Post: #26

(12-31-2014 05:19 PM)coverdoc Wrote:  

(12-31-2014 02:29 PM)Brian Shima Wrote:  Kick Ass Torrents is much better than old Pirate bay and I am the one who first mentioned it in the other torrent thread!!

Yeah kick ass torrents are pretty legit and good alternative to piratebay

seems to be better because of all the seeders

Post: #27

Let me quote AnonymousBosch here:

(12-05-2014 10:19 PM)AnonymousBosch Wrote:  I'd guess at least 90% of blue pill millennials understanding of the world is formed via the pure dramatic fantasy of entertainment media. They're relentless consumers of movies, tv shows, games, music and clickbait - to the degree that they can easily make doublethink excuses for why stealing it all online doesn't make them a bad person.

I, by and large, do not partake in any of those torrent sites, and ask anyone who uses internet connection with my name on it to not partake. There is no free lunch, and, if everyone pirates movies and music, less good movies and music will be made. One of the reasons quality journalism is being replaced by low-quality click bait sites is because everyone thinks they are entitled to read the news for free. One of the reasons 2014 was such a bad year for film is because widespread piracy is gutting the movie industry.

It's disgusting the amount of doublethink pirates have when denying simple objective facts like the fact that the music industry tanked after everyone started downloading it with Napster and other file "sharing" places instead of paying for it. Anyone else remember record stores? Before Napster came around, they were everywhere. Within a few short years, they have mostly all gone bankrupt.

Guys who spend all day torrenting and downloading pirated content are like a bunch of entitled feminists figuring out ways to more effectively divorce rape men.

Post: #28

(01-03-2015 04:12 AM)placer Wrote:  It's disgusting the amount of doublethink pirates have when denying simple objective facts like the fact that the music industry tanked after everyone started downloading it with Napster and other file "sharing" places instead of paying for it. Anyone else remember record stores? Before Napster came around, they were everywhere. Within a few short years, they have mostly all gone bankrupt.

Respectfully, I don't know that you can ascribe the death of record stores generally to Napster or filesharing as such. The trend is much more that as the Internet has grown and businesses have gone online, retail generally has gone into the toilet because the Net's supplanted the middleman that was the retail operator.

What follows is a bit of a libertarian view on my part, so please take this here dose of NaCl with it...

Basically, anybody in between the manufacturer of a good and the consumer is a middleman. They derive their profit from imposing a cost increase on what the manufacturer deems a decent profit on his goods. Be you a wholesaler or distributor, your economic existence derives solely from being able to throw a block between the ultimate maker of a good and the ultimate consumer. If someone comes up with a means to go around you, you are dead. Your business model is over.

The Internet kills middlemen, and as it grows bigger and more complex, it'll kill bigger and more complex middlemen. It will take time, and it'll take a more sophisticated search system probably, but eventually somebody is going to realise that manufacturers can market direct to their customers and cut out all of the distribution chains, thus keeping all of the profit as well. On top of that: no manufacturer can be undercut by a middleman, by definition. Not if the middleman wants to keep operating for more than a couple of months or so.

Shit, take a look at Roosh, Matt Forney, et. al.: self-publishing books was an unviable joke 30 years ago because you couldn't reach a big enough market with mailing lists and fliers, and authors had to kowtow to the Big Publishing merry-go-round and maybe get a spot on a bookshelf somewhere. Now they can go direct to the public with short-run printers, keep all of the profit from a book, and still make as decent a buck as a mid-list author. They can choose whether or not to get an editor for their text and the changes to be made (especially now that Big Publishing, in a panic and thinking it can't live without cost-cutting, has been shedding copy editors like sweat.)

Is this easy? Nope. Not that I'd call on Roosh or Matt here, but I'd guess online marketing of a book is constant hustle. But that experience is actually the same in big publishing on my understanding for anyone bar Stephen King or JK Rowling - and you don't have to hand over 75% of the book's profit to the publisher for the privilege of running around promoting your own book.

It's reasonable to point out Amazon's success online in response to this contention. To that I'd say: wait a while. Its business model ultimately is flawed. It exists solely on desperately growing every year and a bunch of really daft institutional shareholders who don't realise that Amazon is a contradiction in terms: an Internet middleman. (Let's leave aside that Jeff Bezos has been screwing the manufacturers who use him for the better part of a decade or more. Toys R Us even got a court judgment against it for hamstringing it and putting its competitors' goods on the same page as Toys R Us products.)

The reason for that long and pointless digression is this: record publishers are another form of middleman. Always have been. And when those publishers are few and far between -- as with the book distribution business -- oligopoly conditions arise, and the gouging starts. And has been going on basically ever since Buddy Holly plugged in a Strat.

