Thoughts on torrent sites

[Aractus]

I am not naive - I create intellectual property and I want to be paid for it.

You don't want to pay? You don't get to have it. Simple.

I don't give a rat's ass about your example - it has nothing to do with the issue.

You have the exclusive right to profit from your works, but you do not have the right to dictate what is done privately with those works.

This has been established many many times:

* Publishers tried to stop the photocopier.
* Publishers tried to stop VCR's and claimed that they would refuse to release home video mainstream (eg. hollywood) movies on the format. The initially released home video products exclusively on laserdisc. VHS welcomed the 80's porn industry to the format, and before long everyone had VCR's. Thus, the publishers recanted and released home video movies on VHS.
* Record companies tried to stop CD's being rented or put in libraries.
* Home video publishers tried to do something similar with DVD (they printed "this disc is not for rental" on retail discs and lost in the High Court of Australia in 2001).
* Record companies opposed CD burners.
* In 2005 Sony introduced a rootkit virus in order to try and prevent their discs being copied.
* Record companies opposed MP3 players claiming that the format was inadequate for sound quality. They said they would never market or release music as MP3s.
* Publishers lobbied to have the duration of copyright changed from 50 years to the life of the author plus 75 years.
* They all oppose open-market competition and in particular parallel-importing.
* They introduced region-coding in order to try and stop parallel-importing by force.
* They (mainly Sony) tried to ban modchips and repeatedly lost.
* AFACT sued iiNet trying to make them block customer access to peer-to-peer and lost.

Shall I go on? Copyright companies think they can rape and pillage. It's about goddamn time they were put in their place and copyright was handled far more sensibly. For instance: it should last not longer than 50 years. Patents last for 20 years, I believe copyrights should last around 40 years. No one needs to keep profiting from works for longer than that, it's better for the community that works come out of copyright sooner. Just like it's better that patents last 20 years as opposed to 150 years. Can you imagine what it would mean if patents lasted as long as copyrights? It would mean the end of things like competition in pharmaceuticals, prices would go up, and the patent companies would go around raping and pillaging just like the copyright companies do.