lol.
what a fucking clueless prick.

Enjoy your self congratulatory masturbating about how information is worthless. I look forward to a day when all the 'coding geeks' here at slashdot have to work as bricklayers thanks to their own short sightedness. :D

"You frequently espouse the idea that because you have a copyright you're entitled to make money."

are you really that fucking thick that this is what you read into my posts.

Jesus christ its amazing you can operate a keyboard.

I'm maybe moving to a house that has a cellar with a well in it, an active one that water flows through, so the cellar is damp and maybe slightly cooler than normal.
Would the cellar not automatically act as a sort of cheap ground source heat pump, in terms of equalisizing the temperature of the rooms above it?

Well its not as one sided as you think. Take, for example the sites such as rapidshare and megaupload that routinely share terrabytes of copyrighted material.
If you find your copyrighted content on those sites, you can email them a DMCA takedown that MUST include your phone number, your physical address and other contact details.
Note that megaupload do not provide everyone with their direct contact number, and the people actually uploading the copyrighted content are 100% anonymous.
If you are luck,y after 48 hours the site might remove the content, taking no action whatsoever against the uploader.
Within a few hours, the copyrighted content is uploaded yet again, and the whole process starts again.
All the time, the copyright holder is the one who is giving out their personal information, and the hoster and the uploader remain safely immue to any possible comeback.
nice business model, and one that the DMCA does almost nothing to impact whatsoever.

People who criticise the DMCA for being too harsh have likely never used it, or been on the receiving end. Its a very weak piece of law in cases such as these. (The DRM-related aspects of the law are different, and total overkill however).

they have made an inhuman effort to pump up ad impressions.
Everything else was a smokescreen of bullshit.
I don't see, when I visit TPB a big banner linking to all the torrents of free speech essays for countries like china or burma, or stuff that has been published by whisteblowers.
Its just "music" "movies" "games" "software".

They don't give a fuck about free speech, never have, and never will.

Couldn't agree more, but nobody here wants to here the truth. Thats why they modded you down in the hope nobody else will read it.
This is EXACTLY why there are no linux ports of big games. The demographic who insist on running linux have a sense of entitlement to everyone else's work for free.
Why would anyone sane spend MONEY to port their game to a platform where people refuse to pay for it?

who are you talking to?
I'm a small 'content producer' who has 100% embraced digital distribution, does not employ lawyers, and does not support the RIAA, MPAA or any other government lobbying organisation.

And hey, guess what, TPB rip me off along with everyone else. Could it be that they just dont give a fuck about the effects of their actions? Lumping in TPB with some sort of anti-corporate crusade is silly. Those guys just sold out for millions, and were originally financed by a right wing millionaire called carl lundstrom.
TPB are as corporate as walmart.

I agree with you in that I strongly value freedom of speech too, I just think that TPB are the WORST cheerleaders for any free-speech cause.
The minute you lump in freedom of speech and censorship issues with torrents of The Sims and Spiderman 3, you trivialise the whole issue.

There is a whole generation of politicians who look at people defending TPB in the cause of free speech, and see just a petty excuse for virtual shoplifting.

Anyone who really believs in free speech online should distance themselves from a site based around viagra adverts and hollywood movie torrents.
TPB is (and always has been) about making money. Anything else is just PR to give them covering fire.

what 'values' are they fighting for exactly?
giving away everyone elses work for free whilst selling ad space?

no it doesn't.
downloading and sharing pirated music, then getting caught, destroying the hard drive to cover your tracks, repeatedly lying in court, changing your story several times and forgoing about a dozen offers to settle out of court when you are clearly 100% no argument totally and utterly guilty and caught red-handed gets you that.

Most people who get caught breaching copyright law have the minimal number of brain cells needed to admit guilt and pay a relatively small fine. Lets not act as cheerleaders for dumbasses who think they can wriggle out of it.

why?
to punish them for actually supporting the people who create content?
Why the hell would anyone be so petty as to do that?
You realise that when you eat, you buy food that makes money for *gasp* evil corporations!!!!

"Who is going to pay the people who take the time and effort to encode "

Wow. that sure it is a lot of effort. especially when you compare it to the apparently valueless and trivial (according to pirates) effort of actually making a movie.

"Lots of people, like Trent Reznor, for example, are making piles of money while still practically giving their music away"

its easy to make more money once you are already a millionaire.
Lemme guess, you had never heard of this guy, nor had anyone else, and he was suddenly on every media outlet straight from being a garage band that had never had the benefit of a global marketing push right?

What works for established acts does NOT work for people with no history of commercial promotion

just as long as we have established what a morally empty sand selfish person you are for freeloading off everyone else, thats fine.
I'm sure you would expect everyone else to really give a shit they day you get fined by the RIAA though...

Do you really think that people pirating music give a flying fuck whether or not the artist loses out?
You think they check the wording of the recording contract to ensure its an unfair deal before they click download?

people pirate music to get free stuff because they think they wont get caught and they dont give a fuck how it affects anyone else.
Any other justification is just after-the fact rationalisation bollocks.