
Should Online Scofflaws Be Denied Web Access?  - peter123
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/13/technology/internet/13iht-piracy13.html
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tptacek
Before you hit the mod button (because yes, this "proposal" is crazy talk),
please consider: this is happening because people who are straightforwardly
breaking a legitimate (if commercially ill-advised) law appear to be gearing
up to bleed the life out of the content industries. They represent something
resembling the majority of all Internet traffic. Private industry isn't fixing
the problem.

Sure, this proposal isn't going to succeed. But will you be surprised when
some less ludicrous follow-up does? I won't be.

~~~
patio11
_Private industry isn't fixing the problem._

"Private industry" has always been conflicted about piracy, because "industry"
is not monolithic and piracy is _solidly_ in the interests of many players.

Comcast might moan a bit about habitual downloaders, but piracy is pretty much
broadband's killer app, and has been since Napster. Youtube's popular UGC is
overwhelmingly pirated content. Apple has made a mint selling teenagers and
twenty somethings hardware which could hold several years' salary worth of
music purchased legitimately and is _shocked, shocked_ that the overwhelming
majority of music on their devices is pirated.

The history of Google is essentially the history of "Officially, we love and
respect IP. Unofficially, our users want yours for free, we want to give it to
them, and we're going to take the liberty of doing that. We can index your IP
a lot more efficiently than you can sue us. We will become the largest power
on the Internet, and after that we will treat your complaints with the
attention they deserve, and cut off the traffic tap which we monopolized by
being the most efficient way to access your IP. The time for you to object to
this was, oh, about fifteen years ago, because if our behavior was arguably
illegal then it is Industry Standard Practice now, and if you don't like it
well then I guess you're just an irrelevant dinosaur. Isn't that right,
Internet?"

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donaq
_“If you put 200 VCRs in your garage and start making and selling copies of
films, you will get a visit from the police,” he said. “If you do it from a
Web site, everybody says, ‘Hey, freedom of information’ ”._

Not that I support piracy, but torrent tracker sites do not _sell_ the films.
As a matter of fact, they don't even host the actual files.

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carbon8
No.

