So "your mom" comments are still fair game? Awesome!

Doh, wrong thread

No Radiohead?

This means copyright is automatically abolished and Obama has to dance Gangnam Style in a Gotye parody video

Mugato: I can proudly say I haven't seen the Psy video or heard the song. You may touch me.

You're in good company, friend.

Bill Gates?

Microsoft made no effort to crack down on piracy for a long time; it was well understood that their initial policy was that they would rather you pirate their product than use their competitor's. In the long run, they earned far more from the gain in market share than they lost in sales.

Piracy generally tends to benefit those who have a good product but low market share / exposure. For example, much anime in the US is released technically pirated first (fansubs of TV shows). This gives the product exposure in a market that otherwise it would not have, and is a huge boost on their sales when they do bring commercial versions later on. Even for US-owned media, it generates word of mouth that is effective advertisement.

Where piracy hurts most are established brands and subpar products - established brands don't need exposure, and subpar products generate entirely the wrong kind of word of mouth.

It's not really "piracy" if they allow people to download stuff from their own site and ask for people to pay what they want or put ads on youtube or even just allow people to freely trade their music.

But for the loose definition of piracy used in TFA why didn't they mention the Grateful Dead? They went so far as to set aside whole sections of the seating at their shows just so people could set up microphones.

I paid the 5 dollars for the Louis CK special, and it was worth every penny. If he had made it inconvenient and loaded it with DRM, I may have been tempted to pirate it.

I happily paid for the first two Mass Effect games. I was hoping to buy the 3rd Mass Effect game, but there was no way around their Origin requirement, so guess what happened?

No Jonathan Coulton?

I paid the $5 for Louis CK's thing.

\just sayin'

My experience with The Sims franchise is similar. I pirated throughout the first and second versions because I couldn't afford it at the time but when I could I'd buy individual expansion packs etc when they were new because I wanted to support the game. When TS3 came out I got a legal copy, but by then EA had gone a little crazy with the DRM and the game constantly broke, telling me it wasn't a legit copy when it was. So I went back to pirating since it was too much of a hassle not to.

I generally don't mind when people use "off of" when they talk or email. But in a headline? C'mon man.

Speaking of keeping money out of corporate hands, anyway to kill the 'whitelist' request on fark?

Mugato: What about Metallica? Their biatching about Napster put Lars Ulrich's whiny puss on the news for like a year. Lots of free pub.

Anything they were to do had been done by then.

fark'em All.

LemSkroob: Speaking of keeping money out of corporate hands, anyway to kill the 'whitelist' request on fark?

Only thing I'm having "success" with is "Remove It Permanently." Not liking it.

LemSkroob: Speaking of keeping money out of corporate hands, anyway to kill the 'whitelist' request on fark?

It's probably best not to discuss how to defeat a site's nagware *on* the site whose nagware you're trying to circumvent; that seems likely to provoke either bans, or an arms race of people developing methods to stop the nag bar with people developing methods to counter the methods to stop the nag bar.

The absolute simplest is to kill Javascript, but the site has pretty ugly <noscript> layout so you will just trade one irritating layout for another.

fusillade762

Doctorow, who just published a book with sci-fi great Charles Stross

SQUEE! Off to the library!

The Rapture of the Nerds by Doctorow, Cory; Stross, Charles

Welcome to the fractured future, at the dusk of the twenty-first century. Earth has a population of roughly a billion hominids. For the most part, they are happy with their lot, living in a preserve at the bottom of a gravity well. Those who are unhappy have emigrated, joining one or another of the swarming densethinker clades that fog the inner solar system with a dust of molecular machinery so thick that it obscures the sun. The splintery metaconsciousness of the solar-system has largely sworn off its pre-post-human cousins dirtside, but its minds sometimes wander... and when that happens, it casually spams Earth's networks with plans for cataclysmically disruptive technologies that emulsify whole industries, cultures, and spiritual systems. A sane species would ignore these get-evolved-quick schemes, but there's always someone who'll take a bite from the forbidden apple. So until the overminds bore of stirring Earth's anthill, there's Tech Jury Service: random humans, selected arbitrarily, charged with assessing dozens of new inventions and ruling on whether to let them loose. Young Huw, a technophobic, misanthropic Welshman, has been selected for the latest jury, a task he does his best to perform despite an itchy technovirus, the apathy of the proletariat, and a couple of truly awful moments on bathroom floors.

