As someone with money who enjoys a lot of American TV, I'm not really interested in excuses why these services are not available worldwide.
Quit making excuses and make it happen. The torrenters don't seem to have any trouble building a global distribution network, and they are hiding from the law while simultaneously kicking your butt.
If you don't want to make it happen, quit whining about losing money. I have money and you have TV shows, so let's make a deal.
The delay in geographical releases is because studios license the copyrights to a regional studio or a distribution company.
Unfortunately, this arrangements prohibits them to use any alternate distribution channels to release the content on their own. Also, the regional company is unlikely to have any arrangements with services like Netflix and Hulu.
In the end its all about the money and bureaucracy.
Am I right to presume that this system with regional licences was set up by the studios themselves? What stops a studio from skipping their regional partners and just release their content worldwide?
The internet doesn't really know regions, so local distribution partners are no longer a concern (Except maybo for localizing content).
Are they losing money? If you canabalize your existing revenue stream by destroying distributor relationships in exchange for a new revenue stream that is tiny, you will lose money. Contrary to popular belief, most of the people making lots of money as executives are not stupid. They just have more data than the arm-chair quarterbacks have. What seems 'obvious' to us hackers is not always as clear cut when you have the numbers in front of you.
I am sure they do. But they have to rely on such distribution deals to make most revenue. They won't be able to distribute via main stream mediums like movie theaters and TV channels on their own because of extensive offshore logistics.
What do you do in the case where a show is shown on ABC in the US and Channel 4 in the UK, and they both have online streaming? How do you just make that happen? Who is going to give up their rights to broadcast online? Are you just going to wish the contracts away? Yes, the torrenters have no problem avoiding the legal limits because they are illegal, that's not an answer.
Make a new territory called "Internet" which charges viewers directly. If a UK broadcaster wants the UK rights, that would still be available separately. People who would pay a premium aren't really in the same market as people who watch free-with-ads channels.
I know channel 4 etc won't like having a competitor with the same shows on their turf, but they do already - torrenters. At least this way, the competitor will just be one that charges a premium that will only be used by big fans of a show. The casual viewer will remain with the free-with-ads channel.
There are several cases where this happens already. Many TV shows/films are licensed to Irish and British TV stations, however many people in Ireland get BBC et al, so these people can see it twice. Everyone is happy with this system.
Thank you for putting forth this sentiment in a succinct and direct way. If it can be done while being borderline illegal why in the world would the stakeholders not want to profit from this revenue stream?
> If money, or geography, or whatever is preventing it, they'll still do the best they can to make sure they don't miss anything.
I live in Romania, and unfortunately for those a little older than me the '80s were pretty hard times, with us being on the wrong side of the Iron Curtain and living under a dictatorship. Nevertheless, people couldn't care less, they were still listening to Radio Free Europe for the latest "decadent" music charts, even though that could have meant their parents losing their State-controlled jobs or even going to prison.
So, yeah, trying to impose stupid barriers (be them real or virtual) has never worked and they'll never do.
This is true - it doesn't make it right (necessarily) but it is true.
The other thing I'd say though is that most people will still operate within their own moral code. In the UK technically platform shifting (transferring music from CD to MP3 for instance) is illegal but that doesn't stop anyone as people see it as a historic oddity and not something which is even remotely morally wrong.
It's not uncommon that the same people who will pirate movies from multi-billion pound businesses will also voluntarily pay when for donationware (or when Radiohead release an album) they could get for nothing.
There are two things we need to look at:
* Availability / technology and restrictions on the ability to obtain media - for instance I torrent because I can't get it legally.
* Why people's moral code does or doesn't allow them to take certain actions?
We're moving increasingly into a trust economy where from a technical point of view people can have what they want and it's almost impossible to stop them.
In that situation your ability to extract payment from them depends on your making a case for why it's reasonable (and indeed beneficial) for them to stump up in a world where the link between what something costs to produce and what it's reasonable to charge for it is a little less obvious than in the days of purely physical product.
I suspect the argument might run that by not doing something about it you encourage others who might have paid to pirate your product ("if he's not paying why should I?").
But this (if it happens at all) will frequently be offset by those who pirate now but might become legitimate clients in the future. People in this category might be students (no cash at the moment but will have in the future) or those pirating just to see if they like something (one of the reasons home taping never killed music - because through compilation tapes you had people doing your marketing for you and finding you new fans). In this instance you not only lose nothing now but you're actually building product and brand awareness.
Certainly I'd say that effort put into stamping down on this might be better spent trying to convert people to real clients in the future.
The only other thing I can think of is whether there's any legal aspect whereby if you fail to defend your IP you lose rights. I believe that this is the case for trademarks but don't know if it extends. If it did it might mean that you had to put up at least a token fight.
Broadly it seems that the best strategy is just that - some relatively low barriers more as a reminder than anything else and then leave it at that.
Clearly. Fortunately, nobody's arguing that it does give you such a right. The question at hand is "what harm does it do?", however, and the GP posits that the answer is "none, so why care?".
Since you are consuming the content, then it must have some value to you, otherwise you wouldn't be consuming it. So you should be paying something for that value.
I fail to see your point, at least in response to me. It would be a perfectly valid point to make to somebody claiming otherwise, but I am not. Is this comment misplaced, or am I just not following properly?
"Honestly if there is no chance that I ever buy something (say because it is not available for sale) what does it matter if I download it?"
Devil's advocate: You spend time consuming the thing you torrented instead of buying something that was legally available to you and consuming that instead. But yes, this is getting to "penumbric emanation"-level of arguing, though I think that the limited nature of your time is something that should be pointed out.
Likewise: If the thing that isn't legally available to you is "the best use of your limited time," then you should accept no substitute and acquire it anyway, as otherwise your limited time is being wasted. No?
If there exists a sensical answer (i.e. not a variation on "because that's the way it is"), it's related to not receiving the advertising with the torrent. You seem to be under the mistaken impression that the show is the product. Unfortunately, just like in any other advertising-driven area, you are the product, and the show is a means to get your eyeballs on the advertising.
(Just to be clear and attempt to curb as many silly replies as possible: Just because it's true doesn't mean that I think it should be. Furthermore, your contrived circumstances wherein you turn the TV on and off at just the right moment to avoid seeing the ads is of no interest to me; besides being basically impossible to do properly, even most people doing other things during the commercials will be exposed to the advertising in some fashion.)
This is so true, and I reckon people in the US have no idea how crippled online access to entertainment is abroad. Moreover, culture is going global, which should be an opportunity, but in reality exacerbates the problem.
Recently, while in Germany, I found Youtube content to be highly restricted. I could not view music videos that I can view in Ireland, and I find this arbitrary restriction oppressive. I would imagine that others do too, and will just avail of whatever other means are available to them. Torrents and such are just filling a vacuum.
In Ireland none of the mainstream music streaming services (Spotify, Rhapsody) are available. Grooveshark is.
I think another way to say this is that you can be a human being and still lack many things: political freedom, money, love, etc. But -- you cannot be a human being without culture and there exists a strong feeling (whether it is correct or incorrect) that the more culture you gain, the more human you are. The desire to engage in your culture is just the same as the desire to be human, and that desire will trump any other factor, which is why -- and I understand that this may be contentious -- the objections to piracy can only be made in very specific circumstances and that in the general case it is an entirely ethical and justifiable form of acquisition.
As an English speaker in Germany I was particularly interested in using things like iTunes (which is available here) to access TV.
What do you know, it is exclusively German language content. And it is also only released when it airs in Germany rather than when it first airs in the US or the UK.
Where is the logic there? If I wanted to get German language TV when it airs on TV, I would just watch TV.
I'm from germany too and I don't mind spending money on movies, TV shows and music at all. However my requirements are that the film is in english and music is lossless. Turns out you need a lot of patience if you don't want to use bittorrent.
