What kind of file sharer are you?

Posted: Sat Mar 21, 2009 11:36 pm

I guess I count as all 4, but it really depends on if A includes people who can't afford the music in the first place. I'm just a 16-year-old kid who doesn't have a job (and it doesn't look like I'll have one soon with our economy) so it's not exactly like I have any money (much less the $20/album that they want) to spend on music. Most of the music I listen to would have to be imported from the UK or Netherlands if I bought physical copies (which I plan to do eventually, being a cDJ would be a nice hobby), so it would cost even more. Believe me when I say I wish I could buy the songs since none of the music I have on my iPod is published by any RIAA member companies to my knowledge (other than the Rickroll, but that's necessary for when showing people my music) =).

C kind of applies for me for older Game Boy and N64 games that I've lost the cartridges too or the batteries died in them. Plus I get to use XBox controllers and 1440x900 completely owns the 20" TV I have =P.

And I definitely use D a lot. Anything over 100MB (like OpenOffice.org) and every Linux distro I get is through torrents. Otherwise I generally agree with Lareolan, especially since the advent of CCMixter.com

Posted: Sun Mar 22, 2009 12:17 am

B: needs to be slightly expanded for me; I also try out software that's fully protected before I purchase it (such as GetDataBack, wonderful prog). Also try lots of music; and buy them when I can get around to it.
C: mostly old computer games that I miss playing :p
D: WoW; sourceforge material; linux stuff.

Most of my downloads I'd have to say are B; but then I've purchased many CDs that I can honestly say that w/o the internet I'd have never even heard of.

Posted: Sun Mar 22, 2009 12:37 am

i mostly use isohunt to get albums that wont come out for months after its US release,, usually the music shops here dont have listings for most of the stuff i listen to which i find to be bullshit.. if i want certain albums i would have to buy them online with a credit card which i do not have...

IF HOWEVER a music shop here DOES have a listing for an album I want,, I WILL purchase an original copy no matter wether Ive already downloaded it or not.. I will always support the bands I listen to..

ALTHOUGH i have to admit I do get a few movies from here,, which only a few end up being purchased by me,, usually due to the fact the movie turns out to be crap..

by the way.. im in australia.. so EVERYTHING usually gets released a lot later here

Posted: Sun Mar 22, 2009 2:33 am

Something I never see discussed is something that happened to me: I bought a whole bunch of CDs over the years, plus I had a library of some 300 discs on vinyl. I no longer have the equipment to play the vinyl, and some fuckhead decided to steal all my CDs.

I knew who did it, but the courts said, well, HE said he didn't do it, so it must be true. I never recovered those CDs.

Now, I ask you, DO I NOT HAVE THE ETHICAL, MORAL AND LEGAL RIGHT to recover my music, that I paid a license fee (in the sense of paying full retail), by any means available? A good part of the CD collection was bought through Columbia House and so, THERE IS A PAPER TRAIL which can prove my ownership of the plastic.

I feel no moral qualms whatever when I replace my stolen CDs with a copy downloaded through a torrent site. As a matter of fact, I feel TOTALLY justified doing so, as the court system FAILED miserably in protecting my rights. And I do not feel I am doing anything wrong in doing so.

Now there is the question of the VINYL. The license for these discs is not for a digital copy, but rather a particular analogue playback system. The same goes for the CASSETTE tapes. (You know, I purchased John Lennon's last album on tape, Double Fantasy the night he was shot.)

This is a grey area, yes. But, these three hundred discs, some of which have been played ONCE with the express purpose of making a tape copy -- which by the way, the courts said was perfectly legal, now in storage, should give me SOME kind of license to own a digital copy.

There is also another important point that seems to get glossed over, especially by alarmists. That is the point that the ACT of DOWNLOADING is by no means a violation of copyright, nor is it illegal. On the contrary, it is the ACT of HAVING AVAILABLE FOR DOWNLOAD copyrighted material that is the questionable act. Notice I did not use the term "criminal" act.

The intended purpose of most copyright legislation is to provide penalties for violations, and allow the injured party recourse.

Prior to the Internet, these violations entailed large organized schemes to sell, for profit, unauthorized material, such as video tape, cassette tape, and to some extent (and still in certain countries) printed material. Sometimes it would be sports material, or lunch boxes, or shoes or comic books. It always involved thousands of dollars, fraudulent activity and deception.

Now with the Internet, this kind of activity has been facilitated by EBAY, but do you see anyone going after them?

Finally, a lot has been said about how people simply copy material. Hmmm. Guess what? The industry dropped the ball big time! They were so happy to abandon the vinyl disc that had been around for decades, that they ignored that the replacement had the inherent property that a 1-to-1 copy could be made with absolutely no effort. You see, the vinyl disc could not be copied exactly. The video tape could not be copied exactly. But, the DIGITAL source allowed true duplicates. I guess they let the Genie out of the bottle.