Happy Hours: [upload.wikimedia.org image 150x250]

Did Hoffman ever make money on that book? I'm sure he benefited in terms of publicity, but the guy never got particularly wealthy as far as I know. (Then again, if he had money he probably would have given it all away.)

/proud owner of a legal copy

NowhereMon: So "your mom" comments are still fair game? Awesome!

TFA: Rafati started Broadband TV in 2005 with the aim of monetizing and legitimizing pirated video. The Canadian company searches video sharing services, looking for copyrighted material. Instead of removing it, Broadband TV re-brands the content, includes relevant ads, and reposts


Totally useless without any information on what they mean by "re-brand." The article linked within the article isn't any help, either.

The Broadband TV thing is everything that is wrong with YouTube. Oh, it's a popular video (or even one that no one else has ever seen before)? Upload it yourself and get your own slice of the views/ad revenue. It's even more insidious because this is apparently sanctioned by the actual corporations that own the copyright, loaded with even more ads that people want to get away from in the first place.

Or am I misunderstanding the word 'repost' and this doesn't involve uploading yet another copy of the completely unmodified original?

StoPPeRmobile: LemSkroob: Speaking of keeping money out of corporate hands, anyway to kill the 'whitelist' request on fark?

Only thing I'm having "success" with is "Remove It Permanently." Not liking it.

I disabled ABP on Fark. The ads are not annoying. If they become annoying, it will be turned back on. 

/nuff said

Man, Cory Doctorow always looks like a smarmy smug biatch. Look at this face! Jesus, it just screams "PUNCH ME REALLY REALLY HARD!"

I just right clicked on the little annoying bar thingy on top and 'blocked element' or somesuch. It was so easy I can't remember. That said I do click on Fark's ads every so often to assuage my guilt, but it's when I want to.

Apparently Joe Rogan is selling his new comedy special directly from his website, as well.

Raging Whore Moans: This means copyright is automatically abolished and Obama has to dance Gangnam Style in a Gotye parody video

Your wish has been granted.

Link

ITGreen: Shahrzad Rafati is drop dead gorgeous. I hate it when beautiful women are smarter than me.

I just like meeting people smarter than me, it restores my faith in humanity. If they are a beautiful woman all the better.

Mugato: What about Metallica? Their biatching about Napster put Lars Ulrich's whiny puss on the news for like a year. Lots of free pub.

Well it made me never buy any of their records after they did that. If they are whiny pussies then they don`t get my `hard metal mofo` money....

/I don`t have money for whiny pussy music

C'mon, you never bought any Metallica albums anyway. Moochers can't handle the truth. See, election results.

And, Lars was right about Napster. Seems funny now, all that commotion over crap 128k mp3 files.

Anyway, the Napster thing happened right when Metallica changed their sound and look. Which, is really what had pissed their fans off. The people that complained the most were not even Metallica fans. They were just fans of free stuff, and who isn't?

I bought that Louis CK special. Still have it, and still watch it occasionally. Well worth the money..

I bought the Louis CK special, Jim Gaffigan's, and today Joe Rogan's. I like buying stand up this way. I feel like it's just buying a ticket to their show, and for them it's like potentially doing a show for millions of audience members. I think it works really well for comedy.

I would also probably buy a lot more movies if I could download a good 720p file for $5. Just the main movie. Save the extras for the DVD/Bluray. Doubt it'll be available that way soon though.