News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by Iv on Thursday May 23, 2019 @01:26PM (#19993819)
And I am probably going to vote pirate party this weekend at the EU election. Because the industry still hasn't acknowledged the shift in culture. Societies move so slowly...
Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by kryptokommunist on Thursday May 23, 2019 @03:04PM (#19994852)
Consider that they placed Gilles Bordelais, a man who as an EU parliament committee determined sexually harassed women in multiple cases, on their list in Germany before voting for the German pirate party:

https://www.euractiv.com/section/digital/news/german-parliam...

Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by YUMad on Thursday May 23, 2019 @04:11PM (#19995421)
Can you state openly what did he exactly do, or at least link to somewhere where its stated?

Ill bet it amounts to 'inappropriate remarks' and that not stating exactly what it is, instead using the 'sexual harassment' doublespeak is just a FUD tool to attempt to sabotage the Pirate Party.

Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by nostalgk on Thursday May 23, 2019 @04:31PM (#19995588)
https://www.patrick-breyer.de/?p=575559

Here's a link to what seems to be the party's response. From my reading, possibly tainted by translation, he agreed to step down if the European Parliament's Consultative Committee on Harassment at Work found that he had engaged in harassment, they did, and he resigned, but they were unable to remove him from the list due to regulations.

While I can't seem to find an account of what exactly transpired, it does appear that the European Parliament's Consultative Committee on Harassment at Work concluded that something did indeed transpire that falls under sexual harassment.

Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by kryptokommunist on Thursday May 23, 2019 @04:32PM (#19995607)
It’s hard to find official details (I guess they keep them private to protect the victims?) but this looks like reasonably trustworthy source: http://mab.nu/2018/11/16/a-friend-called-niles/

But even without details looking at Julia Redas track record and the fact that the German pirate party and European pirate party distanced themselves from him suggests more than a minor error in judgement. It’s unbelievable that he could successfully trick his party so he could get on the candidates list as number 2. And he will be there on election day! This is no FUD but something they have to blame on themselves.

(That blog entry is linked in this Buzzfeed article: https://www.buzzfeed.com/de/pascalemueller/europawahl-pirate... )

Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by detaro on Thursday May 23, 2019 @05:00PM (#19995894)
Who are you claiming is attempting to sabotaging the pirate party?
Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by YUMad on Thursday May 23, 2019 @06:03PM (#19996472)
I didn't claim specifically who.
Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by Iv on Thursday May 23, 2019 @10:45PM (#19998035)
I'd be voting for another party if I was voting in Germany.
Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by blattimwind on Thursday May 23, 2019 @04:52PM (#19995792)
This made the pirate party unelectable for me in this election. I haven't yet settled on a replacement, quite a large number of contenders.
Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by luckylion on Thursday May 23, 2019 @05:05PM (#19995937)
Why? That wasn't known when the voting lists were made, and when it came out, they weren't able to remove him, because lists cannot be changed once finalized. There's just nothing they can do because that's the law.

I mean, I'm certainly not going to vote for them because they are far, far away from me politically, but imho their reaction to the whole affair was correct and shouldn't be held against them.

Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by LifeLiverTransp on Thursday May 23, 2019 @04:13PM (#19995443)
To be perfectly honest- i do not look at the person any more. I only look at promises and outcomes. Power and Money corrupt absolutly, so i dont even want to waste time on the displays of those with rigid morals. They usually do not accomplish anything, cause any move could bring down the little statue of themselves they put up as example.

I rather have a rupt to the core bastard, which still prevents a catastrophic climate change, because he game of thrones whole industries.

Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by asdf21 on Thursday May 23, 2019 @04:54PM (#19995815)
Is game of throning entire industries going to replant the Rainforest in Brazil?

Cause that's the only way climate change is going to slow down..

Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by shmerl on Thursday May 23, 2019 @03:15PM (#19994982)
A pity Pirate Party never took off in US, because of the entrenched two party system.
Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by baroffoos on Thursday May 23, 2019 @11:11PM (#19998156)
The Australian system works a lot better. There are still the main 2 but there are a huge number of minor parties that actually have a meaningful impact. The minor parties are usually dedicated to single issues. The biggest minor party being The Greens who are about the environment. No one votes for a minor party because they want them to run the government but you vote for them to send a message to the major 2 about what issues you care about and then use your lower preference vote to pick the major party you like more.
Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by Bartweiss on Thursday May 23, 2019 @03:22PM (#19995049)
This is a shame, but if you're in a big coastal US city take a look for them. They're around, sometimes!

Mostly, they campaign for things like police accountability and run candidates to force focus on certain issues like surveillance and net neutrality. They don't win, in those cases, but it's a good way to keep solidly-Democratic candidates from letting the issues slide. But there are some Pirates holding offices like town council seats, which is inspiring to me.

(And on a practical level, they seem to be way better at recognizing their position and making an impact than much bigger factions like the Libertarian Party. Perhaps ironically, they've got some great organization.)

Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by cabalamat on Thursday May 23, 2019 @03:56PM (#19995329)
Maybe the Pirate Party could organise themselves around being factions in the Democratic and Republican parties, trying to ensure those parties elect Pirate-friendly candidates.

Has this been tried?

Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by superkuh on Thursday May 23, 2019 @04:46PM (#19995724)
Both parties have strong top down control over their respective primaries. Both in terms of direct influence and manipulation. For the Democrats you could observe this during Bernie's campaign for president. For republicans you could see it during Ron Paul's. Both had the majority in the primaries in terms of popular support but primary regulations were such that it didn't matter. Local and state factions were just overruled.
Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by aidenn0 on Thursday May 23, 2019 @07:12PM (#19996954)
Neither one of those candidates had anywhere near majority support. The Democratic party made some changes since 2016 to make it harder for a Bernie-like candidate to be elected, but will still allow for any candidate with a majority of primary votes to be selected over the party's direct influence.
Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by noelsusman on Thursday May 23, 2019 @07:32PM (#19997065)
Neither of those candidates had majority support, especially Ron Paul. This is delusional.
Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by njepa on Thursday May 23, 2019 @04:13PM (#19995448)
I don't think any pirate party really had the numbers to make that happen. Usually a faction represents some larger group of people. The only way I see that happening is by unionizing tech. But that would be incredibly hard exactly because it would create a political force.
Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by chimeracoder on Thursday May 23, 2019 @03:55PM (#19995315)
> This is a shame, but if you're in a big coastal US city take a look for them. They're around, sometimes!

They have effectively zero presence in New York City, Los Angeles, Houston, or Philadelphia

> But there are some Pirates holding offices like town council seats

Where? How many?

> And on a practical level, they seem to be way better at recognizing their position and making an impact than much bigger factions like the Libertarian Party.

As someone who's pretty tuned in to US politics, including local politics, I can't identify any impact that the Pirate Party has had. In fact, it's almost impossible to tell that they even exist, in 2019.

Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by shmerl on Thursday May 23, 2019 @03:31PM (#19995118)
Is there any way to change this, besides reforming the whole election system?
Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by nosuchthing on Thursday May 23, 2019 @07:17PM (#19996982)
Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by hannasanarion on Thursday May 23, 2019 @03:42PM (#19995211)
Nope! Duvergers law says that our election system will never be stable with more than two parties.
Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by shmerl on Thursday May 23, 2019 @03:51PM (#19995293)
Then it surely needs reforming. Current parties simply don't adequately represent the people.
Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by ixwt on Thursday May 23, 2019 @04:08PM (#19995406)
There are many other voting systems that are better than the current first past the post (FPTP) voting system that the US currently uses. None are perfect, but pretty much every single one is better than FPTP.

A ranked-choice voting system would encourage the existence of more parties. Even a run off voting would help with the existence of more parties, while still preserving the simplicity of FPTP (though, getting people to vote is hard enough, forcing them to go vote a second time would probably be even harder).

Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by Faark on Thursday May 23, 2019 @05:34PM (#19996231)
I agree with FPTP being bad. But keep in mind the big advantage of the system is keeping two parties close to even, leading to more frequent regime changes. This makes it harder to rig the system in your favor, thus providing long term stability. I'm not sure if term limits alone would would be good enough at that.
Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by ixwt on Thursday May 23, 2019 @05:56PM (#19996413)
I'm somewhat skeptical of the thought that FPTP makes it harder to rig the system. I'm probably a bit information diet biased here, but it seems (as an example) that Republicans have had more court rulings against them due to unfair gerrymandering of districts. It seems who holds the power gets to determine the districts, which would help preserve power. If there wasn't a two way swing, it would arguably be harder to gerrymander in one parties favor, as it _should_ be more difficult to hold 51%+ power if more than 2 parties are available.
Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by foobarian on Thursday May 23, 2019 @11:07PM (#19998138)
How cool would it be if we passed gerrymandering restrictions based on the fractal dimension of the district maps :-)
Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by sjy on Thursday May 23, 2019 @07:17PM (#19996983)
Wouldn't you expect even more frequent regime changes in a system where the vote was split between three or more parties? This is a common criticism of minority government.
Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by hannasanarion on Friday May 24, 2019 @10:25PM (#20006743)
No, only if the electoral system is winner take all. Multiparty proportional systems can be very stable,for example, Germany 2000-present
Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by Tsubasachan on Thursday May 23, 2019 @04:52PM (#19995794)
Heil Hydra Brother.
Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by la_barba on Thursday May 23, 2019 @01:42PM (#19994002)
Its the same law that protect people from others stealing GPL code. I assume you're in favor of that?
Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by cpach on Thursday May 23, 2019 @01:51PM (#19994104)
The status quo and abandoning copyright aren’t the only alternatives. It would also be possible to reform copyright. One obvious change would be to shorten the time that a work can be copyrighted.
Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by Rhinobird on Thursday May 23, 2019 @01:59PM (#19994186)
Like going back to the original 14 years?
Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by __david__ on Thursday May 23, 2019 @02:50PM (#19994689)
Anything less than the current "infinite" would be a pleasant change.
Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by chimeracoder on Thursday May 23, 2019 @03:56PM (#19995325)
> Anything less than the current "infinite" would be a pleasant change.

It's a long time, but it's not infinite. New works started entering the public domain again on January 1, 2019.

Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by ixwt on Thursday May 23, 2019 @04:10PM (#19995420)
That's yet to be determined. Disney is a big influence on the length of US copyright protections.

Let's see what happens come 2024:

> On January 1, 2024, we'll see the expiration of the copyright for Steamboat Willie—and with it Disney's claim to the film's star, Mickey Mouse.

Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by chimeracoder on Thursday May 23, 2019 @04:19PM (#19995504)
> That's yet to be determined. Disney is a big influence on the length of US copyright protections. Let's see what happens come 2024

I'm well aware of Disney's role in copyright law.

Disney's opportunity to do extend the term was before Dec. 31, 2018. That's how they extended copyright durations in the past - preventing any new works from entering the public domain at all. It's much harder for them to retroactively amend the copyright term now that some of those works have begun to enter the public domain.

Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by greycol on Thursday May 23, 2019 @05:15PM (#19996046)
For works released in someones lifetime the effective limit is effectively infinite for ~25% of people based on actuarial tables and assuming the best case of the author published it the year you were born and died that very same year. If the author died when the reader was 13 that's less than 50% who will ever live to that point.

If the author is anonymous(or work for hire) or lives for 20 years after they published the work then it is effectively infinite for ~91% of people assuming the best case.

Say what you want about the old 14+14 system but at least it would have meant that by the time you were a parent you could almost certainly share the works that were influential with you as a kid with your kids. With the current system you have to cross your fingers that it was popular enough to remain in print rather than moving to some limbo of unable to be acquired except 2nd hand or illegally.

Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by tzs on Thursday May 23, 2019 @06:07PM (#19996503)
I think that is too short for cultural reasons. I think it needs to be at least long enough that something new can come out during a person's childhood and become important to them, and still be under copyright when that person is an adult and has children of their own, so that they can introduce it to their own children. Maybe even long enough that this will work for grandchildren too.

Short terms can make that hard. For example, suppose your childhood thing was "Calvin & Hobbes". With a 14 year term that would be public domain by the time you are an adult, and I have no doubt that advertisers would have immediately conscripted Calvin to push toys and cereals ("It's even better than Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs") and such and saturated children's media with this.

So then you go to share with your kid what was your favorite comic strip when you were a kid, and they have no interest in a strip about the Kellog's and Mattel and such spokes character that they've been bombarded with already for years.

Maybe it is time to consider different terms for different copyright rights? Shorter term for the right to make and distribute literal copies, but longer terms for the right to make and distribute derivative works?

Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by _jal on Thursday May 23, 2019 @09:50PM (#19997798)
> so that they can introduce it to their own children

I must be missing something. Why is must something be under copyright in order for you to share it with your kids?

Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by tzs on Saturday May 25, 2019 @04:51PM (#20011333)
Not being under copyright doesn't stop you from sharing it with your kids. It just makes it less likely to be worth sharing it with your kids, for the reasons in the second and third paragraphs.
Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by delecti on Thursday May 23, 2019 @04:03PM (#19995372)
Wasn't it 14 with the option to renew once for an extra 14? That seems pretty reasonable to me.
Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by la_barba on Thursday May 23, 2019 @02:28PM (#19994480)
Do you think practicing civil disobedience on copyright law will lead us to fixing it? It seems like the opposition is just digging its heels even further. In addition to fighting for their right to control distribution, they're also pushing for DRM, which is making things worse..
Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by deathhand on Thursday May 23, 2019 @02:59PM (#19994805)
There will always be a crackdown. This is how entrenched power works. It happened with India and immolation and the Boston Tea party. Standing up for yourself means someone will always try to knock you down.

Ramifications of the Boston Tea Party: https://www.bostonteapartyship.com/the-aftermath

India: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_Sati_Regulation,_1829

Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by la_barba on Thursday May 23, 2019 @04:37PM (#19995645)
Err, are we on the same page here? I don't think so. Because I'm talking about copyright law. Comparing the morality of pirating a disney movie with opposing killing people is not a reasonable position. It cheapens the real struggle that people went through.
Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by sosborn on Thursday May 23, 2019 @04:00PM (#19995350)
Comparing copyright to these situations probably turns more people away from your cause than it attracts.
Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by 0xffff2 on Thursday May 23, 2019 @02:55PM (#19994748)
How do we know that they wouldn't be doing all of those things and more in the absence of pushback?
Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by la_barba on Thursday May 23, 2019 @04:34PM (#19995620)
Starting an argument with "Anything can happen" rarely gets us anywhere. We can only make do with what we know..
Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by pergadad on Thursday May 23, 2019 @02:33PM (#19994513)
A big issue of reform was the switching costs. A number of countries specifically the Nordics and France, have very elaborate and somewhat successful systems for renumeration to publishers and (theoretically) authors. For these any shift to more lax rules risks upending the system in such major ways that they are opposed to it. So any EU reform faces a really uphill struggle, as the vetos are pretty much guaranteed.
Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by dpwm on Thursday May 23, 2019 @02:55PM (#19994753)
Except that reforms that go the other way seem to be subject to majority votes in the council of ministers. [0]

[0] https://torrentfreak.com/eu-ministers-approve-copyright-dire...

Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by shados on Thursday May 23, 2019 @03:01PM (#19994816)
I'd LOVE for that to happen. Just so we can finally see if it makes even the smallest change in piracy.
Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by AnthonyMouse on Thursday May 23, 2019 @03:22PM (#19995051)
It seems almost certain that "piracy" would go down. Even if the only change was that people torrenting Firefly in 2019 would be doing so legally, that's that much less piracy.

Then you get the effect that everything from the 20th century becomes available on YouTube, which is likely to cause increased viewership of that content over newer content pirated or otherwise. Which I suspect is the main reason Hollywood is really against shorter copyright terms -- not just losing the revenue from past works but having to compete with them when they're free.

Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by Bartweiss on Thursday May 23, 2019 @03:26PM (#19995088)
I'm also curious about this. Offhand I wouldn't expect it, since even the historical 14-year window is well past where most people buy or pirate a work. Of course, that also implies the time past 14 years isn't about giving creators time to monetize so much as letting a few behemoths protect their brands.
Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by sandov on Thursday May 23, 2019 @02:47PM (#19994650)
Not OP, but I'm against all forms of intellectual "property". So yeah, I'm not against "stealing" GPL code, from a legal standpoint.

I know I'm an extremist though(statistically speaking), even in this forum.

Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by scarface74 on Thursday May 23, 2019 @04:45PM (#19995710)
How do you propose people get paid for their work?
Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by yeahitslikethat on Thursday May 23, 2019 @03:05PM (#19994862)
But you watch it. Read it. Play with it. You like doing those things? Do you pay for those things? Or download them for free?
Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by clarry on Thursday May 23, 2019 @03:26PM (#19995085)
Does it matter? Nobody loses a penny when you download it. Someone made it because they wanted to make it or got paid to make it. The rest is history.
Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by arcticfox on Thursday May 23, 2019 @03:49PM (#19995273)
> Someone made it because they wanted to make it or got paid to make it.

This is definitely not true when it comes to royalty-based models.

Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by la_barba on Thursday May 23, 2019 @04:41PM (#19995680)
So, just as an hypothetical.. If it were impossible to pirate Windows, would all of those users switch to Linux or BSD or other free OSs?

If even a single user goes out and buys a license to Windows, then there is a definite argument to be made that piracy resulted in the loss of at-least one sale.

Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by clarry on Thursday May 23, 2019 @05:19PM (#19996081)
I don't contest that changes in the environment change purchasing behavior.

However, such wishful thinking has no place in my worldview. Either a sale happened or it did not and it never was. Again, you can't lose something you never had, and calling it a loss is just wordplay. Doubly so when it's only a loss if such and such had been so and so and yada yada. It never was. If you lost something, you go find it or call your bank and have them explain how the account now has less money than yesterday.

And yes, thanks to piracy, you might make fewer sales. I don't have a problem with that. I also don't have a problem with pepsi resulting in coca cola having fewer sales.

Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by la_barba on Thursday May 23, 2019 @06:21PM (#19996611)
>Again, you can't lose something you never had, and calling it a loss is just wordplay.

Well, you can. We have entire legal systems dedicated to assessing economic harm based on similar hypothetical situations. For e.g. Loss of income due to injury.. loss of earnings due to defamation.. diminished earning capacity due to a handicap, etc, etc. You can't simply say - "it never was or you never had that money". All these things have well established economic and legal histories. I don't know if those are part of your worldview. If you wish to reject them, then be assured that you are well outside of mainstream economic and legal thought.

A loss is simply a reduction. I hope you realize that a positive claim that piracy results in zero loss of revenue, has to be substantiated. At best, you can claim "we don't know" and you might very well be right - we simply don't know exactly what would have happened. But that is not the same as saying - we know nothing. We can piece together a model based on basic economic principles of market value, supply and demand, opportunity cost, etc, etc. and come up with a reasonable analysis.

Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by yeahitslikethat on Thursday May 23, 2019 @03:27PM (#19995097)
Yeah they did. They lost ROI.
Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by baddox on Thursday May 23, 2019 @03:42PM (#19995212)
If someone pirates a movie and watches it without paying, the movie studio loses ROI only to the same extent that they lose ROI when someone doesn't pirate it and doesn't watch it. Am I stealing ROI from the Detective Pikachu movie by not going to the cinema to watch it?
Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by briandear on Thursday May 23, 2019 @04:29PM (#19995574)
But when a person has the option of watching a pirate copy vs. a paid copy, then there is a loss. To extrapolate— if everyone only used pirate copies, who would finance movie production or music production or book publishing?
Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by clarry on Thursday May 23, 2019 @05:22PM (#19996106)
> To extrapolate— if everyone only used pirate copies, who would finance movie production or music production or book publishing?

If everyone only pirated, it would mean nobody valued that stuff enough to sustain it. If people doesn't value it, let it die. Can you imagine a world where nobody values movies or music or books? I can't. And therefore I can't see them dying, no matter what. So this concern is irrelevant to me.

Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by baddox on Thursday May 23, 2019 @05:37PM (#19996259)
I'm not sure why I would need to come up with ways to finance the production of goods that people don't want to pay for. Going back to my previous example, I have no idea how the Detective Pikachu movie would get financed if everyone in the world had the same lack of interest in it as I do. But I also wouldn't be too upset if no one was interested in a Detective Pikachu movie and it never got financed and produced.
Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by clarry on Thursday May 23, 2019 @03:31PM (#19995121)
They never had it in the first place. You can't lose something you never had.
Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by RHSeeger on Thursday May 23, 2019 @03:50PM (#19995286)
At one end of the spectrum, everyone pays to see every movie they want to see. The movie makers make bank and keep making movies.

At the other end of the spectrum, everyone pirates the movies they want to see. The movie makers stop making movies because they won't make money on them.

In between the two ends is a large grey area. Pretending that it's always acceptable to pirate any movie you want to see is akin to saying that you don't want the movie studios to make movies anymore. But pretending that every movie pirated costs the studios a ROI equal to the cost of buying the movie is disingenuous, too.

Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by a1369209993 on Thursday May 23, 2019 @05:52PM (#19996381)
> The movie makers stop making movies because they won't make money on them.

Counterexample:

fanfiction.net 13'293'677 works

archiveofourown.org 4'825'000 works

fimfiction.net 125'797 works

[assorted forums and individual websites that make up the other half of my bookmarks] ? works

It looks like people will in fact make things even when they know - due to copyright law even - that they cannot make money on them.

Any creative work that will only get made if the authors think they can extort money from the people who benfit from it is a work that society is better off without.

Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by clarry on Thursday May 23, 2019 @04:05PM (#19995382)
> Pretending that it's always acceptable to pirate any movie you want to see is akin to saying that you don't want the movie studios to make movies anymore.

It is always acceptable not to watch a movie. Does that mean one doesn't want studios to make movies? No, they can still keep making movies if others care enough to keep them going.

This is just saying that movies will be produced in proportion to the amount of people who want to watch movies bad enough to actually subsidise their production.

The same exact mechanism is in play in music (fans who go to gigs & buy swag etc. subsidise music for the masses who hardly put a penny in it), and many other parts of the economy. Enthusiasts, companies with deep pockets, everyone who pours big money into research & bleeding edge tech subsidise the things that will ripple down to the rest of us with lower and lower margins, often in such a way that the original inventor/researcher/producer gets cut out of the loop in that market.

The market will correct itself so it's kinda pointless to hypothesize about a world where nobody wants to pay for a movie yet somehow everyone wants movies real bad.

I think fireworks are a good analogy. On New Year's eve, many people buy them and fire them, but others just go for a walk or watch the show from their window or roof.

Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by la_barba on Thursday May 23, 2019 @04:44PM (#19995703)
The act of pirating the movie itself signals that there is some notional value to the downloaded content. Otherwise, you would just pipe 1GB of bits from /dev/random in to a file and play that.
Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by clarry on Thursday May 23, 2019 @05:21PM (#19996094)
And yet the pirate chose to pirate, so it did not have enough monetary value for them.
Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by bscphil on Thursday May 23, 2019 @05:48PM (#19996354)
>The same exact mechanism is in play in music (fans who go to gigs & buy swag etc. subsidise music for the masses who hardly put a penny in it), and many other parts of the economy.

This is correct; income from services like Spotify are pitifully low. However, it highlights an important distinction between two types of movie piracy: cam-rips of movies currently playing in the theatre, and "normal" piracy, which is of stuff available through retail. The thing with music is that you can't pirate a live band performance: there's very rarely anything comparable to a cam. For one thing, too much of the value of a live performance comes from the experience. Second, it's usually too difficult to capture such a performance as an ordinary audience member. (Official recordings released after the tour are different, of course.)

While I, like some others here, don't believe in intellectual property at all, I do think that artists should be rewarded for their work. Until we can get a better system, I question the ethics of taking something for free when you are in a position to easily pay for something of equal or better quality. So I personally have never torrented anything that was playing in theaters, and I think that's a principle one could reasonably stick to.

However, I think there's a striking difference between what you might call "performance rights", and right to copy. In the latter case, while I think it still makes sense to give the artist some recompense for their success, the situation is in fact much different. Other people regularly make these points, so I'll only mention the top few most relevant for me:

* It's usually impossible to rent / purchase a movie at home at watch it instantly without DRM. Many movies aren't available for streaming at all.

* Quality is usually quite bad when streaming. Even if you get lucky and can get 1080p or above (which means you're not a Firefox or Chrome user watching Netflix), the encoding quality of the film is usually quite bad.

* Even if you have a video rental service nearby, and they have the movie you want to watch in Bluray, you then need to have a Bluray player to watch it (more DRM), as well as hope you have the latest AACS keys, or that your player can download them in a reasonable amount of time if you do not. (Even then there are quite often encoding problems on Blurays, which pirates take the time to fix more often than not.)

