigh* You’re both making overly broad assumptions – first off, not every free download equates to a lost sale, because some people are browsing, couldn’t afford to pay anyway, or don’t have a legal source even when they WANT to pay; and some free downloads are samples or promos. Second, some downloaders pay even when they don’t have to, as well as supporting the artists through fandom. Consumers know perfectly well that creators need and deserve money, while lawsuit-happy labels don’t so much.
For your consideration:
Pay-what-you-like offerings. BoingBoing runs them all the time; this is one famous example. (Link to source)
Also, this from Techdirt:
Author of comic book pirated on 4chan joins discussion, watches sales soar
Ichthyic
January 22, 2012 at 3:23 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Yeah, right on! Fuck the fat-cat record companies! I’m sure the musicians will understand that we’re really supporting them by stealing their work.
more misfire.
what he’s talking about is the problem with the large content distributors, not the content creators. None of us have problems with content creators getting fair pay for their work.
there is a similar problem in just about every publishing industry, even computer games.
it’s the publishers that are pulling this bullshit, not the artists, not the developers.
Pteryxx
January 22, 2012 at 3:24 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Also, re Ichthyic: I would definitely throw some bucks to FTB if there were a donate button, or a monthly/semiannual donation drive or some such. I do block MOST of the ads, and all of them when I’m using dial-up.
andyo
January 22, 2012 at 3:39 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Also, what about artists (as opposed to middlemen) getting hugely successful sales by ditching DRM and other restrictions and selling for a low price, and making it very easy to access the content? Like Radiohead, and more recently Louis CK, who made back a cool million for himself in a matter of days by selling a live special that would have cost $20 on a DRM’ed, region-limited DVD, for $5.
Also, iTunes still selling shitloads of music after also ditching DRM, and other examples like artists made famous through free distribution on youtube and other sites like that, like Justin Bieber, or Pomplamoose.
And even copyrighted content creators arguably benefit from free sharing. The Daily Show got hugely popular largely because users were sharing clips on youtube, and now you can see loads of users on their FB posts and on the site, asking to be able to view the clips in other countries. You think most of those people don’t get their Daily Show fix otherwise? And for those who do, you think they wouldn’t stop doing it if the website was more open?
andyo
January 22, 2012 at 3:40 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I guess James Cameron wouldn’t be happy with just a cool million though…
Ichthyic
January 22, 2012 at 3:58 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I would definitely throw some bucks to FTB if there were a donate button
^^ Hear that, Ed?
Azkyroth
January 22, 2012 at 3:59 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Excuse me, but when a person who wasn’t going to buy the work in question downloads it, the financial loss is the money they would otherwise have spent – $0. Explain to me your magic math by which $0 minus $0 < $0.
Meanwhile, if the people who download it go on to buy it, this results in a financial GAIN. Only in the case that people would have bought it, but don't, is a loss incurred. What reason can you give for supposing those cases predominate?
ambulocetacean
January 22, 2012 at 4:05 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Ichthyic, Jesus. How many times do I have to say it? I am not talking about whether the industry response to the problem is right or wrong.
Your first interaction with me on this thread was your comment at #59. You blockquoted me saying that illegal downloads are theft, then you went off about how publishers are doing it all wrong.
That didn’t seem to have anything to do with my point — hence my subsequent confusion and attempts to find out whether it did. It now seems pretty clear that it doesn’t.
All I am saying is that piracy is theft. I am saying NOTHING about the merits or otherwise of what industry or government is trying to do about it.
Dingo,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Lending_Right
And yes, prosecutors have to prove their case.
Andyo,
No.
No.
mmfwmc
January 22, 2012 at 4:08 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
For Pharyngula, I wouldn’t stress too much – your community is your main resource, and he can’t go stealing that. The other asset is you – you travel, we get to meet you. You speak at conferences, we come to listen. The relationship is, like cat-bread, self perpetuating.
Your main concern in this case should be for the small, newer blogs at FTB, and the best way to help them is what you’ve been doing already – pointing us there when they post something especially noteworthy and hoping we stick around.
ambulocetacean
January 22, 2012 at 4:30 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Azkyroth,
When a person who WAS going to buy the work in question downloads it, the financial loss is the money they would otherwise have spent – say $20. Explain to me your magic math by which $20 minus $20 is not a loss of $20.
What makes you think that they don’t? Is there any good research?
Regardless of the net result to the artist or the record company, it is the right of the copyright holder to determine how the work is distributed.
Everyone is free to give their work away for free. Most people don’t. It’s not up to you or me or anyone else to decide what they should do with it.
Azkyroth
January 22, 2012 at 4:33 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
This point was addressed in the very next paragraph. Are we being trolled?
Why?
Infophile
January 22, 2012 at 4:50 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I left out the word “marginal” before “cost”; my apologies. That is, the cost to make an additional item is virtually zero. Obviously, if everyone pirates and no one buys, the initial investment can never be recouped, so there’s no question that it should be considered a crime. What we’re debating here is whether it’s equal to theft of a tangible, scarce good.
The reason I say that it shouldn’t be treated as such is that it causes less harm to pirate an item than it does to steal one. To make this as clear as possible, let’s imagine a simple supply chain: A person burns their own songs onto a bunch of CDs, and tries to sell them. If you steal a CD from them, they’re out the cost of the CD, the potential to sell that particular CD for profit, and the potential to sell a CD to you for profit (both of these latter sources going to recoup investment costs). If you copy the song from someone else, the only thing the seller loses is the potential to a CD to you. The seller might also lose out on the cost to manufacture the CD if they can’t sell all they’ve made.
