"If I remember correctly, the amusing part of that is that the only ones that get paid royalties are the big-name groups, like the writer, director (I think), and actors. I don't think any of the construction workers, camera operators, or costume designers get anything other than a straight salary."

This confused a LOT of file sharing enthusiasts back when those ads were running. You're right, of course, that the trade and craft folks are paid on a salary, but the straw man here is assuming that the ads were trying to imply otherwise.

The logic employed by the MPAA is that piracy reduces sales, which in turn leads to cost cutting in the industry, which in turn leads to fewer films being made (ie. studios taking fewer chances on risky, smaller productions) or cutting costs by employing fewer people or moving productions to other countries.

That theory in itself invites enough debate without having to throw in the "the salaried employees have already been paid" straw man.

"I've never heard of this before. Who came up with that bullshit interpretation?"

A few people did at the time. A few are listed here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jar_Jar_Binks#Allegations_of_racial_caricature

This issue was revisited with the latest Transformer film; a couple of the robots were seen to be racist caricatures and allusions were made to the Jar Jar controversy. Googling "jar-jar racist" will give you more background if you're interested. You obviously strongly disgree -- as do many people -- but this does not discount the fact that there was a raging controversy at the time.

"What's next? Because Yoda doesn't speak with correct grammar he's somehow racist too?"

I'll take this question at face value. There was no similar discussion of Yoda's accent that I recall. This is because Jar-Jar's accent was seen by many to be patterned after racist caricatures; Yoda's had no such similarities.

The reason is, of course, that Slashdotters, as a general rule, understand what goes into programming an application. We have empathy and respect for programmers for the simple reason that for some of us, it's our profession.

Not so much with musicians. We (again -- as a general rule) characterize them as untalented and spoiled. Some people are more equal than others, and in the eyes of many Slashdotters, musicians are the least equal of all.

We don't pirate applications because we respect the work that programmers perform. However, we elevate music piracy to a social cause worthy of Rosa Parks. Hurting musicians? No -- we're putting them in their place. They should get a day job! They should make a living selling t-shirts! They should just stop being so greedy! We deserve to use modern technology to copy their work, but how dare they try to use modern technology to make a living?

And if that's not enough of a rationalization of music piracy, we're eager to suggest others. Just watch.

Thank you for pointing this out. While the Sonos stuff is nice, it's expensive, and the interface is slow. The Squeezebox products are much more cost-effective, and have an open architecture (one can download the server software).

The Squeezebox Controller is actually a mini Linux system, making it a good hacking platform -- imagine the stuff you can do with a portable Linux system that has wifi, an accelerometer, audio output, and audio codec support.

For a while, Sonos was a bit easier to use, but Logitech recently dropped a major software update that's pretty much a clean-sheet interface design.

Like the Sonos gear, the Squeezebox family is available in a number of options -- headless, stereo boombox, and high-quality mono (think Tivoli). But, of course, it's much more affordable and, due to its open architecture, more flexible than the Sonos -- and can certainly do a whole lot more than the Apple solution.

I have a Squeezebox Receiver connected to my living room audio system, and two Squeezebox Booms in rooms where I haven't run speakers. Everything is controlled with the aforementioned Controller. Between my music collection (sitting on a NAS), Pandora, Rhapsody, and various Internet radio stations, I never want for entertainment.

"The copyright lawyers are laughing at this guy's defense, but these are the same lawyers who think that file sharing is immoral and that record companies should have the right to sue people into poverty because of a few kilobytes of uploads."

Huh? One of the fellows quoted was Ben Sheffner. He's very level-headed and insightful, and his blog is a good read for anybody tired of the Slashdot/Torrentfreak/Digg copyright misinformation echo chamber. Scott Mackenzie has tried a number of consumer advocacy cases. Your statement makes about as much sense as stating that NYCL or CptKangarooski think file sharing is immoral just because they also happen to be lawyers with expertise in copyright law.

"None of us engineers, programmers, or other laborers get a multi-decade monopoly over our creations.... we get paid an hourly rate, then we get laidoff, and that's it. No more money. I'm not entitled to a lifetime of free cash for a schematic I created at age 25, so why should an artist be entitled to a lifelong cash payment either? Fair treatment dictates they should get an hourly wage same as us engineers/laborers, and that's it. The 28 year monopoly is just a generous extra, and not required."