I'm sorry but waiting for the international bluray release is not an option - i probably forgot about the movie by the time. Lossless audio stores with a good selection are even harder to find - I ran across several albums that "weren't available in your country". Really? Do you really want me to turn to my what.cd account? This is by far the most convenient "music store" and that fact should be a shame to the music industry. Recently i noticed a french store named Qobuz, with a great selection of formats (flac, alac, aiff, 24 or 16 bit) and music (indie and popular) - Unfortunately they are not allowed to sell any album in any country either, but you might get lucky there. And those are just stores that sell music - Don't get me started on streaming and locker solutions.
So please, dear content industry, as long as a private torrent tracker run by a handful of enthusiasts is, in terms of selection, audio quality, compatibility, availability and even catalog management or recommandations, a better experience than official and legit stores, don't complain to me about piracy.
The whole system makes eminent sense. Content that has been permitted by the owner is released in your country, when the owner permits. If you are resort to piracy because of this, you are still stealing.
Content that has been permitted by the owner is released in your country, when the owner permits.
There is no legal means for someone to restrict where and when I can and cannot choose to view or use content I own, as much as they would love to think so. And they indeed love to think so: I've actually seen companies claim that it is illegal to use the software they sell outside of the country they sell it in.
If a movie by company X is released in country A but not country B, company X cannot prevent me from watching their movie in country B. I may have to go out of my way to import a copy, but there is nothing illegal about doing so (at least not under the laws of typical Western countries).
If this wasn't true, it would basically be illegal to take any sort of media-carrying device (laptop, iPod, etc) outside of the country where you bought the relevant media.
And so you can import it, assuming your country's laws permit.
But if you want the content owner to sell it to you directly, you'll have to wait for them want to do so. The reasons for them not wanting to do so could include laws, expenses, or other craziness that you aren't aware of.
Believe it or not, we experience the same crap here in the US in regards to foreign stuff. BBC shows are really popular here, but are usually delayed at best. Trying to find foreign-language stuff is almost impossible.
So while I share your pain, I also know that there's more to it than it might appear at first glance.
> But if you want the content owner to sell it to you directly, you'll have to wait for them want to do so.
.. or use BitTorrent!
If the content owner refuses to sell the content to someone, then that person isn't depriving them of any income by pirating it. If an activity harms no-one, then it can't be immoral to do it. If the law says otherwise, it's a bad law.
The content owner would argue something along the lines that you're depriving them the opportunity to have a market to sell that show to a distributor (TV channel, DVD wholesaler, etc) in your area.
The potential value of any distribution deal falls as the original need is satisfied via the use of unauthorized distribution methods.
Having said that, I don't feel particularly bad about downloading stuff that's never released in my market.
If someone refuses to sell you the Mona Lisa for the price you want, it's okay to copy it?
Because let's be honest, they aren't just refusing to sell the TV episode to you... They're refusing to sell it at market rates. If you offered them a million dollars for the latest episode of XYZ show, they'd make it happen on your schedule.
What you're saying is that if you can't have it your way, it's perfectly ethical to just take it. And I can't agree with that.
It's a bit more than that because content consumption has become a large part of 'our' culture. So this encroaches more and more into the realm of restricting culture to the benefit of business.
A couple of points:
1. When you (content companies) spend exorbitant amounts of money on advertising/PR in an attempt to whip up a frenzy around consumption of your content, then don't act surprised when people mimic hard-drug addicts and lying,cheat,steal,etc just to be able to consume that content when they are prevented from consuming it otherwise. You're basically spending a lot of time trying to increase demand for your product. Now you've got so much demand that people are finding 'alternative' ways to obtain your product because you are unwilling or unable to provide a more legit avenue for them to obtain it.
2. The large and wide success of large content companies has brought content consumption (especially for particular brands) into the realm of popular culture. As the world becomes smaller and smaller due to the globalization effects of the Internet (amongst other things), the idea that you can easily divide people up by who is or isn't allowed to participate in that culture (and expect people to just abide by those proclamations) is foolish.
In Denmark they passed a law some years ago making it illegal for shops to import region 1 DVDs to resell. And I doubt we're the only country with laws like that.
> I've actually seen companies claim that it is illegal to use the software they sell outside of the country they sell it in.
This isn't directly relevant to copyright, but there are indeed export controls on some technologies to prevent them from leaving the country and it is illegal to export them.
Releasing content per country is simply a carry over from the broadcast days where radio signals or cables are naturally constrained by geography. In the internet era it makes no sense either.
Now I don't pirate, as I am on a WAN (plus I do distance learning through a UK University and have to use their proxy server so iPlayer works for me too) and don't seem to be discriminated against by Hulu, or some other sites (Hulu could be breaking some laws though, by allowing me to see the content, or more likely just breaking a license agreement).
Even Germans I know are encouraged to use proxies (is that really pirating?) because they want their shows when they are released, not months later, and they don't necessarily want them overdubbed into German. The system encourages this, by thinking the internet can be divided up into countries like a broadcast signal.
It always amazes me that people who consider it an ethical issue by equating copyright infringement with "stealing", have no ethical problem with the fact that copyright law is being blatantly abused to achieve exactly the opposite of what it was intended to do, i.e. maximizing the distribution of original work.
Copyright laws exist to serve society, not just a handful of corporations.
Legally speaking you are correct but that is irrelevant to any serious discussion on the topic.
Laws should be the strictest manifestation of societies expectations. This is clearly not the case here, most people consider this kind of privacy to be about as bad as crossing the street at a red light.
As long as expectations don't change and they clearly won't, people will continue to resort to piracy as long as it is the most convenient way to fulfill their needs.
If people could easily buy music in a lossless format and videos without artificial geographical restrictions at a reasonable price, I seriously doubt that piracy would still be such a "serious" problem.
I'm not a total fanatic, I have no problem with DRM systems if they make sense for e.g. renting movies. I buy all my games via Steam which I consider an awesome platform. However piracy is still the most convenient way to get music/videos quickly in (most of) Europe and it seems very clear who is to blame for that.
There's no point in rehashing the semantic argument; it's still theft in the eyes of the law, and while renaming it may help assuage your conscience, it doesn't really add much to the argument.
The law was written way before there was possible to make an exact copy of something while leaving the original intact and way before the cost of such act is so close to zero than even those who have no money to buy original still are able to make the copy.
One can apply the same laws, but doing so is stretching them too much.
Consider the possibility of you making exact copy of a car just by pressing a button on some device. Let's say the neighbor has a car you like and you have no money to buy such a car. You press the button and you get the copy of the car. Did you steal it from your neighbor? No, he still has his. Did you steal it from the manufacturer? Well, some may say that, because you got something that they produce without paying them, but: a) you'd never buy that car from them anyway (see condition #2), b) they still got all the money for the cars they produced, there is not a single missing.
So, whom did you steal the car from?
No consider more realistic scenario: I torrent the movie. You may call this a theft.
Now slightly modified scenario: I buy the DVD on amazon.com, but while it's shipping I torrent the same movie and watch it. Is it still a theft?
Or if I torrent the movie first, like it a lot, go to see it in cinema, then go to see the second time with my wife, and to top all that I also buy a DVD? How about now, is it still the theft?
My point is: there is a real difference between an illegal copy and a theft, not just some semantics.
If I torrent something "getting for free" is never the reason to do that. The reasons are either availability or convenience. If there was a way to buy movies in digital format (I cannot even buy music on iTunes in my country, only apps) I'd spend a lot more money on them. App Store and Mac App store are the good indicator of that.
You have some interesting points and possible scenarios there which seem near altruistic in their style.
What if we consider what I'll deem the 'general public' when THEY download movies, music and videogames? Is their mindset as enlightened as you, myself and others on HN and similar places?