So, let’s say our hypothetical seller makes 10 CDs and tries to sell them all for $10 each. Let’s look at two scenarios:
1. They sell 9 CDs, and one is stolen.
2. They sell 9 CDs, but can’t find a buyer for the tenth. Someone who bought a CD uploaded the songs on it to the internet, and so now thousands of people are pirating it for free (many of whom would never have even heard of this artist if they hadn’t found the music on the internet).
In both cases, the seller makes the same amount of money. The most money they could have possibly made was $100, but they only made $90. In the first case, one person got the music without paying for it; in the second case, thousands did. In the first case, the theft of the item made it impossible to sell it. In the second, the rampant piracy of the music made it more difficult to sell it, and in this case, it happened to hurt sales.
So, the way it’s set up here, the total harm done to the artist is the same: A loss of a potential $10. In the first case, one person is responsible for this loss. In the second, thousands are. If piracy were equal to theft, then it would have to be the case that each of those thousand people were each denying the seller $10, but this obviously isn’t the case. If you distribute the cost evenly among those who downloaded the music, they all cost the seller less than a cent each. More realistically, you should put the bulk of the cost on the person who initially uploaded it, but there’s no way to crunch the numbers in this scenario that has downloading a copy of the music causing equal harm to the artist as stealing a CD.
And yes, causing less harm does tend to lead to softer punishments in any sane justice system. Murder is worse than battery, grand theft is worse than petty theft (perhaps the law should distinguish between who is being stolen from, but it doesn’t). It’s tempting to say that anything that’s wrong should get a stiff penalty to deter criminals, but overly harsh penalties for crimes can often cause more harm than they prevent (imprisonment has a tendency to turn non-violent criminals into violent criminals). And in the case of piracy, it’s simply so rampant that any imprisonment penalty for it would simply be unfeasible.
As a final point, the “won’t sell to you” situation, in the modern world, is usually due to where you live and content being region-locked and not sold in your region. There are methods to circumvent region-locking, but a lot of those are being made illegal as well.
Most countries these days don’t have problems with racial discrimination on purchases, but region-locking kind of breaks the metaphor of a loaf of bread. Racism was a needless distraction, and I apologize for it.
John Phillips, FCD
January 22, 2012 at 5:58 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
ambulocetacean, there is research out there that shows piracy actually helps sales, sorry don’t have links at the moment. Additionally, in at least two cases, the research was initiated by rights holders and when they didn’t like the results, i.e. piracy helped rather than hindering sales and the ‘biggest’ pirates tended to make the most sales as it was largely being used as a try before you buy, the rights holders prevented initial publication of the research.
Personally, piracy both helps and prevents sales for me. For example, I download a Hollywood movie and 90% or more of the time, I delete it within the first 10-20 minutes as crap. If I like it enough to watch it all the way through, I’ll usually buy a copy of my own so I can watch again. Though I will usually wait for the price to drop and I’ll usually rip it to a friendlier format for my media NAS. The same applies to music and is the practice of the majority of my friends nowadays. If we couldn’t sample before we bought through downloading, 90% of the video and music we have bought over the last 10-15 years, would have remained on the shop shelves.
Hell, only yesterday, a friend sent me a few tracks of an artist I didn’t know about that he had just downloaded. I liked them so much that I went and ordered three CDs by the artist off Amazon and I wasn’t the only one in our group to do the same. Admittedly, there will be those who will download without any intention of buying, but irrespective of the morality or legality of such actions, they are not lost sales as there never was any intent to buy.
davem
January 22, 2012 at 7:29 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
From tumblr.com Terms of Service:
So just write to tumblr, explaining the position. End of his blog. Sorted.
PS Please fix the RSS feed so that the comments on each feed actually belong to the article listed.
captainchaos
January 22, 2012 at 7:52 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
The site appears to be gone. When I follow the link from the main article I get a “Not Found” from Tumblr.
Chris from Europe
January 22, 2012 at 9:54 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I don’t like the term “intellectual property” because of the clear differences between real property and virtual “property”.
Instead of writing down my own thoughts, I will refer to Richard Stallman.
Maybe the state should think about new ways for content gratification, but it should be clear that the kind of rent-seeking by Hollywood and other content industries is unacceptable. As explained above, the damages calculated aren’t real in their entirety. The pirates would only buy a share of it and the cost of the additional copy for the company is zero.
I don’t “pirate”, except if you count YouTube videos. But I watch nearly every trash movie in the theatre, so they can’t complain. If Hollywood had to stop making movies, it would at least have the benefit of preventing another Star Trek movie by J. J. Abrams or another movie written by Roberto Orci.
If I want to see the German version of the Little Mermaid that I saw in the theatre as a child, I have to do so illegaly, because Disney replaced the translation with a new shitty one (they claim it is superior, yet they don’t give customers a choice). And I won’t buy a product that contains the new German track on it, even if the main track is English (especially at Disney prices).
On topic, I think there isn’t much to add to Ed’s post. Maybe Mr Grant was just clueless and needed to be explained the situation. Did he have his own ads on the site? That would be the best indicator about his intentions for me.
andyo
January 22, 2012 at 11:05 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
ambulocetacean,
And yet, you keep saying stuff like
That counts for one person who didn’t buy one movie. Do you know ANYONE who has only downloaded illegally only ONE movie which s/he was going to buy but didn’t? The point is that people download many (tens, hundreds or more) TV shows, movies and songs over time. They can’t possibly have bought all or even most of them if they didn’t download them.
