The Pirate Bay trial ended, the verdict: guilty

[Sacul15]

They aren't hosting it. It isn't on their site. All they provide is a link to a web address - basically a string of characters. Those are not illegal.

[Chopium]

I'm not going to say what I think. I'm just lazy, but this man has some interesting things to say about internet piracy.

[cypher543]

The Pirate Bay doesn't host illegal content, either. Torrents themselves aren't illegal. They're just files that contain "a string of characters" describing where to retrieve the data.

But that wasn't really my point. My point was that it's incredibly easy to locate copyright material on Google and they know it. They could easily knock out 3,230,000 links with that one search alone, and yet they don't.

[Sacul15]

An extremely valid point. And a large oversight on my part. Still, most of those links aren't direct downloads. The sites they link to aren't illegal. In any case, I'm sure that if Adobe were to complain about a particular url, Google would have it removed from their search results. Pirate Bay, on the other hand, would write a sarcastic letter and keep it.

[Dionysos]

An extremely valid point. And a large oversight on my part. Still, most of those links aren't direct downloads. The sites they link to aren't illegal. In any case, I'm sure that if Adobe were to complain about a particular url, Google would have it removed from their search results. Pirate Bay, on the other hand, would write a sarcastic letter and keep it.

Yes, they do that because they are right. Alright, silly come back, but it's true. I can't wait for the appeal... and at any rate, it's a question of principle and should be decided on that level, once and for all. Or rather, the whole system should be reformed, and that's what's happening now, thanks in part to the TPB, however nice or not they may be.

[vcool]

I'm fairly certain Adobe knows more places that host "illicit" copies than we do. And if it really cared, most of them would be taken down.

Some of the russian trackers host torrents like TPB but they have rules for the copyright holders. So right at the top ther'es a link "to copyright holders" and some stuff is written there. And yes, some torrents are insta-deleted because the developers would care enough to visit the site and say "No.". The tracker I frequent, for example, does not host Photoshop despite its immense popularity, because the retail distributor of it in Russia asked them to not allow it.

As I've said it on numerous occasions before, "piracy" drives and helps all the extremely expensive software, like modelling software. If not for piracy, 60% if not more of all the modelling work shown on the Internet would not exist. There would be less tutorials. Game modding would stall. (I am fairly certain that around 50% of source mods have their models done not in Blender or The Mod Tool) The progress of the industry would slow down immensly as well, because it's this feedback of the many thousands of users that will keep improving software.

If companies like Autodesk (and they're pretty damn fucking rich. Anyone seen the invite I got from Autodek in the RandomThread? With a discount, a student ticket to their gathering costs nigh 2k US dollars.) really thought piracy was hurting them in the long run, most of the torrents would be gone because they could pull off some pretty sound cases with their triple-A lawyers that take 5k per hour of consultation. Sure, they will never kill "piracy" but instead of being the more or less mainstream phenomenon now, it will really become this dirty, underground thing the RIAA wants us to believe.

Anyways, those are my 2 cents, and I already voiced this more than once.

[Sacul15]

I agree that piracy usually helps industries more than it hurts, and that anti-piracy campaigns are usually counter-productive, but the decision should lie with the people who own the material (the companies), and not with the people who want to use it without paying for it, regardless of how that decision affects them.

[Surfa]

My friend works at adobe and they pretty much make enough money of industry professionals they really aren't bothered that much about people pirating the software unless of course said user makes money off of using the software. Although sometimes I see the point of piracy (when I check my bank balance) I also remember how much work most of the guys that created the software have put into it and then I always dig deep.


Although having a friend who works for adobe helps (family and friend discount ftw). Now all I need is to make friends with someone at luxology and I am sorted.

[vcool]

I need to marry someone at Autodesk.