Who is at fault here? If I download a Batman movie, am I a criminal? If I watch a downloaded movie, am I a criminal? If I give a friend a copy of that movie, am I a criminal? Is my friend a criminal? One thing is for sure: if I take the movie I downloaded, copy it to a plastic disc and sell it on EBAY, *that* is piracy. If I sell it to a friend, it's piracy. If I sell it on the street, it's piracy. If I search for a copy of the play Blythe Spirit on the Internet, download it, print out several copies, I have done nothing wrong. Until I produce the play for PUBLIC showing, I have done nothing wrong.

Don't make the mistake that most people make. Downloading material is no more illegal that reciting lines of a movie. It is the ACT OF PROVIDING FOR DOWNLOAD SOURCE MATERIAL THAT IS COPYRIGHTED that is against copyright laws. Remember that the intent of most copyright law was to protect the author(s) from some third party to derive profit from their work.

Posted: Sun Mar 22, 2009 3:01 am

A and OMG why i am the first to admit Smile

Proud to be pirate among the privateers in this thread Twisted Evil

Posted: Sun Mar 22, 2009 3:38 am

hasjtracker wrote:

A and OMG why i am the first to admit Smile

You aren't

Cheapshot wrote:

So pretty much option A

Posted: Sun Mar 22, 2009 3:42 am

I would say I'm a bit of A... and B... C and D as well... I usually end up buying what I download, but somethings are not available to purchase any more, so not much of a choice there...

Posted: Sun Mar 22, 2009 6:11 am

First of all, being called a pirate isn’t such a bad thing. Pirates have always had a romantic history, and pirates are people who find ways to outsmart the fattened arrogant powermongers.

But are we pirates? What we take is small, and we take only what we feel we need for our own use. In most cases we have already paid for what we are taking… we are just replacing an obsolete format that we bought in good faith. Even though these things are copyrighted, we have already paid for their use, and in good faith expected to use them forever.

Is this any different than copying your vinyl record to cassette, or your video to DVD? Is it different from getting a book, music or movie from your library (and copying the music and/or movie?)??? No, and it should not be illegal.

Is anyone being hurt by our actions? I was at Best Buy yesterday where there was a huge line up, 15 minutes before the doors even opened. What were they all waiting for? The movie TWILIGHT, being released on DVD that day for a hefty sum. Most of these were young people – young enough to be tech savvy, I’d think. They weren’t downloading the movie – they were buying it, and I suspect every Best Buy had the same line up. Now look at the number of seeders/peers here, on Twilight. Personally, this movie doesn’t remotely interest me, but I assume that most who want it already paid to see it in the theatre. Should they be required to pay for it twice?

So, if I am a pirate now, I was also a pirate when I used my VCR and tape deck, and when I went to the library. Shiver me timbers...

Posted: Sun Mar 22, 2009 6:41 am

With music mostly A, for videos mostly B ( off course i don't go to every movie, but most i like to watch for a second time or even more),for older music and quiet unknown music C, and offcourse i also use it for D,
Most of the time series on tv don't come up on the right time for me, and the commercials are killing me, so i download a lot of tv-series, but when i have time i watch them on tv

Posted: Sun Mar 22, 2009 7:47 am

I'm a type A mostly, and then C a little bit. I like some music that is not sold in the US, so I have to download it. I'm also poor, but I love music. I'll buy albums sometimes just because it's sometimes nice to have the CD itself.

Posted: Sun Mar 22, 2009 7:56 am

I use P2P for several reasons, but the main one is to get stuff that I can't get anymore, and in return I share my stuff (that I've bought and own) for others.
I see it as going around a friends house and he gives you a cd he no longer listens to and in return I give him one of my cd's I no longer listen to.
Also it's a great way to promote yourself.

Posted: Sun Mar 22, 2009 9:40 am

DISCLAIMER: The following is purely a work of fiction. Any references herein to overt acts preformed by, or which may be performed by, the author are purely hypothetical. The author neither engages in nor condones violation of ANY laws in any relevant jurisdictions, including both local and international copyright law. If you sue me, I'll sue you right back for attempting to suppress my First Amendment (here in the States) rights. Ok, ass covered.

"I fit into all of these categories to some extent. D is growing increasingly large as many distributors of shareware/freeware are facing rising bandwidth costs - when given the option of http/ftp direct download or a torrent link, I'll use the torrent. If this hurts ISPs, I say good: infrastructure elements like roads, water, power, and now internet access really SHOULD be publicly run and maintained, as they are necessary elements of productive, functional citizenhood in a country.

