Movies, Piracy, and Bill Gates.

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The Robber Barons Are At It Again
VideoStore Magazine

Well, here it comes: the next bill designed to protect digital copyright holders from peer-to-peer (P2P) piracy.

A California legislator, Howard Berman (D), proposed a bill last week that would let media companies hack into our computers and drop cyberbombs on those they believe are stealing their digital materials.

Like every other recent “anti-piracy” proposal, this bill neglects a couple of key points. For one thing it singles out distributed networks – decentralized networks of computers that aggregate computing power to keep the whole enterprise humming – but does nothing to prevent file trading on instant messaging systems.

Is this an accident? Not likely. It’s just another way of handing control of file sharing to the media conglomerates that claim it ruins them. I’m sure sagging AOL/Time Warner is hot to quell the P2P tide. With stocks worth less than a quarter of their pre-merger prices, it would be quite a coup for AOL to herd as many file traders as possible onto its network at $20 or more per month, thereby boosting the subscriptions it’s losing at an alarming rate.

Even this could backfire, though, if there is anything to rumors that Microsoft will try to buy Yahoo! in November. Wouldn’t it be funny if Hollywood tried to wrest P2P systems out of the techies’ grip, only to get trumped after the congressional break?

This not only illustrates the futility of the war on file trading; it’s not even good subterfuge for Hollywood’s brazen power grabs.

It also doesn’t address a problem I’ve noted before (and now Bill Gates is on board) – that fact that studio moguls continue to blame faceless digital pirates without policing their own ranks.

Gates and a number of his ilk – notably Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, Intel CEO Craig Barrett, Dell CEO Michael Dell and HP CEO Carly Fiorina – sent the studio heads a letter a couple of weeks ago criticizing Hollywood’s finger-pointing.

“Any approach to the issue of peer-to-peer file sharing must address the core nature of this emerging technology,” they wrote. “Peer-to-peer technologies constitute a basic functionality of the computing environment today and one that is critical to further advances in productivity in our economy. Any solutions to the problem of piracy must not compromise the innovations this functionality has to offer and, more importantly, must first address the means by which unprotected content finds its way onto these systems in the first instance.”

The tech moguls suggest consumer education, enforcement of existing laws and, perhaps most importantly, that studios get off their fannies and bring their IP content delivery services up instead of whining that consumers are using whatever means available to get video online and on demand.

The studios don’t want to deal with pesky Justice Department investigations of potential trade restraints, so they lean on legislators (political contributions are a big stick) to advance their causes in Congress.

But make no mistake: the Hollywood robber barons are no different from the railroad robber barons of California’s past. This isn’t merely about protecting their businesses and employees. Their goal is to scoop up all the rights of way (Internet protocols as train tracks) and hardware (train cars and media players) to control what moves where, when and at what price.

Anyone who thinks it’s a good idea to let the robber barons run the railroad should take a good, hard look at California’s public transportation. It’s a pretty good indication we are on the wrong track – again.

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My opinion....
Bill Gates has a point.


This thread was inspired by :
What's the deal with Divx by OG
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A novel adaptation.
This bill scares the hell out of me. I'm a big fan of stealing movies off of KaZaA, and this bill will be the death of me. My biggest problem witrh this, is that the companies can hack into my computer, and delete or destroy any file that shares a name with a copyrighted file. Thusly, if I have an image file called 7726BatMaN09.gif, one of their hackers can delete it!

I'm sending E-mails to my state representative pretty avidly, not only to protect my privacy, but also the privacy of anyone with an internet connection.
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Originally posted by Herodotus
I'm a big fan of stealing movies off of KaZaA,
dude kazaa is BAD news.
I had gotten some movies off there a while back and got threatened with a lawsuit from Warner Studios. Can forward the emails to you if you would like.

If you dont have one I suggest you get a firewall NOW. and disable file sharing on there.

Also I reccommend to anyonw who has Kazaa installed on their pc to read the following articles. Kazaa comes pre bundled with spyware, and even a firewall doesnt help

Check this out about spware bundled with kazaa

Important



A novel adaptation.
I have the most wicked awesome firewall, but more on that later.

I knew about KaZaAs spyware, so I downloaded a program called Ad-Aware, it searches your hard drive and deletes all the spyware for you. The first time I ran the program, it found 189 spyware programs on my PC. If you delete KaZaAs spyware programs though, it will disable KaZaA.

The only real solution, is to download KaZaA lite, a quick search on Google will find it's homepage. Unfortunately, I'm not linking to it, because technically, it's illegal to have. KaZaA lite, is a hack on the original KaZaA program, they got rid of the spyware, and also BonziBuddy. It's only barely illegal, and that's only based on a copyright infringement on Sharman Networks, I wouldn't worry too much about it. Not to say that I have it, but I definitely reccomend KaZaa lite, it's delightful.



I have kazaa lite, a firewall, and a am behind a router with a firewall.

Just offering my advice. Because I can tell first hand, they CAN tel lwhat you have. and I have the email to prove it.



Well my firely little friend can you PM me a copy plz?

my poor purple BonziBuddy is going to have to get killed now . Ive got KaZaa and i have a firewall, i too have Ad-Ware and it s pretty useless im going to get a better one soon, where can you download kazaa lite?



A novel adaptation.
Film Fr3Ak, Send me a copy of that message too.

And Naisy, you can go to http://doa2.host.sk/



well it may be legal to dl them, but all i know is i had and always have had file sharing disabled on kazaa and they still got into my pc to see what I had. 'cause the HP had been on there a while.

reguardless... do what you want, its your pc man. I was jsut offering up my experiance...I will not be using kazaa again any time soon.



yeah i can understand your P.O.V (point of view if your wondering) but i guess its a risk you that with p2p programs, i only use them if i DESPERATLY need something and in most cases you will find what your looking for. Im going to get the K-lite version ASAP. You have to way up the risk VRS the need...

you need alot of precautions either way



A novel adaptation.

I can't beleive I didn't catch that one.



im not entirely sure, but i think that something ive said is the punchline. Im not sure whether to be embarressed or not. Im thinking in this case, confusion is bliss.





tell me "DAMMIT"

"FU**" I want to know....

"NOW"

ahhhhh.... come on.. one of those has to be it...



Now THIS is getting out of hand.
I am sorry but if I buy a dvd and it will only work once on ONE television in my home, I wont be buying any more dvd's.

Read this article.
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/20...052995857.html



somebody says that LOTR:TTT is already online... i dont belive it, but if its true, any true movie fan will not download it.
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