You have to explain why you seem to think the idea that one illegal download is equivalent, morally and financially, of going into a store and swiping the CD or DVD, is right.
dingojack
January 22, 2012 at 11:20 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Can anyone tell me why I have to pay $30 for an Ella Fitzgerald CD?
Does the company have to hire her, some studio musos, a sound guy and mixing guy everytime a CD is burned?
No, some ‘trained monkey’ inserts a few cents worth of blank CD and presses a button, then cranks up the printer for the cover/liner. Total cost: $5, tops. So why $30?
Perhaps someone will say, ‘to support the artist’, didn’t they already get paid? So who does the other $25 pay now, half a century after the original performance and more than a decade after the performer’s death? You can’t take it with you.
Dingo
andyo
January 22, 2012 at 11:27 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Is the reasoning something like this?
In my case, I have gone slightly out of my way (buying imports) to “clear up” most of my music library by getting the CDs after I had the mp3s. Didn’t even do it out of guilt, none of the artists I listen to have come out strongly against piracy, and one of my top (and most prolific) ones even came out for it.
dingojack
January 22, 2012 at 11:39 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
There is an interesting class action here against the banks. The case involves certain fees charged, for dishonoured cheques for example.
The plaintiffs argue that the banks are permitted to charge reasonable fees to cover costs incurred, but these fees are neither reasonable nor are to cover the actual costs incurred; they’re simply punitive.
This is a case that many are watching closely.
Dingo
Rawnaeris
January 22, 2012 at 11:40 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Ed, the Tumblr you linked to in the OP has been taken down.
matty1
January 22, 2012 at 11:41 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I’m not entirely clear how this works but I believe any payment to an artist or author before sale is technically an advance that the distributor then reclaims through sales. The alternative would be that record company execs paid Ms Fitzgeraldd out of their own pockets with no intent of covering that expense.
Of course once the cost of the advance is covered this argument goes away and we are left with that $25* being pure profit to the artist or company.
*This maybe an overestimate of the profit since you left out things like distribution costs and the retailers overheads but I don’t think that changes any major points.
dingojack
January 22, 2012 at 11:48 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Matty – if I sold you a car for (say) $30000, could I say ‘oh but that’s just an advance, you’ve got pay me $0.01 for every mile you drive and I (or my heirs and creditors) get 0.001% of all future re-sales ’till 50 years after I’m dead’?
Is that how it works?
Dingo
Ed Brayton
January 22, 2012 at 12:03 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Good news. Tumblr immediately removed the site, which was devoted to nothing but copyright violations, not only from FTB but dozens of other secular blogs and news sites. Thanks to the person who suggested it above; I’m embarrassed to say that hadn’t even occurred to me.
Icthyic wrote:
This isn’t true, actually. It is a deliberate decision on our part. We have one company that handles all of our on-page ads and another that handles the pop-under ads. I allow it because A) it is a single pop-up that does not have any autoplay audio or video, does not redirect to another site, does not prompt you if you’re sure you want to close it, and so forth. It clicks off immediately. And each visitor only sees it once per day. And B) It pays well.
And A is as important as B. I have rejected lots of offers from ad companies to do a lot of things that are far worse, like putting links on keywords in the text of posts, having autoplaying audio and video, popups that would take up the whole screen, multiple popups, and so forth. The more annoying they are, the more they pay. But I’m not going to have any of those things at FTB. But the single, easily removed pop under is, I think, minimally annoying at most. I spent thousands of dollars to get this network off the ground and it’s going to take quite a while to recoup that money. And the bloggers here put a lot of effort into what they do and very few make anything more than pocket change from it. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to have to look at a few ads and that one pop up once a day to have free access to a mountain of great writing every day.
dingojack
January 22, 2012 at 12:07 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Ed – IT has been suggested before, but have you (FTB, that is)considered asking for pledges like PBS?
Dingo
matty1
January 22, 2012 at 12:14 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Dingojack
I don’t actually know how it works I’m winging this off half remembered bits and pieces. Still I think a better analogy would be.
I’m a car dealer you sell me a car for $3000, I sell it on for $4000. Now would you say that since you were already paid I should not be charging to cover your pay and the price should drop to the $1000 it cost to run the showroom while the car is there?
matty1
January 22, 2012 at 12:23 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
The analogy to cars doesn’t really work but its the closest I can get to my understanding of the business model.
Also trying to work this out in my head isn’t meant an endorsment of how long royalty payments keep going. I’d be happy to say they should stop after the original payment to the artist has been recouped, I just don’t see where other than sales the record are meant to get the money to pay the artist in the first place.
dingojack
January 22, 2012 at 12:39 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
If person A has an object (let’s go more abstract here), that they designed and made themselves, and they sell it to person B for a sum of money (the amount isn’t really important), and if person B subsequently on-sells it to person C (say for a profit, although that’s also not really important either), is Person B under any legal or moral obligation to give person A a share of the money? What if person C on-sells it? Or person D?
What extra has person A done to deserve extra payment?
Dingo
Amphiox
January 22, 2012 at 12:39 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
And this is not even a theoretical argument. We already have empirical evidence of how it might work in the real world. Look what happened Napster and its ilk after the I-pod and its associated support mechanisms took off.
