Internet piracy - criminal and civil penalties in South Africa

Wish that we can have real freedom in SA and not this "economical depression" that drags us further into temptation of wanting to do what Americans do. Seems like pretty soon an annual sanity tax would also have to be paid since we are basically all over-dictated and cannot even express our true feelings on something in fear of persecution, FFS! :mad:
 
my favourite thing is when I go online and on some website I get "this content is not available for your region", however, when I go to torrent site I get no such message.
 
Going after individuals hasn't worked anywhere else, it only further sullied the reputation of the music mafia, so why do they think it will work here?
 
I would love to see Saps/companies going after individuals downloading via torrents - the mum of the poster in this thread comes to mind. Surely Saps has bigger fish to fry (i.e. the rapists, murderers, hijackers, robbers of this country)? Suppose going after the soccer-mum or the student downloading via torrent does not pose imminent danger to our well trained police force.
 
There's something very wrong in the world when you can be sent to jail for such a trivial thing.
 
deweyzeph said:
There's something very wrong in the world when you can be sent to jail for such a trivial thing.
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Trivial? You are stealing. It isn't trivial according to the law no matter how you try to sugar coat your actions.
 
deweyzeph said:
There's something very wrong in the world when you can be sent to jail for such a trivial thing.
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Imagine you've created a movie and are able to generate a healthy income from it for yourself. Are you going to then be happy if people download it for free?
 
As kids we are told to share our toys with others, then as adults it becomes illegal. Whats wrong with us to teach our kids to share, as they will become criminals when they grow up.
 
A toy is a possession that does not generate an income.

Creating a movie is someones profession / income.

Do share your salary?
 
Totempole said:
Who still uses Bittorrent? :confused:
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I do. :wtf:

I needed to get hold of s01 of Breaking Bad and since it came out in 2008 and my Usenet provider retains files for 1100 days. I had no option but to torrent it.
 
People and companies look at digital content the wrong way. Do yourself a favour and read up on when Apple started iTunes and what happened in the background across all the major music labels (such as Sony). Then look at Napster. Both of those case studies will show you that the music- and movie industry was (and still is) completely ignorant and apathetic towards digital content distribution. Instead of working together, each one tries to combat "illegal distribution" and then cry when profit is being lost.

Instead they should work towards an industry-wide standard in how to distribute digital content and disregard their proprietary niche-solutions (DSTV comes to mind locally). I think there would be not a single person out there objecting to a monthly subscription of R500-R700 where you can watch anything at any time. Forget streaming, as we are years away from having sufficient bandwidth/backbone connectivity.

The music- and movie industry are really just chasing their tails trying to combat "piracy". It dates back to trying to copy protect tapes, CDs, DVDs and now on digital platforms it was first FTP, HTTP, then torrents and it is actually ironic that an "outdated" technology such as news-servers has made a comeback. Sophisticated users already use VPNs, peer-blockers, SSL and other mechanisms to "stealth" their downloads and to be honest, local "crime intelligence" will only be able to track the mum or teenager downloading a movie via a bittorrent client (it is comparable to arresting the guys selling DVDs on street-corners).

If South Africa wants to combat internet piracy, it is quite simple - block and filter all news-server traffic. Don't allow VPN and HTTPS transactions for news-protocols - but this is not possible, since this would require ISPA to go against it's own customers and it would equally challenge ECT and customer privacy. Even if newsbin and torrents were shut down, you can be certain than an alternative would pop up very quickly. This happened with torrents already and took less than 3 months to function properly (when looking at the tight integration of sickbeard, sabnzbd, couchpotato, headphones and others).
 
dualmeister said:
Imagine you've created a movie and are able to generate a healthy income from it for yourself. Are you going to then be happy if people download it for free?
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If I made a movie, I would sell it on the Internet for a very small fee (through paypal or something like that) knowing that the cheaper it is the more people would buy it. I would sell it at the same time to people all over the world without restriction.
I would also realise that some people will still copy it and that because of the nature of the Internet, there is little I can do to stop it.
But I do know that those who copy it are also just consumers like the rest, and studies show that they spend a lot of money on other content.
My movie had better be good enough to draw interest, and if it fails to sell I won't blame the people downloading it, but rather myself for failing to make a product that is a drawcard.
 
^ what the magicdude said...

Traditional distribution methods are outdated as dinosaurs, and new methods for content delivery (such as p2p etc) is heavily in demand.
 
Garyvdh said:
If I made a movie, I would sell it on the Internet for a very small fee (through paypal or something like that) knowing that the cheaper it is the more people would buy it.
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Digital distribution is the way to go and has been for the last few years already as MagicDude4Eva said.

But, then again all Hollywood does is remake old movies. No brains :D
 
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