Calling pirates "freeloaders" is an unnecessary ad hominem designed to turn everyone else against them without applying critical thought to the issue at hand. It's the same as calling it "theft" or "stealing". The terminology may technically apply, but in the circles in which piracy is usually discussed (such as Slashdot), saying these things quickly makes you look like a troll.

I'm disappointed in the submitter and the editor for allowing the term "freeloader" in the headline. If you wish to oppose piracy, that's your call, but do it without the use of hyperbole and emotional arguments.

Alright, that's not so bad. But TFS gave me the impression that the conversation itself counts as, for lack of a better term, a sexual offense, and I find that hard to believe.

Explicit conversations with people under 18 are illegal? And can get you on the sex offender list?

Am I the only one who sees that as rather ridiculous?

They already tried that in the 1990s. It didn't work because of the sheer ridiculousness of regulating encryption.

> Pirates love to pirate but if they keep it up, someday they may not have anything worth pirating. The things I mentioned in the previous post are likely consequences of pirates winning.

No, they are examples of the nonsense spread by the antipiracy groups in order to scare people away from the idea of free distribution. You are making the assumption that if the end user does not pay for the content, then creating that content is not possible. I'm typing this comment on an operating system composed entirely of software that I legally downloaded for free; the creators have chosen to give their work away to the world, and I find their software to be of a very high quality. I listen to music that I similarly acquired freely and legally, with the artists' blessings. Hell, even Wikipedia and similar wikis are a perfect counterexample to your points, as the contributors give freely to the sites, which give their content freely to the public via copyleft licenses. You will notice that in none of those cases do I pay a dime to anyone for their work, and yet, for some reason, I still receive software updates, I can still browse for new music, and people still edit Wikipedia.

The old business model of artificial scarcity is not the only way of doing things. In fact, in an environment that does not acknowledge the existence of artificial scarcity (the Internet, where everything can be copied), it's a bad business model.

> Secondly, high criminal penalties probably would stop piracy.

Ridiculous. First, an article was just posted a couple of days ago which completely disproves your point and states that the only really good way to minimize piracy is for content creators and distributors to lower their prices and remove artificial barriers that drive people to piracy (such as 'not available in your region' messages and DRM). Who would have guessed that suing and criminalizing your customers isn't a good business strategy?

Second, why do you support 'high criminal penalties' for something as minor as copyright infringement? Is downloading a song really such a massive offense that you deserve to be subject to 'high criminal penalties'? I hope you realize that you're playing right into the hands of large media corporations by supporting their nonsense. And when all is said and done, they would be happy to throw you in prison along with a huge chunk of the world population. (What, did you think that pirates were anything but your average Joe and Jane?)

Third, what sort of penalties are we talking about here? Naturally, you have a good idea of the legal measures that should be put in place to smash pirates once and for all. Naturally, they will be effective at their stated purpose. Naturally, there will not be any chance of punishing an innocent person. Naturally, these measures will not impose any restrictions on rights that are more important than copyright protection, such as free speech, due process, fair use, and personal privacy rights. Naturally, these measures will not impede technological advancements or innovation. All of this is correct, right? Because I've never seen an antipiracy measure that does all of those. Good luck trying to stop the copying and sharing of certain strings of bits without unjustly interfering with the copying and sharing of any other strings of bits.

> The points I'm trying to make is just because something can be done easily doesn't mean you should do it.

It doesn't matter. Antipirates can rage all they want about the sheer immorality of file sharing, but it cannot be stopped. If people want to pirate, they will. Everyone else needs to adapt to this truth and find ways to live with it, rather than vainly trying to fight it back to the stone age.

> Ignoring for the moment your use of that absurd euphamism ("share")

Antipirates use much more intellectually dishonest terms to describe p2p. "Stealing" and "theft" come to mind, despite that copyright infringement is neither. You yourself are fond of saying "ripping off".

> This is about people who are in the busines of ripping off other people's work so they can draw visitors to their own web sites and generate their own ad revenue without having to invest money in creating the content that brings eyeballs in.

Considering the context of the grandparent's post, it is you who are missing the point. The injustices listed by the grandparent (causing massive economic disruption, torturing people, and unconstitutional wiretaps) are orders of magnitude worse than copyright infringement, even for profit. I have to assume that you know this, and yet you are pushing emotional arguments against copyright infringement as though it were more important than any of the aforementioned issues. This, too, is dishonest... unless you truly believe that copyright protections are of the utmost importance, relatively.

A thousand CDs in a small cardboard box? Let's see.

I'll assume that you're storing your CDs in a standard CD case. Measurements in inches: 5.5 x 5 x .375. This gives each case a volume of 10.3125 inches squared.

A thousand of these would be 10,312.5 inches squared, or almost 860 square feet.

A square box of nine feet on each side gives you a volume of 729 square feet. The box would have to have a larger volume than this to accommodate a thousand CDs in their cases. This is not "small."

If you are invited by a private party to speak or otherwise express yourself, and your speech or form of expression is removed after the fact due to its contents, this is censorship.

> As for the examples in the second FA of a flickr staff member posting things that aren't his own work - they're a huge stretch. It's FUD.

How do you know?

If Flickr honestly cared about upholding this policy, would they not take down every instance of its violation they found, rather than only going after the low-hanging fruit?

Flickr staff members often upload content that is not, by strict definition, their original work. They may be justified in doing so as it is their service, but not abiding by your own rules undermines your authority to enforce those rules on others.

His points were not clear. He misrepresented my position with exaggeration, hyperbole, and caps lock. Then, rather than offering counterarguments, he insulted me (albeit inaccurately, as I am not libertarian). The personal attacks are not a "bonus" - they do not contribute anything meaningful to the discussion. Posts like that are what the Troll mod is for.

Additionally, the fact that I disagree with you does not make me stupid, and does not mean I lack understanding on this subject (such a premise assumes you are objectively correct in the first place).

> Censorship is an attempt by a controlling body to actually prevent information from reaching the public.

Your definition of censorship happens to differ from mine. If someone with power (Flickr) blocks the speech or expression of someone relatively without power (a random Flickr user), it is censorship.

Also, this is the second time I have to tell you this: I made no claim of being libertarian, so the final paragraph of your post is either a very misguided personal attack or a completely off-topic angry rant. It certainly has nothing to do with me or my arguments.

Come back when you can provide an argument that doesn't rely on personal attacks for support. Or at least don't randomly throw epithets at people about whom you know nothing.

This is what happens when you love rule of law so much that you follow laws, rules, policies, terms of service, and end user license agreements over basic ethics.

Whether or not Flickr is justified in removing the images at all, the manner in which they did it is unacceptable. It would be very easy to accuse them of using their TOS (their rule of law) to hide behind the fact that they just don't like the content of the photos themselves.

As TFA points out, this is selective enforcement.

You're the one who brought up free speech, not me.

Their policy might be fine when it comes to actual creative works. Deleting pictures like these based on the justification that you must upload your own work is valuing the letter of the rule above its spirit.

They will now get the backlash they deserve.