Infophile
January 22, 2012 at 12:48 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I would argue that it would have to go on longer than that. The company takes a risk whenever it signs an artist, as there’s a chance they may never recoup their costs. If the best they can ever do is to cover their initial payment, they’ll never make any money. Perhaps there should be an upper limit to how much they can get out of sales before it all starts going to the artist, though. As more artists start to realize that there are other options out there, it’s possible that they’ll be able to collectively bargain for better contracts in the future.
Pteryxx
January 22, 2012 at 12:51 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
to Ed:
I appreciate knowing this. My reflexive hatred of all pop-up ads (because of the behaviors you just described) might be misplaced here; however I’m still not going to turn off my blockers, because FTB is just one of multiple browser tabs and I need the protection from all the OTHER awful adware out there. Personally I would much rather donate directly to FTB.
For the moment, though, I’ll consider installing a second browser instance and customizing its settings specifically for ad-enabled FTB, so I can keep the rest of my tabs under guard.
matty1
January 22, 2012 at 1:02 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Dingojack,
I see where you’re coming from now, you are talking about extra payment to person A. I was talking about how person B is entitled to cover what they already paid person A when they sell the object on and how covering this cost will make the price of the object higher than the cost of selling it is.
This doesn’t really work with objects so I’ll revert to music as an example. Person A records a song, person B pays an amount of money for the recording, person B then sells copies of the recording. Person B’s costs include the original purchase not just the cost of making copies and who sells for less than cost?
Let me repeat that once this cost is covered I do not believe further extra payment is justified.
Chris from Europe
January 22, 2012 at 1:33 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
@Pteryxx
I don’t know what kind of blockers you have installed, but mine can easily exempt FTB.
Pteryxx
January 22, 2012 at 1:38 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
@Chris (reposting my comment from Pharyngula’s TET, incidentally)
Yeah, I know I can disable Adblock for FTB (and I do) but Noscript and Firefox’s own pop-up blocker still disable almost all the ads, including the one carefully screened FTB pop-up that makes Ed so much money. I can’t disable pop-ups specifically on FTB, nor script blocking – Noscript blocks the ad server, not FTB, and does so across every tab I have open. If I enable say Google ad services in Noscript for FTB’s benefit, it’s going to attempt to load Google ad services on every single tab I have open; and when some of THOSE tabs have Adblock disabled (but are less cautious about screening their ads) I’m going to get pop-ups and random sound from those other sites.
Pteryxx
January 22, 2012 at 1:52 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Actually, it IS possible to permit pop-ups on FTB specifically – thanks to Irene Delse:
Link to comment
In my Firefox 8.0 it’s actually Tools > Options > Content > Block pop-up windows is still checked, but goto Exceptions box – entered “freethoughtblogs.com” to the whitelist. We’ll see how it goes.
Irene Delse
January 22, 2012 at 1:58 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I’ll chime in on the ads, too. Ed, I appreciate that you put thought into the matter, but as it is, they are still very intrusive. I’m not talking about the ads in the margins, but the ones that crop up between the posts on the main page, or worse, between an article and the comments on individual pages! There’s a content/ad ratio problem, here.
Another issue: large ads rich in images and/or animation are heavy and make the website slower to load. It’s a problem for people on dial-up connection or with older computers.
Now, with the most popular ad blocker, AdBlockPlus 2.0, the last version’s default settings allow “acceptable ads” (non-intrusive ones, meaning they are small and/or mostly text-based) to be seen. The rationale is to give an incentive to advertisers and websites developers to tone down the average ad:
http://adblockplus.org/en/acceptable-ads
I do hope this will take on and make the web a little bit friendlier.
Pteryxx
January 22, 2012 at 2:09 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Irene: For readers with older computers or dial-up connections (hi!) what would a good option be? All I can think of is enabling Adblocker, or having text-only advertising over all of FTB, which would really reduce the ad revenue – and most readers CAN load image-heavy ads.
Would it be possible (or worthwhile) to attach an image-light viewing option for FTB, enabled via FTB login preference perhaps? I’m also wondering if such a version would improve accessibility for text-to-speech readers, such as visually impaired people use, but I know much less about that.
(edit: Aaaand as I was composing this post, wireless went down, so I switched to dial-up on the fly – which means disabling all the script permissions I’d allowed for FTB, and disallowing all images.)
Pteryxx
January 22, 2012 at 2:37 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Also, 2010 Techdirt article on RIAA accounting:
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100712/23482610186.shtml
The exhaustive source links to that article are well worth reading, too.
Pteryxx
January 22, 2012 at 3:18 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Hey, and here’s a brand-new article dissecting piracy stats, via BoingBoing. (And now I’ll be quiet, honest.)
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2012/01/internet-regulation-and-the-economics-of-piracy.ars
Tabby Lavalamp
January 22, 2012 at 3:30 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I used to write a television related Blogspot blog and on occasion entire posts would be lifted and posted elsewhere. It didn’t cost me any money as I was doing it all for free, but that didn’t make it less frustrating to have possible traffic stolen from my blog.
But what really astounded me was the feeling of entitlement the thieves (and where there were comments, their readers) felt. Any request to quote just part of a post with a link back to my site was greeted with anger and indignation, how dare I expect recognition and blog traffic for my own work when others can benefit though the lengthy and tedious chore of copying and pasting?
matty1
January 22, 2012 at 3:43 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
@Pteryxx
I stand corrected, if they are in fact playing with the expenses in that way then the claim that higher prices support artists is simply false and I withdraw my misunderstanding.
