Torrent Discussion

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Jackolantern
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Re: Torrent Discussion

Post by Jackolantern »

They still definitely love to voice their opinion against file sharing, and I bet if the Napster incident happened today, they would do it all over again lol. Maybe not this year due to the public outcry over SOPA, but that would just be a decision to prevent losing too many album sales. I can't stand Metallica, and I used to like a few of their songs. But I will never give them another cent after they sued their fans in court for downloading their music, not large-scale uploading "release groups". That is what made me the most angry over it.

There has just always been a part of me that can understand content providers wanting to protect their IP, since I am a game developer who would love to have major games I created on Steam or something like that. And I would not be happy about people illegally downloading my game in that case because the meager earnings I would make from my game (really, most indie games aren't making million of dollars, and tons of the games on Steam probably were made by developers with day jobs) would be going to help feed my family. I can see it being a bit different if it is someone like Lil'Wayne who is making tens of millions of dollars, but even then, it is technically still his money, and it isn't anyone's business to say when he has made "enough that it doesn't matter".

Of course, I would never sue people who wanted to download and play my game (aka my fans). Instead I would just do what the game industry at large has been doing for the last 7 years or so and instead try to hook my game into value-added services that cannot easily be downloaded illegally to encourage more people to buy a legit copy. That is the time when I think more users may actually buy a legal copy who downloaded the game illegally in the first place, because typically, most people do not pay money for something they already got for free. If someone does buy a CD after they downloaded the entire CD for free, they are the exception to the rule as far as I have seen in the last few years. I have either seen people buying it in the first place, or illegally downloading it. I think I knew one person about 5 years ago who bought a legit copy of a game after downloading it, but that is the only time I ever saw it myself in real life. Oh, and this is excluding games that do hook into value services, such as Xbox Live, PSN, etc. In those cases many players likely would buy a legit copy after downloading an illegal copy because the illegal copy cannot be played online. By mentioning the one person, one time thing, I mean products which basically gave the downloader everything when they downloaded it, such as a movie, a CD, a single-player game, etc.
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Xaleph
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Re: Torrent Discussion

Post by Xaleph »

Yeah totally understand your point of view. But you can`t compare an indie developer/musician/band to the big coorparatised "brands" like EA, Metallica and whatever is mainstream in their respective fields. If I were an indie developer and truth be told here, I would be honored if people would download my game. And games and software is something different then media like music and movies. As told before in this topic, Flash has gotten big because of the spreading of the Flash editor. Not because it was bought by so many people but people just wanting to make a game which ensued a large crowd wanting to play flash games. Most developers who didn`t buy a license sure did after they realised they could make a fair share of money in developing flash games.

Many artists who`ve never gotten a label representing them now found a HUGE audience just by uploading and sharing their music online. I respect that. That`s one of the major reasons im behind torrents as well. It`s not all about piracy or illegal sharing of content. Even big coorperations like EA publish patches et cetera on the torrents network. It`s a fast and easy way to share larger documents and you don`t need dedicated servers to serve all those millions of people.

The fact that Metallica actually sued their fans is ridiculous and I too will never ever buy ( or listen for that matter.. I don`t like the music to begin with ) anything from them again. However, I do feel that this also was enriched and pushed by their label company. If they could`ve created the sympathy vote if it came from Metallica itself, maybe people would stop downloading. I don`t know, maybe they pushed them to do something like that. Who knows?

And I too respect IP and IP laws. If you created something, you should be entitled to it. However, the big companies are the sole IP owners of the mainstream music nowadays. If you buy a lil`wayne album you pay for IP from his label company, not Lil`Wayne himself. And that`s what`s bothering me.

And in reference to publishing your game on Steam, you can consider Steam as merely a medium to reach an audience. They will NOT own IP on any of your products. All they do is take a share in the profits for offering you the possibility to reach their audience. Which kind of looks like Apple`s iTunes and AppStore. You can hate Apple or Steam for doing so, but I wont. I`m happy with their services. I`m just unhappy that the money they pay the IP owners doesn`t (in large) go to the actual creators, developers, musicians, editors and directors of the content.

There`s a cool movie somewhere on how the ACTA bill is working. Sure, it`s COMPLETELY over exaggerated, but the core remains the same. This is what could happen if bills like those would get trough. Same goes for SOPA and PIPA.

Fun ( actually quite horrible ) fact, here in the Netherlands, stiching Brein ( a foundation called BRAIN ) has managed to have ISP`s BAN the website thepriatebay.org. 2 ISP`s have been forced by law to block that website and any subsidiary website they have. One of those ISP`s is the ISP my internet is coming from. That law has been taken in effect today ( yesterday, since it`s already wednesday ) and if i try to visit that site, i get a default page from my ISP. However, every ISP who hasn`t been forced to, is not blocking it. In fact, all ISP`s are very weary on blocking sites. The 2 iSP`s that are now forced to block that site already begun filing petition against the blockade. But this illustrates how far the record companies are willing to go. The BREIN is a foundation paid by the record labels. So they will do anything and all to stop "illegal" sharing of content. Even if it includes legal torrents. I`m ashamed to be Dutch at the moment. Once taken to the real courts, I hope the precedent will be undone.

