Beware! Personal copies of games and movies are illegal

[czc]

Ah MyBB. The place filled with people that have the attitude of "If they won't let me buy it, I'll just take it. How cool am I!"

Yeah, what kind of sick fsuk won't let me buy something!

 

[Valerion]

Ah MyBB. The place filled with people that have the attitude of "If they won't let me buy it, I'll just take it. How cool am I!"

So. A company rejects my money and say I am not allowed to purchase something, simply because I live in SA. That smells of discrimination to me. Since last year I have been gradually re-purchasing my dead-tree books in Kindle format. Several of them showed up as "not available in your region." I suppose that I will have to just accept that I am not allowed by the high and mighty copyright companies to purchase their books then. Sucks for me. And well ... it doesn't sell well in SA, as evidenced by the lack of sales. So the SA consumer doesn't need to be factored into the release schedules.

If it is the last book in a very riveting series, I know that the temptation to pirate is very high. The publisher is deliberately providing a teaser and then withholding the final dose of an addictive substance. Of course there will be people that take the illegal route, since there IS no legal route to obtain your fix.

 

[Katoolsie]

Its impossible to enforce these bull**** laws.
They will have to sue almost everyone in the country who owns a MP3 player or a PC......... its just ridiculous

 

[Tornalca]

Its impossible to enforce these bull**** laws.
They will have to sue almost everyone in the country who owns a MP3 player or a PC......... its just ridiculous

Jy is dalk katools maar jy praat die waarheid!!!

 

[Jola]

There will always be some reason people don't want to pay.

Speak for yourself !

I know many people who register for iTunes with a USA address, and who then buy video material with e-vouchers - now that is probably also illegal in some way or another, but at least they pay for it.

 

[Juice]

F'em. At one point I bascially had to smack a retarded local on-line digital retailer in the face with my cash and they STILL wouldn't sell me ONE single DRM-free song. So now I have a US iTunes account (probably also 'illegal' because the US digital copy infringes on the copyright of the local non-digital DRM-encumbered copy). These idiots really are their own worst enemy. After SOPA, PIPA and ACTA, these clowns have been taking an enormous public beating. Get with the times, or GTFO.

Juice

 

[creeper]

Speak for yourself !

I know many people who register for iTunes with a USA address, and who then buy video material with e-vouchers - now that is probably also illegal in some way or another, but at least they pay for it.

Let's see. You open an account (il)legally. You get a method of payment legally. You buy the content legally. I would love a court case on this one.

Seriously, these guys need to grow up and get with the 21st century.

 

[rrcatto]

I regularly torrent ****. However, because bandwidth is so expensive, I set my upload limit to 1Kbps (lowest setting possible in utorrent). That means that I have never shared a complete copy of anything I downloaded with anyone.

In fact, most torrent users could argue that they have never shared a complete copy with any one person. Since an incomplete copy is useless, one could argue that what you have given others amounts only to a random selection of useless bytes, useless on their own.

Therefore I am not a pirate.

 

[Mike Hoxbig]

I regularly torrent ****. However, because bandwidth is so expensive, I set my upload limit to 1Kbps (lowest setting possible in utorrent). That means that I have never shared a complete copy of anything I downloaded with anyone.

In fact, most torrent users could argue that they have never shared a complete copy with any one person. Since an incomplete copy is useless, one could argue that what you have given others amounts only to a random selection of useless bytes, useless on their own.

Therefore I am not a pirate.

The law doesn't make any distinction between partial and whole, just distribution. And in that instance torrenting is distributing.

 

[BeVonk!]

This whole legal|illegal business around digital content|rights is one massive f-up. I have a Kindle e-book reader and I always buy my books from Amazon when I can get them from Amazon. I get my book immediately delivered to my device. Happy customer with no motivation not to pay. But - as someone already stated - I get a "this book is not available for your region" message I will get it in "other ways" as I'm willing to pay but I'm not allowed to do so. I have invested in paper printed books for 40 years and I have paid more for moving books than furniture over the years and I therefore stopped buying printed books. I started replacing my collection with e-books, getting rid of the printed version where/when I could get an electronic version.

I have an illegal US iTunes account, not because I like doing illegal stuff, but because I AM FORCED TO DO SO. I do not buy CD's any more. I don't want to store CD's in my house any more. Same goes for movies. I do not want to store DVD disks any more. I want my stuff in a digital format. It is not the consumer's fault that the f-up industry is not using readily available technology to make it possible to be legal with convenience. Why not have ATM-type kiosk machines where I can buy and download music/movies onto a USB drive and pay using my credit card? Why MUST I buy and own a plastic disk that comes in a plastic box? Is the GREEN idea not to get rid of such methods?

This thing is not a simple black|white issue. There is a hell of a lot wrong on the other side too. But it is easy|convenient to write laws to oppress some and make others richer and richer with nothing motivating them to get better solutions in place.

 

[mouks]

R5,000 and/or 3 years imprisonment for EACH copyrighted item distributed in the case of a first conviction.

They will probably send me straight to Hell ..