I still think it is not unreasonable to treat payments to the artist as part of the cost of making a CD on top of the cost of manufacture but the linked article is not the way to do it.
kermit.
January 22, 2012 at 7:44 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
ME and Ambulocetacean:
‘You think downloading a file is is the same as stealing a disk from a store? Really?’
Yes. Explain to me why it isn’t.
Because an idea that can be replicated is not the same thing as a product that needs manufacturing or crafting. If I see a neighbor do something really cool in his garden, and I copy it, that is not the same thing as sneaking over in the middle of the night and stealing his shrubs. You seem to have trouble differentiating between these behaviors.
It used to be that we didn’t think of ideas as property.
‘Suppose the person downloading didn’t know it wasn’t an approved outlet?’
Oh puh-lease! How often do you think that happens? Anyway, if you buy stereo speakers off the back of a truck “I didn’t know they were stolen” doesn’t tend to work too well as a defence.
I guess you’ve ignored computers until recently, and never saw in-laws or parents install Microsoft Office on multiple computers with one license. This was further confused by some companies allowing that with their programs.
‘or wanted to see/hear/read the file but never had any intention of buying the original? Seems a lot like reading a library book’
Writers get public lending rights payments that are based on how many copies of their books are in libraries. To make stealing shit “a lot like reading a library book” you would need to have a Public Stealing Rights scheme that paid people based on how often their shit was stolen. I would be all for this, especially if it was paid for by fines levied on the people who steal stuff.
I believe there is a surcharge on CDs and other recordable media for that very reason. I wonder how much of it goes to actual artists? I don’t claim to know, but the more arcane and obtuse the money flow, the more I suspect it doesn’t go to the actual content creator, but instead the content owner.
And I despair of talking to you sensibly about this matter if you think that borrowing a book from the library is theft. I wasn’t comparing reading library books to theft; I was comparing it to file sharing.
‘I also think that artists should be rewarded for their work, which is why I am not very sympathetic to the record studios’
Yeah, right on! Fuck the fat-cat record companies! I’m sure the musicians will understand that we’re really supporting them by stealing their work.
Ask Tom Fogerty and almost any blues musician before 1980 who they think the thieves are – their fans, or the companies they signed the contracts with.
‘it’s not the artists who lose out with the new technology’
It’s the artists who lose out from piracy, aka people stealing their work.
Perhaps, although I hear of studies that indicate otherwise.
But I was talking about technology.
‘If they sold their songs online for a quarter each they’d make more money.’
That’s not what we’re talking about. We’re talking about people stealing their shit, so instead of making 8 cents a song they make 0 cents a song.
[...]
That’s why I suggest charging them a small amount for each song. But the recording industry doesn’t want that – they aren’t trying to protect the artists (or programmers, or authors); they are trying to retain control of an industry that has been made irrelevant by the technology.
‘It’s the fat cats …. ‘
Energy companies are fat cats. Should we all steal electricity? Breweries are fat cats. Should we all steal beer? Oil companies are fat cats. Should we fill up at the service station and drive off without paying?
Oil and coal companies are likely killing your grandchildren, or your cousins’ grandchildren. They are guilty of crimes against humanity that make any that came before them look like innocents.
What does that have to do with theft of their products?
You have not established that the music industry is losing money to file sharing.
You have not established that any money lost is money the actual creators would have gotten.
All this professed concern for the artists while ripping them off is sanctimonious, self-serving bullshit.
To whom are you speaking? As far as I know, I have not downloaded any illegal files.
I understand where it comes from. “I’m a good person, so if I’m doing it it can’t be bad, so let’s see if I can think up some shit to support myself.”
But guess what? Stealing shit is wrong. People who steal shit and then try to justify it are even bigger assholes than people who just steal shit and don’t deny the fact that they’re thieves.
I know – let’s just declare every idea anybody ever had to be property, and the first ones that claim it (with all proper paperwork filed and notarized) to be the owners!
Oh, wait. We’ve pretty much done that.
In the software industry, filing patents on algorithms and business plans is a shark-feeding frenzy that makes it almost impossible to produce new products with a team of lawyers and your own patents to cross-loan. Genes – ! are getting patented (sequences, alleles, and other genetic specifics). How can researchers work like this? They now need lawyers on call to work on cures for cancer.
We’re not rewarding artists for making good music; we’re rewarding the lawyers and CEOs of an intellectual property industry. By owning and controlling the past they will end up killing our future.
zmidponk
January 22, 2012 at 10:51 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
kermit #141:
Illegally downloading files is not ‘replicating ideas’. In your garden analogy, you still have to put in the effort of obtaining and planting the trees/shrubs/whatever to replicate the cool gardening idea you saw. The equivalent in this situation would be seeing a cool program online, taking a look at what it does, then putting the effort in to code, from scratch, a program that does the same or similar thing. Files and software are not simply ‘ideas’, they are the product of an idea plus the effort put in to make that idea a reality. I’m sorry, but I see very little difference between taking this product by stealing a physical copy of it from a shop and taking it by illegally downloading a copy of it.
damien
January 22, 2012 at 11:23 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I don’t know if this thread is still active, but I have to chime back in here to try to throw some actual reality.
Let’s talk specifically about videogames, since that’s an area where I myself have felt the effects of piracy. I released an iPhone game (I won’t say which for Google-related reasons), which was 90% pirated. I didn’t even make my money back, let alone enough to make another game.