I want to say so much more but my English is starting to become a barrier, I don`t know the words anymore ahahah.
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Jackolantern
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Re: Torrent Discussion

Post by Jackolantern »

Xaleph wrote:And in reference to publishing your game on Steam, you can consider Steam as merely a medium to reach an audience. They will NOT own IP on any of your products. All they do is take a share in the profits for offering you the possibility to reach their audience. Which kind of looks like Apple`s iTunes and AppStore. You can hate Apple or Steam for doing so, but I wont. I`m happy with their services. I`m just unhappy that the money they pay the IP owners doesn`t (in large) go to the actual creators, developers, musicians, editors and directors of the content.
I understand the way it works, and that it is a lot more like the App Store than a publisher (although they are much more selective than the App Store, obviously). But that doesn't bother other people out there, and there are dedicated software packages out there to rip the DRM out of Steam software so it can be uploaded to file sharing services. At the end of the day, I don't care too much about EA games and the like, beyond the fact that the game industry will begin to get more desperate if they lose another 20% of their potential audience to those not paying anything for the games. But to me what is sad is seeing small indie games being pirated as well. I obviously go out of my way to try to support indie developers, and it just feels like a slight to me to rip and upload a game that a couple of developers may have maxed out credit cards to fund, just to provide people a fun game to play and hopefully make their money back at least (because seriously, most of us don't have much allusions of making the next Angry Birds or Farmville and retiring in 5 years from some little game we make). Just kind of sad to me...
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Xaleph
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Re: Torrent Discussion

Post by Xaleph »

Aye, that I understand. If it requires a big investment by indie developers, it saddens me too. it makes no sense either. Indie games usually dont cost that much and I bought games via Steam to support indie game development. And don`t forget, Angry Birds was developed by an indie game studio as well. Just because it got popular makes no difference. No, I hear you, people should support indie game developers, as well as indie musicians and other indies. It makes no sense not supporting them because most of the time the prices are way lower then commercialized products by mainstream sources. It goes back to why I buy albums from unknown artists. Or buy games from Steam.

However, that`s not a reason to be against torrent sites. Torrentsites not only offer pirated products, they also offer legit and legal content. Either because of artists that want to get their album out, or because of indie devs trying to create a customer base. Or the free products like NetBeans or Eclipse, or patches.

Oh, I wanted to mention this too, in the Netherlands it`s not illegal to download movies or music. It`s only illegal to share illegal content. Goes back to the copyright laws where you could own a tape recorder and record music or movies. Home copying is not forbidden. That`s why downloading music or video is not. Doesn`t count for software though.
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Ark
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Re: Torrent Discussion

Post by Ark »

lets be possitive and expect the next angry birds will come from this community :)

regards!
Orgullo Catracho
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Jackolantern
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Re: Torrent Discussion

Post by Jackolantern »

Its the same way here. I have nothing against torrent sites, or torrenting period, and I don't think I said I did (I may have said something along those lines, but was only abbreviating myself to mean "illegal file sharing through torrents", which, lets face it, is pretty much understood when most people say "torrent" lol).

I am actually not clear on what the "back-up" laws are here in the US. I have heard different things from different people, ranging the spectrum from "you can have back-ups if you own the original media" to "that is BS and you can't legally back anything up". I kind of doubt any of the people here giving the advice have seen the law in black-and-white, and neither have I. And the way the law is (at least here) you still probably couldn't understand it if you read it lol.
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Xaleph
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Re: Torrent Discussion

Post by Xaleph »

Haha yeah, same here for most of the laws in place. But the copyright law here is not ambigious fortunely. It`s not illegal to have backups from your own media. As long as you dont share it. That goes for downloading illegal content as well. You can download it, which is not illegal, but you cannot share it with others, which in turn is illegal.

So torrenting illegal content by definition is illegal, because once you start downloading, you are already sharing ( peers and seeds ). However, that`s like an exception. Or let me rephrase, it`s a grey area. You wont be fined for doing so ( if you ever got caught.. No policing or whatever.. ) However, if you belong to one of those teams or groups that actively crack games, cam movies and rip audio and publish it, you`re fucked.

So if you download music or movies and you dont share it ( neither by torrents or whatever, like Usenet) you`re not doing anything illegal.
Torax
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Re: Torrent Discussion

Post by Torax »

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Last edited by Torax on Tue Jan 02, 2018 11:31 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Darius
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Joined: Fri May 10, 2013 10:26 am

Re: Torrent Discussion

Post by Darius »

Jackolantern wrote:Its the same way here. I have nothing against torrent sites, or torrenting period, and I don't think I said I did (I may have said something along those lines, but was only abbreviating myself to mean "illegal file sharing through torrents", which, lets face it, is pretty much understood when most people say "torrent" lol).

I am actually not clear on what the "back-up" laws are here in the US. I have heard different things from different people, ranging the spectrum from "you can have back-ups if you own the original media" to "that is BS and you can't legally back anything up". I kind of doubt any of the people here giving the advice have seen the law in black-and-white, and neither have I. And the way the law is (at least here) you still probably couldn't understand it if you read it lol.
At least you have one law :D. I've had to read the laws (Belgian and EU) for one of my classes. They both are completely different and both valid ...
Laws against pirating software or even hacking at all or in general a gray area and totally unclear. Unless a global agreement would be made (which won't happen soon), it's impossible to say what is legal and what isn't for P2P sharing.

If my Lebanese friend sends me a cracked software and I (Belgian) upload a torrent for it onto a Swedish server and someone in the US downloaded it and used it.
Which laws should be applied (Lebanese, Eu, Belgian, Swedish, US (they are all different)) and who is guilty of what.
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