File sharing is not illegal!

galaxyAbstractor

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On BBC Click they said all things on bittorrents official homepage is legal to download
 

iholla

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The only way file sharing can be labeled illegal with 'sense' is if I try to benefit monetarily in any way from what I bought and now own but are distributing for a price or something similar.

I buy a dvd, Lp, software...I own it. I can make as many copies of my stuff as I want and distribute it freely to those who need them.

If they dont want people to freely share copyrighted material, they should distribute their material with better locks.
 
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noerrorsfound

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The only way file sharing can be labeled illegal with 'sense' is if I try to benefit monetarily in any way from what I bought and now own but are distributing for a price or something similar.

I buy a dvd, Lp, software...I own it. I can make as many copies of my stuff as I want and distribute it freely to those who need them.

If they dont want people to freely share copyrighted material, they should distribute their material with better locks.
No, the license agreement of the software you're buying states you can't distribute copies of the software, DVD, et cetera. You can legally make backups for your own use (although some companies such as the RIAA and MPAA don't think you should have that right) but sharing them is not legal (which isn't true in all countries--I'm talking about the USA) and for things such as software you actually have to agree to the license/terms of use to install them.
If they dont want people to freely share copyrighted material, they should distribute their material with better locks.
That is an absolutely stupid argument. If you don't want your house being broken into and your items stolen, you should have better glass on your windows? It's not possible to create software that has unbreakable copy protection.
 

Livewire

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You can legally make backups for your own use (although some companies such as the RIAA and MPAA don't think you should have that right)

I wanna point out that some licence agreements also forbid that; case in point the EULA on all Nintendo DS games, although why you'd need to do a backup from a cartridge eludes me anyways. CD I can see, Cartridge I can't since those are built friggin' strong anyways.

It's not possible to create software that has unbreakable copy protection.

Quoted for Truth. Even Starforce 3 is now shattered like a bullet through glass - the general rule of thumb is if it can be decrypted, it can also get cracked.

All copy protection tries to do is stop the not-as-smart-as-the-rest users from throwing it in their disc drive and telling Nero to copy it. The ones beyond that know how to edit the EXE and crack it.

The ones in between know where to get the cracked EXE's that the smarter ones put together and distributed :)



The only way I can think of that would be unbreakable is something similar to MD5 encryption - one way, so there's no way to get the original data back short of brute-forcing it.

And that defeats the purpose, because then the material is unusable in its normal state.
 

pgames

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My high school teacher says File Sharing is legal...
So i've been saying to myself these days: "File Sharing FTW!"

Only when u distribute copyright stuff is when it's illegal.
 
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dwd2000

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Another scenario:
I own a few hundred vinyl albums, cassettes, and 45's.
I don't own a way of transferring them to mp3's or even to Cd.
Since I already own legal copies of the music, is it illegal to get the mp3 equivalent of the songs, via file sharing?
 

noerrorsfound

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Another scenario:
I own a few hundred vinyl albums, cassettes, and 45's.
I don't own a way of transferring them to mp3's or even to Cd.
Since I already own legal copies of the music, is it illegal to get the mp3 equivalent of the songs, via file sharing?
Yes, but I believe it's completely stupid for that to be illegal. Even though you have already supported the artists, the only legal way is to buy all of your music collection...again.
 

Rolyin

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If these big rich companies wern't so greedy in asking around 15-20quid for a cd people would probably be more inclined to buy them instead of staying at home turning the PC on and googling for the stuff.
But instead they feel it is better to charge a fortune for their material and then waste money in stupid court battles with people who copied one CD.
In my oppinion the more people share illegal copyrited files the sooner these big companies will realise people arn't willing to pay a stupid ammount for their crap anymore.
 

Loneua Technologies

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File Sharing isn't Illegal,

It gets illegal when you share files that have copyright's saying that you

and only you can use it.
 

Foxhound

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It's funny because some people use the classic, "if things were cheaper I'd buy it" excuse but it's a lie. You know you have access to a free copy so why would you waste your gas to drive to a store to buy it just because it is cheaper? The only people who truly have a reason to buy instead of downloading are big companies who run the risk of being closed due to pirated software.
Downloading software is also in no way equal to stealing products from your local Wal-Mart or whatever shopping market you have. If you made a copy of the movie or song and walked out with that copy that is the equivalent to downloading because I am not stealing a file from anybody I'm just getting a copy of that file from someone else who decided to share that program or software with me.
 

Soki

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This is all bull that is not worth arguing over without...ME! ROFL! Well I think its illegal to do such theft, but if its like Limewire and Bearshare, then they can't do anything about it seeing how they do not store any files. Windows Media Player has the option of sharing music with other users as well, but no one is complaining.
 

djesiret

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I work for an optical media replicator. We have seen a steady decline in our business for the past 10 years. I used to have a home, health insurance, etc. Now I have to press 10x the amount of disc to make ends meet in my low-end apartment.

