U.S. Government Plans to Expand Internet Piracy Crackdown

[Sproingy]

Sorry for the double post guys.

I don't know how to feel about this. It's good they're hitting the guys counterfeiting stuff but the law to blacklist sites overseas is a scary prospect. It means that they would have the power to censor the internet. That goes against the entire idea of the internet as a medium to access information from all around the world in all its forms...

 

[Sproingy]

As a devout (heh) Pastafarian, I predict a rise in global warming because of this ruling.

RAMEN!!!

 

[Adam Galli]

Gotta love good old Uncle Sam

 

[The Rockerfly]

I would love to see them take down limewire or pirate bay

limewire was taken down months ago but only because he cocked up

OT: With Americas policing the world image, I'm very surprised people aren't going to war. Some days it seems like they are trying to piss people off

 

[tehweave]

Well... What does this mean, really? We have the whole of the US government versus hackers and pirates over the digital domain. Frankly, the government can never ever stop pirates and hackers, but my only question is: How much damage can the government do? They obviously can shut down any website they please, so... Have they just been sitting on their ass this entire time, or are they actually having difficulty dealing with pirates and hackers?

If each side (Government versus Pirates) threw everything they had at the table, who would win? Would the pirates realize that it's too much trouble to try and download that new movie or get the new Linkin Park cd, (random band) or will the government keep trying, but to no avail because the hackers are too good at evading?

 

[tehweave]

snip

The problem isn't even the torrents here. To be honest, simple programs like a certain mule is all you need to be able to download everything, and there's no website to shut down.

The problem is the government giving itself the tools to effectively censor (you say it's not censorship, I say it's the first step) anything that doesn't fit their corporate masters' wishes.

Ugh... I never know which side to take on this. Yes, pirates are stealing from them. Yes, they own the copyrights to the intellectual property... But is it really causing them to lose that much money? Or is it just a petty squabble between big wigs and the little guys where the little guys are getting a 1up on the big wigs through illegal means and the big wigs find themselves more insulted than strapped for cash...

I don't know. I've downloaded stuff before. I haven't done it in a long time out of fear, mostly. But really, I can't imagine that apple is losing shittons of money because people don't buy from itunes... I can't imagine nintendo is losing a shitton of money because people prate Wii and gamecube games onto emulators...

I feel frankly apathetic towards the whole thing. I buy pretty much 90% of the random entertainment things I have in my house. (World of Warcraft account, CDs, various games) I feel as though a physical copy is much more reliable (my hard drive can crash too easily) but I feel like I should root for the pirates because I'm part of the cyberculture...

I keep going back and forth. I don't know. Good luck to you pirates, but if you get caught... Well... Sorry I guess.

 

[Asehujiko]

That's awesome. Another sign of the American Gov't being bought by corporate interests...

How about you fix the fact that a huge percentage of your people are below the poverty line...

By putting them in jail for buying the only goods they can afford of course! And banning the news outlets who report on poverty because they infringe on the copyright of the data collection agency obviously!

 

[Royas]

No good can come of this. Anytime the government gets into bed with the corporations, it always goes too far. It always ends up hurting innocent people, not just in the USA but around the world. This is not a security issue, the DHS has no business being involved. It's a money issue, as in "we gave you politicians money to get elected, now we want payback!". It's basically a response to massive, legal, bribery.

I'm glad that piracy is being treated with at least some seriousness, but this will spread to violating free speech rights in no time.

 

[SadisticPretzel]

As long as piracy is illegal, there will always be ways to do it.

Why? Because us humans are an immature lot...If you tell us no, we'll do it just to piss you off.

Also, because there will always be entitled people who feel they should have everything handed to them.

 

[Gindil]

I would love to see them take down limewire or pirate bay

Actually, LimeWire is already down.

Google it if you wanna know more, I gotta get going.

You don't know about Limewire, pirate edition? [http://torrentfreak.com/limewire-resurrected-by-secret-dev-team-101108/]

As long as piracy is illegal, there will always be ways to do it.

Why? Because us humans are an immature lot...If you tell us no, we'll do it just to piss you off.

Also, because there will always be entitled people who feel they should have everything handed to them.