When someone posts on Facebook or whatever the equivalent is (Myspace, ICQ or whatever) for that time period "How do I use x" with x being torrents, Napster or whatever, they seem for the most part to simply want to get something without paying for it.
I can think back then and being the 'computer guy' I'd get asked how to use Kazaa or whatever was popular, right now it's torrents. Why did they want to know? Because they wanted to get something without paying for it and technology simply streamlined that ancient human desire of wanting something for nothing which desire is one of the bases that man ever once stole.
In my younger days I would pirate much though nowadays I have essentially stopped. I would once play the newest games whether I was able to pay for them or not, now I go without, for the time being, like with Portal 2 - I haven't played it yet and I guess I won't till I buy it though I could easily pirate it. Am I 'missing out'? Apparently.. meh. I did recently buy Sparrow, the email client, and it is excellent.
But hey, we all know Linux users are willing to give billions of dollars for good software - the Humble Bundle has proved that. ;)
The law has nothing to do with "making a copy" or "leaving the original intact."
Wiring into the neighborhood cable-tv network without paying is an example of "theft of services", as is sneaking into a movie theater.
Making an illegal copy still takes money out of somebody's pocket. Saying that you wouldn't (or couldn't) have bought the product makes no difference-- the demand is still being alleviated, and non-zero.
I do not take money out of anybody’s pocket when I’m pirating something I can not and will never be able to buy. (Reality is never quite that clear cut but what you are saying is, strictly speaking, not true.)
b) they still got all the money for the cars
they produced, there is not a single missing
It doesn't work like that - in the event of a magical button that can replicate a car, all the cars they'll be able to produce and sell is exactly 1.
In such an event the car maker won't be able to recuperate its sunk costs, and the writing would be clearly on the wall, so such a magical car will never be produced, unless there's legislation in place that prevents people from giving away free cars.
In software or creative endeavorers, where the sunk cost is mostly measured in time spent on the task, there are always people willing to give away their work for free (having other incentives than money). Internet also makes it easier to find other people with the same interests and collaborate.
But make no mistake about it - hobbyists will never be able to create something like an Audi, or an Avatar or an Adobe Photoshop for that matter (yes, I'm a happy GIMP user, it ain't and never will be on the same level as Photoshop).
I buy the DVD on amazon.com, but while it's
shipping I torrent the same movie and watch it.
Is it still a theft?
Yes and No, depending on the perspective - No because you already payed for the privilege of watching it, Yes because torrents are usually of poor quality, which may make you give bad reviews to people whom would otherwise watch it themselves.
Imagine you're Da Vinci, and I'm displaying a copy of Gioconda in my museum, half the size, with the hue changed, with less details and cropped, saying to people that that's just like the original Gioconda ... after all the hard work you've put, I'd imagine you'd get upset too.
On the other hand it isn't right for people to get charged multiple times for the same movie. So I guess piracy itself is as morally-wrong as these ripoffs.
If I torrent something "getting for free"
is never the reason to do that.
IMHO, I'm also torrenting stuff because I want to check out what I'm buying ... people should really learn to make better demo versions and price their stuff according to the provided value.
Personally I'm sick of bad movies that lured me to see them because of a fancy trailer that exhibited non-representative traits of the movie.
Also for software, 30 days valuation periods are not enough for complex software like Office or Photoshop. Also, software like Photoshop Elements should be free of charge, or you should get some sort of refund when buying Photoshop.
Your comment doesn't follow from mine because I touched on both (a) quality and (b) legislature that makes distribution or possession of copies illegal.
This is an economy of scarcity -- people tend to buy the cheapest product that fulfills their needs. Those needs many-times include not getting sued to oblivion and risk huge penalties.
I was going to reply with all the legal stuff on TPB, but I wanted to point out that even the biggest-budget and most popular content can survive even if it's available for free. There are a lot of producers who distribute primarily on P2P and it doesn't seem to be any harder for them to make money. I think http://vodo.net/ is the biggest example that comes to mind right now, and individual artists like http://www.pronobozo.com/ are doing OK on their own as well.
You're touching on alternative business-models. Alternative as in different than creating shit then selling it directly ... a general business model that has worked since money where invented.
And the problem with these business models is that they aren't general enough (working on a case by case basis) and don't even survive the onslaught of technological evolution.
Music artists can make money from concerts (they always did). But in case you haven't noticed, theaters are in big trouble, artists many times having to seek out employment in sitcoms/trashy TV shows to make a living. One month ago I also watched an opera show in 3D with surround sound ... it was like being there and it will only get better.
Yes, you can find artists that do well by riding the Internet wave / the freemium business model. That doesn't mean it works on a bigger scale or that it will continue to work 5 years from now.
Creating shit and selling it if it provides value is the only sustainable and general business-model. Society would be worse without it, unless you're talking about getting rid of money altogether.
These days 720p torrents are the norm if something is at the point where you can buy the DVD, mainstream stuff anyway. So I doubt your going to really be getting something of lower (drastically at least) quality.
"The law was written way before there was possible to make an exact copy of something while leaving the original intact and way before the cost of such act is so close to zero than even those who have no money to buy original still are able to make the copy."
Piracy is a form of counterfeiting, not stealing.
"and to top all that I also buy a DVD? How about now, is it still the theft?"
Because most people who pirate don't do this.
"My point is: there is a real difference between an illegal copy and a theft, not just some semantics."
Well, it still has destroyed these industries. Over time, with more and more piracy available, people are going to feel that they should be getting this content for free. The market value will go down, and it will become increasingly difficult to make any money at all. With no money in an industry, that industry will most likely die.
The value of most digital goods are in the minds of the people that want to purchase it (similar to currency or a service). When this is devalued because of piracy, I don't know if I would necessarily call it 'theft', but it's still in the same family. The owners are losing money because of your actions. It's worse than theft because it's not like you can just buy another one. It devalues the entire product, forever.
"If I torrent something "getting for free" is never the reason to do that. The reasons are either availability or convenience. If there was a way to buy movies in digital format (I cannot even buy music on iTunes in my country, only apps) I'd spend a lot more money on them. App Store and Mac App store are the good indicator of that."
Right. Just like music? I've heard all these excuses before. 10 years ago, when Napster came out, the people that were justifying piracy came up with all these excuses too: They wanted to be able to "try before buying", cheap music, and to put a stop to "artists getting screwed".
Now, there are services like last.fm and pandora, music is cheap (99c or less is pretty damn cheap for a song), and artists don't need to be on a label to succeed (social networking FTW). Has piracy stopped? No, there are a new set of excuses and piracy is worse than ever.
I don't think it will ever stop. There will always be a new set of excuses to legitimize selfishness.
No, the industries have destroyed themselves by letting piracy go out of hand when they could have done something about the root causes of piracy. Instead, they have focused their efforts on treating the symptoms and not the disease.
What can they do now? They can make it available, convenient and priced reasonably. Piracy may never go away but giving people an option between illegal and legal means of obtaining content can improve their chances of making money.
Clearly there is a point to rehashing the argument as long as you're pointing to a wikipedia page on theft of services and claiming that bitorrenting a copy of a TV show is the same thing. Clearly they're not. Hacking a cable box to access channels without paying for them might be, but if you're completely routing around their service, in part because they don't actually provide what you want (e.g. a show in your language), then you're clearly not stealing it.
if you're completely routing around their service, in part because they don't actually provide what you want (e.g. a show in your language), then you're clearly not stealing it.
Huh? That's a completely specious claim.
The owner of the rights to the TV show may not be offering the product in your market--yet. The may choose to do so at some point in the future. Whether they do or not, it has no bearing on the fact that you are consuming their product (and infringing on their rights) without paying.
Your argument is essentially saying that it isn't theft of services if a 15-year-old sneaks into an R-rated movie, because the theater won't sell them a ticket.