Or let’s take hard numbers: Witcher 2 was bought a million times, and pirated 4.5 times that much. Say what you will about duplicable properties and content owners versus content creators, but the bottom line is that piracy is a real problem. It is driving up the cost of content for those of us who aren’t scummy enough to steal it, and therefore makes theft more appealing. It is driving the investors in new content to abandon the more risky and interesting works in favor of safe, middle-of-the-road fare for the most part. It is actually, really, a problem.
In my perfect world it would operate like this: all information would be floating freely on the internet for people to grab. However, they would have something like a digital wallet that followed them and worked no matter where they went, and which would be charged instantly when they pulled something down from the net. That would be easy, make distribution a snap, and it would prevent the issues of bankrupting creation firms.
Would that be a system that we could all be behind?
dingojack
January 22, 2012 at 11:59 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Kermit – Who do artist think the pirates are?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnkDITDZT-M
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4sVShT6nVTA
:) Dingo
Pteryxx
January 23, 2012 at 12:46 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
@matty1, you’re welcome. I’ve also got a comment #132 in moderation for too many links… it was another Techdirt article, a New Yorker citation, and this 2007 interview with Trent Reznor on his labels screwing his own fans without his knowledge: Source
@kermit:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_copying_levy#United_States
As I understand it, the blank media royalty goes to an organization founded for the purposes of royalty distribution, which is… supposedly… independent of the record labels. I’ve heard it doesn’t work out that way in practice. At any rate, because CDs are rapidly becoming obsolete, it doesn’t make much sense to attach a copying levy to the media anymore.
Travis
January 23, 2012 at 12:47 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Ugh, this kind of thing drives me nuts. I see above people have already mentioned this strange idea that everything on the internet is public domain. It boggles my mind why people think this is the case.
The anger and bizare response to your request to Peter Grant reminds me of my experiences on Fetlife, a social network I use very often. One of the groups I am a member of is dedicated to finding those that are using photographs without permission (this is against the TOS for the website but that never stops anyone) and trying to contact the copyright holders so that they know the photos are being used and can deal with it as they please. However, the reaction of many of those that are caught is amazing. Often they get angry, they will try to justify it as “fair use” or argue that because it was on the internet it is public domain. In one case I know of the copyright holder asked that a photo on a profile be taken down (rather than simply issuing a DMCA request they asked the user politely) and that person quit the photographers paid website and created a counter-group to complain about how unfair and awful it is that people want to stop others from using their photographs. In other cases, even though it runs against the TOS, users write on their profile that the photos are not theirs but they are assumed to be in the public domain (amazingly enough they often also write that no one can use anything from their profile or their own pictures can only be used with permission).
I have to admit though, in the case of a social network, my concern about copyright infringement is less about rights, though that is important, but what I consider negative effects of allowing fake profiles and people that contribute nothing but simply hoarding thousands of photos.
Anyway, I am glad the tumblr took the site down. It would be nice to see the same happen with blogspot. I have never dealt with them when it comes to a DMCA request but hopefully they will respond appropriately.
democommie
January 23, 2012 at 7:37 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I have taken thousands of photographs of musicians and others in public venues, where they have no expectation of privacy. I have never put any of those photos on the internet (that’s not to say that the musicians haven’t done so).
About 20 years ago I photographed a band and gave its leader the photographs which he then used to make a t-shirt. He did not give me credit, payment or even a free t-shirt. And then he wondered why I never photographed his band again. Entitled is as entitled does.
daniellavine
January 23, 2012 at 10:13 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
You guys should do an FTB fundraiser — not to replace the ad but to see how well you can do from direct reader support. I’d donate $5 to FTB. Hell, I’d even open a paypal account to do it.
Chris from Europe
January 23, 2012 at 10:36 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
@damien
It would violate privacy and data protection. You are dreaming of a totalitarian system. But that was clear by your earlier comments.
Chris from Europe
January 23, 2012 at 10:39 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
It has been logically demonstrated in this thread that there’s a substantial difference. And this is reflected by the behavior of the majority and still even by law.
damien
January 23, 2012 at 3:27 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
@149 – What I’m dreaming of is a world where people are conveniently charged for their accessing creative works, with punishments meted out for violations. Just like, oh I don’t know, every single other crime on the planet.
Your sanctimonious reduction of my position is aggravating to say the least. I’m trying to imagine a system whereby people like me don’t have to take second jobs at Coffee Bean because people are stealing their work; where investing in content isn’t so much of a crap shoot, and where the customer gets what they want, when they want, for money.
And BTW, if we’re going to act as smug pricks, I must applaud your use of the ad populum argument. Really makes your whole communist fantasy go down a lot easier when everybody agrees, doesn’t it?
See how annoying that is?
Pteryxx
January 23, 2012 at 4:14 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
@damien:
do you care more about charging those darned consumers, or ensuring artists get paid? Because there are other ways besides making individuals pay-to-play… we have roads, for instance, radio, and fire departments.
damien
January 23, 2012 at 5:07 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
@152 – Obviously my end goal is to get the artists and financiers of art paid. However, I disagree with your examples based on the fact that two are tax-based and the third is advertising driven for the most part (excluding XM and such). Two seem impractical given the anti-tax agenda of the government, along with the fact that even I would consider an entertainment tax to be specious.
The third example you cite, radio, already exists in some fashion on the internet: Hulu, Netflix, Xfinity, etc. However, the truth is that the torrenting of episodes saps revenue from these avenues, thus sapping revenue from companies and ultimately the artists. Therefore, the simplest way for this to operate is an unobtrusive, simple payment system.
