Sony Music Among Parties Pushing To Cut Off Internet for Pirating Customers — Supreme Court Asked To Intervene
a year ago by moe90 to c/technology
Also, the ignorance regarding VPNs.
Internet access is absolutely a utility in every function. And like a utility, most people don't have a realistic alternative. Not without sky-high prices and/or slower speeds and less reliability. Thanks, Donald Trump.
I'm so glad the internet hasn't forgiven them for that.
I'm a bit sad that not everyone remembers when they made up a movie critic so they would have good quotes to put on ads for Sony Pictures movies.
I also haven't forgiven them for trying to sue people for simply watching the Geohot video, or removing alternative OS functionality from the PS3, or for trying to reinvent MMC/SD memory cards in a different shape and charge more for for them. Hell, I still haven't forgiven them for SonicStage.
I won't buy anything from Sony for any reason. I don't care what it is. I made damn sure my most recent camera purchase wasn't a Sony, no matter what the reviews said. That's because they pissed me off 20 years ago and haven't demonstrated any improvement in behavior since. Nerds have long memories.
Fuck I still hate them for the minidisc
They would sentence you to death while demanding that you pay for your own execution.
Libertarian police
I was shooting heroin and reading “The Fountainhead” in the front seat of my privately owned police cruiser when a call came in. I put a quarter in the radio to activate it. It was the chief.
“Bad news, detective. We got a situation.”
“What? Is the mayor trying to ban trans fats again?”
“Worse. Somebody just stole four hundred and forty-seven million dollars’ worth of bitcoins.”
The heroin needle practically fell out of my arm. “What kind of monster would do something like that? Bitcoins are the ultimate currency: virtual, anonymous, stateless. They represent true economic freedom, not subject to arbitrary manipulation by any government. Do we have any leads?”
“Not yet. But mark my words: we’re going to figure out who did this and we’re going to take them down … provided someone pays us a fair market rate to do so.”
“Easy, chief,” I said. “Any rate the market offers is, by definition, fair.”
He laughed. “That’s why you’re the best I got, Lisowski. Now you get out there and find those bitcoins.”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m on it.”
I put a quarter in the siren. Ten minutes later, I was on the scene. It was a normal office building, strangled on all sides by public sidewalks. I hopped over them and went inside.
“Home Depot™ Presents the Police!®” I said, flashing my badge and my gun and a small picture of Ron Paul. “Nobody move unless you want to!” They didn’t.
“Now, which one of you punks is going to pay me to investigate this crime?” No one spoke up.
“Come on,” I said. “Don’t you all understand that the protection of private property is the foundation of all personal liberty?”
It didn’t seem like they did.
“Seriously, guys. Without a strong economic motivator, I’m just going to stand here and not solve this case. Cash is fine, but I prefer being paid in gold bullion or autographed Penn Jillette posters.”
Nothing. These people were stonewalling me. It almost seemed like they didn’t care that a fortune in computer money invented to buy drugs was missing.
I figured I could wait them out. I lit several cigarettes indoors. A pregnant lady coughed, and I told her that secondhand smoke is a myth. Just then, a man in glasses made a break for it.
“Subway™ Eat Fresh and Freeze, Scumbag!®” I yelled.
Too late. He was already out the front door. I went after him.
“Stop right there!” I yelled as I ran. He was faster than me because I always try to avoid stepping on public sidewalks. Our country needs a private-sidewalk voucher system, but, thanks to the incestuous interplay between our corrupt federal government and the public-sidewalk lobby, it will never happen.
I was losing him. “Listen, I’ll pay you to stop!” I yelled. “What would you consider an appropriate price point for stopping? I’ll offer you a thirteenth of an ounce of gold and a gently worn ‘Bob Barr ‘08’ extra-large long-sleeved men’s T-shirt!”
He turned. In his hand was a revolver that the Constitution said he had every right to own. He fired at me and missed. I pulled my own gun, put a quarter in it, and fired back. The bullet lodged in a U.S.P.S. mailbox less than a foot from his head. I shot the mailbox again, on purpose.
