Re: The Bigger, Badder, Even More Serious Thread [3]

[Eldorion]

The Atlantic has an interesting piece about the increasing tension between the Tea Party and the rest of the GOP (though they erroneously imply that the Tea Partiers are the only conservatives in the party). It will definitely be interesting to see what happens in the 2014 midterms. Normally, the party that holds the White House loses seats in Congress in midterm elections, but if people carry resentment for the shutdown into 2014 we might see an exception.

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/10/the-conservative-war-on-the-gop/280637/

[Lancebloke]

Is there not a lot of resentment towards the Republicans for causing it at the moment? This whole Obamacare thing is stupid. It was part of Obama's election campaign and he won. If I were people I'd be pretty pissed off at the opposition holding the country to ransom over what the public has already voted for.

[Eldorion]

The GOP is feeling the heat in terms of their approval rating right now, but who knows if that will still be on people's minds in a year when the next elections take place.

[halfwise]

The core Repuplican base is pretty P.O.ed at the Tea Partiers, but unfortunately it's a grass roots movement, which means it has strong support in some demographics. I think they'll be partly diminished but far from wiped out by this debacle.

[Pettytyrant101]

A sad farewell to more than ten years of isohunt. The good fight is lost, the US Courts are taking it down as a bunch of lawyers for those lovely people at Disney, Paramount and Twentieth Century Fox won their case-

"It sends a strong message that those who build businesses around encouraging, enabling, and helping others to commit copyright infringement are themselves infringers, and will be held accountable for their illegal actions," said MPAA chairman Mr Dodd.
The successful outcome of this landmark lawsuit will also will help preserve jobs and protect the tens of thousands of businesses in the creative industries, whose hard work and investments are exploited by sites like IsoHunt."

Give me a break! 

[Ringdrotten]

The future of piracy isn't looking that good. I've stopped all P2P activity since the government passed a new law that allows copyright holders to surveil IP-addresses that are used to download their products (books, films, tv shows, games etc). The law is a disgrace and a serious kick in the balls for Ola Nordmann's (fjordian equivalent of John Doe/Joe Bloggs) privacy. I can see how, in theory, it's not very different from a shop owner installing a camera in his shop to ensure nobody steals from him. In that manner the law is fine - copyright holders should be able to know who's stealing from them. But the shop owner isn't allowed to install cameras in people's homes, which is what I feel this new law lets copyright holders do

[halfwise]

A subtle point, but as it's a camera that only tracks one's own goods and shows where they have been taken (and nothing else) I don't think it's the same as a camera in the home.

Apple and Netflix deserves kudos for the model of making music etc easily available at a reasonable price, I can't say I feel too bad for pirates. Creators do deserve to profit from their work. For software there's usually enough imitations that if you don't like the price you can get something similar for cheap or free.

The problem is that copies are so easy to make, but copyright law has evolved to allow limited use for education and group entertainment. There will always be gray areas, but such is life.

[Ringdrotten]

I haven't downloaded a song in years, not since Spotify entered the market. And with the different apps out there making Netflix content from different countries available and HBO I don't download films and TV shows any longer either. And I too think the copyright holders should see some money coming their way when they create what they do and make it available for us. I do not like, however, that everyone who's made a song or written a single book, small or big, can spy on me whenever they want to, legally. Not that I think many people will use this with ill intent, but the possibily is always there.

[halfwise]

I don't know enough about it to understand how it can be used for spying. Doesn't it just show what computer it ends up on?

[Ringdrotten]

I don't know exactly how it works myself, but from what I've gathered they can target specific users/persons, before any illegal activity has happened. And I don't know to what their surveillance is limited. Don't get me wrong, I'm not against the idea that the owners should be able to catch those who are stealing their product (it is theft, after all), but what some lunatic with a copyright on something could do within legal boundaries doesn't give me a good feeling at all. I guess I should say that I'm overly paranoid about everything Internet-related, but still, I don't like this law very much and I'm not the only one.

[Eldorion]

The problem with piracy discussions is that anyone who has ever listened to a song or watched a movie on YouTube (excepting official uploads like Vevo) instead of buying it, or has ripped a CD that was borrowed from the library or a friend, has partaken in piracy and denied creators their rightfully deserved profits.  Hell, back in the '80s, TV and music companies used the exact same arguments as today to claim that VHS and cassette tapes would kill creativity by stealing money from artists.  Few people would disagree that artists deserve to profit from their works, but that does not (or should not) override the rights of consumers to do what they want with the property, which often includes sharing it with others or making copies.

