Kickass torrents defense: Torrents are not copyrighted content, US has no case.

[zenkai]

You're right, my point didn't make much sense. All I meant was, it's valuable enough for you to download and use it. If there wasn't another product out there like it, and you couldn't get it for free, odds are you would have bought it. The stance "I had no intention on buying it so the company isn't losing anything by me downloading it" is flawed by itself.

---

I 100% agree with you.

[Zoldor]

Problem is that this is akin to the "I don't sell the drugs, I just tell people where to buy them" defense. Which has failed in the past. But we'll see.

Problem with this is drugs are illegal, torrents are not. This is closer to the I sell guns, guns aren't illegal, I'm not responsible for your killings. I provide a database to search for torrents not all torrents are illegal copyright information. I'm not responsible for what torrents are downloaded I just facilitate the distribution of a legal data type. Torrents. Both are apples to oranges, but the gun dealer analogy is closer to the defense they are making.

[Independent voter]

If you make a living off of copyrighted stuff you support copyright laws. If you don't, you want free stuff.

[Vash The Stampede]

Problem is that this is akin to the "I don't sell the drugs, I just tell people where to buy them" defense. Which has failed in the past. But we'll see.

It's more akin to burning CDs/DVDs as well as memory sticks and hard drives. You don't blame the media for what illegal content it has. You don't blame the CD/DVD industry for the illegal use. Another example is using compression fittings to repair a brake line. They do sell them in auto stores for this reason, but it's illegal.

The problem with torrents is there's no centralized user to put the blame on. This is why bit torrent is widely used to pirate. The best thing you can do is blame the ones hosting the torrents, but they aren't liable either. Just like how companies think that Google is liable for search results that point to torrent web sites. Google does somewhat try to remove pirate sites from their search engine, but only to make advertisers happy. Otherwise if Google wanted pirate sites to show up, nobody could make them accountable. Like KickAss, Google isn't hosting the illegal content.

[Nefarious Tea]

I've never understood why the market just doesn't adapt to the current technology fully. I still have problems finding the shows I want to watch, if they all just consolidated everything in one service that's easily accessible for a good price then I'd be more inclined to pay for watching instead of downloading it.

As it stands they're making it close to impossible to watch some things unless you want to wait about a year before it comes to your country.

They should get with the times.

Fucking exactly. Doctor Who isn't on netflix anymore so I have to pirate it for the girlfriend and I to watch it.

It wouldn't stop piracy though, which is the point.

Ironically, piracy actually makes people more likely to buy future products from the same source. Back when Blue Plz was a thing, I'd hear a lot of sweet new metal during music breaks I'd never heard of (since it doesn't have much of a scene in North America compared to Europe), and then I'd put on my tricorner cap and pillage the album. If I liked it enough, I'd go online and buy pretty much a band's entire back discography directly from them (if possible), or generally from one of the European metal labels. Some of my favorite music I only know because way back when the earth was green I pirated an album for a song I liked and found I liked all the songs.

[Deleted]

He's got a solid argument. Giving someone information isn't a crime, how they use it might be.

By volume, the postal service is the greatest drug dealer in virtually all countries.

[Vash The Stampede]

It would reduce it significantly.

Nothing has proven to reduce piracy. In fact, anything done to prevent piracy will cause people to pirate easier. Pirates are lazy, and if you can't pirate with Torrents then someone will make a system where you can. A system more anonymous, and harder to point the blame.

A good example of this is how people pirated before torrents. It was more centralized but riddled with viruses and fakes, like Kazaa or Napster. Or how Nintendo tried to prevent piracy by using cartridges on the N64, but indirectly help push for emulators on PC. Or how the music industry tried to force users to buy albums instead of individual songs, which ended with the Mp3 which made a 150MB song into 1.5MB.

I buy games and software, because they are easily accessible and (for the most part) reasonably priced.

Like G2A!

[AeneasBK]

True, but then it's their loss. Literally.

Well in the case of the music industry they paid shills like Taylor Swift to argue their case for them. Fuck 'em.

[Lady Dragonheart]

The issue that they'll likely encounter is that not all torrents are illegal and therefore need a standard to define them by and then prove that this is the case. Grueling, but we'll see.

[Ahovv]

If I torrent things I would otherwise never buy, I don't follow the logic that I'm somehow "stealing" anything. Not only does the company still maintain their right to sell the product, but what I've viewed/played is irrelevant as I would have never bought the product under normal circumstances.

Instead, torrenting certain products has caused me to pay for them in the future, or for a future part in a series. There are a few games I've tried from torrenting first, and decided to spend the full amount later to unlock multiplayer access. I see nothing morally wrong with this.

[Vash The Stampede]

Ironically, piracy actually makes people more likely to buy future products from the same source.

There have been situations where piracy helped promote a product that otherwise wouldn't be known. Microsoft is said to owe piracy their business, as pirated copies of Windows helped them establish ecosystems. If pirating Windows wasn't possible, I can assure you that Linux would have a much larger presence. In fact Windows 10 is extremely lenient with pirated copies, unlike Windows 8 and 7. Microsoft has allowed copies to be pirated and then release an update that screwed with users and told them their copy of Windows wasn't genuine. It's not like you couldn't use your PC, but you would have a black background and be limited on what things you can do. This system didn't work as well as Microsoft had hoped, cause they offered to activate your Windows for a fee. With Windows 10 they seem to be giving it a pass, but that doesn't mean they won't flag illegal copies of Windows 10 in the future.