“All right, all right!” the man yelled, throwing down his weapon. “I give up, cop! I confess: I took the bitcoins.”
“Why’d you do it?” I asked, as I slapped a pair of Oikos™ Greek Yogurt Presents Handcuffs® on the guy.
“Because I was afraid.”
“Afraid?”
“Afraid of an economic future free from the pernicious meddling of central bankers,” he said. “I’m a central banker.”
I wanted to coldcock the guy. Years ago, a central banker killed my partner. Instead, I shook my head.
“Let this be a message to all your central-banker friends out on the street,” I said. “No matter how many bitcoins you steal, you’ll never take away the dream of an open society based on the principles of personal and economic freedom.”
He nodded, because he knew I was right. Then he swiped his credit card to pay me.
Original Credit: https://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/l-p-d-libertarian-police-department>>>>>
Thank you for this. I don't think I've ever laughed so hard on my lunch break ever
as digitized almost all societal functions are, we really should define basic internet access as a human right.
All this with a VPN?
420,696,969% tariffs on VPNs who let you connect outside the US.
The level of short sightedness in this pursuit is laughable, even if it's coming from corporate.
You pirated a song?
Well then, we're going to cut off your internet so that we can never effectively market anything we make to you ever again.
We'll gladly lose out on all the revenue you normally spend on corporate movies, tech, and content because we'd rather hyper fixate on the pennies of lost revenue that mp3 cost us, than ever worry about the macro economic conditions of the real people it comes from.
Fucking LOL.
It’s the same idea as “death penalty will scare people out from committing murder”
The hope is the threat will stop new people from getting into that
My Google account that I had for 15+ years got banned from YouTube when I let my 9 year old play around making edited videos. He'd mash up clips from PBS Kids and other places. Apparently PBS didn't like this and after a couple of vague warnings, my account is banned from YouTube for life, no actual chance of appeal. Of course I could just ditch it and open a new account under another name, but I'm stubborn, over seven years have passed and they're still silent on the issue. I can watch YouTube, but not comment or post videos. Oh well.
Death penalty is an ineffective deterrent mostly because people tend to commit the crimes it's used as a punishment for while not thinking, or caring, about the consequences at all.
Now, forget cutting off the internet, if you'd get the death penalty for getting caught pirating music, it would prove to be a very effective deterrent at stopping it. I guarantee, zero piracy after a few years.
A lot smaller population left to buy the legal media too, though, but hey, no pesky pirates!
Death penalty is an ineffective deterrent mostly because people tend to commit the crimes it’s used as a punishment for while not thinking, or caring, about the consequences at all.
People pirate for not caring about the consequences
Death penalty for its use cases though is getting off easy. That’s why you find people killing themselves either with murder-suicide or suicide in prison
It’s like “what if we gave you no punishment at all”
Is music piracy is still a major thing these days? I've not even considered it for years, because every music streaming platform has all the music, it seems.
Movie and TV show piracy must be so much more rampant because of the fragmentation creating inconvenience to consumers.
Music piracy isn't rampant at all. It's the "immigrant crime is out of control" of the internet.
If anything, youtube is the biggest sharer of pirated music. You can listen to anything on it for free, from anyone.
Hell I still sometimes find those old "lyrics" videos. Remember those? They all had that bluish teal background? Some of them survive to this day.
They're still around for most big songs, old and new.
Hell, most of the major labels post tracks themselves to sponge up that sweet ad revenue. You can just use the tool of your choice to download the audio straight out of it if you decide you want to keep it for later.
It's honestly easier than torrents.
It's mostly hipsters with modded iPods, everyone else just streams music. You can stream it in lossless quality on some platforms and download most played songs to your device if your mobile bandwidth is limited.
Hell I'm a weird hipster who likes to have local copies of things and even I've given up.
Audiophiles like me listen to local .flac files through external DAC's for better sound. And I'm not a hipster. Also lots of music I like isn't even on streaming.
