teh Forum

With so much drama in the OC, it's kinda hard bein B to the triple E.

For the last year or so, I've been bothered with talk of lawsuites, record associations, black boxes, federal bureaus, fines, and jailtime. We need to start a thread discussing this news and I need your thoughts, opinions, comments, statistics, views, and/or plans for the future of fi|e $haring as it appears the scene is getting a little dangerous.

You see...I have this friend who is a filthy pirate who takes what he can get and gives nothing back. A friend who consumes, on average, 300 Gigs of files per month. A friend who hasn't turned off his computer in close to a year because there isn't a second in the day when the 7th OSI layer of his network isn't processing at least 1.5Mb's of raw data. Did I really just say that ? Nevermind. A friend who, if he tallied up the total worth of the files he's downloaded, owns close to 1.5 million dollars in digital media.

Now this guy appears to be taking the more "underground", more safe (or is it) approach to obtaining these files. In a nutshell this means:
- no distributing or sharing of any files.
- absolutely NO use of P2P software.
- subscribing to news servers that maintain anonymity.
- and frequent use of IRC.

With the amount of bandwidth that he consumes, and the amount of material he has stashed in his CD cases, and the means by which he obtains such goodies, should he be concerned with the current actions being takin by the different associations and bureaus to eliminate piracy? Or , as amazing as it might be, does he really have very little to fear at this point?

Is he a 15 year old girl living in low rent accomodation, or a student? If not, he has nothing much to fear.

Sorry, that wasn't very helpful.

But, I would say, if this 'friend' (who has probably been known to get his other friends to buy blow up dolls and porno mags) did get caught and dragged before a judge, that he should boldly tell the judge to send a big 'fuck off' signal of freedom to the RIAA, shout every single good argument in favour of P2P from the rooftops with passion, and not, I repeat NOT, go for a snivelling 'I was doing it for a friend and had no idea it was a crime' sort of defence.


Sorry, that wasn't very helpful either.

Good luck to you brother. I'm just glad I don't live in the land of the Brave and the Free.

... probably don't have much to worry about, but you never know. Most of the time it's the people making things available who go down first. I don't really do a lot of that business anymore. I do like tons of cartoons, but the thing with those are that they are on TV, so anyone could record them using a VCR. I don't really think much could be done on that side of things, (even though the cable companies don't like it.) As far as games go, I just buy those these days because not many cool ones come out at a given time anymore. Music, I buy, or copy the CD of someone who did. And applications, well, those I still rip the frig off, because they charge thousands for an app that I make no money off of. Now, if say, I was to start selling the music that I make, then I would go straight out and buy a license for my copy of Cubase, and the Native Instruments synths that I use. Or if I started selling digital art, I'd go out and buy Photoshop. It's all about balancing these things. The other thing I do, is replace all of my older pirated games with legitimate ones that come with hardware. (Or similar oem copies.) That way, my licensed games steadily grow without me paying money. It's like a long preview and then get a real one for free I have a HUGE case of licensed games now, and a single spindle of copied ones waiting to be replaced. If I was to be questioned, I could easily pass the spindle off for backups, since I have more licensed copies than not. I keep a bare minimum of non-licensed software on my system too. I have a legitimate copy of Windows XP, but I don't use it. I only have it so I have a license. I actually run a volume license that doesn't need to be activated. (I refuse to activate my OS.) Anyway, that's the methodology that I've adopted after 20 years of digital piracy. (Wow it's actually been exactly 20 years.) Crazy... Over.

You mean MY FRIEND probably has nothing to worry about. And yes, he is a student living in low rent accomodations.

He hardly downloads any music or software these days. Most music on the radio today sucks and his computer is so packed full of software that it'll pretty much serve any purpose. It's mostly DVD ISOs and Theatre screeners he's after, which suck up alotta bandwidth. And many of the DVD's being posted are custom compiled, such as the Adult swim, southpark, and simpsons DVDs, and you cant find those in the stores.

I think his main concern is if anyone wanted to investigate pirates, they'd start with bandwidth consumption. Makes sense right? And if he subscribes to a news server that doesn't keep logs of uploads or downloads, they'd have nothing on him...right? Forgive me if I sound paranoid for him, and I ask you veterns because I couldn't get a better answer anywhere else.

... your friend shouldn't worry too much. I'm sure there are several criteria besides pure bandwidth, though I'm sure that's high on the list. I'm sure there are some popular ports for certain types of transfers that are checked first, most notably P2P. I know the news is somewhat monitored, but not even close to the way other methods are. I know a friend of McNevin's got a letter from Ted Turner himself [TEE HEE HEE] or something like that With a private news server though, and only d/ls and the numerous other things you listed about your friend, he should be ok for a while. My friend is going to be back on cable soon, so he'll be hitting the groups too. I think the ISP would be the first to notify your friend if there was a complaint, then if it continued, he might find himself in some trouble.

The latest "lawsuits" issued by the record labels were only a scare tactic. The labels know that this isn't going to stop and their lawyers are shitting out anything that they can to stop folks like your FRIEND. Only a few days ago I saw that there were over 3million people on KaZaa alone sharing files! They quite literally can't get everyone.

I'm not the most tech-savy person, but wouldn't the record labels have to nose about in people's computers to find out if they are downloading? If so, that could be considered an invasion of privacy (unless they present a warrant).

Also of note: did anyone get their $20 from the class action lawsuit where the recording industry was found guilty of defrauding the U.S. public
2 BILLION during the 1990s? I signed up for it, but still haven't seen my damn check! What's the holdup?? I figure that I probably bought about 200 CDs in the 90s. At about $20 a pop that comes to about $4000.
The verdict estimated that the recording industry had overpriced CDs at least double, so I was overcharged about $2000..... and they only offered each person who bought CDs in the 90s and happened to hear about the payout in time to signup for it $20?!?!?!?!?

So I'm due to get 1% of what I was essentially ripped off when these bastards got together in a back room and set prices. Tell your FRIEND to download a few extra files for me.