In other words, the value proposition of pirating retail products is pretty good. You can instantly (or nearly so) watch a larger selection of films in higher quality than you can get through any other means, with no technological limitations. I think in this case, the value of compensating artists is outweighed by the competing value of the incredible increase in convenience and quality that piracy represents to the public.

None of this is to say that compensating artists isn't important; the problem is that the current system for compensating them sets up a whole bunch of competing values. While your "fireworks" analogy probably works for films in theaters, it doesn't exactly capture the realities of the retail market for films. That reality is that we need a better system for distributing movies that makes it possible to compensate artists without neglecting other values.

Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by tomp on Thursday May 23, 2019 @04:34PM (#19995618)
On the third end of the spectrum, there's the crowdfunding model. Alternatively, we could only have "free non-commercial use" - so that if you make money from the movie (e.g. a movie theatre) you'd need to pay royalties... so people could either pay to see it in the cinema, or download free and watch at home... i.e. same as the de facto status quo. (Personally, I don't understand why people go to the cinema - I prefer to watch movies at home even if cinema was free - but some people still seem to like going...)
Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by scarface74 on Thursday May 23, 2019 @04:48PM (#19995751)
Yes because “crowd funding” is going to raise the $5 million it took to make “Get Out” let alone the $356 million it took to make “Avengers Endgame”.
Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by 0815test on Thursday May 23, 2019 @06:01PM (#19996460)
Crowdfunding is not inherently limited in scale. If it can raise $5k $50k or $500k, there's no reason to think it couldn't raise $5M. Or even $350M for that matter. The reason these projects aren't being funded is because they're basically uneconomic to make in the first place; by forcing people to pay for content instead of releasing it for free (effectively a price floor!) the proprietary market has to compete by "gold-plating" the stuff and wasting away any potential gains in efficiency.

Compare U.S. airlines before deregulation got rid of the price floors there. Incredibly appealing service, with great waiting areas at the airport, gourmet meals in-flight, young attractive air-hostesses, and so on and so forth - but only if you could afford it in the first place! Behind all that luxury, we were actually seeing rampant wastage of resources.

Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by scarface74 on Thursday May 23, 2019 @10:21PM (#19997936)
I specifically called out “Get Out” for that reason. It definitely wasn’t “gold plated”. It was made on a budget of $5 million and grossed $285 million and got great reviews.
Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by cercatrova on Friday May 24, 2019 @12:50AM (#19998587)
Look at Star Citizen, it has raised over 200 million now.
Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by scarface74 on Friday May 24, 2019 @07:38AM (#20000456)
Not exactly a ringing endorsement of crowd funding from the consumers perspective. It’s already 5 years late.
Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by sandov on Thursday May 23, 2019 @03:48PM (#19995271)
Sometimes I pay for them, when I consider that the product is really good and I want to support the author, and sometimes I download them for free.
Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by yeahitslikethat on Thursday May 23, 2019 @05:13PM (#19996029)
Sometimes you dine and dash too, I suppose? If the food isn't really good or you don't want to support the restaurant?
Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by sandov on Thursday May 23, 2019 @05:41PM (#19996303)
Dine and dash is theft. Piracy is not.
Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by yeahitslikethat on Sunday May 26, 2019 @01:51PM (#20016298)
Piracy exactly is theft. You prefer being called a pirate to being called a thief. You realize pirates are thieves right?

Is called piracy because it's theft.

Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by adrianN on Thursday May 23, 2019 @02:00PM (#19994190)
I'm okay with people stealing GPL code to look at it with friends over a few beers and popcorn.
Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by shawnz on Thursday May 23, 2019 @02:21PM (#19994415)
The GPL already doesn't prevent that kind of usage, so clearly that's not what the parent was talking about
Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by adrianN on Thursday May 23, 2019 @02:24PM (#19994449)
My point is that the argument is a false dichotomy. We could very well legalize filesharing without making the GPL any weaker.
Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by monocasa on Thursday May 23, 2019 @02:50PM (#19994685)
RMS himself is against the idea of intellectual property; it's just that copyleft is the closest you can get in a system that supports IP.

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/not-ipr.en.html

Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by stordoff on Thursday May 23, 2019 @03:38PM (#19995179)
RMS's stance is that he is against the idea of 'intellectual property' as an umbrella term for copyright, patents, and trademarks, as it conflates three (or more) largely unrelated areas of law. This does not necessarily mean he is against any of these ideas per se.
Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by monocasa on Thursday May 23, 2019 @03:56PM (#19995324)
Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by 0xffff2 on Thursday May 23, 2019 @03:01PM (#19994818)
My reading of the linked rant is that RMS is against lumping copyright, patents and trademarks under the umbrella of "intellectual property", but not against those things individually. I don't see anything there to support the idea that RMS is against the idea of copyright (that being the section of "IP" that the GPL most directly addresses).
Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by monocasa on Thursday May 23, 2019 @03:56PM (#19995326)
Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by zanny on Thursday May 23, 2019 @02:48PM (#19994659)
The GPL is hijacking IP to create a consumer right to repair that should exist but doesn't.

Total IP abolition in combination with a strongly enshrined right to repair, which would necessitate access to source code of binaries given, would be perfectly in the spirit of the free software movement.

Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by takeda on Thursday May 23, 2019 @04:18PM (#19995486)
I would add that it RMS would actually prefer that over current GPL. GPL was created as a response to current IP laws trying to use it against itself.
Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by bunderbunder on Thursday May 23, 2019 @02:01PM (#19994205)
I don't know that this is all-or-nothing.

The same law that protects people from stealing GPL code also protects movie studios from having their content copied and redistributed without permission. And I wouldn't be at all surprised if some of the GPL family of licenses' restrictions on exactly how you can use GPL software are legally difficult to discern from media companies' efforts to restrict how we are allowed to consume their works.

But there are things that I suspect would be easier to disentangle. I wouldn't mind seeing some sort of provision where copyrighted works can more easily fall into the public domain when they've been abandoned by their copyright holders, for example. We could also stand to roll back some of the power grabs that media companies have managed to get codified.

Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by stordoff on Thursday May 23, 2019 @03:16PM (#19994999)
FWIW:

What The Swedish Pirate Party Wants With Patents, Trademarks, And Copyright (2012):

> Copyright must be reformed. We’d like to keep the copyright monopoly for commercial use (but with shorter, more sensible terms of protection). The big problem is that copyright has expanded in the past 20 years, going from being something that only corporations needed to care about, into something that criminalizes the entire young generation (and more and more people who aren’t even particularly young anymore).

> The Swedish Pirate Party wants to; Legalize file-sharing and other non-commercial sharing [...] At most 20 years of protection from the publication of a work. [...] Registration after five years. [...] Sensible regulation for quotations, parodies, and remixes [...] A ban on DRM

http://falkvinge.net/2012/10/13/what-the-swedish-pirate-part...

Richard Stallman (2012):

> I agree with all three of these positions. I do suggest, however, that it would be better not to group together these three issues and only these three. Why would anyone group together these three unrelated laws? I suspect it reflects the mistaken concept of "intellectual property".

http://www.stallman.org/archives/2012-jul-oct.html#16_Octobe...

You can reform copyright without rendering the GPL unworkable. I asked Rick Falkvinge about this a number of years ago (2008-2010), and he seemed quite confident that the GPL would still be viable given their proposed reforms.

(Current Pirate Parties appear to use similar policies, such as Pirate Party UK:"A fair and balanced copyright regime that is suitable for the 21st century is an absolute necessity for the UK to remain competitive in a global economy that is built upon ideas and innovation. Copyright should give artists and innovators the chance to make money from their work; however, that needs to be balanced with the rights of society as a whole. We will work for copyright reform and reduce copyright terms to 10 years to balance everyone's needs." https://www.pirateparty.org.uk/policy/culture/home)

Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by kzrdude on Thursday May 23, 2019 @02:21PM (#19994409)
Copyright reform is not about burning copyright to the ground.
Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by marssaxman on Thursday May 23, 2019 @02:43PM (#19994608)
Burning copyright to the ground would be a significant improvement over the mess we have now. Artificial scarcity enriches a few at the expense of the many; hardly a desirable state of affairs.
Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by h3throw on Thursday May 23, 2019 @03:23PM (#19995061)
This is true if you only consider the first order effect of copyright.