I use Foobar and Plexamp to listen to my FLAC collection. I have a lot of magazine CD inserts not readily available on the streaming platforms. Just feels really good knowing companies like Spotify aren’t making a dime off me.
Never heard of foobar, and honestly surprised it doesn't have a linux version. It has a windows phone version, but NOT linux.
I know I shit on linux a lot on this site for having a small userbase, but COME ON!!! You make a windows phone version but NOT a linux version??? At least linux has something like 5% of the pc market userbase. And while that may be mockingly small, windows phone probably only ever had 5 users total!
You know it's bad when I'M the one insulting a program for not having a native linux port.
Well, Foobar is ancient software and barely has any developers. It’s intended to be a WinAmp clone. I’m sure there’s an equivalent piece of Linux software that does something similar.
Most personal computers run Linux.
Because most personal computers are phones.
Yup. With shows and movies it's the other way around. Netflix was already losing a lot of the third party content I liked and then they pulled the whole "have to live in the same house" thing. Instant cancel.
I do have Apple TV+ nowadays, but only because I have the Apple One package that gives you Music, TV+, Arcade and storage space for a bit more than any of the services separately. TV+ is also nearly all originals and there are a lot of good ones. They have much less content, but much better quality to garbage ratio. I've watched some shows 3 times over. Not a service I'd likely pay for separately, but the bundle deal is just an excellent value proposition for me.
Everything else I torrent. Indiscriminately. Hollywood blockbuster? Torrent. Estonian movie? If I missed it in the cinemas, torrent.
Japanese corporate culture is fucking terrible. I don't understand how anyone can support these gaming companies.
Edit: Gaming/Entertainment
Japanese corporate culture is atrocious ≠ American corporate culture isn't atrocious
Both need some major reforms in order to be just non-awful, let alone acceptable.
My point is more that what they wrote didn't make sense talking about Japanese corporations when more American companies are listed. The entertainment industry is simply awful, nationalities aside.
Pretty sure sony is Japanese.
Well streaming shouldn't have fucking won
I Personally refused, I bought every CD I could even digitally. Hell I'll still buy some but it's getting annoying and I don't want to support certain platforms anymore. So now it's like I'd rather pirate the albums, buy merchandise, and use Vanced versions of streaming services
Oooo a fresh take on the reality of the situation.
Yeah, that's the notion I think I most identify with. I was like "support better behavior for a relatively low cost? Hmmm I guess so, there's a huge value here and it feels like an olive branch"
And hoooo how wrong we all were. Never again will I ever trust one of these companies. Now, it's me as a user and everything is transactional and always with a free alternative.
I've never forgiven Sony for decades deleting an account with paid for expensive games on it, they claimed inactivity for 6 months and UK law meant they had to.
No other account (with purchases) I have has ever just got deleted on me and you better believe Sony are never getting a single penny from me again.
Microsoft stole my copy of minecraft when they bought it
I may or may not have been pirating media for over 20 years and this song and dance will never end.
Sure, the well known torrent sites have marginally less content and seeds than before but my Plex server may or may not still be packed full of classics and the latest releases.
The above may or may not be purely fictional and victimless. And no, I wouldn’t “steal a handbag.” Handbags aren’t infinite digital replicas, and handbag owners don’t drive supercars.
(I draw the line at software largely due to the risks, and partly due to Mac apps and Adobe suite being locked down pretty well. I’m happy to pay for software regardless. Netflix and Amazon on the other hand…)
They plan on suing all the ai companies too?
They could but let's be honest, the AI companies have no capital to take. They're just one big ponzi scheme waiting to collapse as soon as new investors stop coming in faster than they leave.
People wouldn't pirate your shit if it was easily and cheaply available
And won't disappear the moment someone decides they won't pay "licenses" for it to be on the service you paid for it.
Fuck you Sony...
Signed a lifelong pirate.
It costs a holiday and a nice dinner to make the SCOTUS say "um, ackchually, the constitution doesn't say anything about access to the internet".
