Grooby Legal Action against Piracy ...

[PomonaCA]

The purpose of the original post is what? To serve public notice? State intent? A lawsuit is a lawsuit, let it happen in a courtroom, not the hungangels website. Outside of the suit, this thread looks like a lot of bluff and bluster. Stupid really, along with a lot of stupid posturing by copyright amateurs.

[BellaBellucci]

I think there's quite a difference between property and "intellectual property" which I don't even consider to be a valid concept. If you take my property then I don't have it anymore.

There may be intellectual rights but there's no property and there's no intrinsic reason that one should continue to be paid for something long after the labor they expended on it is complete. If I design a house I don't get paid every time someone walks through the door but if I make a film I expect to be paid any time someone watches it until the day I die.

... because the house doesn't generate a profit.

~BB~

[Brittany St Jordan]

So if I sign a non-disclosure agreement about a project someone is working on and I leak it to the world it is somehow a moment of liberation for free speech? Every pay site with copyrighted material has a user agreement which is a legally binding contract where you, the user, state that you will not disseminate any material without some form of authorization from the owner of that material if even allowed at all.

And for the argument that using stolen material to promote the site is a good thing, stick that you up your ass along with your head. Every site has affiliate programs that you can join for FREE and promote the site for FREE without ever releasing actual paid-for material from the members area of the site. And the big kicker to those is you can actually get paid money instead of paying legal fees.

As Amy said:

LOL @ Being extorted. They broke the law, deal with it.[/url]

Whether a person robs a mom & pop store with a .22 somewhere in podunk Kansas or with an AK-47 in the Mall of America it is still armed robbery. Same goes for file sharing pirates, no matter how big or small they may be they broke the law and there are consequences that go along with that.

The fact that potential customers know that pirated material can be easily found online is enough to dissuade them from actually joining a site so yes stolen material does equal loss in income for the owners of the material. So now the playing field is being leveled by letting copyright thieves know that if they steal and they get caught stealing there will be legal action taken against them. So if by letting potential customers know that you can pay a little now for access to the copyrighted material or pay a lot later in legal fines is extortion then go bitch at 7-11 for every shoplifter they ever prosecuted.

[SmashysmashY]

... because the house doesn't generate a profit.

~BB~

You never heard of anyone selling a house before?

[NYBURBS]

If they're being extorted, yes.

These legal procedures and suits are nothing to do with stopping piracy, nothing to do with addressing the cause of piracy or even the providers of piracy. They are simply a way of getting someone to give you money so you don't publicly drag them through the courts over some shemale porn. In fact they don't even want to go to court, it's too expensive.

If this was about addressing piracy then it would be different, it's not, it's about making money.

It is a tactic, but if it reduces the amount of people that share his product on file sharing sites then it will have worked. I doubt a few thousand in settlements are his idea of getting rich.

[JoePitt]

... because the house doesn't generate a profit.

~BB~

You never heard of anyone selling a house before?

Heh, have you tried selling a house at a profit in the last 2-3 years? Also, I'm sure Bella was talking more about an ongoing, sustainable profit.

[SmashysmashY]

Heh, have you tried selling a house at a profit in the last 2-3 years? Also, I'm sure Bella was talking more about an ongoing, sustainable profit.

Ongoing sustainable profit like what, rent? The designer doesn't retain any copyrights at all, they certainly don't get royalties. That's not how it works.

[NYBURBS]

It's a difficult question to answer because it presupposes that if I wrote a book I would charge people to read it. I would only write a book if I thought it contained important information and I wouldn't be surprised to see electronic copies of it because I would place it in the public domain.

Yea but you would have the choice not to charge for it, instead of the choice being made for you. There's quite a difference.

Many use words like "thief" and "pirate" but when enough people feel that it’s okay to do something, that thing ceases to be wrong in their own cultural context. That's just the way it is.

That's true to a point, of course there are countries where they stone you to death for having an affair, but I wouldn't adopt that as a just punishment simply because people in their culture think it is. Oh and I'm not trying to equate downloading some porn with killing someone, but just pointing out that the whole relativism argument can be quite slippery.

There may be intellectual rights but there's no property and there's no intrinsic reason that one should continue to be paid for something long after the labor they expended on it is complete. If I design a house I don't get paid every time someone walks through the door but if I make a film I expect to be paid any time someone watches it until the day I die.

If you design a house then you're selling the rights to your design to the person who is having the house built. Grooby is selling (or licensing would be a better term) a finished product, but retain the rights to it. By your logic, only the first customer to buy it need pay, then he's free to give it away to everyone else as he sees fit.

[JoePitt]

Many use words like "thief" and "pirate" but when enough people feel that it’s okay to do something, that thing ceases to be wrong in their own cultural context. That's just the way it is.

LOL So by that crazy rationale, you support widespread pedophilia in Afghanistan?

http://www.hungangels.com/vboard/showthread.php?t=49667

[BellaBellucci]

You never heard of anyone selling a house before?

A house is a tangible item that is bought and sold only once at a time. Content is intangible and consumed en masse. How else would a content producer see a return on their investment if not for copyright laws? If they could give it away for free, it probably wouldn't be very good, would it?

It has everything to do with replication and redistribution, but to use your analogy, if someone designed, say, a pre-fabricated house intended for mass production, then yes I think they should have intellectual property rights. And what NYBURBS said.

~BB~