Pteryxx
January 23, 2012 at 6:27 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
@damien: if you think internet radio as it’s currently practiced is a GOOD example of that “unobtrusive, simple payment system”, or that piracy is music’s biggest concern, you really need to look into the mainstream industry’s control of SoundExchange, how corrupt its practices are, and the history of radio royalties being levied disproportionately on (small, up-and-coming) Internet businesses while terrestrial, payola stations get exemptions.
Currently there’s already an “entertainment tax” folded into cable and satellite contracts, ISPs, and blank media, as noted above.
Pteryxx
January 23, 2012 at 6:31 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Hang on, if you’re opposed to “entertainment tax” what do you consider libraries to be? Half those books are fiction, and my library also lends DVDs and videotapes. Sheesh.
zmidponk
January 23, 2012 at 8:07 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Chris from Europe #150:
No, it hasn’t. There has been a few arguments that try to justify piracy, but it hasn’t really been shown that it’s not the same as theft – the act of taking something that does not belong to you without the permission of the person it does belong to.
So anything and everything that is detailed in a law is correct? And anything and everything that is believed or practiced by the majority is also correct? I would completely disagree with that, sorry.
damien
January 24, 2012 at 2:31 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
@pteryxx – You raise a good point regarding libraries, but I think that this goes to my main point: libraries buy the books, the DVDs, etc. SOMEONE is paying.
And I’m quite familiar with the incredibly shady business practices of the music industry. They suck, it’s true, and you’ll hear no different argument from me.
Additionally, if you actually look into it, my readings are that some countries levy the anti-piracy blank media tax, but I haven’t seen anything to demonstrate that the US is one of them. And if ISPs have actually instituted the discussed piracy fee, I haven’t heard about it.
The gist here is that people ought to be paid for their creative works, yes? And pirates don’t generally pay, right? I object to that, and to the notion that they shouldn’t be punished at all. Severe $1.5m punishment? No. But punished nonetheless.
dingojack
January 24, 2012 at 5:21 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Damien -
“The actus reus of theft is usually defined as an unauthorized taking, keeping or using of another’s property which must be accompanied by a mens rea of dishonesty and/or the intent to permanently deprive the owner or the person with rightful possession of that property or its use”. – Wikipedia.
Doesn’t really fit intellectual property very well as the owner of the property isn’t actually permanently deprived of the property or it’s use.
Also
“Articles 101 to 103 of UNCLOS
Articles 101 to 103 of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) (1982) contain a definition of piracy iure gentium. They read:
Article 101
Definition of piracy
Piracy consists of any of the following acts:
(a) any illegal acts of violence or detention, or any act of depredation, committed for private ends by the crew or the passengers of a private ship or a private aircraft, and directed—
(i) on the high seas, against another ship or aircraft, or against persons or property on board such ship or aircraft;
(ii) against a ship, aircraft, persons or property in a place outside the jurisdiction of any State;
(b) any act of voluntary participation in the operation of a ship or of an aircraft with knowledge of facts making it a pirate ship or aircraft;
(c) any act of inciting or of intentionally facilitating an act described in subparagraph (a) or (b).
Article 102
Piracy by a warship, government ship or government aircraft whose crew has mutinied
The acts of piracy, as defined in article 101, committed by a warship, government ship or government aircraft whose crew has mutinied and taken control of the ship or aircraft are assimilated to acts committed by a private ship or aircraft.
Article 103
Definition of a pirate ship or aircraft
A ship or aircraft is considered a pirate ship or aircraft if it is intended by the persons in dominant control to be used for the purpose of committing one of the acts referred to in article 101. The same applies if the ship or aircraft has been used to commit any such act, so long as it remains under the control of the persons guilty of that act”. – Wikipedia.
(see – everyone can play ‘the definition game’. It’s fun)
Dingo
Chris from Europe
January 24, 2012 at 7:32 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
That’s bullshit. There have been several arguments clearly showing that pirating is not on the same level as theft.
Yeah, it’s just that copying isn’t taking, except if one deletes all other instances available to the distributer.
And your other reaction is as dishonest. The law may not be correct in every way (I clearly don’t think so), but any sane person will see that there are clear differences between copying data without paying and taking material without paying. You may think that such actions are morally equivalent, but in respect to economical impact and possible violence they are not equivalent.
At a certain point the damage assumed is certainly only virtual, as it cannot be assumed that consumption with compensation would have reached the same level by far.
Re damien:
It’s just that your idea won’t work except you control all devices or all internet servers. I’m not sanctimonious, I’m simply thinking it through. I’m not opposed to new ideas about gratification if I think they are reasonable and workable. *hint*
You seem to assume that you would have made that money if everyone had paid. But you cannot be sure about that. If it couldn’t have consumed without paying the price, you cannot know if the pirates would have consumed it.
Friends had success with their game by making available content for people with a registered account and additional vanity items to buy. (Users easily wasted more money on that than the game.)
Make a workable proposal then that doesn’t include inspecting every computer.
zmidponk
January 24, 2012 at 5:03 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Chris from Europe #159:
What you actually mean to say there, if you’re trying to be accurate, is that there’s been several arguments that try to show that piracy is not as harmful as other forms of theft because [insert reason here]. There has not been any arguments that actually show that knowingly and wilfully committing piracy, which is obtaining items that do not belong to you without the permission of the people that they do belong to, is not theft, apart from perhaps in a purely legal sense.