As an aside that's one of the major things I've never understood about how SCOTUS developes rulings, ie: how they use 'original intent' to figure out current issues.
We need a new internet, a new way to connect.
But what if you could chain the smart phones and laptops of the world together using WiFi and Bluetooth to create a wireless network that was free and open to everyone, with no need for Big Telecom?
Some guy has already done it:
https://unsigned.io/hardware/RNode.html https://reticulum.network/
Same goes for other projects using the same frequencies. WiFi HaLow, LoRa/Meshtastic/LoRaWAN, Z Wave, Zigbee, Sigfox. All great tech.
Spectrum had a policy like this at one point. They'd shut you off after a couple of instances of p2p that were reported. Afterwards, they directed you into a captive portal with some plausible deniability where you had to say "I don't know what happened, but it won't happen again".
Nowadays they just send you an email but don't restrict access.
Either way the Internet isn't too safe, protect yourself with at least a VPN.
do these dumbasses think people pirate without vpns?
We once got a letter from our isp because someone who was at our dnd game night was using our internet to download shit without telling us so that was fun.
He stopped when we showed him the letter (he was the only guy with a laptop so it had to be him at the time)
In that guys defence, it's pretty common to just have your torrent client on in the background doing its thing. He was likely unaware either until seeing the notice.
We weren't super angry at him, it was more a "you can't do that here, we don't want the internet suing us. Cause they'd sue us, not you" and he did stop, we never got a letter again.
I do. I'm an idiot and already got emails from my ISP.
I do and I never get emails from my ISP.
Are you outside the US?
Nope
Same.
Cut off internet for people who pirate... Those people are now unable to stream anything... Sacrifice thousands in potential revenue over an infringement that maybe cost them a few dollars, if that... Deter no one because everyone thinks they won't get caught.
Good move. Smart guys.
ah all good....nothing is lost. everytime ppl hate murican corpos more, the world becomes a better place.
apple making it hard to install warez, google forcing playstore,gsf and manifest3 on ppl
everything american is always shit. period. because entire culture is built on being a shit person. dont blame tump or sony or microsoft...it is the american people that just suck all the time.
everytime ppl hate murican corpos more
FYI, SONY is a Japanese multinational corporation.
Huh, I'm American and I'm surrounded by people who are incredibly kind and nurturing and will bend over backwards to help others. Sounds like you live in a shit part of the country if you only have assholes near you.
I live in literally one of the most blue states there is. I know of 1 person who voted for Trump. And if a cup that is only 30% full is considered "overflowing" where you live I would love to move there and open up a bar. I'm sure I'd make a killing.
Turns out the 'shining beacon on a hill' and the 'thousand points of light' they used to talk about were all crosses burning.
As an American, I approve this message. It's accurate.
Do not conflate the people with the corporations.
And let's not ignore the fact that many nations were happy to buy and profit until the USA government turned into a bargain sale for billionaires.
as an American this is an absolute truth nuke.
You can just download a house now:
Sony: still trying to make the Betamax monetization plan work....
Haha the US is so fucking dumb bro I can't
surely this is only for torrents right? there should be no way they can detect DDL.
honeypots
Um, has there ever been a time Sony, the rootkit DRM company has not called for state intervention to enforce IP laws regarding Sony holdings? (All the while Sony pirates anyone else's stuff.)
This is like the news that Comcast objects to municipal areas opening up Comcast monopoly regions to new ISPs. Sony is almost as bas as Nintendo when it comes to their franchises.
Get a vpn provider. Set the location as the Netherlands. Set up a docker container with deluge and openvpn, and set it up to use your vpn provider.
Voila. You only need run your torrent traffic through the vpn, and it’ll be on its own kill switch.
Emigrating to internet friendly country is something I'd do in a week. I guess sharing someone else's internet, or account identity is an option.
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This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
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Absolutely diabolical. Cutting off internet access is no different than cutting of electricity in modern society. Sure, you can live without it, but everything from paying your bills to getting a job or having a social life just got a whole lot harder. Fuck anyone who thinks this is a reasonable response.
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