It is your choice -- and your choice alone -- if you want to work for an employer in a work-for-hire capacity (in which your employer owns your inventions) or strike it out on your own and work in an indepent capacity, licensing your software or engineering designs. Some are happy with the first method, as they get relatively steady employment and all the perks that go with it. Others prefer the second method. It can be a lot more risky, but if you're lucky and skilled enough, your code or your engineering designs can be making money for you even when you're not working.

"I'm not entitled to a lifetime of free cash for a schematic I created at age 25, so why should an artist be entitled to a lifelong cash payment either?"

Because you chose to create that schematic as an employee and gave up any opportunity to license it. That was your choice. You chose that route because it meant a more comfortable lifestyle for you at the time -- you got a guaranteed paycheck. You chose what you thought was best.

The artist, on the other hand, chose to hold on to his copyright. Perhaps he didn't have a family to feed at the time, and was able to try to eke out a living writing songs. And, since this artist receives a "lifelong cash payment," it means that he got very, VERY lucky. He effectively won the copyright lottery. What percentage of songs written in the 90s, 80s, or 70s are still making money for their creators today?

"But EMI don't own the particular soundwaves which comprise the Beatles' songs. Instead they own the very idea of these songs."

It's actually pretty well-known and well-documented that EMI owns the recordings, but that for many of the Beatles songs, it's actually Sony/ATV publishing who owns the publishing rights, which covers performance, licensing, covers, and most of the other ways you can make money off of a song other than selling a copy of the recording.

"No matter who sings it, or performs it, or records it, or sells it, or even hums it this music belongs to EMI because they own the very idea of it."

This is, of course, not correct based on the generally understood and documented state of ownership of the Beatles catalog.

"However, some authors, like J. K. Rowling, are rich greedy bastards who don't care about the disabled. I already own all her books, and most of the movies. I felt pretty good about downloading her collective works on The Pirate Bay, and would encourage all of you to get it there to punish her."

Per http://www.looktothestars.org/celebrity/171-jk-rowling:

She supports charities dealing with AIDS, Animals, Cancer, Children, Creative Arts, Education, Family/Parent Support, Health, Homelessness, Human Rights, Hunger, Literacy, Mental Challenges, Physical Challenges, Poverty, Refugees, and Women. With regard to your assertation that she does not "care about the disabled," she's donated to charities that address Dyslexia, Multiple Sclerosis, and more.

Perhaps your point might be that she deserves punishment because she doesn't donate enough to these charities -- am I correct? You certainly wouldn't be the first Slashdotter to hold this view; the popular opinion is that Bill Gates is also greedy, despite the billions he's given away.

But back to JK -- do you have any information about how much she's donated, compared to your donations to charities for the disabled? Do you believe that most people reading your post have done more to support charities for the disabled than Mrs. Rowling? I understand that caring about disabled people is very, very important to you and I'm certainly not going to argue that point. But my guess would be that she's done more to help the disabled than most people reading this have.

"Probably because copyright infringement (unless commercial) is a civil matter"

This is a dangerous meme and I wish people would stop spreading it. What if somebody read the above and believed it to be true?

The "commercial" requirement was eliminated with the NET act, and the threshold for criminal infringement is very low. Distribute just a few copies of a $500 vertical app to your friends, or leak a pre-release album, and you're in criminal infringement territory. One's lack of money, or the greed or wealth of the software developer aren't conditions codified into law.

If that was a poor analogy, it shouldn't be hard to think of a better one. I agree that he was trying to point out the logical error in the statement " will always exist, so don't bother trying to stop it." It's one of those basic logical fallacies. We should know better, but when it's something where we are the threat, and an industry we don't care for is the one being threatened, logic tends to get pushed to the side.

If you're not sure what I mean, imagine if I were to tell you that people will always try to violate the GPL, so we shouldn't even bother with the GPL. You'd be upset, and rightly so: it's a stupid logical fallacy.