I would guess that categories B and C are the largest percentage of my use, as i enjoy supporting artists/software producers I like and have the money to do so on a limited basis. I didn't actually buy any music before Napster expanded my world well beyond the radio rotation (if I wanted to hear the stuff the radio played, I could just listen to it, no reason to buy a CD). Software previewing is even more important than is art previewing. The investment is usually larger, and it is often impossible to tell if a given software product (game, OS, office productivity suite, digital audio/video/photo editing solution, etc.) is going to work for any given user in his/her personal situation without a several-months-long vetting process of the entire, non-limited product. For game producers who only have a month or so of playability in their product, I say this: you don't deserve to be financially successful. Do multiplayer, modding capability, and/or non-linearity right, and your product gains near-infinite replayability. I still play through DeusEx (the first, good one) ononce or twice a year, and it's coming up on its 15th birthday. If you don't want to put the time into making a worthwhile product, thats fine, but don't expect people to pay $50+ for it.

Category C is an interesting division, as there is a lot of content out there that cannot be obtained through legal means, because the cost of (re)mastering it and distribution through traditional channels is deemed too high by the copyright-holder. For example, there's a torrent of The Real Adventures of Jonny Quest episodes floating around out there. I love that show, it was my favorite when I was little, and there are only two episodes (released as a promo DVD with some cereal I think) available in any legal format ANYWHERE, and that's questionable too, since I got the disc on eBay and it's clearly marked NOT FOR RETAIL. I would gladly buy the retail DVD compilation were it available, but it does not exist.

I also straight-up pirate some things. I need .docx access for some of the online content in my classes, since MS Office formats are STILL a de-facto standard, and I'm not gonna drop $100 for Office 2007 so i can read a few things (I use my legit Office 2003 for most of my own writing Razz

). I'm especially not gonna do it when the last version ripped out half the useful features and added nothing but a broken interface and an XML-tagged doc format. I know this all thanks to piracy; I might otherwise have been fooled into buying the new product, thinking "Newer is Better!" I also occasionally pirate mainstream pop for party mixes and such, with no chance I will or would ever buy the full CD. That's an interesting philosophical question: does being a good host obligate me to financially support artists I detest for the sake of my guests' enjoyment?

Finally, I use BT for the unmentioned category E, which would be greymarket/blackmarket digital products. These products have no legal means of distribution because they themselves are illegal. For example, virus source-code (and I'm not talking proof-of-concept designs to test security measures here) is much easier to distribute over P2P because it is decentralized, and it's much harder for law enforcement to get the required warrants for 1000 users' computers than it is for 1 takedown order for a website. And since the network is dynamic, once you hit a certain level of penetration within the user base, eliminating a file becomes next-to impossible, given constraints on law-enforcement resources. While this category does not offer any particularly good argument for the legality of BT search engines (quite the opposite in fact, sorry guys), it does allow them to exist as a site for resistance to hegemonic domination. This, for anyone who loves freedom, is certainly a good thing."

Posted: Sun Mar 22, 2009 12:36 pm

Cheapshot wrote:

hasjtracker wrote:

A and OMG why i am the first to admit Smile

You aren't

Cheapshot wrote:

So pretty much option A

True matey excuse me,i think i was reading what i expect to read(in general).

I am the typical pirate stereotype ; gloryhunting,limelight stealing and speaking to loud without making sence. Laughing

Posted: Sun Mar 22, 2009 12:52 pm

Isohunt facilitates piracy just as much as a coathanger facilitates break and enter -- it can be used for a lot of other things, but it happens to be quite useful for that purpose.

The question shouldn't be whether or not it facilitates, but whether or not its legal uses outweigh its illegal uses. This isn't as clear, judging by the amount of copyrighted material indexed by Isohunt, but it is clear that there is a lot of legally distributed content on Isohunt.

If Isohunt was like TPB and stuck its fingers in its ears when the lawyers claimed copyright infringement, then this would be an open and shut case, but the fact that they do answer to (proper) DMCA requests makes it difficult to argue that their main purpose is to facilitate piracy.

All legal arguments aside, Lessig's argument points at the problem being copyright itself. There are many times where copyright doesn't make sense, such as when a copyrighted work is no longer available for sale. At that point, the publisher is losing nothing by people copying, since they didn't stand to make money anyway, while at the same time the continued distribution of the work greatly benefits the public. This is what Fair Use was made for -- we should be seeing a lot more of it.

Posted: Sun Mar 22, 2009 1:47 pm

Welcome to IsoHunt, RevEng. Great post, but you never did say, A, B, C or D.