I could get another job, but someone has to do my job. Oh yeah... Korea.

If you think that piracy hasn't had an impact on our society, past the greed of corporations, put it into this perspective...

You pinch them, they pinch me.. I have no one to pinch. But they will continue to adjust the industry to appeal to the market. If fewer people buy a legal piece of optical media, then the production must become cheaper.

And after a while, they will no longer be able to pay me to do my job. And you will all get optical media from some third world country in a back water replicator, that probably won't follow ISO standards. In other words, your purchased media will be crap.

More and more media will go the way of digital transfer. With more and more protection schemes. Instead of having a hard piece of optical media, you will have a digital file. You will be responsible for making a hard piece of media to protect your investment. They will save tons of cash in manufacturing, advertising, distribution. They will charge you the same 14-20 US for the media.

They still win.

Except now you have a burned piece of crap on a organic substrate CDR/DVDR instead of a real piece of media. Since there will be no packaging, you can forget about special editions, collectors edition, and that nifty little t-shirt you got with your preorder. They will be making the same money, and you will suffer for it. And I will be flippin burgers.

All in all sounds good to me. I get tired of killing myself over a printing press to print CD/DVD that no one care about anyway. Rather than have a 6-color litho print in a kick-ass metal case with a promo artbook, you'd rather have a 1 color matte-clear CDR with a sharpie skribbled across it. Now that's class.
 

.algx. maX

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Your post is entirely true. But the media industry is slowly making people shift into the digital era. It started with iTunes and buying digital music and movies. Now Hulu, as well as other online distributors like it, have easy to download online shows or add supported shows, not to mention home consoles and downloads.

So regardless of your personal opinions (and struggles) with file sharing, your job is being threatened on two fronts.
 

truthguild

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there's also the question of the local laws where the person downloading it is. for example, here in the netherlands, it is not considered a copyright violation to download movies/music/etc for private use or study, but it's illegal to give the copies you make out. (in other words, i can loan you one of my dvd's which you can copy, but i can't make a copy and give it to you)
 

tittat

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File sharing via yahoo messenger or like services have a loop hole.
When you are involved in file sharing via yahoo messenger it will create a peer to peer connection.So the other party can steal your ip and a risk of hacking is there.
 

galaxyAbstractor

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There is 10 sites that you can use legally for free. bittorrent.com is the only I remember
 

score_under

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@tittat: What can you do with an IP address? I have never seen any hacking done on an IP address that doesn't have an open SSH port/vulnerable web service/ etc.

I think the concept of file sharing being illegal is just stupid - You're not taking anything from the manufacturer! Instead, one person is copying data that they bought from one place on their hard drive and sharing it with someone else. The difference between digital products and "real" products is that digital products can be reproduced indefinitely at no cost whatsoever.

And if you /HAVE/ any physical method of paying for downloads halfway across the world, because of your age...
/me curses 15 years of no paid downloads
... then what are you meant to do? Wait 6 years to get out of school, out of uni, into a full time job with good income and get a good credit card?

Er. no.
Because in 6 years time, even Windows XP will be out of date. (Windows Vista is already outdated, IMHO.)
And then what do we get? Super high-priced "WOW, it's NEW! LOL111" excuses for digital vomit. And is it just me, or as time gets moving, do programs seem to increase in size?
The old games, like Raptor: Call of the Shadows, fit on a few megs of flash disk easily. Now, take a game like Maplestory. That's a few years on, could optimize itself (eg.load maps online), etc, but NO! They chose the most bloated way to do things that they could, ending up with GIGABYTES (!) of game, and it could (with a good compression scheme, or a new format, etc.) be about 100 MB max.

I recently got a splinter cell CD as a gift. It spanned 3 CDs. Which means its setup program is WAY over 1.5 GB. Imagine that extracted!
But, oh.
The bloated libraries used for the setup did it again.
General protection fault.

We pay for this stuff? We're stupid/insane/backwards!* (delete where appropriate)
 

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if file sharing was illegal then limewire should have 99999999999999999999... law suits...napster is another one but you HAVE TO PAY...whats the difference between PAYING and free file sharing? athough i dont like filesharing units because the bring in alot of viruses....i can't say that they are ILLEGAL!
 

stealth_thunder

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My opinion as a person who much like file sharing services... I appreciate their work for making it free and allowing others to get it...

Have you ever though that piratesbay and other torrent website earning millions just by you clicking or search a torrent... ?

You see why piratesbay or limewire exists because these people are very very smart... not only they have the money to purchase DVDs of movies,games.... or music CD, upload it and share it... using anonymous name or alias...

They claim they own them... yes... coz they purchased them... but file sharing is one thing which every sure mistake about.... sharing something that someone is willing too... is never illegal.... if the person does not want to share he have all the choices to stop sharing and deleting the torrent or music file or stop uploading them in future....

Many companies sure... thinks that sharing will make losses to them.... but not sharing.... will make them unknown to the world... because sharing also brings free advertising...
 
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