As for the viability of the two business models: the top Kazaa executives probably made $10 or $20 million each. The most popular bittorrent trackers might make maybe a million bucks a year. These amounts are more than your typical signed recording artist makes, and in fact, the most successful tracker operator probably makes more in a year than many, many indie record labels. So, at first glance, you can make a point that piracy is a better model than the traditional model. But when you make a more direct apples-to-apples comparison, the luminaries in the arts -- say, Stephen King, Jeffrey Koons, or Bruce Springsteen -- have incomes that dwarf the most successful people in the piracy industry by an order of magnitude.

You make some excellent points.

Safe harbor laws are written to ease the burden as much as possible on hosting providers, but they can't resolve people of all responsibility. When these sorts of things go to court, a big question is whether the plaintiff made a reasonable effort to ensure that the service complies. The courts typically have pretty good BS detectors and can figure out if somebody's acting in good faith. But the process isn't perfect.

Agreed with you that there's more than one example of somebody who's acting in good faith but is unfairly caught in the contributory infringement net. I happen to be acquaintances with some of the higher-ups at the MP3tunes music locker service; Universal has been on their case for years and I believe that it's completely unwarranted.

Just to say what the AC said, but a bit more gently: you're correct, of course, that the DMCA is a US law, but it's an example of a safe harbor law. Safe harbor laws are found all over the world, and in various areas of the law -- not just in matters of copyright. Wikipedia has a good article on safe harbors if you'd like to learn more. Either way, it's a safe bet that Brazilian law has some sort of safe harbor provision for contributory copyright infringement that protects people who act in good faith.

The essential point to understand about safe harbors is that they work both ways: not only are they designed to protect you, but if a safe harbor exists and you don't take it, it can work against you. That might be what happened in this case; the defendant opted not to implement filtering, and (as would likely happen in the US as well), "we are incapable of adding a filter" did not work as a defense.

It's the principle of acting in good faith that many Slashdotters seem to miss, and it's a crucial part of understanding the "just like Google" fallacy. How you act plays a huge part in how the courts will treat you.

I hope this is clear -- if not, let me know.

"The truly fear and depression induced thing about Slashdot, is just how many of its' readers appear to have drunk the government or corporate Kool-Aid with regard to things like copyright, and actively defend and advocate the government/cartel position."

Don't look at me. I think copyright terms and (in particular) statutory limits are hugely of control. Understanding how something works certainly isn't drinking Kool-Aid. I'm agnostic about piracy; I certainly did enough of it when I was a teenager.

Disliking copyright law is no excuse for not understanding it. Notice how the same arguments keep coming up and Slashdotters keep getting surprised? The "it's just like Google" fallacy has been around for as long as Google itself, and yet people are still surprised that it's not a magic bullet.

The state of self-serving, willful ignorance of the basics of copyright law is pretty sad. If file-sharing enthusiasts want to change the law, first they must understand it. Tilting at windmills and counting on loopholes that only exist in the collective imagination of the file-sharing community won't help.

"I've yet to see one which says, "Well, this can be used for infringement, but technologically, it's no different from other programs which are not used for infringement"."

But how would that be relevant -- and more to the point, how would it help the case?

Pirate tracker sites share much of the same technology as, say, legaltorrents.com. The latter gets a pass while the pirate sites go down because of things unrelated to technology: the actions and intent of the people running them. This is one of those fundamental legal things, unrelated to the level of technical experience of the person making the judgement.

"Certainly that's been what's been behind the decision to ban "peer-to-peer software" on a lot of private networks. And yet, this same logic isn't applied to other technologies which have also been used for piracy like ftp, tftp, newsgroups or http."

Because it's irrelevant. It's about actions and intent. And we should acknowledge the people who have been busted for serving up pirated files via http and ftp.

"The judges aren't idiots. They have a basic understand of what's going on and how these programs work, but they don't have a deep understanding of how the internet actual works. If they did, at least some of the decisions would have to be written quite differently."

Well, to be fair, your belief is a common one among Slashdotters: the problem is not that we don't sufficiently understand copyright law, but that nobody in authority -- not one person -- sufficiently understands the technology. If they did, then they'd throw out all of this "actions" and "intent" and "safe harbor" and "substantial non-infringing uses" mumbo jumbo and simply understand that since a warez tracker or Kazaa trades packets in much the same way as other technologies, then the operators can't be held liable.