No, it would be theft of services if they sneak into a theatre. On the other hand, if they stay at home and watch a bootleg DVD they bought from a criminal because they were refused admission due to their age, or because they want to watch films the cinema doesn't show, then it's no longer "theft of services", since they are no longer taking up a seat in the cinema. The "service" that is stolen is not the film itself but the delivery mechanism, much as you can steal a DVD from a shop.
You are right, it‘s a semantic argument (I think you are not at all right in claiming that copyright infringement is theft of services, the linked Wikipedia article certainly doesn’t support that claim) but I do think it’s important to rehash it.
The legislator has decided to not treat copyright infringement like theft. Copyright is not the same as property (so says the law), it would be wrong to act as though there is some sort of consensus in society that both are somehow equivalent. The law is not everything and the law might be wrong (there might be good reasons to treat both the same) but it is disingenuous to act as though there is not at least a controversy.
Yes, it's "stealing" something that has zero marginal cost and is not for sale. I think the world has more important problems than this, for instance, teaching ants to respect traffic rules ;-)
Although that might be legally correct, it will not stop people rating, and any tv/film company that bases it's online strategy on that theory will continue to fail and miss opportunities.
And that's why the European counterparts of MAFIAA shouldn't be able to appeal to lost sales in many of these countries because don't have any fucking sales to lose.
I've long advocated a fair-use rule that where a copyrighted work in some format isn't readily for sale in some geographical area, then people in that area should have the legal right to produce a copy of it in that format for themselves. The format is relevant because if people want CDs or uncompressed FLAC albums but they can only buy a lousy DRM-ridden 128Kbit/s MP3 instead, it shouldn't count.
Same goes with old music or films: if nobody's selling, people have the legal right to copy. If the copyright holder decides to start selling again, the legal right to copy goes away. Then the longevity of a copyright would matter much less.
Indeed. I'd add to that that paying 15 Euro for a BluRay may be perfectly acceptable in the Western world, but a huge budget hit in the rest of the world.
The buy 'physical media via the Internet' argument doesn't fly there either.
Right, and a 250k Lamborghini is also a huge budget hit for me in the West. Which is why I drive a shitty Citroen.
I'm sick and tired of the entitled whining. Nobody owes you the right to listen to the latest album of whoever is at the top of the charts; in fact, nobody owes you anything but what they agreed on. The proposition is very clear: there are people who create something. They give it to you, on the condition that you pay for it. They may not want to offer it to you because it's too hard to do business in your country. If you don't agree to their terms, or their decision not to offer you their stuff, that still doesn't give you the right to just take whatever it is they're offering from another source.
Feel free to find other people who make things you want and offer it at terms you accept; or petition people to offer things at a cheaper price; or whatever. But taking things from creators against their wishes is not only criminal but also immoral.
(Maybe you still do it, even if it's criminal and immoral. That's a personal decision. But then just acknowledge it for what it is and don't try to weasel yourself out of the moral responsibility).
I gather from your comments that your moral code depends heavily on the rule of law. Many people don't base their moral code very heavily on the laws currently on the books, except as far as those laws reflect the original intent of law - to make the world a better place to live overall. It's generally agreed upon that stealing physical goods, murdering, etc. make the world a more unruly, unpleasant, inefficient, discouraging place for meek, cooperative people. Filesharing doesn't fall into the same league in those terms, so many don't really believe it's immoral, especially if one wasn't going to buy those files if there was no alternative. In that case, it's like happiness created from nothing. This other moral code makes the morality question a good bit murkier.
If filesharing undermines the creators to the point where they stop creating, will the world be a better place? In case you haven't noticed, we've had YouTube for years but the home-made movies are not on the same level as the ones produced by the major studies. Most indy bands are good, but can't reach their full potential without financial support. Filesharing undermines that whole system, especially because it would be near technically impossible to prevent something from being shared in all countries except those where the work is not being sold.
Good question, but the more important one is whether filesharing is doing that. This is where the question of whether someone would have bought something otherwise or not comes in.
Anecdotally, most of the people I know who fileshare just consume more now than they did, in a wider variety. Some of them have stopped buying stuff, but most of them haven't, and many went to Hulu, iTunes, Grooveshark, Pandora, etc. as soon as those became a good enough alternative.
You don't need to prevent it completely, that's putting your eyes on the wrong goal (though this seems to be the tack that they're taking). You just need to make the alternative as easy or easier and inexpensive enough to not think too much about if you're moderately well off. It's a stupid company that tries to force their market to act in the way they want it to, rather than finding a way to cater to them.
The morality is quite different to physical goods. Infringement is a malum prohibitum not a malum in se.
Copying is not immoral in itself. Quite the opposite: it is something we would want to encourage.
It can only really be immoral in so far as the law is moral. And the law is only moral in that it serves an economic purpose -- that is, to be clear, it serves us overall. The law is not there to 'protect' or benefit copyright 'owners', they are the means not the end.
So is it serving us overall to restrict access to goods where there is no need to? to charge more than can be afforded, yet the cost of supply is negligible?
If the intrinsic act is moral, and the law obstructing it is in some case seemingly immoral, it is easy to support doing the act anyway.
Not sure I agree. The two mala can overlap; in the realm of unauthorized copying, I think that they sometimes, but not always, do. It's complicated.
What's clear, though, and where I'm pretty sure we'd agree, is that rhetoric conflating unauthorized copying with traditional forms of stealing doesn't stand up to much scrutiny. It isn't at all like taking somebody's food or jumping out of a taxi without paying.
> The two mala can overlap; in the realm of unauthorized copying, I think that they sometimes, but not always, do
How?
You are taking a more cautious view than me, which is maybe more prudent and respectable. But I would be interested to hear how copying can be intrinsically harmful . . . the basic problem is that it is by definition physically separate, so for there to be any effect communicated at all requires some other system. Is there a good counter-argument or -example?
If someone cannot afford a movie, downloading does not equate to a lost sale. It does not hurt any person involved with the creation of that movie. It can possibly make the downloader a bit happier. Therefore I think that, in this case, downloading perfectly moral.
Is stealing a bike not immoral until the owner of the bike notices it? Or until he misses it? Let's say he has a bike that he never uses, and never will. Is it not immoral to steal that bike?
If you really mean what you say and understand the implications, I am disturbed by your ethics. I'm usually disturbed by utilitarians - they're the ones who end up saying 'torturing a couple of terrorists is morally OK when it means that we can save the lives of 50 innocent civilians'.
Well, you have started upon just the pertinent path, so let us consider the conclusion.
Would it be immoral to do something 'to' someone, when it has no effect on them at all? Hmmm, that seems rather difficult to find any immorality in -- after all, any moral concern must eventually bottom out on some actual effect -- deontological or consequentialist.
If all that can be said is that it would be 'spiritually' wrong or 'god' decrees it to be wrong, or merely that 'we' have decided it is wrong, that is unlikely to satisfy anyone rational.
What can be done to someone that has no effect on them at all? Is there actually something being done then? I'm not understanding the situation. If you're asking if acts can be moral or immoral even if they have no consequences, then the answer is yes, they can.
Objective morality doesn't have to be derived from god or a spiritual being, or feeling; there can be objective morality that we deduce, or interpret or find, depending on how you look at it, through reason. From a limited set of axiom (which I referred to in another post in this thread), we can derive objective morality. The problem with morality is epistemological, not about its nature. We just don't know yet how to deduce what is moral in some circumstances. Maybe we will some day, we'll see; but that morality is subjective seems to be a commonly held belief but one that usually doesn't stand up long when one examines the consequences. When enough people think that it is morally OK to execute all those with hair growing out of their ears, is it? No it's not, and it never is. It's not because it violates the right to life of those people (leaving aside issues of death penalty etc).
