Why are people still downloading illegal films etc?

[jamin]

At the end of the day, piracy is illegal and downloading Pirated copyrighted material is theft in the eyes of the law. Making a personal stand against a greedy industry does not change this.

Personally, I see the oil industry as a far more corrupt and greedy entity but I don't fill up my car then drive off without paying for my fuel, as this is theft.

I used to download pirated films, but was nearly always disappointed with the quality. My wife and I started have going to the cinema regularly but pick our times to avoid chavs. You can't beat seeing a film on the big screen.

I would expect ISP;s to maintain a bandwidth management policy even if the illegal networks are terminated to prevent bandwidth bottlenecks.

IMHO, torrents became an easy and guilt free way for pirated material to be downloaded after napster was forced to go legal. Yes I know there is a lot of legal material shared p2p as well, but the illegal material drove the spread of the protocol.

[spac3d]

Kill Bill Vol1 and Star Wars Ep3 came out in a "watchable" workprint before they hit the cimemas. I wouldn't call it watchable in this HD era, but back then it was ok for a computer screen... (I sampled the quality on a friends computer - I wouldn't dream of watching such films in that quality, but for most non-tech students (and even some tech ones) it was acceptable quality)

Laughable!

[Steve B]

[Splash]

but the fact that people are using this bandwidth for illegal use means the ISP are not under any pressure to solve the problem.

Let's say that in an ideal world all illegal use of peer to peer technology was stopped as of tomorrow. Do you think that

a) the ISPs would stop overselling their product and invest in the necessary infrastructure so that their customers could all get what they pay for, at all times?

b) the ISPs would find something else to blame (I'm looking at you, Youtube, iPlayer, 4OD, Steam, game patches, etc etc etc)?

I'm not condoning piracy, but I'm struggling to see your viewpoint. The ISPs are using piracy as an excuse but if that wasn't there I personall think that they'd find another excuse. I'm not even giving the option of c) all would work well again on the internets as the tubes would be unclogged.

[Blitzen]

At the end of the day, piracy is illegal and downloading Pirated copyrighted material is theft in the eyes of the law. Making a personal stand against a greedy industry does not change this.

Personally, I see the oil industry as a far more corrupt and greedy entity but I don't fill up my car then drive off without paying for my fuel, as this is theft.

I used to download pirated films, but was nearly always disappointed with the quality. My wife and I started have going to the cinema regularly but pick our times to avoid chavs. You can't beat seeing a film on the big screen.

I would expect ISP;s to maintain a bandwidth management policy even if the illegal networks are terminated to prevent bandwidth bottlenecks.

IMHO, torrents became an easy and guilt free way for pirated material to be downloaded after napster was forced to go legal. Yes I know there is a lot of legal material shared p2p as well, but the illegal material drove the spread of the protocol.

I agree that piracy is wrong.
What i dont agree with is that its theft??? How can it be? Who are pirates stealing from?
This is the common theme that is totally wrong. Do you really think that anyone who downloads a film for example wouldve bought it if they hadnt downloaded it? Of course they wouldnt.

Btw......you say you choose your cinema times carefully to avoid the 'chavs'. How is that possible in Southend?

[Jay]

so you don't think cutting out illegal file sharing would help with the issue of bandwidth?

If they wanted to balme a legal service I think that it would not wash to well, blaming illegal sources can't really be argued with.

[TheAnimus]

It's a big shift in thinking for the business world though.. the mentality of 1:1 losses for pirate copies is utterly retarded in my eyes.

But that dosen't for a second begin to excuse the freetard behavoir.

I think the only time i've been morally justified in pirating a film, has been when a family member was too ill to goto the cinema, really wanted too see it, and there was a chance they wouldn't be around by the time it was out on DVD.

All those complaining about the cinema costing £8.50? You can buy a monthly watch all you want pass for £16 at most, failing that there is NOTHING stopping you from waiting till its on dvd or tv, its not as if there is a shortage of films you've never seen. The exact same thing goes to people who are complaining about the environment. There are only 3 cinemas i regularly frequent in London, they are in areas that are chav free.

I've said it before, and i'll say it again, there is a clear proof that most people who pirate things in the UK are absolutely completely and utterally f**king moronic.

Why? Because they will use a technology like Bit Torrent. For a start off, it isn't ideal for mass distrabution, my broadband down is sometimes as fast as 16mbits, up, abs max of 1.2mbit. Yes, P2P is going to work well isn't it So now we've rubished the distrabution method, lets look at punishments, if you upload illegally something its worse than downloading it. Brilliant dipsh!ts, you're all making yourself even more fineable. Then the fact that people can easily detect whats going on if they're on the inside, now odds are they are going to be able to get onto the inside, a mate of mine who works for a computer forensics firm was moaning about how there is more money spent on combatting online piracy than there was against pedophilia.

So, if your still using Bit-Torrent for piracy, ask yourself are you as clever as you think you are?

[Splash]

so you don't think cutting out illegal file sharing would help with the issue of bandwidth?

If they wanted to balme a legal service I think that it would not wash to well, blaming illegal sources can't really be argued with.

Help? Yes. Fix it? Hell no.