Bullshit. By this argument, if I go into a shop and steal one copy of a CD, that’s not theft as long as that’s not the last copy. You are taking these files/programs, it’s just that, due to the very nature of digital goods, it’s impossible to take the last copy.
So why mention the fact the law treats them as slightly different things as if this proves your argument, when even you seem to be now saying it doesn’t?
Frankly, the only difference I see is the precise method used. In both cases, you are taking items without any kind of permission from the person or people who own those items.
Even if I accept what you’re saying here, this simply means one method of theft is arguably justifiable, and the other is not.
nickthomas
January 24, 2012 at 5:04 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
@31 / 40:
Not really true these days. “The main switches” (routers, actually) is true for traffic to, from and within the US, of course – and many routes preferentially go via the US (UK to China/Australia, for instance), but there *are* alternative routes that would function to some degree if the inter-US links went down. Obviously, traffic wholly within the EU, or Africa, or South America, or Asia, or Russia, or Canada won’t go go through the US at all. That would be ridiculously expensive and wasteful.
“The registry” is only vaguely true – .gov, .com, .net, .org, etc domains are managed by US companies (Verisign, for instance), but .eu, .uk, and many, many other examples are not. Obviously, many big websites are hosted in .com, and their servers are located in the US, but equally, many are not.
ICANN is the authority those registries look to, and this *used* to be strongly US-controlled, but a number of years ago complaints were raised about this (and people starting setting up alternative DNS systems in protest), leading to it becoming much less US-dominated. There are tens of root name servers (which tell machines where the .com, .uk, etc nameservers are), they’re all coordinated, and they’re managed, and located, in a number of countries these days.
DNS is, of course, entirely optional and quite easy to subvert and/or replace, if you decide you no longer trust your upstream’s version of it. And this has happened in the past.
tl;dr: if the US dropped off the internet, we’d definitely *notice*, but the rest of the world would keep working. If US.gov decided to start seizing arbitrary domains, many, many domains would be untouchable, and alternative systems would pop up quite quickly if it became too bad.
nickthomas
January 24, 2012 at 5:10 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Oh, and copyright infringement isn’t theft – it’s copyright infringement.
The two are trivially separable – after a theft, the erstwhile owner has one less of the thing stolen, whereas the thief has one more. Following copyright infringement, the owner remains in possession of exactly the number of things he used to have, while the infringer has one that he didn’t originally have.
The wrong done in each case is very different – in one, what is violated is possession of your property, whereas in the other, what is violated is your exclusive right to make copies of your work.
They have vaguely similar *outcomes*, in terms of deprivation of revenue, but the latter *is* less serious than the former, since it’s “merely” an opportunity cost, rather than an actual loss of something concrete.
It doesn’t mean copyright infringement isn’t *wrong*, of course – but it is important to be clear about the wrong being done.
Chris from Europe
January 24, 2012 at 6:25 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I don’t say it doesn’t. It clearly treats them differently and attempts to get courts to decide otherwise have failed. I mentioned it because having several political systems over a long period and jurisprudence disagreeing with your position is clear evidence that you are making an extraordinary claim. And I think you are pretending that not considering it equivalent is the extraordinary claim which it is not.
I reacted to your strawman that everything in law would be correct. I generally don’t think that laws are always correct and I think copyright laws are overly broad, favor publishers over authors and consumers and protect longer than necessary, even harmful in respect to the stated reasons (“To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts” as in the US Constitution).
And you don’t think that this is dishonest? In your use, item would generally be recognized as meaning a physical item, not a virtual item. Because as you wrote above in reaction to me, “due to the very nature of digital goods, it’s impossible to take the last copy”. Yet you are implying that by writing about taking items from people. They still have their items after someone copied them illegally.
@nickthomas
I intended to communicate that. You did a great job.
zmidponk
January 24, 2012 at 6:29 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
nickthomas #162:
I will assume your conflation of ‘copyright infringement’ and ‘piracy’ is entirely unintentional. Copyright infringement is an umbrella term that covers all sorts of things that are nothing to do with piracy, as well as covering piracy. For example, if someone were to make a game based on copyrighted works, even if they actually create all models, textures, etc themselves, but do not have permission to do this from the copyright holders, that is copyright infringement, but it is not piracy.
And the fact the ‘infringer’ has something he has no permission to have by the owner is what makes it theft. The fact that the nature of digital goods means that this fails to take the item away from the owner does not mean the item is not stolen. This is why someone managing to gain access to a computer or computer network and making an unauthorised copy of data stored there is known as ‘data theft’.
Chris from Europe
January 24, 2012 at 6:45 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Sloppy and colloquial language is not an argument.
zmidponk
January 24, 2012 at 6:56 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Chris from Europe:
Except you have in no way actually shown in what way my claim is incorrect, ‘extraordinary’ or not – and I have indicated in what manner they are the same. If every legal system there has ever been since the dawn of time, plus every legal system there ever will be until the end of the universe all treat piracy and other forms of theft as two slightly different things, this will still fail to prove that piracy is not theft.
So why did you mention that law treats them different as if that proves your case, then? If even you agree that laws can be incorrect, then your original point has no merit.
No, ‘item’ means ‘item’, funnily enough, not ‘physical item’ or ‘virtual item’. Maybe that’s what the problem you’re having in grasping my point is – you’re reading things that aren’t there, then responding to what you’ve read, rather than what’s there.
Erm, what? I am implying no such thing. At all. Perhaps you are inferring it, and getting confused.
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