It's the issue that IP lumps everything into one confused mass of dissention and angst.

I think it's quite silly to have Maccas want to OWN an 'M' that just happens to be yellow.

But that's IP for you....

The issue is that people want to think that Art, Architecture, Music, Literature, etc are also 'IP' and thus somehow intangible and immaterial.

And therefore TAKING an item in these categories is theftless and victimless.

Crap.

And yet when an owner of one of these defends his ownership he is simply some bastard arsehole stifling free expression and people are hell-bent on sticking-it-to-the-man in response/revenge.

Someone somewhere probably also associates 'free love' with a right to go off and rape anything with a pulse....

Yes, you actually got it wrong.

Why is it all those who philosophize about the ethics of theft and what constitutes it need to hide behind the concept of 'material/substance' being the determinator of possession/ownership yet are oh-so eloquent with the concepts of conceptualizing?  Are your ideas and opinions simply stolen from others because you are into free thinking and that means taking others' thoughts?

Too?

Don't know, is any of my ability work floating around in other mods without reference and for pay?

(Edit:  Just in case, no one freak out if they are.  I wouldn't give a shit if it were, assuming I'd even notice I was using my own work.)

I can go one better than copyright infringement though, I've had actual work stolen, non-duplicated originals comprising hundreds of hours of work.  My painfully detailed Warhammer figurines disappeared out of a game room when I was in high school.  I didn't become a proponent of strip search security checkpoints at entries to infrastructure open to the public.

Removing anyone who doesn't personally benefit from copyright from the argument over whether and how much protection is a good thing, is sheer stupidity.  If we made a law protecting rapists from prosecution, that same logic would bar anyone but a rapist from commenting on the good of the law.  You'd dismiss the victims of a flawed system, and only have the beneficiaries give weight because you lack the intellectual honesty needed to admit to those flaws.  It's an absurdity to assume only artists can recognize benefits from copyright as well.  There are indeed utter bleeding morons convinced the world would be better off without anything of the kind, but they're few and far between.

An example of how dangerous copyright has become.  I have a sizable DVD collection.  The codec that allows me to play these can be removed from the market at the whim of the shareholders of the DVD FLLC group.  My DVD's can be turned into coasters long before they cease to be functional items because the patented device they play on requires copyrighted software to run.  If it were a patent, they would have to pay to renew it, and simply by improving on the DVD player, you can get around that patent and sell the new device.  You can't do that with a copyright.  With proper care, these disks will still be functional when I kick the bucket from old age.  No player will last anywhere near that long, and even without further extensions by congress, the copyright on the DVD codec will long outlive me.

MMO's are a more obvious example of this, one I personally avoid like the plague for unrelated reasons.  You buy a probable coaster every time you purchase one.  As soon as it's no longer cost effective, the only people who are allowed to run the server, stop.  Leaving you without a legal method of utilizing your purchased product.  The obvious nature of the market has had disastrous effects on it as well.  There's a reason why all of these smaller MMO's keep flopping so fast, their near guaranteed failure discourages investing into them initially, accelerating their decline.  Only the giants in the industry are a safe bet for that $50 and the continued investment of time and money.

This is nonsense.  Mods can be killed by the franchise owners at their whim.  They are done with tacit, and often direct allowance.  Many copyright holders crush any attempts at modding with cease and desist orders followed by punitive actions should they be ignored, such as the Honor-verse mod that never made it past a topic.  There are also various franchises with strict rules on how their medium can be used.  Games Workshop for instance has a very strict use permission, you cannot combine other IP with GW IP, or they take your ass out.  Just ask the BFG modders here and they can give you the skinny on release reqs.  Other owners, such as Paramount, don't give a rip what their fans do as long as no one is printing money off the efforts.

I can understand about the work. Sorry that happened to you. Thieves are not cool. Although you modded the figurines, you bought the originals... not sure how it was different from someone taking your mods of games, though. Seems (on the surface) to be pretty much parallel... but certainly no less painful. I'm sure you're being a bit reticent about what you felt like doing to the thief/thieves at the time, though.

Unfortunately, you left them in a game room. An honest person generally makes that mistake... the game room wasn't secured, so you lost them. Pretty much what copright legislation tries to prevent with respect to IP. 