Yep, they're the ones that work for the big companies such as the MPAA, RIAA, etc.

 

[Lance Arrow]

You don't know about Limewire, pirate edition? [http://torrentfreak.com/limewire-resurrected-by-secret-dev-team-101108/]

Huh, guess I didn't.

 

[Zaik]

How about you fix the fact that a huge percentage of your people are below the poverty line...

It seems like the US has its prioritys straight, eh?

Anonymous vs. The US Goverment? You couldn't get me to bet a quid on how thats gonna turn out.

If the President wants 4chan taken down, it will be taken down, no doubt about it.
Where talking about a man incharge of one of the world's superpowers, I doubt he dosnt have the authority to take down a potential threat to his country.

Luckly for 4chan, Obama is a /b/tard and would never betray his fellow /b/rothers.

Anon is not 4chan

edit: Also, all this crap about world of goo is dumb. I played the demo on steam, it's *not* a great game. It's like if you took some random minigame from warioware and tried to expand it into an actual game. No matter how many contrived situations or different types of goo you use, all you ever do is build a tower up to an upside down Mario pipe. Most people are probably just looking at it's meta score and saying "oh that's good, right?".

I'm pretty neutral on the whole pirating thing, but as far as World of Goo goes, maybe it's pirated so much in comparison to sales because it has a demo? I mean, normally that's a good thing that would prevent pirating, but when you can get bored of the entire mechanic behind the whole game in a demo, then your game isn't good. Which is exactly why you shouldn't buy a game without a demo unless it's a sure hit.

 

[Fusioncode9]

I would love to see them take down limewire or pirate bay

limewire was taken down months ago but only because he cocked up

OT: With Americas policing the world image, I'm very surprised people aren't going to war. Some days it seems like they are trying to piss people off

Woops, thanks for correcting me.

 

[Alon Shechter]

Well its a bad week for anyone on the internet against(i dont mean literaly) the us eh?

wiki leaks,pirate,counterfeiters.
wonder if their going to take on 4chan next?

No way.
4chan will ruin them.

 

[Solon5694]

I'm all for protection of personal property. If I created content I'd hate to see it cracked and stolen. However, I don't think the government will ever be able to significantly enforce anti-piracy laws without going to extreme measures.

 

[Arehexes]

snip

Biased, guilt tripping presentation of information and lack of insight about the whole deal is what makes it look bad. The reality is, the smaller games get pirated by the same amount of pirates, relative to the publicity the product gets on the internet. Now, the reason those rates are at 90% is not because piracy is literally smacking their sales into oblivion, it's because the sales aren't big enough (because the product isn't appealing and/or isn't marketed well enough for the people who actually buy stuff) to balance the numbers of piracy.

If the first thing you whine about when you have poor sales is piracy, you got yourself an unappealing product and it's as simple as that.

Ehem. Beg to differ when it comes to World of Goo. All around its considered a general good game... That nobody buys. Every single one of my friends that i talk to about 50-100 All played it. I bought it. SO thats like ehm, 1 %?

Also. If part's of the internet was every being closed down due to piracy. I would always, blame piracy. Its more logical than you might think. The only reason that they are targeting piratestuff now is when they noticed that their god damn servers host more than 20 million people. (Which is like, a third of the people who play the stuff to begin with)

I beg to differ with you, I know a lot of good games people should at least try but they never heard of them because they are under the radar. In fact I only know two people who played World of Goo and they like indie games a lot. But lets see how much advertising did World of Goo get compared to: Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 and Black Ops, Mass Effect 2, Uncharted 2, Resident Evil 5, Dante's Inferno, Final Fantasy XIII, Halo 3, ODST and Reach, Gran Turismo 5. You can see the difference in numbers here, it's not just piracy when it comes to sells it's about advertisements and getting the world. Hell I bought a RPG named Recettear on steam and I found out about it by pure chance (and it's bloody good if you like games like Atelier Annie another under the radar game). You only hear a publisher complain about piracy when a game that didn't do well in market(And I notice those games weren't to good in the hands of "pro" reviewers), I haven't heard complaints about the sales for Call of Duty Black Ops. Under the radar games always do bad because they are under the radar.