Also like a lot of middlemen, they're far more interested in being nice to their customers than to their suppliers. Look at the long strings of would-be singers who were screwed by the record companies, made bankrupt because of seriously unfair contracts signed in their early years. Look at the shit someone big like Prince had to go through just to get free of his record company. And record publishers have always jealously protected their near-monopoly control over distribution channels; they even sued tape-making companies because people were out making copies of recordings then, too. Even the digital era did not wise them up: in Australia a bunch of them tried to sue a major ISP on essentially the same argument: "U iz making space for pirates and therefore iz infringing on our rights!"

And the digital era has not changed their attitudes on creative accounting and being fair with artists: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/201104...lead.shtml

I would guess the investment in a new artist at a music house has gone much the same way as it has in publishing houses: a few bucks on promotion and leave the rest of it to the poor sap who signed up to a shitty contract leaving him with the tab for the advertising.

Yes, piracy is illegal by most jurisdictions under various legislative instruments that we could go through. But piracy is merely an example of a larger trend. These guys are dying by the sword by which they lived: they could only survive so long as someone did not hugely change how products can be moved from maker to consumer. That change has come, and they've essentially refused to evolve or change their business model. Some of it is illegality in action - but most of it is merely Darwinian economics.

Post: #29

(01-03-2015 04:12 AM)placer Wrote:  Before Napster came around, they were everywhere. Within a few short years, they have mostly all gone bankrupt.

While the rest of your post is interesting and the morality of downloading torrents can definitely be debated, the part I am quoting is absolutely wrong. Napster/torrents/file-sharing has nothing to do with the demise of record stores. Record stores would have died a painful death with OR without Napster. iTunes was the real game-changer in that regard. The ability to buy a single and not the entire album changed the industry. More importantly, it's not iTunes or internet piracy that killed record stores, it's the move away from physical media and the move towards digital content. Even without torrents people would not be buying records/CDs and would be at home downloading music from legal platforms such as iTunes or Google Play.

Saying that Napster killed record stores is like saying torrents killed Blockbuster. No, Blockbuster died because Netflix could provide the same service for a much cheaper price AND they got into the streaming business which is how people consume most of their media now.

Blaming file-sharing or torrents for killing record stores/rental is a little funny. Paracelsus explained it perfectly, it's the internet to blame. Most people prefer to get content straight to their smartphones/laptops and don't want to go to a store to buy physical media. Even the last few Blu-Rays I have bought were ordered from Amazon not from Best Buy or some video store.

Post: #30

(01-03-2015 01:25 PM)TheSlayer Wrote:  Napster/torrents/file-sharing has nothing to do with the demise of record stores. Record stores would have died a painful death with OR without Napster. iTunes was the real game-changer in that regard.

Record companies only made their music available on iTunes because piracy was already killing their revenue stream. Source: Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs

Here's a chart of music industry revenue, adjusted for inflation:

   

Now observe: The peak of the music industry's revenue was in 2000 Napster came out in 1999 and took a couple of years for it and other file sharing networks to catch on. Revenue went down right when people started illegally downloading instead of buying the content. To deny that piracy did not hurt the music industry is as logical as a Erdely accepting Jackie's rape story without any fact checking.

No, it's not just a coincidence. No, it's not because music quality suddenly went to the toilet in 2000 (But, you're a misogynist for refusing to believe Jackie's story!). No, it's not only because of the post-dot-com recession (But, Jackie really was raped, it was just at a different fraternity!). It's because people started downloading instead of buying music.

As an aside, I agree that it's a good thing to be able to get rid of the middleman. For some genres, such as electronic music, it allows a lot more music to be available. Then again, I don't see how an independent artist or band can single-handedly create a disco album (costs a lot of money to hire and record an orchestra), a really good rock album (you need a good room, good microphones, and a good engineer to pull it off), or an album like Jackson's Thriller (which cost $750,000 in 1982 dollars to record). It's sad that rampant piracy has made it impossible for us to ever have a band like Led Zeppelin or The Beatles ever again.

One final thing: It wasn't Netflix's internet movie streaming service that killed Blockbuster. Netflix's DVD-by-mail service was what killed Blockbuster.

Post: #31

^^ Firstly, I find it a little troll-ish that you are comparing this to the UVA case and making comparisons between feminists and those of us who download torrents.

Secondly, you seem to be missing the point. Unless technology didn't evolve and you think people would still be carrying around CD players etc. then record/video stores were always going to go extinct. With iPods/MP3 players/smartphones the move away from physical media to digital ownership of content was always going to happen. It was only a question of when, not if. Steve Jobs can say whatever he wants, if he hadn't come up with the concept of iTunes someone else would have. Once his iPods and MP3 players took-off there was no looking back.