As for this legislation, it's really aimed at sites that disseminate ripped work/programs, etc. I'm happy they're doing it (the legislation). I don't see how it would conceivably hurt me, though. 

The only people it hurts Doc are those with no morals and who participate in illegal activities, illegal file sharing, ripping, etc.  Bring on the bill!

Yes, they do make reference to it, but congress and the "big guys" (RIAA and MPAA) have made a mockery of them.  Basically they are not worth the paper they are printed on thanks to the stupidity of those determined to keep the buggy whip business going long after people have started to drive cars.

This bill will do nothing to stop illegal file sharing and it is not intended to do so. The only thing this bill will do is censor the internet. Do you want the feds to regulate the internet like China?

 http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/05/eric-schmidt-internet-blacklists-make-us-more-like-china.ars

I think we had only one Nixon, and Google's Eric Schmidt is the last one to talk. Google wants everything, everybody and everywhere (hell, they're working on space as well!) and they want it yesterday. If Google doesn't like it, I almost want to say I do, automatically.

Sorry, Cars... don't see where the fear is coming from.... and China? No time soon. How does a site make the blacklist? By distributing PREDOMINENTLY warez for free or profit. That doesn't bother me. Hell, bury 'em. But NOT without Judicial revue.

The answer of the big boys is, "Don't make a new law, enforce the ones we have." False choice. I say why not both? Crack down so hard on the pirate/warez sites so hard you'll hear the 'pop' as they disappear. 

You mean like Google has done for China...just so they don't alienate a massive user base?

It's not fear Doc, it's common sense. This will lead to censorship, plain and simple. It may not be tomorrow, but it will happen.

This may be used to block some pirate sites in the begining but the law will be twisted into something that it was not intended to be.  

To think otherwise would be naive.

I'm all for protecting intellectual property but to give the goverment the power to censor the internet is not the answer.

You are making fairly a fairly grand assumption that the federal government wants to use its power to only shut down warez sites and that the DoJ will perform any sort of review. This legislation opens up a door that has incredible associated risks, and while we can hope for the best, such overarching powers could easily be abused. How would you feel if Deviant Art was shut down because Disney or Sony decided that it contained too many of their copyrighted objects? What about these forums because of unauthorized posting of copyrighted video? While this is not the intent of the legislation, federal agencies tend to forget legal intent as time progresses and these powers await abuse.

No, it's always better to give THAT power to commercial entities such as Google.  Much more noble motivation and far more accountable....;p

Or Stardock's software [as IS the case].

Would it force un-moderated sites to lift their game and take more responsibility for what actual content is hosted?

Yes it would, if they wished to continue to be a part of the Net.

Specifically with regard to that, if this WERE the case I [and others] would NOT be chasing the removal of warez CONTINUOUSLY - involving the very same uploader on average once a week.

Instead, "someone" would VET the uploads before being made public and such Warez would not be an issue [there].

It's good enough for us to do it here on Wincustomize....why not EVERYONE?

And if you screw up....you get screwed to the wall.

Seems fair...;)

FAIR, LOL.

Take a poll of Americans that would like this passed. You might get the 400,000 and the other 274 million would say NO GOD DAMN WAY. Show me fair.

Just poll this thread.

No, I'm only dealing in facts... not fears and neither 'potential' nor assumptions. What will happen will happen and it will be something neither of us anticipated.

I checked how good of a job you're doing on that so I searched for a torrent of Object Desktop.

The latest one uploaded was from 2008(!) so you're doing a good job!

You & the bill will keep warez out of the hands of the general public, but networks such as DC++ and FTP sites I wonder if they'll ever get....

If the networks are outide the US, they aren't addressed directly, only their address will disappear... and the big search engines will be made responsible to do that.

If it means getting rid of illegal activities, YES!

And that is how it starts - with thunderous applause at the nobleness of the loss of freedom and liberty.  It is not until the nag is sent to the glue factory that some begin to see where the slippery slope started.  Anyone can see the bottom.

The Pirate bay is able to generate advertising and merchandise revenues from its website. These revenues wouldn't exist without the distribution of intellectual property they don't own. Take away the content and the site doesn't have any value of its own.  How is it right that they can profit off another's labor without compensation?

Setting aside any arguments of "who would or wouldn't have bought" it seems reasonable that mass distributions would financially devalue the product. Some may call this 'theft', but at the very least its fair to call it harmful and I can't support it.