However, the second order effects would lead to, for example, significant decrease in investment of the creation of any work that has marginal production of near $0. Why would Disney/Marvel go to the effort of creating the Avengers movies when those movies could be shown freely by movie theaters? They, of course, would not as there would be no way to recoup their investments. Now the millions of "the many" who have freely exchanged their dollars for movie tickets are worse off. Nobody wins, not the few and not the many.

Why would GRRM write the next two works in ASOIAF if ANY publisher could take the text, print it and sell it without remuneration to GRRM? At best he would because he's already rich but would he ever have in the first place?

The winners in your world may very well be Amazon and others with the easiest/best distribution platforms at the cost of the creators and in turn at the cost of all as the creators no longer create.

Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by TFYS on Thursday May 23, 2019 @03:44PM (#19995234)
We could transition into a model where works are crowdfunded before they are made by people who want them the most. Creators set the amount they want for their work and if there are enough people that wish to see the work it will get funded and will be free for everyone to enjoy without artificial scarcity.
Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by creddit on Friday May 24, 2019 @04:14AM (#19999506)
Crowdfunding exists today. We don't see this model much at all and certainly not at the levels of quality or scale seen in for-profit, copyright/IP based enterprise. Why?

1) To gain a crowdfunding base of sufficient size to replace the current models and achieve the necessary budgets in the first instance would require massive marketing spend. This would HAVE to be forked over prior to obtaining funding and therefore represents a major risk because with crowdfunding, it's all or nothing.

2) Tragedy of the commons/freeloading. Why agree to pony-up when I can wait/hope for some other saps to do so?

3) Crowdfunding means paying for something that doesn't exist to be created and trusting that the creators can/will create it at a level of quality that matches what you expected from their pitch. But wait, you've already committed your resources to them. Why should they actually strive to create an optimal good when they get your money regardless of the quality? This is a huge problem with crowdfunding. In today's world, you can rely on word of mouth, reviews, previews, etc.

So, no, the proposed world would be much worse. The set of above reasons are really showstoppers, imo, and they don't even cover the full scope of the problems with your proposal.

Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by scotty79 on Thursday May 23, 2019 @03:48PM (#19995264)
> Why would Disney/Marvel go to the effort of creating the Avengers movies when those movies could be shown freely by movie theaters?

Maybe we could wait a bit for cool movies when technology advances to the point where they can be made by few dedicated people with off the shelf hardware instead hundred million budget that needs to be propped up with additional millions to trump up the hype so it can be earned back?

So many things made possible by copyright that we are accustomed to look like severe pathology when you look at them with fresh eye.

Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by sosborn on Thursday May 23, 2019 @04:07PM (#19995400)
> Maybe we could wait a bit for cool movies when technology advances to the point where they can be made by few dedicated people with off the shelf hardware instead hundred million budget that needs to be propped up with additional millions to trump up the hype so it can be earned back?

We aren't far away from that, but it's important to remember that creators now have the option to create without attaching copyright to a work. Copyright isn't mandatory. Creators tend to choose copyright because it is in their best interest.

Also, it isn't mandatory to consume copyrighted media. Just find something else that isn't encumbered by it if you wish.

Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by scotty79 on Thursday May 23, 2019 @04:19PM (#19995498)
It also isn't mandatory to respect copyright. It's unenforceable and a lot of people ignore it happily.

> Creators tend to choose copyright because it is in their best interest.

And some peole choose to emit tons of CO2 because it's in their best intrest. The question is, is it in everybody's best interest.

A lot of people would be culturally poorer and more isolated if not for piracy and 100% secure copyrighted content wouldn't be as popular.

Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by sosborn on Thursday May 23, 2019 @04:31PM (#19995593)
Copyright is not equivalent to climate change.

What does it mean to be culturally poorer? Attaching importance to pop culture knowledge sounds like the real problem.

Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by scotty79 on Thursday May 23, 2019 @05:35PM (#19996243)
Of course it is not. What I'm saying is, optimal economic decissions of some people might not be good for people in general. When it comes to copyright we can't consider only the good of the creators and people who paid creators.

Copyright is not just for popculture. Also learning materials, software and culture in general. Tonnes of people in the world got their higher education on pirated software and xeroxed books.

Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by creddit on Friday May 24, 2019 @04:25AM (#19999560)
If your "fresh eye" take on copyright is "Hey man, one day just a few dedicated people will be able to do this and we should just wait til then because it will happen and those people will do it for free and it will be of equal or greater quality to what we have today or would have in the future regardless" without a clear path to that being a reality nor a clear argument for why these people will actually do that, then I'll stick with the "severe pathology" which to date is still clearly the best means through which resources are put to productive use.

Long live capitalism, free choice and property rights: the greatest human forces of all time; the creators of prosperity.

Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by pbhjpbhj on Thursday May 23, 2019 @03:35PM (#19995155)
I appreciate the sentiment that leads one to such considerations, but really all I see with no copyright is that creators will be completely exploited and the only people making money from people's works will be corporations who lock stuff up with DRM, or with other IP, or sui generis licenses, or simply through physical gateways like only showing movies in cinemas. I don't see that this would lead to greater access to new media creations (though obviously past media would all be open to use).

Short copyright terms - someone mentioned 20 years max, with registration needed after 5 years. That sort of thing is better, far better than both longer copyright and no copyright.

The maximum term, IMO, should enable people to enjoy for free-gratis in their middle ages the media of their youth and build on that freely (libre) as inspiration to create cultural works for themselves and those that follow. Being able to have open, uninhibited access to one's own cultural inspirations well within one's working lifetime seems ideal to make sure that the demos get something worthwhile out of the deal.

Works restricted by DRM can't enter the public domain and so should be exempt from protection by copyright, though I'd allow some sort of deposit system whereby companies could put un-bound works in escrow, and so still be allowed to get copyright protections.

Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by baddox on Thursday May 23, 2019 @03:46PM (#19995251)
What you describe in the first paragraph seems like a detailed and accurate description of the current state of affairs, with strong copyright law essentially written by the large corporations you describe.

Anyone who is making a modest living producing their own original IP is not doing so because of IP protection laws, because they surely cannot afford to litigate (and they certainly can't afford to lobby to get the laws to favor them).

Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by belorn on Thursday May 23, 2019 @03:00PM (#19994814)
GPL is in the word of its author Richard Stallman a strategy to maximize the amount of users that can exercise liberty over their own life in regard to software.

I think it is a rather nice trade to give up GPL if we get in return the right to repair to deal with DRM and no copyright to allow for sharing and modifying software.

Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by Endy on Thursday May 23, 2019 @02:31PM (#19994500)
For my own part, outside of OS and security software, which I feel should be 100% monolithic and black box, I'm fine with the idea of all text and code of every program and file being available to anyone who may wish to improve it.
Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by vageli on Thursday May 23, 2019 @02:33PM (#19994518)
> For my own part, outside of OS and security software, which I feel should be 100% monolithic and black box, I'm fine with the idea of all text and code of every program and file being available to anyone who may wish to improve it.

Curious to hear why you think OS and security software should be black boxes and not open.

Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by Endy on Thursday May 23, 2019 @02:42PM (#19994590)
Because I don't trust anyone. I feel that human interference is a security problem that can't be overcome and should be reduced by every possible means.
Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by ativzzz on Thursday May 23, 2019 @02:56PM (#19994758)
By that same logic, you shouldn't trust the creators of the monolithic black box either. So you can't trust anyone, except yourself and the OS only you have access to.

In general, do you not find carrying this level of paranoia on a daily basis is simply oppressive to your own well being?

Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by Endy on Thursday May 23, 2019 @07:56PM (#19997201)
You're right. The preference would be that each person has access to a single part of the black box and no access to anyone or any other part of the whole shebang. Either that or the old way of dealing with people involved in things that have to remain secret. Of course, you behead enough OS devs and soon there won't be any.

As far as my daily life, no not really. I just live a life where I grant very few people a view into the things I consider private, and ensure that every two or three people know contradictory things without knowing the parts that put them together. It leads to a robust but distant social web.

Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by ativzzz on Friday May 24, 2019 @07:11PM (#20006084)
> I grant very few people a view into the things I consider private, and ensure that every two or three people know contradictory things without knowing the parts that put them together

Sounds exhausting, I can't imagine using that much mental energy to keep up this web, but your life your rules.

Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by nostalgk on Thursday May 23, 2019 @02:59PM (#19994798)
What are the vectors you fear? If anything, an open OS makes vulnerabilities less of a commodity and more eyes = easier fixes.
Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by Endy on Thursday May 23, 2019 @07:52PM (#19997177)
The vectors I fear are the potentially malicious brains behind every pair of eyes. Why do you want to see my OS (or really any of my software)? The only reason I can think of is to have access to my files, or to hijack my machine and install customized ransomware as part of the OS. Therefore, any individual who sees any part of my OS that could grant them any access whatsoever to any part of my PC is an extreme and real danger.
Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by lixtra on Thursday May 23, 2019 @01:44PM (#19994025)
But a vastly different spirit.
Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by umanwizard on Thursday May 23, 2019 @01:53PM (#19994127)
How so? "You are not allowed to use my work unless you agree to particular conditions that I care about".

In one case the condition is "I get paid", in the other "you have to contribute back your changes", but it's a similar underlying concept.

Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by PeterisP on Thursday May 23, 2019 @03:18PM (#19995013)
GPL is a way to ensure that this particular piece of software stays free forever. One thing that GPL definitely doesn't do is "you have to contribute back your changes", it's fully legal to modify and use GPL-based systems and not contribute any changes back; the only thing that GPL prohibits is enforcing copyright restrictions on others when (if!) I pass the software on to them.

In a legislative regime where all software is free, that goal is achieved without GPL so GPL isn't needed anymore; I get the permission to use, modify and redistribute all software as if I had received it with the GPL.

Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by contras1970 on Thursday May 23, 2019 @02:58PM (#19994785)
that's a gross mischaracterization of the situation.

copyright doesn't mean "i get paid", it means "i get to withhold" (see all the out-of-print books, abandonware, etc).

GPL does not mean "you have to contribute back your changes" at all: "The GPL does not require you to release your modified version, or any part of it. You are free to make modifications and use them privately, without ever releasing them." https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.en.html#GPLRequireSourc...

one is about taking access away (for whatever goal), the other is about taking that option away (for the benefit of users).

Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by la_barba on Thursday May 23, 2019 @01:48PM (#19994080)
Well, the author of a work should be able to control certain key aspects of distribution. Either you agree or disagree. Anything else is just a special-pleading logical fallacy.
Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by claudiawerner on Thursday May 23, 2019 @01:58PM (#19994175)
I don't think that's true at all. We can acknowledge qualitative differences and aims and indeed this "special pleading" is the foundation of all law - we select based on our own conceptions of what is right which laws to make; to say that it is special pleading is to say that laws against those actions which cause harm is special pleading - after all, what's so special about harm? Nevertheless, it is possible to imagine a world in which one restriction (or liberalization) is made but another is not. While this requires a competent legislature and judiciary, there is no reason to think it is impossible; the difficulty in making an analytic distinction is only a small speed bump.
Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by la_barba on Thursday May 23, 2019 @02:22PM (#19994428)
Well, sure, thats all well and good in theory. How do you deal with existing laws though? Its hypocritical to tell someone to not "steal" GPL code, when you're downloading the latest Avengers movie yourself. I'm all for changing the law, but I don't agree with the approach that copyright law can only be fixed via civil disobedience.
Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by athrowaway3z on Thursday May 23, 2019 @03:07PM (#19994881)
You are creating a false dichotomy by using the word stealing in the first place.

If you accidentally take a picture of my shitty origami art project you are not stealing

If you walk into a factory and take the mold for a military sonar device you are stealing.

At what point does changing the first story into the second story does it become stealing?

Either you can pinpoint a minimal set of changes in which it becomes stealing OR 'stealing' vs 'not stealing' is insufficient to accurately describe a situation

Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by la_barba on Thursday May 23, 2019 @04:32PM (#19995608)
Yes, stealing applies primarily to physical property or physical items of value. And the word hacker now has a second meaning with a negative connotation. Words outgrow their original meaning as the language evolves. I'm not advocating for the word 'steal' to be a legal definition of anything. I'm simply using it on an internet forum in a casual context.
Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by adrianN on Thursday May 23, 2019 @02:27PM (#19994477)
The author already doesn't control all aspects of distribution. It's for example okay to use copyrighted works for satire in many legislations. So lawmakers already agree that there are legitimate uses of copyrighted works that are out of control of the copyright holder. If we wante to we could extend such uses to include filesharing.
Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by la_barba on Thursday May 23, 2019 @04:52PM (#19995789)
Yes, and that would be good. Alls im saying is, follow the law, or change it, but don't advocate breaking it ;)

(I admit I too pirated music and sw during my college days, but I don't anymore..)

Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by mirchibajji on Thursday May 23, 2019 @03:32PM (#19995124)
It isn't just the author personally controlling though. It is about using tax payer's money to do so.
Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by jfk13 on Thursday May 23, 2019 @03:55PM (#19995316)
As a society, we have generally agreed that the author has certain rights of control, and as a society (i.e. using taxpayers' money) we will enforce those rights on behalf of the author.

How is that different from society agreeing that it'll use taxpayers' money - through the police force, courts, etc - to uphold my right to keep control of my wallet, my car and my house, in the face of someone who might want to take them from me? My possession of these things is personal, yet society supports/enforces it when challenged.

Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by contras1970 on Thursday May 23, 2019 @02:51PM (#19994694)
GPL "abuses" copyright to prevent conveyors from closing off software from its users. make the provisions of GPL the law, and copyright of software can go.
Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by 0xffff2 on Thursday May 23, 2019 @03:02PM (#19994829)
Why would we want to make GPL the law? Any reduction in the scope of copyright is far more likely to move in the general direction of CC0 than GPL.
Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by takeda on Thursday May 23, 2019 @04:13PM (#19995446)
The reason GPL exists is because of current IP. Stallman believes in all source code being open and treated no different than a cooking recipe. GPL was created to use existing copyright laws to fight with proprietary software. So if we had no copyright, GPL wouldn't even be needed.
Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by la_barba on Thursday May 23, 2019 @04:46PM (#19995732)
> Stallman believes in all source code being open and treated no different than a cooking recipe.

Not exactly. He doesn't want people modifying the recipe and keeping it a secret. Or atleast, not distributing food made from that recipe. (I know that analogy breaks down here.. but I tried!)

Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by Iv on Thursday May 23, 2019 @10:47PM (#19998043)
No. I'd rather have no GPL and no copyright.

But Stallman and the pirate party have come up with a pretty nice proposal in the end: a much shorter time limit on copyright that can be extended if you give more rights to the user.

Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by Findeton on Thursday May 23, 2019 @03:13PM (#19994958)
BSD licenses wouldn't be required if copyright didn't exist.
Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by jmpman on Thursday May 23, 2019 @01:49PM (#19994088)
You’re suggesting that actors/directors/musicians shouldn’t be paid because the marginal cost of their product approaches $0? Wouldn’t that disincentivize production of new TV/Movies/Music? Enshrining the right to piracy is enshrining the right to destroy your artist community.
Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by vespasianhun on Thursday May 23, 2019 @02:15PM (#19994362)
This whole thing usually goes in circles but I think I've observed a few consistent facts in the discussions on HN:

* People believe that you shouldn't be able to remix art to make money off it.

* People believe that you should be able to pirate games for free, often because they feel that the games makers are exploiting them (via DLCs, in-game purchases, whatever)

* People believe that essays, books, etc. should be pirateable

* People believe that business software shouldn't be pirateable because software engineers need to make money. You'll usually be downvoted if you suggest this on, say, a Jetbrains release or something.

All this taken together, to me, provides some amount of evidence to me that this stuff is just characteristic of the kinds of employment that most people on this forum have, rather than some sort of philosophical position people have on this issue. Hope this saves you some time in discussion.

Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by CuriousSkeptic on Thursday May 23, 2019 @03:09PM (#19994907)
My take is that copyright got lost when people started treating it as property. In that aspect I think GPL has a better philosophical standing as treating code as a commons to be protected from becoming property. Would not be sad to see it go out as collateral damage if it would mean abolishment of copyright and it’s philosophical failure though.

We should focus more on how to incorporate the commons in all we do. Economics, politics, justice.

This is what John Locke was talking about when he suggested that not everything can be private property.

Yochai Benklers the Wealth of Networks is a good overview of the concept of commons based peer-production, and the tragedy of the anti commons.

