Tenhawk

May 16, 2010 at 11:12am

Stop calling it stealing, damn it. It is NOT stealing. It is copyright infringement. We have legal terms to describe it, we do NOT have to keep applying erroneous terms to make it sound scary.

This is like looking at an aggravated assault and listing it as murder. There is NO Body, it's NOT murder. There is no actual loss, it is NOT theft.

Theoretical losses to not constitute theft, damn it all. They may or may not constitute actual monetary losses incurred, however those losses still don't constitute a retroactive theft. watching a movie you didn't pay for is something every person in the PLANET has done, will do, and a sizeable chunk is probably doing as you read this.

Please, just stop. Yes it's (currently) a crime. Yes, it's bad (maybe). But it HAS a name. Use IT.

There is a reason that this is a confusing area to many people, and that reason is simple that it is NOT clear cut. Anyone over the age of 25 grew up taping music off the radio, and movies off the TV. Neither of those activities hurt the bottom lines of the companies involved, arguable they increased their profits through the spread of their products. For those of us who grew up with this culture, how exactly are we supposed to look at the internet and digital downloads other than more of the same? We've legally been permitted to do this for a couple freaking decades! Now, suddenly, it's being associated with slitting the throats of starving artists who make more in a day than I make in a year.

Pardon me for not seeing how clear cut the issue is, when just ten years ago it was clear cut the other way as far as anyone on the street was concerned.

For more than 30 years now the movie and music industry has been adamantly opposing every technical advance that comes along. The Cassette tape? Made them millions. They wanted it made illegal. Burnable CDs? Billions in profit, some of it ammoral, yet they wanted it illegal. VCRs? Billions more. Yet it was one speech away from being banned by US Congress. 

Digital Downloads? Same song, different verse.

CentiZen

May 16, 2010 at 10:26am

What?! That's nowhere near the same thing. I don't think you understand how hard it is to actually tie a person to something another company tells you they think their computer did. Time Warner is a huge company with MILLIONS of users, putting through BILLIONS of requests every single day. It takes alot of investigating, searching and time to do what these lawyers are asking them to do. I agree that they could put a few new people to do this job, but they can't just take random people off the street and train them to do this, they need trained professionals that know databases, mainframes and all sorts of proprietary systems and programs. They need time to orient them, and time before they can see results. And because these people are professionals, they will have to be paid high wages, given benifets and bonuses. It may not seem like much to you, but to a businessman, all of thes costs pile up REALLY quickly. And since Time Warner actually has no obligations to co-operate with these sub-LE agencies, they don't need to hire any more people. I mean, if you owned Time Warner, would you be okay with paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to hire and train more staff when your own people are more than adequete to take care of the actually important requests like Child Abducton or pornography? I wouldn't. 

aviaggio

May 16, 2010 at 7:48am

The bus driver might be willing to testify until you tell him he has to take time off from work to spend at the police station and then the courthouse. Once it hits him in the wallet I bet he changes his tune.

If Time Warner has to spend more money to fulfill all these bullshit requests they are only going to pass the cost to their subscribers.

Maybe the movie and music industries would be in better financial shape if they weren't hiring so many lawyers who apparently do nothing all day but write up and submit an average of 27 IP lookup requests a day.

So yes, I'm proud they've decided NOT to spend more money, effectively telling the industry to go scratch its ass.

Hell, maybe they've even realized that ratting out their customers doesn't exactly foster brand loyalty. 

chronium

May 16, 2010 at 6:32am

He at least made one good movie, which is Postal. I might even buy the dvd.

SEALBoy

May 15, 2010 at 10:16pm

To be fair, the MPAA or RIAA have nothing to do with this slew of lawsuits.

Peanut Fox

May 15, 2010 at 6:49pm

Your then should be than.

SEALBoy

May 15, 2010 at 2:23pm

Same here. I wonder if this extends to similar lawsuits, like the one for The Hurt Locker.