What part of the legislation says that only unmoderated sites would be affected? In fact, no such qualifier is part of the proposed legislation. While moderation does have positive effects on some community sites, it has negative effects as well. In the case of forums, moderation is definitely a necessity, though only to manage spam and enforce forum rules. In all honesty, moderation does not prevent theft, copyright infringement or illegal activity, but merely masks it in the same way other self regulation schemes have done. Returning to the OP for a moment, if someone posts an image or some other form of copyrighted material without any form of watermark or other such protection scheme, it seems incredible to be surprised that someone would then rip and reuse those completely unprotected images.

As for your several comments about Stardock, I find it hard to believe that Brad feels that such draconian measures are necessary to fight and prevent such theft of IP. Looking at the fact that most Stardock games have declined the use of harsh DRM software which overly penalizes normal users, it would seem illogical that normal websites which have community features should also be asked to perform significant moderation simply to avoid summary blacklisting.

Having a system in place where Warez is actively PROHIBITED from even MOMENTARY posting means Upload moderation DOES work.

This isn't about spam moderation on forums...it is about active pre-emptive vetting of what is HOSTED by Stardock's sites...and rest assured Brad is ENTIRELY happy with that mechanism being in place.

Perhaps, as you are posting from 'Elemental's site/forum you overlook the reality that Stardock is a SOFTWARE developer whose programs are distributed as warez just as any other Developer's is.

The REALITY of site Moderation is that IN NO WAY are Stardock's sites used as mechanisms of software theft.  Stardock has a zero tolerance for warez and the Sites' Moderators and Admins actively police that.   There are plenty of people IP-banned from any interaction with the Stardock community for that very reason.

The Issue with any site which allows 'uploads' of content WITHOUT such moderation is that BECAUSE they have no pre-emptive checks in place they will 'unwittingly' be engines of warez distribution....until such time as they are made aware of it.  And that is typically TOO LATE.

The horse has bolted.

It's not a matter of whether moderated sites are included or not...but that by definition moderated sites won't be exposed AT ALL.

Note that here 'moderated sites' means more than someone checking whether 'poo' and 'bum', etc is being used 'gratuitously'.

We're talking about how unmoderated content means you may as well call your site 'Piratebay part deux' and be done with it...as that's what they will be allowed to become if unsupervised.

I don't think I've been called reticent in decades.  I wanted to cut off their balls, grind them up, and feed them the bloody mess.  I still wouldn't want security measures put into place to prevent such thefts.

After all the internet has been properly moderated to make sure no one ever commits a crime, how much use do you figure you'll still get out of it in the areas currently dominated by low moderation mediums?  WC is a business, running sales.  It can afford to have employees checking the content out because the content is of commercial value.  Every schmucks stupid crap picture on DA doesn't.  The more regulatory nonsense a site has to go through to stay in operation, the fewer sites there will be, it's a simple numbers game.  If you want to shrink the WWW, then crap like this bill is a great idea.  Beyond that it's just a triviality, they will always be one step behind the criminal element, and getting TPB blacklisted from Google isn't going to change that.  Personally, I wont miss any of this shit, but content hosting is going to change big time from this stupidity if they actually use it to anything effectual.

Screwing yourself into the ground to prevent a little crime is never a good thing.  It results in varying degrees if disastrous consequences when the stupid masses pick a little more security over a little more freedom.

Edit:  The first thing that would happen is the US search engines would become vaporware as everyone switched to unfiltered results.

Clearly you live in an alternate universe to the rest of us mere mortals...hint....Fringe is  fantasy....;)

So, the solution is not to do anything. Ever. Because it might go wrong?

In the meantime, the criminals have a field day.

That might work for you, but not for me. Let's try to stop them, and keep an eye on those in power. 

I choked on my coffee reading this.

Corporate America think themselves gods amongst men. If you can scrape another dime a day at the cost of humanity, so be it.

This is typical Corporate bullshit thinking. Fuck humanity as long as I get a bigger piece of the pie.

How does SD manage to grow enough to almost take that whole building over with pirates waving there swords around. How does Impulse get to big for its britches with pirates intruding everyones homes. Oh my, thats not enough, lets censor the WWW and to hell with what everyone else thinks. I NEED MORE.

Put it to a national vote and see what mere mortals think if this bullshit bill.