Did Napster/file-sharing accelerate the process? Surely.
Did Napster/file-sharing cause a decline in revenues? Absolutely?

BUT record and video stores were always going to lose this battle with or without torrents.

And yes, I am aware that Netflix defeated Blockbuster with their much cheaper mail-in DVD model, I suppose I should have clarified. The larger point was that now Netflix is synonymous with online movie streaming and digital delivery/ownership of media was always going to happen unless we assume an alternate universe in which technology stops evolving after the early 2000s.

Post: #32

The torrents/copyright argument is moot. Don't forget they used to sell dual deck tape recorders back in the day on every store shelf. Not to mention you can just turn on the radio and record the song playing. Is that still piracy?

The whole concept of intellectual property is stupid. Once you sing a song, speak a thought or draw a picture ...it belongs to the world. And you can't possibly stop anyone from sharing it, copying it or making their own version of it loosely based on your design.

And the more things go digital the easier it is to duplicate and share. Because when you look at it close enough the information is just a 0 or a 1. How do you copy protect a string of 0's and 1's You can't.

Post: #33

(01-03-2015 02:01 PM)placer Wrote:  Record companies only made their music available on iTunes because piracy was already killing their revenue stream. Source: Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs

So piracy led to massive innovations in technology and the way media is consumed, is what you're saying? Basically, we wouldn't have mp3 players, Youtube, Netflix streaming, etc. without Napster?

Yet pirates are the bad guys here, not the companies who will continue to push the status quo and making as much money as legally possible until they're forced to change?

Quote:As an aside, I agree that it's a good thing to be able to get rid of the middleman. For some genres, such as electronic music, it allows a lot more music to be available. Then again, I don't see how an independent artist or band can single-handedly create a disco album (costs a lot of money to hire and record an orchestra), a really good rock album (you need a good room, good microphones, and a good engineer to pull it off), or an album like Jackson's Thriller (which cost $750,000 in 1982 dollars to record). It's sad that rampant piracy has made it impossible for us to ever have a band like Led Zeppelin or The Beatles ever again.

Dude, are you serious?

The Beatles broke up almost 50 years ago. A $50 smartphone in 2015 has more computing power than the PCs being used by NASA in the 60s -- and it's not even close.

The average home producer today has access to better recording equipment and engineering software than even existed at that time. If anything, a lot of today's music is overproduced.

Furthermore, major label deals still exist, it's just that they push shit music and rape the hell out of their artists to the point they're barely making money.

Meanwhile the technology of today allows millions more musicians the change of being heard. Independent artists can actually succeed and gain recognition without major label backing -- and the lack of restrictions in creativity that come with it. Mackelmore won a Grammy on an indie label.

There's just a huge amount of bias from the older generation towards current music. Somehow artists are supposed to be as innovative in now well-established genres like rock & roll as bands were during its infancy. Yet new genres like hip hop, EDM, etc. are panned (in much the same way that rock once was).

Nostalgia and personal connection won't allow them to admit that anything is as nearly as good as what their generation created.

Same goes for movies. Kind of easy to be a pioneer of filmmaking when people just started recording in color 5 or 10 years prior, when every shot you make is cutting edge.

I'm not trying to say that current entertainment is better than the older, but there is still plenty of good music and movies being put out.

I love classic music and movies. And there's plenty of complete shit release these days, of course, but the majority of that is being put out by the major label/studios that you're defending as some kind of heralds of quality media.

In reality, the big time executives most hurt by piracy are the ones who most hurt entertainment by only focusing on sales and marketability at the expense of creativity and innovation.

I'm not saying piracy is "right", but it also didn't do what you're claiming.

If anything, it helped to shift through the bullshit and release the stranglehold the mainstream media had on what we see and hear. The same ideas that created piracy are the same one's that allow this forum, the manosphere, and non-mainstream news and ideas to reach a larger audience.

Post: #34

So someone is d defending Hollywood and thinks they will start making master pieces if we stop downloading movies??

Post: #35

(01-03-2015 02:01 PM)placer Wrote:  

(01-03-2015 01:25 PM)TheSlayer Wrote:  Napster/torrents/file-sharing has nothing to do with the demise of record stores. Record stores would have died a painful death with OR without Napster. iTunes was the real game-changer in that regard.

