Ok, say you make a CD and put it up for sale. Someone buys a copy and burns a copy of his copy for his friend, who has never heard of you. You have lost nothing. If his friend likes your CD he's likely to buy a copy of your next one and you earn even more. Now, if your customer sells a copy of his copy to his friend, that's money that should have gone to you, but didn't.

I don't understand how I've suddenly lost more when someone who hasn't (yet) heard of me paid money for a copy than if they'd taken it for free. Either way, the money should have gone to me. What do I care in which pirate's lap the money lands? Whether it's the person who provided the copy, or the person who took it, it's still money I deserve, and in either case, the injustice is that it's not in my bank account.

Grr. This is a pet peeve of mine.

I'm not talking about a potential loss of revenue for MapleStory, I'm talking about the gain in revenue for UMaple
Kind of like the difference between downloading a movie off TPB and selling copies of the movie for a profit

Copyright law is supposed to protect the artist, not stop people from making a profit. The problem is that the people who have the artistic talent are not seeing results for their hard work, not that someone else is making money. You have to remember that the wrongdoing is against the artist. What harm does the money do to the artist, over giving it away for free? About the only difference I can see is that the giving away for free simply saturates the market more with the illegitimate goods, since more people would take it. But for some reason (latent jealousy is about the only reason I can come up with), making money is frowned upon, and even though we don't prosecute it, it somehow makes every crime worse.

Well perhaps (leaving some minor pedantry aside), but an entity doesn't have to commit an act of violence in order to be considered violent. For example, we say a film is violent if it portrays violence, even though it's all fabricated.

Saying an ideology is violent is very different from saying that some of the people who follow it (or at least, claim to follow it) have previously committed violent acts. If that were the criterion, then I think any ideology would be considered violent. Hell, even pacifism would be classified as violent. It's not a very meaningful category if you're just going to put everyone in there.

You, sir, are an idiot. You conflate Buddhist philosophy with old Japanese philosophy. Find me one piece of Buddhist philosophy that supports any of the things you mentioned.

It's almost like you believe that religious people obey only what is written in their religious texts, rather than make human judgements of their own. Your ignorance disgusts me.

No, you guess wrong. The conclusion doesn't follow from the premises at all. A better argument would be to show that all (or at the very least, most) Bhuddist countries are among the least peaceful on Earth, but even then that's pretty weak. What you need to do really disprove it is to find some commonly accepted Bhuddist philosophy that incites war. Then, it's clear that it's the religion that's violent, not the people who practice it.

You mean like the sentence "Exactly.", except less universally understood? :-/

Really? You think all these pro-*AA comments are genuinely held views?

I'm not sure I've ever seen a pro-*AA comment here on slashdot. The closest I've ever seen, I think, are a very small number of my own posts, however they've more been anti-pirates than actually pro-*AA. Of course, there's nothing stopping you from believing that I'm a *AA shill, but honestly I don't care. The "shill" label has always been little more than an excuse to dodge inconvenient arguments without actually tackling their content. It's the arguments themselves that are of importance, not how the person saying them is employed. It's just yet another form of the ad hominem fallacy.

And knowing the pathetic efforts the *AAs make to twist the debate? It makes a lot of sense to me astroturfing would be their next attack point. Though I agree, /. is an unlikely venue, but they are so clueless, they could easily waste effort here.

I don't think they're nearly as clueless as you think. Right now they're sinking a lot of money into lobbying and trying to remove piracy's status as a social norm, both of which are very sensible ways of dealing with their predicament. Lobbying allows them indirect access to taxpayer funds to help them obtain the money that the public owes them (certainly not the way I'd prefer them to do so, but I can't deny that it's a savvy plan).

Removing piracy as a social norm is a much loftier goal, but piracy being a social norm is exactly what is hampering them, so it's a juicy prize if they can manage it. They're not giving in to the pirates, which I think is also sensible, because acquiescing to entitlement typically exacerbates the problem. Right now they believe they have right to other people's work when they want it, however many copies they like of it, and in whatever format they desire. Some have also put up heavy price restrictions as well. Now, these people are going to have children who are going to grow up thinking that artists are there primarily to serve their needs, and that any artists who protest are themselves self-entitled and deserve to have their work pirated. They're not going to like adults preaching to them about how much money is "fair" to give an artist, and the kids who think that they deserve less (or zero) will be the envy of others. Basically, I think it's very likely that, if the *AA did not take a stand, they could have easily gone under many years ago, and dragged much of the industry with them.