People often argue to me 'but if there are no people, there is no morality, so morality has to be subjective' (actually someone said that to me last week right after saying how her Christianity was such an important part of her identity - I think she didn't quite get the memo on the nature of morality in her church, but I digress). My point is that morality always exists; it's like the fundamentals of mathematics or the laws of nature. Would Pythagoras's theorem hold even if there would never have existed humans who formulated it? Of course it would.
> If you're asking if acts can be moral or immoral even if they have no consequences, then the answer is yes, they can.
If you are going to make a rule -- i.e. that restricts people in the real world -- yet it has no purpose in real-world effect, why on earth should anyone be interested in agreeing to it?
"We are not allowed to go out in the sun on wednesdays. Why? Because it has been unimpeachably objectively derived from the 'axioms of morality'!" Anyone with any sense will just go elsewhere.
Ultimately, one has to be sensible with philosophy.
> It's not because it violates the right to life of those people
And why is it wrong to violate right to life? Because it has a real harmful effect. This is the point: all these rules come down to actual effects. If it were possible to remove the harmful part (maybe like killing someone in Quake Live), such rules would lose their meaning or worth. What really counts in moral evaluation is the real-world effect.
Don't confuse copyright infringement, aka. pirating, to stealing. You may well believe that they are morally the same thing, but they are not legally the same thing.
Theft has existed as long as man, copyright infringement was invented about 100 years ago. copyright infringement varies wildly in penalties. In some countries it is a serious offense, in others it is legal.
I'm a lawyer, thank you very much, I know perfectly well about the difference, and this is another thing I'm sick and tired of - people making minute semantic arguments that have nothing to do with the substance of the matter. Note that nowhere I equated piracy with stealing, exactly because I know that when I do somebody will come with this remark.
While we're nitpicking, your second sentence contradicts itself - if copyright infringement is legal, it's not infringement any more.
Also you're wrong about the history of copyright and intellectual property. Although not named as such and part of a broader concept of exclusive rights on information, guilds in Medieval times had privileges granted to them that would nowadays be called, amongst others, copyright. You're trying to make it sound as if copyright is something that was just made up out of thin air 100 years ago and that it has no relationship to physical property law at all; that argument is misleading as the actual history and relationship is much more nuanced.
Ah that might explain why your moral code seems to draw from legality.
It's not nitpicking to separate theft from copyright infringement - they have very different effects on the owner, and to conflate the two is basically spreading FUD to confuse the argument. They should not be treated the same way by the law, despite what the rightsholders might like.
Oh no it doesn't, if anything it just makes that I have been confronted with and thought about the orthogonality between 'legal' and 'moral' more than 'average' (I hate to use this phrase because it makes it sound like I'm arguing from authority there - I'm not) and I am highly aware of the difference. The reason I didn't respond to the post above saying a similar thing is that it's very boring to discuss personal opinions and circumstances that lead to them; and if personal opinions of certain people are interesting, I'm not one of those people. Rest assured though that I do not conflate the two, nor derive one from the other.
The matter is that morality is based on a small set of axioms - personal sovereignty, strong property rights, and the moral binding power of contracts (not in the legal sense - in the sense that if two people agree to something, they are morally bound to following through on those commitments). Intellectual property is just as much property as physical property is; without going into too much detail here, it quite naturally follows from more traditional, physical property ideas like Locke's labor theory. To simplify (so disregarding subordinate issues like ownership of ownership of base products, work-for-hire etc), when a person puts his efforts into creating something, he owns it, regardless if that what he creates is physical or not. It's painfully obvious and intuitive; if not (to use a very crude argument), then why does CC with attribution even exist? Most everybody instinctively recognizes this concept, and no sophistic constructs about maximum social utility or information as an oppression mechanism (cough crazy man Stallman cough) can do away with that.
Anyway, I'm not saying intellectual property and 'regular' property rights should be treated the same under the law; there are valid technical and conceptual reasons to separate them. That's not the issue I contend; what I contend is the pervasive cognitive dissonance in the 'geek' community (of which, to be clear, I am part) that somehow they should have the right to download whatever they want because there is at the moment no effective way for creators to enforce their will on what happens to their creations.
what I contend is the pervasive cognitive dissonance in the 'geek' community (of which, to be clear, I am part) that somehow they should have the right to download whatever they want because there is at the moment no effective way for creators to enforce their will on what happens to their creations.
For now, I hope we could reserve IP for Internet Protocol only.
I think the problem is that there are any rights involved at all. To be precise, I think nobody should have a right to download whatever they want but I also think that nobody should have a right to control copying either! They both seem ill-wrong, somehow.
I don't think we can possibly formulate our world based on rights. Going to the extreme, everyone has the theoretical right to not become killed and yet lots of people end up killed all the time by individuals, institutions and nations of much varying moral capacity and the world still goes around. So rights seem to be philosophical ideals: lots of should-nots and ought-not-to's but the actuality often doesn't reflect the rights at all. More so, often worst things happen when we try to be the judges of these rights ourselves.
I feel that there's no such thing as intellectual property. I don't know why exactly but I just know things are going terribly wrong with it. One indicator is the copying vs. stealing argument: we have lots of collective experience about the latter while the former has never been considered a major problem until the last few decades.
We have only recently built a commercial mechanism that allows certain individuals in a minority to make huge amounts of money by the music and movies they create, and keeps the rest a.k.a. the majority out of the picture, except for paying for that all. This is a new thing alltogether and concerns only a fraction of the whole population so it's funny to see the "problem" having grown out of proportions.
Imagine you've made up a song in the morning and you sing it aloud when you go outdoors gardening. Somebody walks by the street, hears the song, learns it and starts singing it along the street. All neighbours learn the song from him and soon the whole block is singing that song. Somebody will grab their guitar and go to the town marketplace to sing that song to everyone else, and he receives some money from it when people drop coins into his hat.
Is that a collateral wrongdoing going on there or just something that happens and nobody can't control? Major criminal activity or people having fun? Was the song writer deprived of lost sales or potential income by this ruthless copying? What if he never wanted any money? How could the other people know that? How could the song writer protect his intellectual property: by never singing his songs? What if he writes his songs out of love for music instead? Can we assume he did? What if he didn't care about it at first but becomes greedy and wants money from all his neighbours the next day, does he have a right to ask that money?
Who knows. Nobody knows.
The whole intellectual property thing is far from a clear-cut case and I consider it an open question at worst and a non-issue at best.
> Intellectual property is just as much property as physical property is
That is wrong. And it is easy to see there must be a problem with it. If you copy my stuff, you benefit and I am unaffected. If I in return copy your stuff, we both lose nothing and end up with twice as much as we started with. That does not sound like taking property at all, in fact it sounds good!
That really ought to be enough to seriously undermine the illusion of IP . . .
First ask: why do we have property? which is as much as to ask: why is it moral? Property is not an axiom of morality, it must be justified. Even more clearly so with IP, since it invents a kind of restriction where there is none in physical fact.
Property is moral because it gives a group/community as a whole a good way of managing things. Property is good not because it gives to someone what is 'theirs', but because as a whole system, in aggregate, it is good for all.
(If we want a rational principal of morality, it is universalisation. Morals are codes of cooperation. They are justified as to how they affect some group. That is what is distinctive in moral rules: they are not rules for individual purpose, they are rules for all (if they do not suit all, why should all consent to them?).)
The Lockean proposition of copyright really only establishes attribution: it 'attaches' a particular thing to a particular creator/author.
But attribution alone does not justify anything much. I may have made a shovel, but that does not then give me a right to dig anyone and everyone's garden with it. Attribution of authorship is merely the 'location' of some possible rights; it is insufficient to set the limits of those rights on its own.
Locke understood this, which is why, when we look at the source of this argument, we find he clearly included the condition of "at least where there is enough, and as good, left in common for others". For a rule to be moral it must make sense more widely than for its primary participant. It must work overall for everyone. That is what sets the limits to rights.
