File sharing, is it just plain piracy?

[Dave A]

I think when it comes to recording TV (and "rebroadcasting" across multiple TV sets), it's legal as long as the recording is viewed on the same property where it was recorded. Applicable in individual residential units but not applicable if the rebroadcast would form part of a commercial service.

[twinscythe12332]

If you buy a game you buy the rights for you to use it. You never own the code that's on the disk. I might be wrong but I don't think those rights are transferable to someone else. I think it's illegal for that game to by resold by you. If you buy a second hand game from a pawn shop no offence but aren't you depriving the makers of that game of income?

Edit. I just read through the post, no offence is meant to anyone. When I say 'you' please don't read it like I'm pointing a finger, I mean 'everyone' not just you.

That's a debate that has been around for ages. Reselling of games isn't illegal. If it was, places like gamestop would have been shut down and fined. Heck, if it was illegal, how could the original resellers sell the game?
In most EULA, it specifies that the game may be installed on and used on one computer at a time only. that stops the game cafe down the road from buying 1 copy and having it on 10 PCs.

[tec0]

Well in honesty if you buy anything form a pawn-shop it is not going to be profitable for the game-makers artist and so on. And PS3 games normally don’t have codes or registration problems. Also technically they are still legal.

Now the truth is the artist and other authors will always demand millions for their arrogance and think they are worthy of every singly ting and is indeed empowered by law to push the public around.

Right now I am battling it out with steam. They sold me a computer platform game but the game can’t play without heavy massif updates. My argument is “there is a big difference between registration and downloading the rest of the damn game� before it will work.

And I think this is the case and point: Pirate Games don’t need updates to work and it will play without the CD or DVD. But because I am the legal owner of the game I don’t qualify to enjoy it. No I must first register the damn thing then I need to do the massif costly updates. Then only after all that is done can I enjoy a game that is now costing me more than PS3 “new title� game.

When it comes to write protection, companies can basically to a virtual “date-rape� and according to our laws it is legal. There is no consumer law protecting us against “incomplete retail games� so there is nothing we can do about it.

So this makes for a nice case and point scenario: Legal gamers suffer more because they have to basically prove with each purchase that you didn’t steal it. But Pirate Games is just happy-sessions because they can download – play and even LAN the game without any problems.

Now as for music you can’t find in South Africa... Well the music I listen to can only be found in Scotland, Sweden and if you lucky there are online stores that will ship it to you at a cost of about R460 a CD “that is what I pay� takes about 3 months. Sometimes I can order it locally... And if you talk to importers like “want it all� they are sometimes “90% of the time� able to help so I don’t pay as much anymore.

The utter truth is I spend a lot of money to buy the legal stuff and keep my nose clean. Face it these authors and companies will happily destroy a young boy or a young girl’s life if it is to scare people into buying there crap legal.

In a way it is a war, and right now if I can’t own it I don’t want it. But make no mistake if retailed games can drop to R100 a game and music to R50 a CD and software can drop from R1200 to just R400 or even R300 Piracy will be dead in a year or two. The truth is some people use pirate stuff because the legal stuff is just too expensive and in the end it is always about the economics.

rock on

[AndyD]

When it comes to write protection, companies can basically to a virtual “date-rape� and according to our laws it is legal. There is no consumer law protecting us against “incomplete retail games� so there is nothing we can do about it.

This also gets my goat. It's perfectly legal for legal owners to make a back-up. The distributors install copy protection that stops you doing this. Then it's legislated that it's illegal to bypass the protection even if it's stopping you from exercising your legal right to make a back-up.

So this makes for a nice case and point scenario: Legal gamers suffer more because they have to basically prove with each purchase that you didn’t steal it. But Pirate Games is just happy-sessions because they can download – play and even LAN the game without any problems.

DRM only persecutes the innocent.

The utter truth is I spend a lot of money to buy the legal stuff and keep my nose clean.

So do I but I like to listen before I buy.

In a way it is a war, and right now if I can’t own it I don’t want it. But make no mistake if retailed games can drop to R100 a game and music to R50 a CD and software can drop from R1200 to just R400 or even R300 Piracy will be dead in a year or two. The truth is some people use pirate stuff because the legal stuff is just too expensive and in the end it is always about the economics.

I think piracy is so rife because the music and movie industries are so slow to adapt their business models to accommodate what the public want.

[tec0]

Well the intention is clear copy-write is here to stay and we will pay dearly for software in the coming future as the Rand keeps on losing value. It is for this reason that I switched over from PC games to PS3 games. Fact is a PS3 game will work with the provided hardware.

PC games will not work. You need to constantly upgrade your computer and a proper gaming PC will set you back round about R10000 and within only 4 months it would lose about 40% its value and by the end of the year you will have to upgrade again. It was this concept that killed the PC game in eyes.

