Well, it seems the world never stops and here’s the two latest acts of intelligence—or should I say lack thereof.
1-Astatalk has moved into pirating movies:
http://astatalk.com/tag/3/Movies/
2-EBay has no issues of sellers marketing and selling stolen goods and expect buyers to buy before complaining, forcing buyers to participate in illegal distribution, aka, piracy:
http://feedback.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewFeedback2&userid=criselargonza&ftab=FeedbackAsSeller
Of course, Yahoo us still facilitating piracy, via its groups. Hey, Yahoo, some of those groups that are not marked adult are pirating explicit adult material. Maybe you should hire someone to search through the Yahoo groups and see just what Yahoo is affiliated with or participating in by authorizing the group in the first place. You might even want to disallow file sharing.
It’s sad to say that even the search engines are helping people find pirated material.
Granted Google does remove links when requested, but why does the burden have to fall on the owner to hunt and request removal? Doesn’t everyone know what torrent means? Any link with the word torrent in it should be automatically banned from even showing up in a search engine to avoid driving business to a pirate site.
For that matter, advertisers might want to check where their ads are appearing. To see an ad on a pirate sites tells me that most advertisers either don’t know or don’t care where their ad appears. Hello! An ad on a pirate site is only going to get your material pirated, not sales as pirates do not purchase, they steal.
Hey, Google, step up and take charge, ban the word torrent, bittorrent, bit torrent, bit-torrent and other suck well known and common piracy language. Show the world you are a topnotch search engine keeping pace with the times, maybe even stepping ahead.
If I wanted to live in a place that censors its citizens’ ability to search for information on the internet, I’d move to China. You might like it there, but here in the US most of us don’t want to have our sources of knowledge dictated like that. There are many legal uses of torrent files, from fair use to files with Creative Commons licenses. Oh, and Facebook just acknowledged that they use Bittorrent to transfer data between servers: http://www.downloadsquad.com/2010/06/26/bittorrent-finds-another-legal-use-facebooks-server-farms/
ReplyDeleteCars are used for all sorts of illegal things, like most drug trafficking, but we don’t take everyone’s car away. The internet itself is used not only for piracy but for child pornographers and terrorists to organize and share information. But we don’t shut down the Web for all users because of the misdeeds of a few. I have found a ton of great music and video, all legal, as torrent files because *some* artists do choose to give away their creations that way, so who are you to say I cannot seek them out with Google? Congress tried censoring search engines with the Communications Decency Act back in the mid-90s and the Supreme Court wisely struck it down as violating the First Amendment.
Group punishment is easy, but not fair or just. If tracking illegal file sharing by IP address is as simple as you make it out to be on this site, then that is clearly the way to tackle piracy. Not the overkill of telling everyone what you think they should be allowed to search for online.
You think I'm too harsh? I'm all for revoking a driver's privileges from all states forever if caught driving or using a vehicle for more than legal transportation; the death penalty is something long overdue everywhere; a rapist, molester or murder should be tied, gagged and bound, then handed over to the victim's family.
ReplyDeleteI believe in an eye for an eye and a life for a life, I live by do unto others as you would have done to you. I believe in being fair and just, upholding the law and not infringing on another person’s right to what is legally their property.
When your freedom infringes on my freedom, then you become an oppressor who no longer cherishes freedom, but twists it into something America has long since fought against for your own benefit while disregarding those you infringe upon.
When one’s rights or beliefs infringe on the rights and beliefs of others, freedom no longer exists, but wears the face of oppression.
Consider the following…
Marilyn vos Savant - “What is the essence of America? Finding and maintaining that perfect, delicate balance between freedom 'to' and freedom 'from.'”
While you have the freedom to take, you do not have the freedom to take what is not legally yours.
Unknown - “Liberty is the right to choose. Freedom is the result of the right choice.”
Yes, you have the right to choose, but choosing to take what is not legally yours makes you a criminal.
Tiorio - “A man has the right to toot his own horn to his heart's content, so long as he stays in his own home, keeps the windows closed and does not make himself obnoxious to his neighbors.”
When your right to do, speak, have and so forth infringe on my right to what I created, what is mine and alters my life for your whim, you become the oppressor who walks on America, what she stands for and the constitution of the United States you claim to embrace.
Since when does your right to take what you want override my right to protect what is mine?
According to the US Constitution, never.
And for every IP outed here, there are ten times that given to the legal authorities.
My quandary is, should Google ban URLs containing the sequential characters t-o-r-r-e-n-t from appearing in its searches, my quest for sites that are pirating my work becomes much more difficult. Yes, it makes it harder for the criminals to find BUT the victims (authors and publishers) do not have the time and the resources to scour the web to enforce their rights.
ReplyDeleteBattling piracy is a difficult task. I applaud you for taking this vital step. Flush the cockroaches out of the corners! Shine the light on them!