OMG the book 1984 had a sequal?

The t-shirt on the frontpage is actually being made right now. It will be sent to the enemy frontline.

HAHAHHAHHAHAHHAHHAHAH

AHHAHHAHHAAHHAHHAHHAH

I agree with the shirt. Although, I BUY my stuff.

What nobody mentions here is the very purpose of copyright, and the reasons it exists in the first place. To be in control over  your own produced intellectual works is a very important civil liberty (mostly in regards to written work, admittedly). It has a very old tradition, going back to antiquity. The internet blurrs the line and it is easy to steal intellectal property, and since it doesn't belong to anybody but the author the claim that companies just sit on it to make money is absurd. They own it, they can do what they see fit with it. The right of authorship is important.

The problem with the internet is that the theft of intellectual property is downplayed and twisted around, turning the authors into evil overlords that withhold what rightfully belongs to the users/consumers for free with a hefty price. It can hardly be called criminal if the authors want to be in control over whom they give their works to.

I too though watch TV shows online, even though I mostly don't use torrents but rather rely on others who upload the shows to video hosting sites like ninjavideo or megavideo. I don't have a TV and I don't feel too bad about it because most broadcasting websites offer their episodes on their homepage after they aired anyway. This means that they freely share their property, so what I do isn't really anything different.

Movies.. I downloaded some via torrent, but I really prefer to watch movies in the theatre. The ones I got are either not released on DVD or won't be released in the right regional code or only get released in the dubbed version here (Germany) and I like watching the original version. Translations really don't work most of the time. Sometimes I downloaded a movie that I own on DVD already because my DVD drive has glitches or won't play them.

I never play computergames, I think its all pretty dull and boring (sorry), so I don't have a good oppinion about games. The same principels as for books apply there though, authors have the right to decide who gets their work for what price and how many they want to sell. To publicice everything takes away the incentive for authors/creators to do anything new in the first place, especially if they have no control over their intellectual work. Google books is a good example of a bad development.

Sorry but you are misinformed. The purpose for copyright is simply to provide incentive (limited legal monopoly) to be more creative for the ultimate benefit of society. Additionally copyright does not go back to antiquity. It came about around the same time as the printing press and public literacy but that is a discussion for another day...

Please explain why it is important that copyright is still in effect 70 years after the authors death? Or why Mickey Mouse will never go to public domain? Hell, Disney himself built his work on the work of others, so why can't others do the same for his work? Copyright as it is now is twisted for the purposes of large industries, not for the benefit of those who actually create something, so it is pretty far from its intended purpose.

http://techdirt.com/ These guys often point out the problems with the current copyright laws (among other things) and why they really need to be changed.

And before anyone starts yelling, I'm not saying that copyright laws should go, I'm saying that the balance is lost between creators, consumers and publishers, and that is why they need changing.

I agree that one could ask the legitimate question if there is any original thought and idea left or if everything is just some form of copy of something else that has been around before.. You can have a very interesting debate over fanfiction in that regard because it is one of the most obvious facettes of reusing established ideas and characters of others with your own creativity. 

There is a certain deadline in regard to the deaths of authors, I am not sure how long that period is though, but 70 years seems to be a bit long. On a sidenote, The same is true for music, and here it is a pain because you have to pay fees if you play music of recent composers which can be trouble if you are a small orchestra/band and your expenses are greater than your profit anyway. It is a deterrent for laygroups to use recent works because they can't afford the fee. In Germany, many Youtube videos don't play anymore with audio because the agreement between Youtube and the GEMA ran out this march. No pay, no audio in Germany. If youtube wants to host copyright protected audiofiles in Germany they have to pay.

The idea that ones intellectual works should belong to the author is old.

Woot, it's the "armchair" word again This is the part where Jafo tells us we are all armchair philosophers and we should ignore anyone but him. God I love his arrogance

I'm getting tired of giving you karma for all the appropriate responses you make.

Please have mercy on this old man! How many times can I click! Have some consideration!  

I was sticking to books here because I had been thinking about google's project to digitalize the worlds literature and thus making it available to everybody. Other artforms like painting/drawing/sculpting are a bit more tricky in violating copyright.. after all, painting a stilllife with a flowerbouqet has been done a million times and even though it is the same motif I wouldn't call that violating copyright.

Architecture always copies from somewhere else, immitation is a normal process for everything. You see something you like and use it while you are building your own house, I find it difficult to call that copyright violation except if you as the builder/architect  claim to be the sole creator of said style. But if good old ideas are recycled and combined with new approaches - that is fine with me. Fromm Rococo to classicism - same principle. They didn't like the ornamental and playful style of the beginning 18th century anymore and remembered antique styles with simple lines, arcades etc.

By the standard of today's laws, "piracy" is illegal - end of story.  In the past, it was different and maybe will be again in the future.  All that said, I think the current commercial model is broken and reflects an industry that hasn't adjusted to the next technological frontier.  iTunes is a good example of a music model that successfully adapted.  People of course still pirate single music tracks, but I would argue that far fewer do with the advent of the 99 cent track.  The movie industry has yet to catch up.  Material does not need to be free of course, but it needs to be priced at a point where it is attractive.  No matter what the model, however, there will always be piracy.

I'm not sure what the right commercial evolution is for video games, but a large percentage of videos games are Crap with a capital "C".  You can't trust the online review mags because they are beholden to the game industry for advertising revenue.  Forums are a mixed bag because it is always the negative voices that are the loudest.  The best I can do is "try" the game out before purchasing the game.  Is it illegal - yep, I make no bones about it but I am not dropping $59.95 on a game that I play once and then shelve (okay I have done this more times than I care to think about).  For instance, if I had the opportunity to try a game out for a week for $5.00 then I would take that alternative rather than pirate a game.  Demigod, for example, is worth the amount I paid for it, but for everyone of those, there are a host that are not.  The business model requires me to put in several hundred dollars before I find a game that I like and that does not work for me.

Being arrogant and attacking the pirates won't have very much effect. There will be more. Demonizing it without looking at the things that cause it is twice as idiotic. There will always be a way to pirate.

I've downloaded several games to see if they're worth playing. If they are, I buy them. If they're not, I don't. No exceptions. I'll never buy a game with intrusive DRM either, where the pirate copies are even a higher quality. I download cracks for every single one of my games because I don't like having to deal with the discs. And for some games (like Oblivion) that need to have an uncracked exe for certain programs or mods to run (OBSE in this case) I make an .iso file on my hdd that I can load, so I still don't have to bother with the dvd. Am I a demon worshipper that should be scuttled with the rest? 

Focus on why there is piracy, and work toward a goal around that. Also, accept that some people will never buy anything. They wouldn't buy the music/games/whatever even if they couldn't get it for free. Focus on why the people who would buy your game, don't.

Being militant in your defense or offense of piracy makes you sound like a moron, and you might as well be wearing a guy fawkes mask spouting memes in front of the senate. There's a lot of room in the middle that can stem the tide and help the industry and the consumers. The dick measuring contests of people trying to be smarter/more intelligent/more polarized than the rest just leads to more and more of the intelligent crowd becoming more of the fodder for the constant shitstorm.

tl;dr Stop trying to cut off the nose to spite the face.