'Abstract goods' (i.e. the subjects of copyright) are nonrival. They behave fundamentally differently to material things. Use by one person does not deny another. It means the tacit assumption that some restriction similar to normal property is implied immediately falters. And that puts an end to the Lockean 'argument'.
And if even that is not enough, reconsider from your own view: those proposed 'axioms' of morality. Either personal sovereignty and property rights are equal or, more likely, personal sovereignty has precedence. Well, IP imposes a direct physical restriction on others' personal freedom: telling someone they cannot copy something is telling them they cannot do as they please with themselves and their own property (and even though the IP 'owner' may be completely unaffected). Now either you have a deep conflict in those axioms or, more reasonably, IP must be overruled.
The only reasonable argument for IP is the orthodox economic one of supporting and sustaining a market. This is a pragmatic moral argument: one that is a matter of evidence and practicality, not of any kind of 'natural right'.
Ok, that's one part of property - it cant be copied. Been covered to death.
The other part is, people descended from apes have territorial instincts. This drives them to all sorts of behaviors. Some are very useful behaviors. Like creating things to be useful, yes, but also to impress others, create a reputation, gain value in the eyes of society.
If I create something like software, I still want it to be mine. Because that, in part, motivates the creation. Never mind abstract political arguments, you take my software for yourself without any acknowledgment to me, I get pissed. And probably stop creating it, go back to making shovels. Or at least stop showing it to you, since that just gets it appropriated for whatever you want, instead of what I want.
I don't work in the movie industry, which is its own can of worms since that product is Designed to be shared. I write software for particular purposes. And as it stands, I won't share it with anyone unless they properly pay for/acknowledge my contribution. Certainly not with folks with goofy arguments like "since you can't keep me from taking it, its mine!" Certainly not them.
There are so many wrongs in your argument that I have no option but to fall back to the internet pedant's way of arguing, which is to respond point by point, for which my apologies.
"If you copy my stuff, you benefit and I am unaffected. <etc>"
If something is property or not, is irrelevant to what happens when it is copied. What makes something property are the natural rights of the creator, in short - that ownership is justified through the labor of the body, over which the individual has ownership by axiom and the fruits of which are also the property of that individual.
"Property is moral because it gives a group/community as a whole a good way of managing things."
No it is not, these 'greater good' theories are nonsense. Rights exist independent of their social context. Morality isn't just a tool to organize society, it exists irrespective of how people 'feel' about it or even whether there are people at all.
"Locke understood this, which is why, when we look at the source of this argument, we find he clearly included the condition of "at least where there is enough, and as good, left in common for others"."
Right, and this is where intellectual property is even 'more' or 'easier' to see as property than 'physical' property. One man's idea does not preclude another from making his own; there is no scarcity of ideas or expressions. So there is no reason to not make an expression the exclusive property of the author; nobody else is limited in their freedoms because if the original creator would not have made the expression, it wouldn't have existed in the first place. I don't see how you're supporting your argument with this part.
"Well, IP imposes a direct physical restriction on others' personal freedom: telling someone they cannot copy something is telling them they cannot do as they please with themselves and their own property "
Yes this is faulty reasoning that I've had to put to bed several times here on HN, but I can't find my previous posts so I'll repeat. Freedom to do something only goes so far as long as that something doesn't infringe on someone else's freedom; of course my right to not be tortured infringes on your freedom to torture me. In other words, one freedom is always the other side of the coin of the prohibition of someone else to infringe on that freedom. I don't see how you can reasonably argue that freedom doesn't exist, because its very nature is that it is a protection against someone else's actions (those that infringe on the freedom being protected).
Besides, in your specific example it's not even telling others what they can do with their property; it's telling others (or rather, putting conditions on that that person can then choose to accept or reject) what to do with your property.
"The only reasonable argument for IP is the orthodox economic one of supporting and sustaining a market."
No it is not, and that's my whole point. For someone to own the expression of his or her ideas is perfectly reasonable and broadly accepted; and not (only) for utilitarian reasons, but also for fundamental moral ownership reasons. Which is why so many people feel wronged when a picture they took is used by someone else without attribution - a very common pattern, judging from the amount of blog posts about it.
Expressions of ideas represent the work of a creator just as much as a vase made by a pottery maker represents the work of that maker, and just like that maker is entitled to the ownership of the result of his labor, and any potential economic benefit he can gain from it, so are the creators and expressors (I think I'm just making up that word) of ideas. It's not because there are no practical ways of enforcing that ownership that the moral fundamentals change.
In all this you are glossing over what ownership really means (whatever that might be), and how that particular meaning is justified. It is inadequate to simply proclaim it all as some axiom. You need to explain it rationally.
Let us assume mixing of labour gives ownership. Does that mean the owner can demand everyone pay not just when buying the product, but every time they use it? or every time their descendants use it? or every time they merely think of it? That surely sounds absurd. But what makes that absurd and not lesser rights? Aren't they all fruits of the original labour? Wouldn't they all offer economic benefit to the creator? How are the limits set to what rights the creator should be given?
You speak of the objectiveness and deducibility of moral rules. That is fine. So deduce the rightness of payment-for-copies, as opposed to the wrongness of payment-for-thoughts etc..
Somehow you are really going to need to refer to the real-world and its effects on people. What else is more fundamental? and that people really care about? And if you are to stay within any kind of bounds of normal ethics, any rules must be somehow general or universalisable -- that is what makes a rule ethical.
(A Kantian demonstration of the immorality of lying really depends on two things: universalisation of lying as a rule, and the substance of what lying does. Something is found contradictory in general -- what? the actual effective features concerned.)
Just look at the facts of reality. IP imposes restrictions on a beneficial abundance (copyability), where there is no intrinsic need. It is logically possible to compensate people for labour with no restriction on copies. And if you are not interested in the actual effects, why propose rules that have actual effects? Why not simply say that creations are owned in principle, but that everyone need only acknowledge that, and not in any way change their behaviour? Real rules need real justifications.
One of my mottos is that it is far easier to change yourself than it is to change the world, even if you've done nothing wrong yourself.
Trying to change everybody to live by that code is quite a bit harder than to adapt to the situation we're in (and, arguably, that kind of draconian view created in the first place).
There is no need to rationalize why you use Bittorrent, there is no argument to win and nothing to defend.
It's not stealing, it's not not stealing it's just a fact that people will continue to use bittorrents as long as there is too much friction to get it legally.
Bittorrent will be around as long as the content owners insist on localizing copyright and not offering their content to a globally oriented customer base.
You can use bittorrent to download and watch a film that's been released on DVD. This deprives the content created of a sale/hire/watch on demand, so in theory they lose out on revenue.
You can also use bittorrent to download and watch a TV show that was broadcast in another country the night before and that will never be shown on your country's TV network. Think about NBC or Comedy Central - 30 Rock and Colbert aren't going to be broadcast in the UK any time soon, and their content owners refuse to let international users watch online. Torrenting this content is therefore a victimless crime.
Wouldn't surprise me either if the ones torrenting end up spending more money on the show that those who catch is casually when it finally does get aired.
I've been to concerts where the artist is touring Australia for the first time and hasn't ever done any Australia specific marketing and they manage to fill out venues. Doubt that would have happened before file sharing.
Without a doubt - look at a band like Tool. I don't mind saying that I torrented every one of their albums. Grew to love them, bought the CDs, went to a dozen of their concerts, spent at least £50 on merchandise over the years.
Legally yes you are right. Philosophically or morally I believe that copyright is based on a premise that is no longer the case.
I recently saw the Product Manager from Spotify give a presentation.
In it he said that spotify users are much more likely to listen to of the charts music when they use spotify. I think he said something like 60 or 80% of the music listened too wasn't chart music.