Record companies only made their music available on iTunes because piracy was already killing their revenue stream. Source: Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs

Here's a chart of music industry revenue, adjusted for inflation:

I suspect one element playing into that chart is the onset dates of new technology. Take a look at what happens in those graphs when CDs first come in: vinyl's already dropped into oblivion and tapes follow suit shortly after. CD sales go through the roof: no drops in sales until 1996 or thereabouts. But it's not like there was a sudden explosion in mindblowing music - by 1990 or so Michael Jackson and Madonna were pretty much done making interesting music and Nirvana was headed our way - so what happened?

I came across potentially an answer in (of all places) a short lecture on sound engineering. Basically, when CD technology came out, the record industry had to give people a big reason to support it and buy it - so they began rereleasing en masse old recordings of artists that had already appeared on vinyl decades before, completely remastered and arguably in much better shape than the vinyl recordings.

Remember Agent J's passing remark about tiny CDs in Men in Black and "Guess I'll have to buy the White Album again."?

Or remember a short, passing conversation from Nicholas Cage to a fellow character in "The Rock"--

Quote:Random Agent: Why spend fifty bucks on a Beatles record when you can spend twenty dollars on a CD, man?
Cage: Firstly, because I'm a Beatlemaniac. Second, these sound better.

What I suspect is partially happening in those graphs is not the expansion of music sales in the form of new music - it's partially explained by the adoption of new technology and rebuying of old recordings like, say, the whole Beatles backcatalogue on CD on the (debatable) rationale that it sounds better and it's a lot cheaper.

(Let us again note the oligopoly conditions in place again and the Internet's place in them: if you have thrown out your Poison "Slippery When Wet" vinyl LP and have a sudden hankering for Nikki Sixx again, without the Internet you've got two basic choices: go looking through every secondhand record store in Buttfuck, Idaho for a scratched, vaginal-fluid-soaked copy ... or buy a brand spanking new CD from the publisher, who will be perfectly happy to take $20 off you for something that cost them $2 in physical costs and of which the boys are only likely to see about $0.01 or so in royalties. But with the Internet, it's a whole other story, because the entire planet becomes a potential supplier of the goods you want.)

Thus, to some extent the business's growth from 1985-1996 was possibly founded on people having to upgrade from diamond needles to laser sharks. Er, optical lasers. After that the Internet began to take off in a serious way.

At a guess you won't see the same explosion repeated again for digital sales partially because of piracy, certainly, but partially also because everybody had a CD burner in their computers by the time the digital era took off. People don't have to rebuy their albums as a new technology, they can just create personal copies -- and archival copying of material has always been a perfectly lawful exercise -- and enjoy the music exactly as it was.

Post: #36

This is a great thread.

Placer and Paracelsus make some great points.

I recently did a book review which covers the downsides of the digital revolution we are living through:

/thread-43988.html

One thing that comes to mind is that the idea of copyright has always been quite a strange one. But it has been around so long that we never take a chance to look at the concept with fresh eyes.

It is kinda' weird that you can spend a day recording a song and then (if you are successful) continue to earn millions of dollars from that day's work - for the rest of your life. And most of the life of your children and their grandchildren as well.

I am not saying it is right or wrong. But if you turn the idea on it's head - people would think it strange if you had to pay a small royalty to the guy (or his estate) who invented the concept of bridges every time you use one.

At heart - I sense this is why people are comfortable with the idea of ripping off copyright holders. Since the idea of intellectual property is one that most of us struggle to really appreciate.

Sure - we can follow the intellectual arguments - but on an emotional level, the idea that you have to pay the children of a dead guy every time you experience his work sits uneasily. Particularly when the initial work was something that was knocked out in a week or two.

It all comes down to how we picture economic value - and that comes down to have we define economic value. Subconsciously - we are all Marxists in the way we envision the nature of value. I have spoken a bit about this elsewhere - /thread-44053.html

But from a Marxist perspective. He would argue that all products and ideas in society are built on the creativity and ingenuity of countless, unknown, workers who came before.

For example - you can trace back an expensive rolex watch to sundials and further back to the astronomers and astrologers who mapped out the stars.

Imagine you had to send 5 bucks to the estate of Ptolemy every time you bought a rolex watch?

And imagine having them chase you down for buying a fake rolex on your holidays in Thailand?





This might sound silly - but this was the key idea behind the communist worldview. Since it was so hard to honestly track who has benefited society - or who are the direct descendents of those who helped society grow - that the best solution was to treat everyone as being equally responsible.

It is reminiscent of Chaos theory. Who created Microsoft? Bill Gates? Or the unknown teacher who got him interested in computers? Or perhaps the parent who helped guide that high-school teacher into the teaching profession?

This might sound silly. What the fuck is this dude going on about communism for? Particularly when he is not even a communist.