One could make an argument that the ease of duplication that digital technology allows means we need to reevaluate our theories of property and ownership in the information age, but that's not being seriously advocated by many "pro-" or "anti-copyright" groups as far as I can tell.

[Pettytyrant101]

Reasoned points Eldo. I quite agree.
No one thinks artists should not get paid for their work, but we all strongly suspect the companies who control the artists have a lot more to do with the artists financial position than any pirates ever do. And those companies, despite all the clamour, appear to make every increasing profits.

[Eldorion]

There are plenty of artists who have been hurt by piracy, though.  Small companies and independent artists are arguably at even greater risk from piracy than big companies because they have less of a financial buffer to protect them.  On the other hand, the independent music and movie scenes were largely made possible by the last technological revolution in how we consume entertainment (VHS and cassettes).  And plenty of people have benefited from the new model of digital distribution, even as that model has undermined the previous way of doing things.  So one could argue that big companies and indie folks alike should get with the times and update their business practices.

I'm not sure where the claim about ever-increasing profits comes from, though.  Global music sales fell every year from 1999 to 2011, despite massively growing markets in countries like China and Russia (source).  Other industries have largely fared better than the music industry, but they've still felt the heat.  There is clearly a sea change going on, but it's important to remember that (1) this isn't the first time that an established industry has been threatened by new technology undermining their reason for being, and (2) trying to ban the competition might work for some industries, but downloading music is too easy and too widespread to ban outright.  The right way to respond is services like iTunes or Netflix.  It gives less control to artists (and, of course, the companies that distribute their works), but that's a trend as old as modern technology.

[Pettytyrant101]

A large part of it is definetly about delivery, the other is cost- selling ebooks at the same price as a physical book is not good practice in my view, savings in manufacturing costs should be passed in part to the customer, or they will get in other ways.
Format is also important, most of what I watch is either streamed or is in avi divx or some other video compression format- yet few companies release their product in these easy and commonly used file types- but the pirates do and so gain an advantage.
Another problem for some is just crap before films, pirated films tend to just give you the film- no unskipable FBI threats no advertising you have to endue every time you want to watch it, just the product you want clean- if companies offered people what they wanted, in the formats they most commonly use that would make an impact on piracy too (as in fact was espoused by Kevin Spacey in his speech on the state of the industry).

[Pettytyrant101]

'The creator of Breaking Bad says piracy "helped" the show to become popular and increase "brand awareness".
Vince Gilligan said: "[It] led to a lot of people watching the series who otherwise would not have.
"The downside is a lot of folks who worked on the show would have made more money, myself included, if all those downloads had been legal."
Atlantis executive producer Johnny Capps said "if people are downloading it, people are talking about it", which helps create fans and drive people to buy the DVD of the show.
"There is the problem of illegal downloads, we have to sort of face that, but as the series progresses and networks around the world buy into it, we'll be able to create a system where you can do day and date transmission.
"And when that happens it has been proved that the counterfeiting of shows goes down a lot."- BBC

[Pettytyrant101]

After Cameron and Milliband rowing for weeks over energy firms and pricing they are turning their guns on water prices.

I am surprised the Tories would go there for a very good reason.
The best, cleanest, least disrupted supplies and cheapest water is in Scotland.
And there is a good reason or that. Unlike England and Wales our water was never privatised, its a nationalised industry under the control of the Scottish Government.

Now this is a bit of an elephant in the room for the Tories who obviously loathe nationalised industry and are all for private sector promotion.
Believe me there is no campaign in Scotland to privatise our water having seen the results of it in England in particular.

This from the BBC in 2012-

There is "no way" Scottish Water will be privatised by the Holyrood government, Finance Secretary John Swinney has said.
The director of CBI Scotland, Iain MacMillan, called for the organisation (Scottish Water) to be sold off.
The business chief believed Scotland should mirror England and have water run by private enterprise.
However, Mr Swinney said the body would not be privatised because it contributed directly to the economy.
He told BBC Radio Scotland's Good Morning Scotland programme: "There is no way the government will privatise Scottish Water.
"I think that is essentially the general and settled view of the people in Scotland that they want their water industry, which of course is an enormous economic asset to Scotland.
There is a very direct economic impact by having a clear and appropriate governance framework in place that keeps Scottish Water in the public sector, delivering for the people of Scotland."

It will be interesting to see how long they can talk about this without mentioning that its a better service in half the UK and its provided by the State.

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