I seem to remember similar findings with netflix.
In other words when people have to pay for a CD or a DVD they will make the safe choice. But the second there are other options their patterns are different.
In my world at least. There is absolutely nothing philosophically or morally that dictates that it's a right to get paid for something that you can produce once and then mass distribute more or less freely.
It's an opportunity.
The movie industry has no problem replacing jobs previously held by people with machines. They have no problem arguing that people who used to do models with physical materials are just not effective enough. The movie and music industry have no problem distributing their content digitally, laying off thousands of people, closing thousands of stores. All in the name of the progress of technology.
And to be clear I have no problem with that either.
But I just so happen to believe that the same should apply for the record labels and the movie industry.
Just hanging on to old definitions of ownership while ridding themselves of others who aren't following the progress of technology is simply not grounded in anything but lobbyism.
So as long as those industries are not ready to re-considers rights issues while insisting that they should reap the benefits I simply refuse to accept that piracy is in fact piracy in the way it's claimed. I refuse to accept the philosophical premise that is used to define theft, illegal & copyright.
When the underlying reality changes so must the law and regulation. It's there to reflect reality, not the other way round.
Meh; right or wrong it is looking increasingly like sharing of content for free is inevitable. More interesting are the consequences of this change.
1. The resources that were spent on these products will be invested alternatively.
2. With a lower margin for performance, continued (live) performance becomes the only way to make a living.
3. Production-on-demand as opposed to production, followed by marketing for demand will produce more producer-motivated that audience-motivated content.
4. MTV cribs will have a lot less bling.
5. Based on my middling wage in the financial services sector, I could totally get a Kylie.
Why should the music and movie industry be the only industries being allowed to keep the middle men when the value they provide is almost nill.
The reality is that the bands coming out today have no problem being both good with marketing, technology and doing music.
There is nothing that says that it's a right of a musician to record an album for almost nothing, reproduce and distribute it litterally for free. And make hundreds of millions reselling it. It's not a right it's a privilege.
It's inevitable because the producers of the content are stuck to an old model they refuse to give up. About a year ago I abandoned DirecTV. I was paying about US$80/mo for a fairly basic package that included the few stations that I watched. I tried to get it lower, but it turned out the 1000's of stations I didn't want and the few I did want.. always came out to the same monthly fee. I would pay a much smaller fee for those few stations (that contain the shows I really want to watch).
Until then, I'll torrent those TV shows, and use my Netflix subscription to watch movies.
And, I would love to torrent the TV shows from the official TV site. I'd do it even if they included a reasonable amount of commercials. Reasonable is hard to define, but if they became annoying, I'd go back to what I have. If they setup their own tracker, then they'd be able to count the downloaders, which is no different than counting people that have their DVR record a show. Well, it's a little different in that they can't spy on your watching habits like TiVo and the others apparently do.
They could deal a death blow to piracy very swiftly, if they wanted. But they don't. They want the current system, at all costs.
Germany is usually even more behind, and TV broadcasts and movies are horribly dubbed versions. I'd gladly pay three to five times as much for Netflix as it costs in the US if it were available...
Ditto for France. I assume it's mostly true for all european countries, with maybe the exception of the UK? At least they probably don't have the dubbing issue...
Also, we do have the playstation store (well... used to) but all the movies there are dubbed and we can't get the original version (with or without subtitles). I'll stick with bittorent for now...
If you're willing to pay that much, sounds like you just need to grab a $20/month server in the US and use it as a VPN endpoint, then use whatever services in the US that you like.
And a lot of videos on youtube are blocked as well and you get that "Sorry, not available in your country" link.
I always cringe hard and scream inside when I see that since I am trying to view a link online on a website so it should not make ANY difference which country I am coming from. Please keep your pre-historic distribution and business model out of the web!!!
Doing something like that should just be banned by law.
That was really annoying to me even as an American as well (though I currently live in Denmark). When I embed Youtube videos in things like blog posts, I want to know that all my readers can view them, not just me, but Youtube won't tell me which videos are region-restricted. I ended up having to use a proxy in another country to test for myself, so I could avoid unknowingly embedding US-only videos.
And even if the content is available today, that does not mean it will be available tomorrow.
Recently I found a new music video posted in the official channel of a record distribution company (nuclearblast), which a couple of days later was blocked because one of the big music labels intervened. By now, they seem to have resolved their differences and the video is available again here - but for how long?
International copyright laws are a bit of a mess.Also, in lots of countries you have to pay a fee if you're "performing" publicly. And according to some agencies, Youtube videos do count as such. If I remember correctly, one such agency, the German GEMA wanted to collect 12 Euro cents each time a major label video was watched on youtube.
True, but I think he was asking why the meta-information isn't provided, where you'd be able to click on something next to a video and get information about which regions it's available in.
Even if I only have an internet access at my home, no TV and no radio, I still have to pay a quarterly "licence fee" (see http://www.bbc.co.uk/aboutthebbc/licencefee/) because certain public stations have a website and could offer certain TV or radio programs on their website.
Sorry, this was mis-leading... I was actually talking about the German GEMA rules and only used the BBC website as an example for "license fee" since I am not sure this is the correct translation for what the German GEMA and that "tax on radio and tv" is all about and I doubt anything like that exists in the USA.
Erm, I think you're confusing the GEMA with the GEZ, which would be the equivalent of the British TV licenses, i.e. your fee for state-run broadcasts. Not aware of any equivalents in the US, things like C-Span, PBS and NPR are more independent if I'm not mistaken.
The GEMA is something entirely different, about as capitalistic as you can get get. And so to no surprise there are equivalents in the US, e.g. BMI and the Harry Fox Agency.
Ireland aswell. In recent years films have been released much closer to the USA date. I think most of this is due to piracy. If the studios wait a few months, then people will pirate it. Just look at the second Matrix film, that was released on the same date and same time in many countries. The sort of people who would watch The Matrix are the aort of people who are well able to pirate.
I believe this is another example of where piracy was a force for good (for the consumer) Another example is how many nonDRMed music is more easily purchasable, and many TV stations (eg BBC) have online 'watch yesterday's show' services.
Stealing something (or obtaining it illegally) just because someone doesn't want to sell it to you (or give it to you for free) is still stealing (or obtaining it illegally), regardless of the fact that you want it so bad.
As long as you own something, you have the right to choose if you want to sell it to some country, give it for free or do whatever else.
It really is a symptom of the decadence and entitlement of your typical Internet user. If somebody doesn't want you to have a thing they made, why not do without instead of acting against their wishes, taking it illegally, and rationalizing it?
I sometimes torrent TV shows that I forgot to DVR and don't really feel bad about it.
It really is a symptom of the decadence and entitlement of your typical Internet user.
If the entire internet disappeared tomorrow, am I allowed to complain about it? Where do you draw the line? ("Be thankful for your brocolli, there are starving children in Africa")
Breaking car windows with spark plug ceramic is easy and just like piracy, you don't directly bear the costs. Cheap and easy isn't a justification for immoral behavior.
The advantage over a VPN-based solution is that there is no need to route all of your traffic over the VPN. Most of the time they only redirect the geo-location stuff and once you receive the videostream URL, that transfer will go over your 'regular' connection.
It also allows you to just put their DNS servers into your router and your Apple TV / Wii / iPad ... will automatically use the service.
Security wise, they might be able to redirect any domain resolution to their servers, but they still won't be able to fake the SSL certificates. As long as you're using IMAPS/HTTPS/*S you should be fine I guess.
And even if some of these services are available in your country you might get screwed. For instance I once bought a music album on iTunes. A few weeks later a friend of mine sends me a link on grooveshark to a song from the same artist. I've never heard the song before but to my surprise it is supposed to be on the same album I own. I do a little research and find out that the album sold in US iTunes store contains two extra bonus tracks! I check to see if there is another version of the same album in my 'local' iTunes store, but no, it appears these two bonus tracks are only available in the US
I don't think that the services mentioned want to exclude non-Americans. All of them deal with music or video, both of which require country-specific licensing.