Any talk by Lawrence Lessing from way back when the topic was hot is fantastic takes remix culture

Personally I add to that the thinking of Henry George on how an just society should divide the land rent as public dividend. Also checkout geo-libertarianism and surrounding ideologies.

Perhaps taking it a step further:

Locke argues that land becomes property when you mix it with your labor. But only if there is no contention, the land is after all for all to share.

I’ll restate that as this:

The commons is primary. We all have an equal claim to it all.

To take something from the commons and make it private requires a fair trade. It’s not enough to put a stake in the ground and just claim it. Instead what is lost to the commons must be repaid.

Hence the question should never be, “how should x get paid?” but rather “what value can we derive from granting x exclusivity?”

Just consider for a moment the amount of resources are spent on enforcing the artificial scarcity supposedly motivating copyright.

The primary costs of policing it. Employing people to fight legal battles over it. Implementing automatic enforcements. The cost to those getting caught in violation. The cost of practioners in negotiating rights (what would it cost TPB to secure rights for everything it facilitate access too?)

Then there is the secondary costs. The opportunity costs of not having free access, the Napster that could have been. The things all those people impacted by the primary costs could have done instead, what value could they have provided?

My mind boggles when contemplating it, and I can’t for a second believe that if that is what it takes to get Game of Thrones produced, that I couldn’t live without it for a freer world.

Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by sleepybrett on Thursday May 23, 2019 @05:32PM (#19996212)
> * People believe that you shouldn't be able to remix art to make money off it.

Say goodbye to a whole era of hiphop and electronic music.

Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by tfha on Thursday May 23, 2019 @02:04PM (#19994238)
Most content creators already aren't paid well. Value accrues to the publishers and the publishers today have massive control over distribution channels.

We're demanding a better solution.

Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by slg on Thursday May 23, 2019 @02:10PM (#19994312)
Isn't that mostly how Silicon Valley works too? Software developers like content creators are generally compensated well enough to live an upper middle class lifestyle, but their compensation doesn't necessarily match the value they create. Instead much of the value is captured by VC or production companies. This is because those companies are the ones who bare the largest percentage of the risk. If a project completely falls flat on its face, software developers and writers, actors, directors, etc still collect their paycheck. It is the VC and production company that lose money.
Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by stcredzero on Thursday May 23, 2019 @02:22PM (#19994419)
Isn't that mostly how Silicon Valley works too? Software developers like content creators are generally compensated well enough to live an upper middle class lifestyle, but their compensation doesn't necessarily match the value they create. Instead much of the value is captured by VC or production companies.

It's not just that. Society is still catching up to the ramifications of the additional value extracted by social media and tech media companies. People can't deny that automotive technology made much of the US population dependent in their daily lives on cars. (Whether this is a good or a bad thing is besides the point for this discussion. Probably bad in many ways, good in a few.) This gave the auto makers a certain responsibility for meeting minimum levels of safety, reliability, and environmental friendliness. Society eventually caught up to the implications of automotive technology, and this was reflected in laws codifying that social responsibility.

This is because those companies are the ones who bare the largest percentage of the risk. If a project completely falls flat on its face, software developers and writers, actors, directors, etc still collect their paycheck. It is the VC and production company that lose money.

Then it is also the "production company" which should bear the social responsibility for their impact on the media landscape and social discourse. As was the case for the appearance of laws and regulations covering the activities of the automotive industry, as that industry had ever greater impact upon the general public's life, so too is the case for social media tech companies.

If they reap the rewards, then they should take on the social responsibility.

Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by ggg2 on Thursday May 23, 2019 @04:32PM (#19995604)
yes.

What's the point?

Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by slg on Thursday May 23, 2019 @06:24PM (#19996629)
I thought it was interesting to highlight the similarities because this community would likely push back much harder if you said the startup scene is inherently flawed like that comment said about content creation.
Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by probably_wrong on Thursday May 23, 2019 @02:25PM (#19994461)
> Wouldn’t that disincentivize production of new TV/Movies/Music?

I think fan fiction is a clear example of the kind of vibrant art community that could emerge if the law got out of its way.

The right to piracy wouldn't kill art. It could cripple the art business, though, but that seems to me like a fair deal.

Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by Noos on Thursday May 23, 2019 @02:42PM (#19994589)
If by "vibrant art community" you mean "an endless firehose of low-grade porn and fetish junk based on existing properties," maybe.
Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by Obi_Juan_Kenobi on Thursday May 23, 2019 @04:08PM (#19995405)
Counterpoint: Night of the Living Dead

NotLD entered the public domain because of a failure to apply a copyright indication. Largely due to this oversight, and entire genre of Zombie media has flourished unencumbered by restrictive IP.

Obviously your cynical take on fan-art is despicable and ignorant, but there's no shortage of examples of what the commons can produce.

Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by GNOMES on Thursday May 23, 2019 @03:00PM (#19994806)
Porn is inevitable though even with the laws... I think the parent is referring to people making games and writing stories based on popular franchises.

Look at game companies stopping fan made games. I remember hearing about a fan remake of PS1 Metal Gear Solid. Was gathering huge fan far and had kojima's blessing, but the studio shut it down.

https://gameranx.com/features/id/159002/article/10-incredibl...

A success story for one fan project though was Sonic Mania https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonic_Mania

I have also seen theories for movies on r/writingprompts that blow actual sequels out of the water.

Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by komali2 on Thursday May 23, 2019 @03:59PM (#19995342)
An endless firehose of art will have a bunch of weird shit in it yup, we've known that about the internet since like 2001.

But then again, this is nothing new: (nsfw) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erotic_art#/media/File:Shuvalo...

Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by krapp on Thursday May 23, 2019 @02:59PM (#19994790)
Most amateur art in any field is low quality, and likely porn. Sturgeon's Law always applies.
Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by mikorym on Thursday May 23, 2019 @02:22PM (#19994426)
I can't speak for actors and directors, but as a musician I have made peace that the only pennies I'll be having are from live events.

Even if you pay $5 a month for <insert music streaming service> and only listen to my songs, I get literally $0.00 (up to significant figures). They pool everything together so essentially you are subsidising Justin Bieber; just putting it out there...

Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by johntiger1 on Thursday May 23, 2019 @08:27PM (#19997372)
Sorry but it seems like you just aren't getting many streams . But let's say I give you $5/month for a year. Do you want it?
Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by mikorym on Friday May 24, 2019 @02:55AM (#19999111)
> just aren't getting many streams

Exactly, yes. But many fans (of other artists; when referring to myself we'll have sampling bias) actually have no idea that their $5 doesn't go directly to the songs they listen to in a month.

> let's say

I would happily accept if we can cut out transaction costs. My idea of a "good" streaming platform for music is one with only a flat rate (say $5), no free option, and no pooling. That means that if I listen to Scatman once in the month and it is the only song I listened to, then John Larkin's estate should get exactly $5, min some small platform fee. (Sorry for picking a dead artist; royalties after death is complicated. Personally I guess I would limit mine to about 10 years, but then again I don't receive any royalties.)

Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by mikorym on Friday May 24, 2019 @03:01AM (#19999134)
Sorry, just another clarification. I am not against pirated music. But I am just explaining a possible improvement over Spotify / Apple music. Also, this "improvement" may actually discribe a niche kind of "fandomify" that maybe will always be small. But if you implement the above it puts the onus on the customer to support their artists. It also disincentivises account sharing for hard core fans that want to give money to their favourite artists.

You can easily check that your money goes where you want it to from a statement at the end of the month... If you see that Justin Bieber's Baby got $0.99 then of course it's plausible because your "friend" logged in and listened to the song 99 times out of your 500 listens that month.

Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by NikolaNovak on Thursday May 23, 2019 @02:25PM (#19994451)
Not everywhere do Pirate Party and Pirate Bay have similar or compatible goals.

In Canada, Pirate Party claims to stand for: - Increased privacy of citizens - Increased ability of citizens to own and control their data - Increased visibility and public discourse &debate of technology's impact on private lives, business climate, intellectual property, societal changes, etc

As such, it is the only party here to openly tackle, let alone make it their core platform, what I personally perceive to be the defining issues of the 21st century.

I feel that Pirate Party may end up like the Green party of few decades ago -- initially perceived as fringe, marginalized, irrelevant; until we realize they are tackling emerging core societal problems.