 

[czc]

I regularly torrent ****. However, because bandwidth is so expensive, I set my upload limit to 1Kbps (lowest setting possible in utorrent). That means that I have never shared a complete copy of anything I downloaded with anyone.

In fact, most torrent users could argue that they have never shared a complete copy with any one person. Since an incomplete copy is useless, one could argue that what you have given others amounts only to a random selection of useless bytes, useless on their own.

Therefore I am not a pirate.

Thats not very nice now, is it?

 

[BeVonk!]

If online piracy was such a big problem as "the industry" claims it is Apple would have closed the iTunes store long ago. But they are doing well ... so most people do want to pay for stuff.

 

[MrGray]

There will always be some reason people don't want to pay. It is too expensive. It isn't in the format I want. It isn't in the quality I want. It isn't in the timeframe I want. Ad nauseum, ad infinitum.

This is very cynical. You'll note that this forum is full of people *begging* to be able to pay for content on platforms like iTunes or Netflix. I honestly believe that if you give people the opportunity to pay an affordable fee for well delivered online content, most people will happily do so because it is far easier than messing around with torrents and nzbs and what have you and the quality is always best from the source.

People will just use whatever justification they desire to justify in their own minds taking that which they are not allowed to.
But that isn't really the bad part. It is the self righteousness they have when they do it that is sickening

Well, I'm not sure it's about self-righteousness. As I mentioned, in my case at least, it's purely a matter of practicality and local unavailability of the product. I suspect that this is the case for most people.

In order to obtain a piece of music for my iPod I can either:

A. Drive to the mall, find parking (which I must pay for), hopefully find the music I'm looking for etched onto a plastic disk in a shop where I have to queue to pay, drive home, find a PC with a CD player and finally rip the song to a digital format (which is apparently illegal anyway).

or

B. Obtain the track I want in mp3 format in under 3 mins without moving from my desk.

Now what do you think normal human beings will choose to do?

 

[JStrike]

Speak for yourself !

I know many people who register for iTunes with a USA address, and who then buy video material with e-vouchers - now that is probably also illegal in some way or another, but at least they pay for it.

I'm one of them. But I don't try pretend me circumventing the publishers rules as either good or just. It is selfish and immoral

 

[LazyLion]

I'm one of them. But I don't try pretend me circumventing the publishers rules as either good or just. It is selfish and immoral

Why don't you just be honest and admit you have no freaking idea what other people's motivations are or what is going through their mind?

 

[LFX]

let's make memes out of the mugshot

 

[Mike Hoxbig]

This is very cynical. You'll note that this forum is full of people *begging* to be able to pay for content on platforms like iTunes or Netflix. I honestly believe that if you give people the opportunity to pay an affordable fee for well delivered online content, most people will happily do so because it is far easier than messing around with torrents and nzbs and what have you and the quality is always best from the source.

To be fair, most of the delay in getting content to SA is due to the unnecessary red tape introduced by the FPB.

 

[MrGray]

To be fair, most of the delay in getting content to SA is due to the unnecessary red tape introduced by the FPB.

I don't think the FPB has any bearing on the lack of legitimate avenues to purchase digital content. Having said that, the reason why you can't buy music/video on iTunes/Amazon/Netflix etc is still a bit of a mystery to me. Would someone in the industry please enlighten us as to why we are still in the stone age here.

 

[rwenzori]

@Kosmic I agree, the law doesn't suit the digital environment at all, and we are in need of a revamp. The thing is it's not just the law that needs an update. One has to remember that the Copyright Act only sets up the default position, the other thing that needs an update is the licencing of the media itself. Personally if owners of works updated their licences properly then this wouldn't really be an issue. To a degree this is what the Creative Commons People are doing, and shows you a good idea of how "powerful" a licence agreement can be.

@ponder the law has been "revamped" a couple of times (most recently in 2002). But as far as I know there are no major drives to do a full overhaul, which is what is proberly needed. In fairness this sort of process is only starting to happen in much more "advanced" legal systems (like Europe) only now. I know the UK is also has started looking at copyright reform.

@Rwenzori To my knowledge none. We have had some criminal cases (but those were against people who where selling pirated copies in flea markets and such). Just for disclosure, neither I nor my firm represent SAFACT.

I must give you a lot of credit for coming here and responding, especially to rude pricks like me. Good man.

No - we neither want nor need a revamp. What would happen in a revamp would be something like:

- Govt would call for some sort of input
- Places like SAFACT, the BSA, Nu Metro and others would put a lot of money and effort into punting their bs - "Clamp down on these dirty copyright-infringers, criminalise, put big fines, and we'll create lots and lots of new jobs and give you lots more tax revenue."
- Joe Public has not the resources to put up a fight - people wouldn't pay anyway, all these new international copyright-protection efforts are really just a way for the first world to milk money from the poorer nation, you bastards are actually "losing" very little anyway, keep the sanctions appropriate to the illegalities, you bastards actually need to move your arses into the digital age and price cheaply sell on volume, etc.
- Morons in govt would think themselves very clever to pass draconian legislation in line with such horrors as the DMCA, SOPA, ACTA, and we would be stuffed.

Leave it alone.