EDIT - take into account that a number of ISPs already "manage" peer to peer technologies and how can they really blame the technology? Either they can manage it, in which case they have no excuse for congestion or they can't, and they should look into ways to manage their network (be that investing in more bandwidth or managing the protocols like other ISPs)

Yesterday morning I downloaded the new Ubuntu distro in 32 and 64 bit flavours. I left the client open because it hadn't completed by the time I left for work and when I got back home I'd uploaded a significant amount of data. Now *technically* I'm part of the problem, but because I'm doing nothing illegal what would you expect the ISP to do? Will they claim I was doing something illegal purely because of the spike in bandwidth? How about my uploads to my Amazon S3 for offsite backups? And the downloads of SQL dumps and home drive backups from various webhosts?

Yes, I'm a heavy user but I expect to pay a premium for this service. I don't think that blaming illegal downloads will fix budget ISPs for me, so I use a premium ISP and I'm a happy customer. Not everyone who uses a lot of bandwidth is breaking the law.

[dangel]

But that dosen't for a second begin to excuse the freetard behavoir.

But that really wasn't my point - I'm looking at it from the side of the need to change business models to cope with the modern World. Fact is, you need to provide flexible mechanisms for your customers and a good price - that's happening now for music and so i'd like to see the idea extended elsewhere.

Most people, given a decent alternative will go legal. By that I mean not DRM'd to the hilt, reasonably priced and on-demand. If DRM-free music can flourish and sell well why not other media?

As for P2P - yes you're upload speed might be a fraction of your download but it still works well if you've got a big-bandwidth seed (or two) and lots of downloaders (who contribute and help balance the load). I don't see it as being a bad thing that it reduces overall bandwith costs for the distributor.

[Platinum]

have you considered that they might download films because that's their preferred distribution mechanism?

+1 on that one, I would much prefer to be able to legaly download films in HD, who wants a stack of Discs these days?
I do it legally with Music these days so why cant I do it with films?

[spoon_]

Sorry for OT guys

dangel - I wouldn't really suspect anyone to use Opus here, well done mate

PS. Do you know from which platform this software is originating?

[dangel]

Sorry for OT guys

dangel - I wouldn't really suspect anyone to use Opus here, well done mate

Hexus folk are well-informed And thanks!
(also apols. OT)

[Jay]

Help? Yes. Fix it? Hell no.

EDIT - take into account that a number of ISPs already "manage" peer to peer technologies and how can they really blame the technology? Either they can manage it, in which case they have no excuse for congestion or they can't, and they should look into ways to manage their network (be that investing in more bandwidth or managing the protocols like other ISPs)

Yesterday morning I downloaded the new Ubuntu distro in 32 and 64 bit flavours. I left the client open because it hadn't completed by the time I left for work and when I got back home I'd uploaded a significant amount of data. Now *technically* I'm part of the problem, but because I'm doing nothing illegal what would you expect the ISP to do? Will they claim I was doing something illegal purely because of the spike in bandwidth? How about my uploads to my Amazon S3 for offsite backups? And the downloads of SQL dumps and home drive backups from various webhosts?

Yes, I'm a heavy user but I expect to pay a premium for this service. I don't think that blaming illegal downloads will fix budget ISPs for me, so I use a premium ISP and I'm a happy customer. Not everyone who uses a lot of bandwidth is breaking the law.

What you do is fine and as a "proper" user you are also being restricted because of the fact that we are all pained with the same brush. I torrent distros when I need them and then will let it upload for a while to help with Linux/GNU distros, its the least I can do. I would even be happy to log all my P2P traffic and pass it to my provider to have my limits removed but this is never going to happen. I don't think illegal file shares are using all the bandwidth but I think they are being blamed for it and used as a way to limit everyone's bandwidth. If there was no illegal downloads the ISP would have to then limit us all for legal use of the net and I am sure that some one would take them to the cleaners for that one.

The more people use the net to download illegal software etc the more restriction are going to be put on it. In 5 to 10 years time I expect we will have every aspect of our net usage looked into every day and we will then look back and think how stupid we all where for not taking a stronger stance as users while we had the chance to. Illegal downloading is good for the ISP as it gives them excuses for everything that is wrong with their service and its good for the Government because it will give them an opportunity to push laws through to spy on us in the name of "fighting piracy".

If we don't make a stand and stop this we are all going to regret it and those "free films" that we downloaded and never even bothered watching will have cost us whats left of our digital freedom.

[shaithis]

I don't think illegal file shares are using all the bandwidth but I think they are being blamed for it and used as a way to limit everyones bandwidth. If there was no illegal downloads the ISP would have to then limit us all for legal use of the net and I am sure that some one would take them to the cleaners for that one.

And there lies the problem with your argument, all nicely summed up.

ISPs hide behind the illegal downloads argument, yet they have no way of completely stamping illegal downloads out.

Unless they add a white list, allowing download from a handful of sites that they have ratified, they will always be able to hide behind that weak excuse.

Now, do you want a China-like internet service just so that you can get a better download rate with a crap ISP?

[Jay]

So I assume that most people here are saying that stopping illegal P2P traffic is not a good thing then?

[format]

I think their point is that you are focussing too much on illegal p2p downloads, as they are not the problem - it's the country's old infrastructure.