PS3 games will work and you don’t have to do any real upgrading on it for 1 to 2 years and it will cost you R4500 “depending on the shop in question” Yes I agree that PC games are more fun because you can get trainers and proper working cheats and stuff but sadly at what cost?

Still here is the truth behind pirating. Large disrupters are looking for max profits and do not understand that more sales are actually the key to success. Pirating will stay popular because people want to watch TV shows without any interruption and more importantly they want to watch as much as possible in the little time they do have.

In South Africa, internet television is just an impossibility because:
A>> it is too expensive.
B>> Slow Service

Yes you do get alternatives and some people do use it because it is simply cheaper. So sadly you end up with shows on TV that is interrupted every 2 minutes by a million adverts and expensive DVD collections as mentioned before. But I will just wait until I can buy it on Disk and watch it on my own time in HD “if the option allows itself”

Right now Digital decoders are our only option and we cannot even enjoy new shows... Yet it gets advertised but look at the time slots? It is just stupid. Some shows is on a permanent rerun loop in South Africa there is just not anything new! Sadly you still pay a lot of good money to view old stuff.

So I dumped the decoder and my TV set. Got a nice big LCD computer monitor and DVD player with a VGA interface. It works well and I have a few bucks to spend on DVD’s every month. Some months I have to order stuff and wait a bit, but in the end I get the entertainment I want...

The internet is my news source so I am not missing out on anything anyway. As for television in South Africa, in my eyes it is dead. So DVD Players with VGA capability and PS3 systems is my new found hobby and it is less expensive than paying for a decoder filled with old shows.


rock on

[SilverNodashi]

File Sharing is not piracy! File Sharing is merely a tool, or "vehicle" to make pirating music / DVD's / software / etc easier.

By killing / stopping / banning file sharing, you're not going to treat the problem, but simply get the pirates to get other ways of doing it. Piracy has been running since the old BB's and newsgroups and they still use those tools as well.

[tec0]

The truth is “it is never the tools� but it is who uses the tools. See file sharing is as old as the first network and files can be anything. Fact is some people just want to communicate and share their findings others use it for profit and other more damaging content.

These are the facts and like it or not. I will not say P2P is a good thing because it is simply not a good system. There are too many abusers and “bad content� to call it good. The fact is P2P was designed to be anonymous and almost untraceable.

Still, P2P as a tool is not illegal... but as a tool it can be abused.

[AndyD]

The fact is P2P was designed to be anonymous and almost untraceable.

The bittorrent protocol is not anonymous. Without getting too technical, the nature of how it works means ipaddresses of peers are resolved. Even using the encryption options built into most torrent clients ipaddresses are easily harvestable by doing nothing more than taking the .torrent file and joining the swarm with a standard torrent client such as utorrent or vuse.

As far as I can see the only possible way to use torrents anonymously would be to run a VPN but it would probably be at the expense of speed. Maybe the TOR network might help but I'm not sure if they allow bittorrent protocol traffic or not.

[tec0]

Well, the fact is your ISP knows exactly what you do and when you do it. They know what you watch and what you search for. They know what webs you access and they will even call your mom if you use b**b!e.

Ok... ok... they will not call your mom when you log on to b**b!e but I imagine they will very soon. The fact is the internet is killing itself by taking away anonymity and they give stalkers a wonderful new tool to abuse...

So nothing is private anymore and we are at the mercy of supper hackers that will wipe your electronic existence from the net and make it impossible for you to live and then make a 15 minute HD video clip where you are sitting helplessly on the streets begging for money. Then they will use pigeons “that is proven to be faster than Telkom’s digital lines� to forward there Data along with their personal bragging rights.

All this while the big bad internet lawmen is tracking down and imprisoning children for downloading a new song from a P2P network. Then good old mom and dad will sit with a heavy lawyer bill and a criminal for a child.

The point I am making here is we the citizens of the internet is under a heavy attack and belief it or not we are losing it. So spend the money get the legal stuff at the shop and keep your nose clean. That is basically all we can do.

In the end of the day when enough children is in jail and enough people are so angry a massif consumer strike will hit these blood sucking companies and they will lose so much money that they will have to renegotiate.

There is always the odd chance that people might stand together and say enough is enough.

[AndyD]

You're right that ISP's know what their customers are up to but if I wanted to hide my internet activities from my ISP I could, it's just more trouble than it's worth if you aren't trying to hide anything. Even if I was doing something illegal I have a right to privacy, I would only expect my ISP to hand out any personal details or usage logs if there was a court order presented to them.

There is always the odd chance that people might stand together and say enough is enough.

Given by the massive number of normal people involved maybe file sharing is exactly that, people saying 'enough is enough'. Maybe it's protest at the inflated prices of movies, music and (some) software. Maybe it's protest at the lack of fair use tolerated by the courts when it comes to copyright cases. 'Fair use is a right granted to the public on all copyrighted work. Fair use rights take precedence over the author's interest.'