[callipygoustp]

Ease of access has reduced the amount that I pirate. I sub to Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Showtime and rarely run out of things I want to watch. Years ago I pirated for three reasons : limited access, having to buy old content on new formats (vhs(yeah, i'm dating myself there), dvd, blue-ray), and then cost. Access has been made easier over the years and I now store all my video and music on a server at home. The only issue that, at times, still has me pirating : cost.

I worked at Broderbund Software back during most of the 90s. We released one of the first, if not the first, game on a CD : Myst. I used to crack up reading the news from the music industry as to why the price of music CDs remained so high when I was intimately involved in the production cycle of various games released on CDs : Myst, various eLearning releases, the Carmen SanDiego series of games, Prince of Persia, and several others. The first few years of production was a bit higher than what it cost to put those same games on 3.5" or 5.25" disks. However, by the mid 90s, like 95-96, the cost to produce a title on CD (or later on DVD) was actually CHEAPER than producing the same title on floppy disks. Was that ever reflected in the cost of the game? Fuck no. In the film and music industries same situation and likewise the price has never come down for content from those providers either.

Fast forward 20 years.

I'm avid reader. I average 3-4 books a month. I am still regularly stunned that the cost of a ebook is the same, or at times, MORE than the cost of a physical book(paper back). How the fuck is that possible? The production cost of electronic media is minimal but somehow electronic media costs the same as a physical copy.

Then there is the cost of network television show episodes: $2-$3. A 10 episode season for a network television show runs ~$20-$30 while I can see vastly more content from Netflix or Amazon Prime for ~$24 a month. I've stopped pirating most network TV shows because of the volume of content available on Netflix and Amazon and I don't mind waiting for network shows to clear whatever grace period is in place before they become available to stream. The pricing still irks me.

Cost, its the only thing that still causes me to pirate something from time to time. A more reasonable, reasonable to me, pricing model would result in me pirating nothing.

I'm not saying I am right in pirating. I'm not saying pirating is okay. The above is merely my rationale for why I continue to, rarely, pirate. Thinking on it a bit it comes down to : their greed vs my greed.

[Hotmail]

Piracy brings happiness to millions of internet users around the world and doesn't cost anyone a single dime in the long run so where's the harm?

I remember being forced by my English teacher in high school to take an anti-piracy stance for a paper, and even to this day none of the arguments that I had to use seemed to hold any waters. I mean, sure, a composer for whom integrity is important might feel violated that their content is being taken without so much as a transaction taking place but let's be honest, once you are in showbiz you've already sold your soul to the devil.

At this point I'm pretty sure that we are just splitting hairs.

[Deleted]

They are entirely correct. The man broke no law.

[McFuu]

[/B]

But KAT still hosts the links to those torrents, even though the physical torrents arent on their site. So the question becomes if that's legal or not. Otherwise everyone could sue Google for copyright infringement

That's exactly what I think they are aiming for. Hoping the judge rules in favor of them because of setting a massive precedent if not.

[Ayla]

In the end, I think torrents and filesharing will prevail over all. Movies and music will be crowd funded and made accordingly.

[Deleted]

I would happily pay 30 to 40 bucks a month for a service that provides me with all video's and series i want to watch.
No such service exists though due to corporate retards.

[Canpinter]

Problem with this is drugs are illegal, torrents are not. This is closer to the I sell guns, guns aren't illegal, I'm not responsible for your killings. I provide a database to search for torrents not all torrents are illegal copyright information. I'm not responsible for what torrents are downloaded I just facilitate the distribution of a legal data type. Torrents. Both are apples to oranges, but the gun dealer analogy is closer to the defense they are making.

if you know that many of the people buying your guns are doing so for illegal activity or that some of the guns your selling may be stolen you may be held responsible.

[Vash The Stampede]

I would happily pay 30 to 40 bucks a month for a service that provides me with all video's and series i want to watch.
No such service exists though due to corporate retards.

To make it worse, region locking is another issue. Australia right now can't use Netflix due to this. Recently Netflix is proactive in blocking VPNs which was used to get around this. Australians can't even legally use US Netflix. This isn't Netflix's fault, but the media owners who don't want their content is other regions.

[Annoying]

He's got a solid argument. Giving someone information isn't a crime, how they use it might be.

Drugs were brought up as an example.

If files are drugs, what we have here is a rave.
A torrent file is a ticket to get into a rave.
All the people in the rave are the p2p users.
The person running the rave and checking tickets is a tracker.
And finally the person who's listing where all the raves are and the person giving people tickets is KAT.

A handful of those raves have no drugs in them at all (legal torrents, like Linux distros).
A whole lot of those raves have drugs, though.

Is it a crime to list all the raves, let people search through them, and then give people a ticket to get into those raves?

KAT isn't giving them drugs (not a direct DL). They aren't even running the raves (Not a tracker). So it's certainly a case of "secondary copyright liability".

Remember, KAT was just a "torrent directory" unlike TPB, which was both a directory and a tracker. KAT never had their own tracker, they used other trackers.