As such, while I'm extremely in favour of supporting creators (all my software, from OS to Photoshop is legally purchased; I duly pay my Netflix/Spotify/Prime, purchase photography and clipart when I need them, go to concerts, go to cinema, tip baskers, participate in Patreon, buy webcomic books, etc; and discussion on whether those appropriately pay artists is important but orthogonal to this one), I do support Pirate Party of Canada through my membership and might consider voting if they had a local candidate.

Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by 0xffff2 on Thursday May 23, 2019 @03:09PM (#19994908)
>I feel that Pirate Party may end up like the Green party of few decades ago -- initially perceived as fringe, marginalized, irrelevant; until we realize they are tackling emerging core societal problems.

I don't know how much if at all the Canadian Green Party relates to the US Green Party, but the Green party south of the border is certainly still perceived as "fringe, marginalized, irrelevant". A quick look at Wikipedia suggests that the Canadian Green Party probably still fits that bill as well.

Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by frenchy on Thursday May 23, 2019 @04:28PM (#19995561)
The Green Party is certainly marginalized here, but a lot less so than in the US. The party leader actually has a seat in Parliment and is regularly quoted on public radio. They also form a small part of the a coalition government in BC and almost did in PEI.

The Green Party here suffers from our poor electoral system (FPTP), but they definitly have supporters, even if their supporters don't vote for them for strategic reasons.

Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by clarry on Thursday May 23, 2019 @01:59PM (#19994184)
> You’re suggesting that actors/directors/musicians shouldn’t be paid

They're suggesting that we move to a different model.

Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by res0nat0r on Thursday May 23, 2019 @03:30PM (#19995112)
What is that model? Whichever this new model is, folks still would like to be paid and make a living being artists/musicians/directors etc...
Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by 8bitsrule on Thursday May 23, 2019 @02:15PM (#19994357)
"The "Uber of Live Music" will charge you $1100-1600 to book a house show, pay musicians $100"

https://boingboing.net/2019/05/22/dont-pay-the-piper.html

This is, once again, the ethic of the existing model.

Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by dev_throw on Thursday May 23, 2019 @02:14PM (#19994346)
No, this incentivizes different models to reward content creators. Torrents are technologically a super efficient way to promote discovery. Off the top of my head, artists can make money off live events, live streams, interacting with their community, sponsorships, patronage, etc.
Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by 0815test on Thursday May 23, 2019 @02:09PM (#19994290)
Look at what people routinely pay for in crowdfunding models, where all costs are 100% transparent and marginal cost is indeed generally low or even zero. You'll find a whole lot of indie stuff (very high-quality indie stuff in fact - because the same well-established reputational mechanisms that are active in the FLOSS community work there as well!), and few or no "actors/directors/musicians" of the mainstream sort getting any money there.

This is how it should be - there is simply no rational case for mindless entertainment ("TV/Movies/Music") that costs on the order of $10M or $100M to make!

Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by hombre_fatal on Thursday May 23, 2019 @02:15PM (#19994364)
> This is how it should be - there is simply no rational case for mindless entertainment ("TV/Movies/Music") that costs on the order of $10M or $100M to make!

How is this not just outright snobbery about what people should enjoy?

I like high-scale, ambitious entertainment.

Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by teddyh on Thursday May 23, 2019 @02:42PM (#19994594)
If you like pyramids in modern times, it’s on you to pay for their construction.
Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by jfk13 on Thursday May 23, 2019 @03:58PM (#19995336)
Which is exactly what we do when we buy movie tickets, etc. And those who aren't interested don't have to pay for it. I'm not sure what your point is?
Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by teddyh on Friday May 24, 2019 @03:55PM (#20004779)
We all – not just those who go to the movies, but everyone – also pay a hidden cost: The cost of the copyright system itself. You imply that this cost is necessary for “high-scale, ambitious entertainment”, but I say that you should then be held to pay for it, instead of society as a whole.

It may or may not be true that “high-scale, ambitious entertainment” is unsupportable without copyright. If it turns out to be not supportable, it would be like the pyramids: Large, impressive, and expensive things which the structure of our society and our economy can no longer support the constructions of. I.e. the society we live in could concievably be re-organized to again support the construction of pyramids, but we choose not to do that, in order to have a modern society and economy instead.

Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by macintux on Thursday May 23, 2019 @02:11PM (#19994319)
And yet those big budget films/TV shows are one of the few things remaining that provide a common cultural experience. It’s nice to be able to talk about something besides the weather with a complete stranger.
Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by clarry on Thursday May 23, 2019 @02:15PM (#19994365)
> And yet those big budget films/TV shows are one of the few things remaining that provide a common cultural experience.

For some people. Believe me, there are lots and lots of people who do not share that experience.

Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by hombre_fatal on Thursday May 23, 2019 @02:22PM (#19994420)
I think you gave in to the temptation to point out that you're not like the rest of us sheeple even though it wasn't relevant.
Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by 0815test on Thursday May 23, 2019 @02:57PM (#19994778)
> things... that provide a common cultural experience.

That's what the public domain is for, of course. It's too bad that this limits us to 1923-or-before material (in the U.S., and ignoring non-copyright-renewed stuff from later in the 20th c.) but that still covers centuries of shared culture - even millennia, in some cases!

Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by macintux on Thursday May 23, 2019 @03:58PM (#19995338)
True enough, but those lack the virtue of timeliness.

Absent an organizing effort, it’s unlikely you’ll catch someone who has read, say, Dracula for the first time recently just like you have and can share that initial enthusiasm for the material.

Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by Noos on Thursday May 23, 2019 @02:48PM (#19994652)
The rational case is that it's absurdly expensive to make artistic content in term of people's time, as well as the cost in things like location, filming, and support. This isn't saying there isn't unneccessary costs...part of the need for a publisher is to keep costs under control! But things like building sets, special effects and more really ramp up the cost and fast.

You are supporting an army of workers to make a decently budgeted film, for multiple years.

Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by behringer on Thursday May 23, 2019 @02:13PM (#19994334)
Why would I create an indie production of some kind for no money? Are you saying now if I want to make something I have to setup a gofundme and get it funded before I even make the product. That's fine for something, and ruins the artistic intent for other things. Imagine Star Wars being crowdfunded before it was made.

If we reach 100k we'll make sure Han Solo shoots first.

It doesn't make sense. People should be paid for providing a service, whether it's a hamburger or a movie. You don't pay someone before the goods are delivered. The modern system of pre-funding and patronization is absurd for many projects.

Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by 0815test on Thursday May 23, 2019 @03:10PM (#19994928)
> ...get it funded before I even make the product.

Strictly speaking, you don't have to do this. You could make the product, send it under a strict NDA to a variety of widely-trusted 3rd-party reviewers/critics, with whatever sort of protection against leaks you might require, then put the existing product for crowdfunded "ransom" (Like Blender was, after the original company went out of business), building in whatever return you might wish to ask for in exchange for bearing the ensuing risk. This doesn't require ordinary copyright protection at all, only a very limited-in-scope protection for private, unpublished stuff.

(The "ransom" model is in fact already potentially-applicable to a lot of existing content that's generally considered worthless, but that, much like Blender itself, might be valued more in the context of an open release. Transaction costs - namely, wrt. the exceedingly-common case of "orphan works", with unknown rights-holders - get in the way of it, however.)

Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by behringer on Thursday May 23, 2019 @08:34PM (#19997402)
Maybe, but piracy skirts that issue. Who's going to protect you when someone breaks the NDA? When someone steals your production copy? Piracy is a broad brush.
Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by saalweachter on Thursday May 23, 2019 @10:57PM (#19998098)
There is the serialization model.

You produce whatever small part of your work you can afford to on couch change, pizza favors and family support and sell it. Fund the next part from the proceeds of the first.

It lives on today in webisodes and patreonage, or, hell, TV shows, but some of what we now consider great literature was produced as serialized chapters in magazines, and only after the fact bundled together as a single volume novel.

Maybe box-office blockbusters funded as multi-million dollar investments and released all at once were just a temporary aberration, like the "album".

Re:After 15 Years, the Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed by Iv on Thursday May 23, 2019 @10:50PM (#19998057)
No, I am not suggesting that in any way. I am suggesting that when the marginal cost of their product approaches zero, a system that is based on retributing them based on the number of copies do not make sense anymore.

Actually I am goign to vote for them more because of their proposals on liquid and direct democracy, I haven't followed their debate on copyrights in the last few years. When I was the most popular proposal to replace copyright was a global license, which actually exists in a very badly implemented form in France for bars and shops.