So yeah, I think they're cluey enough to know when a battle is hopeless. Often, when a person challenges one of their lawsuits, they'll drop it, because they know that simply scaring most people is enough to get them some money. That's why I don't think they'll touch slashdot: there's nothing to gain. Almost everyone here is so dead-set against them that every pro *AA comment is likely either to be modded down and invisible, or countered with at least 3 times as many highly moderated rebuttals.

Personally, I'm still waiting for my first payment.

And my employment contract.

And for my job position to actually exist first.

The **AA doesn't care enough about your opinion to pay people to try and fail to change it. Get over yourself.

Pardon my ignorance, but I've seen this before, and I've always been curious: what does it mean to start your post with "This."?

ROCK LOBSTER!

Ooh! "Controlling"! That sounds evil and scary! Tell me, what methods of control do Apple employ on their users? Do they chain them together and force them to work in the mines? Do they brainwash them and force them to extol the virtues of Apple to everyone they meet? (OK, ignore that last one) Do they prevent them from buying any non-apple product for the rest of their life?

Well, what do they do? What kind of control do they employ? Let me pick up my iPod touch and check. Oh blast, where did I leave the bloody thing? I haven't picked it up in weeks. I only use it for some very casual gaming and the occasional web surfing or navigation with Google maps. I used to use it for music until I bought a lovely little non-Apple branded music player. I guess I'm just having trouble understanding where that fits into Apple's evil plan to control me, and exploit me for money.

When I bought my iPod, I knew exactly what the development environment would be like. I enjoy having the reduced risk of malware, plus having the apps work more or less consistently is a nice bonus. I paid for my iPod, and it has worked exactly the way I expected it to. I'm not sure what self-serving definition could possibly call that "exploitation" or "controlling". It's also pretty funny that you're accusing Apple of not respecting their users, since they apparently respect them enough to offer them what they want, instead of preaching to them what they want.

I think the real issue here is that you need to come to terms with the inconvenient fact that many people like the walled garden model on their phones. It doesn't mean that they secretly (or openly) hate freedom and would support a nanny state, or something like that, it just means they like the hassle-free and family-friendly approach to phone software. In the words of Alan Turing:

I do not think that this argument is sufficiently substantial to require refutation. Consolation would be more appropriate

Corporations have no "word"

Why not? Think about what a "word" actually is. It's a promise that other people expect you to keep; that's about it. If you break your word, certain social consequences ensue, such as a loss of trust, anger being directed at you, etc. Facebook is perfectly capable of giving their word, and moreover, there is some small incentive for them to keep it (which is much the same incentive to people keeping their word): basically fewer people will trust them and use their services.

Of course, at this stage, this is largely superfluous, since most people who would pay attention to this stuff don't trust them anyway. However, it does raise the question: when have they been outright lied about the extent of their use of our private information? I'm just curious; maybe their word is still worth a little something.

He also argued that the Drug Prohibition is mostly targeted against blacks, and therefore it's a racist policy that needs to be ended.

It's a bad argument. For one, I think it's pretty clear that most people do not intend that the drug laws oppress the blacks, so it really cannot be attacked for its purpose. It also can't really be attacked in implementation, because although the statistics support an over-representation in blacks being prosecuted in this, this is a problem with racist law enforcement in general. I'm fairly sure that other laws, e.g. theft, are levied more heavily against blacks than whites, but it's not actually a racist law, and it should not be appealed on those grounds.

OK, you've ridden your hyperbola up its asymptote, now come down and talk sensibly with the rest of the environmentally conscious folks.

As for the 3D movies, please quit going to see them, so they'll let the format die.

No. I like 3D movies, and I hope that the format will live and prosper. Notice you don't see me asking you to stop seeing 2D movies so that the format dies. Choice FTW.