In this case the boundaries aren't artificial, they're historic.
The world will move to laws which are unified (or at least close enough) and allow day and date releases and true international markets but it's unrealistic to expect it to happen overnight.
But a resistance to change (some of which will have it's feet in positive intentions, some in negative) is different to collusion.
In this case the boundaries aren't artificial, they're historic.
They can be both, actually.
The world will move to laws which are unified (or at least close enough) and allow day and date releases and true international markets but it's unrealistic to expect it to happen overnight.
Sorry, should have been clearer - they may be artificial but these are historic boundaries which while they may support (in some ways) certain business interests, are not there because of them and in almost all cases pre-date those interests by a considerable period.
Same thing happens in Argentina, I tried some times to buy certain games online, but for some weird reason for digital content, the purchased is limited to the US and Mexico. Why does this limitation even exist for digital content?
I saw it in several games in Direct2Drive, (this games had the same restrictions in other online stores).
I don't think is fraud though, as the same site sells other games to Argentina. This is what direct2drive says on the matter:
Why are some games "country restricted" ?
This is a limitation set by either the game developer or the internet distribution laws your country. We have to abide by both of their wishes.
iPlayer isn't a commercial service, it's funded by the UK tax payer though the license fee.
I agree that this is something the BBC should look at making available more widely as a revenue generator to fund it's operations but it's not a priority for them.
less 'not a priority', more 'politically impossible'. They're constantly under pressure from the Murdoch empire, and other commercial TV, trying to prevent the BBC doing anything popular/profitable. International iplayer would send the lobbyists into an epic tantrum.
What's the TV license at now? 180 pounds or ~275 US? If it came with access to iPlayer, 4oD & iTVoD I'd probably be willing to pay for a UK TV license.
That's an interesting model - pay the full price for a TV license and only use the web services. There would be technical difficulties, of course (guaranteeing a decent connection to the BBC servers, possibly adding international data centres) but it certainly provokes thought.
On the other hand, how exactly will the government justify collecting tax from non-citizens (even worse, non-residents!)?
> On the other hand, how exactly will the government justify
> collecting tax from non-citizens (even worse, non-
> residents!)?
How do the US justify taxes when I (in the UK) buy something from Threadless which is based in the US? Or my subscription to Backblaze? Or the sales tax when I visit the US (where I'm neither a citizen nor resident)?
It's pretty much a non-issue.
Technically though it probably wouldn't be a tax. A tax is collected by the state and this would almost certainly go through a limited company which while ultimately owned by the state is legally different.
And likewise none of the streaming options for American shows are available in the UK.
Now, with American shows, I think there could easily be a good business model - we've seen English TV channels pick up American shows (sometimes running almost in sync with America, more often than not running a year or two behind) with success. Examples include The West Wing, Friends, Glee, Will and Grace, Family Guy, CSI and so on. So I think there could be enough of an audience over here to be worth doing it.
But iPlayer for non-UK viewers, it just isn't feasible. Firstly, BBC have the content licensed for UK viewing only, and they can't pay extra for international viewers because they are funded by the public (TV license over here). For the BBC website, international viewers see adverts, but that model can't be extended to iPlayer for a few reasons. Firstly, and least importantly, BBC never puts advertising into its shows, and they don't want to go against that, even for an international audience. That could be got around quite easily. Secondly, selling video adverts is a lot more complex (from a sales point of view, not technical) than shoving them into a website, it would take more work from them. And finally, if they were to sell adverts and open up iPlayer to an international audience, I doubt they would make enough revenue from the adverts to justify internationally licensing the content, i.e. there just wouldn't be enough people watching it.
iPlayer for non-UK viewers is actually pretty easy to get.
Rent a virtual private server on any of the many UK VPS services. Then use get_iplayer[1] to download TV and radio programmes when you want to.
Although I live in the UK (and pay a TV license), I use this method because it's much more convenient. It doesn't require flash, lets me keep the programme for as long as I want, and downloads are really fast. For example I can grab a 2 hour film from iPlayer into a .flv file in about 15-20 minutes.
Technically they could, but it would mean creating and managing a new license fee system.
Right now there's no enforcement of the license fee, just the knowledge that, to watch live broadcasts (either on TV or online) you must have a license, and if a TV license inspector catches you, you'll be in trouble.
With the iPlayer service, if you watch any of the live-streaming channels and you don't have a TV License you will eventually get a letter informing you that you need to pay the license fee. Fail to obtain the TV License after that point and you are subject to the normal fines.
I think the BBC must have some form of tie-in with the ISPs as I know a number of people that have had this happen to them.
I'm regularly tunnelling all my traffic through a UK VPS (not for geolocation regions, I'm in the UK myself anyway), and never had any issues watching iPlayer.
And if I watched to avoid it, I could always use something like www.tvcatchup.com to watch the live content, and just go onto the iPlayer for VOD content (for which you don't need a license).
I wonder - traditionally a TV license is per household, not per person, meaning that if I want to watch on a TV in a friend's house, they need to have a license, not me. With internet access, how does that work. For example, say they were able to prove I had been watching iPlayer live streams in my house, what if it was a friend watching on their laptop, and they own a license? What if you're watching from a public WiFi or a 3G connection on a train? The "license for the house" doesn't quite translate.
They'd still need to differentiate between shows that they could show to a US viewer and ones which they couldn't (because they didn't have the rights to international distribution - for instance most sport, any drama they've bought in and so on).
Well, but isn't that what the whole problem is about? Doesn't matter if it's BBC, iTunes or Spotify - it's that the country-based licensing model doesn't work in the age of Internet.
I'm going to guess that a lot of the reason these services aren't available in a lot of other countries is not that they don't want your money, but rather that your governments either have ridiculous regulations to navigate, or there are concerns about their ability to protect intellectual property rights.
I highly doubt it is the former. I hear the US have pretty ridiculous regulations if you want to do crazy things like broadcast videos over the internet: http://www.dnalounge.com/backstage/webcasting.html. Somehow these services manage to exist in the US regardless of the ridiculous regulations there, but allofmp3.com got stamped on despite complying with Russian law because they fell afoul of licensing interests in the US.
As for the latter, what exactly is the point in "protecting intellectual property rights" in Estonia if you don't sell anything there in the first place, and as a result everyone there who would like to buy your stuff is getting it off thepiratebay.org? Sounds like the worst of both worlds to me.
The fact that the U.S. might have ridiculous regulations has nothing to do with it. If you're a business, you might be willing to wade through all that red tape once, especially for the biggest consumer market in the world. Are you willing to do it 30 times? 195 times? If the Estonian market represents a paltry amount of money, why bother?
I would also add to this list audible.com which restricts certain books to US only. I am a platinum subscriber to audible, however, I couldn't get my hands on Stephen King's Under The Dome. So I got it from the thepiratebay pretty much on the next day. I did buy other King's books on audible though.
Note that a large number of these are apps stores. I can imagine the licencing fees or whatnot being the showstoppers for audio/video, but what on earth is so difficult about selling applications?
Wait. This is YCombinator right? Why on earth does no-one create a startup to make buying digital copies easier wherever you live? Why is that so hard?
But it's a tricky problem, because of the heavy involvement of intellectual-property laws and tangled webs of existing licensing arrangements (defended by large incumbent players with large legal teams).
Quit making excuses and make it happen. The torrenters don't seem to have any trouble building a global distribution network, and they are hiding from the law while simultaneously kicking your butt.
If you don't want to make it happen, quit whining about losing money. I have money and you have TV shows, so let's make a deal.