Well - the interesting thing is that hard core libertarians argue we shouldn't have intellectual property either.

So - if you invented a cure for cancer, that means you wouldn't be able to protect your idea and gain a financial reward?

Well - yes and no.

You see the only way for you to financially benefit from your idea would be to rush your idea to market. The head start on your competition would be enough to ensure a temporary monopoly in which you can make a killing. And under such a system - the flow of good ideas to the marketplace would speed up.

I should mention this as well. There is one form of 'insider trading' which is totally legal.

If you come up with a revolutionary idea that could make billions - here is a good investment tip. Don't bother with the hassle (and risk) of setting up a company to bring your idea to market.

Instead - approach a company who is best placed to bring your idea to market - and hand it to them for free. You sit back and invest all your money in that company (along with financial derivatives which increase your exposure to the share price), and sit back and collect your winnings.

It is a win-win all round. And if the company doesn't like your idea (or couldn't make it a success), it was probably shit to begin with. And chances are - you haven't lost any money (or time) pursuing it.

Anyway - how does this all fit in with the issue of music piracy? Well - I think the long term solution will be a form of taxation which gets shared among the creative class.

I know - the very idea of it will make you uncomfortable. But - at the end of the day - art is a community good (as is defense, policing, sanitation) which thanks to the revolution in technology can no longer be funded by the marketplace.

But how would the government pick who to fund?

It doesn't have to. As long as enough tax breaks and incentives are in place - the marketplace can still decide which artists are worthy of being funded. And which artists should consider quitting so that they can get a real job.

Such a solution is an uneasy compromise will probably piss off the right and left in equal measure. Which suggests it may actually be a good idea, now that I think about it.

But one thing to remember is that the money involved would be tiny. What would you rather have?

This:



Or a couple more days fighting in Iraq?

Post: #37

One important rule of the Internet is, the more you fight to censor something, the more it will get talked about.

By battling to shut down TPB, they made over 300 new sites arise. Instead of fighting piracy, they should find new means to make money.

Movie theaters, cheap digital downloads, etc. are ideas, I'm not an expert in the music industry domain, but fighting something will just make matters worse for you.

Post: #38

(01-12-2015 11:40 AM)Plato Wrote:  Such a solution is an uneasy compromise will probably piss off the right and left in equal measure. Which suggests it may actually be a good idea, now that I think about it.

There's an old saying lawyers use when trying to convince people to settle a matter: a good settlement is one that nobody's happy with, but everybody can live with.

This could very easily get out of hand and segue into our discussions in Wittgenstein's thread, Plato, but the thing about intellectual property is that it is a raised middle finger to the assertion that "You can't put a price on art".

If one were easily able to separate art out from entertainment, I think the debate would be easier to solve. But you can't. If a piece of entertainment is so distracting, so escapist, that it makes you contemplate a different reality entirely, does it not then become art? Conversely, if you go and contemplate Michelangelo's David in all his glory standing in the Galleria dell'Accademia in Florence, and are transfixed with wonder at the biological detail juxtaposed with David's out-of-proportion hands (done that way, so it's said, to represent the Hands of God), have you not, as Russell Crowe screams at us in Gladiator, been entertained?

Post: #39

Does anyone have a recommendation for a good site to download a torrent?

Post: #40

Kickasstorrent is my go to ^^ pretty good layout with a a forum if any issues comes up

Post: #41

(01-12-2015 12:31 PM)alex3948 Wrote:  One important rule of the Internet is, the more you fight to censor something, the more it will get talked about.

By battling to shut down TPB, they made over 300 new sites arise. Instead of fighting piracy, they should find new means to make money.

Movie theaters, cheap digital downloads, etc. are ideas, I'm not an expert in the music industry domain, but fighting something will just make matters worse for you.

If one want to censor something. They will have to drop the website down the memory hole before a critical mass of people is even aware of its existence in the 1st place. As well totally denying its existence in the 1st place and painting their detractors as conspiracy theorists and attaching David Icke Reptilian bullshit to it.

Post: #42

(01-20-2015 04:47 AM)Fisto Wrote:  Does anyone have a recommendation for a good site to download a torrent?

Magnet links my friend. I use Extratorrent for my tv and movie needs. You can also try http://www.oldpiratebay.org.

Post: #43

I stopped using torrents back in 2004, I used to use Supernova.org which was the biggest at the time and torrentleech (which was private). Funnily what I found was that in the previous few years, great copies of The Fellowship of the Ring, Harry Potter, 50 Cent's album, Die Another Day, The Two Towers etc were all ripped as high quality DVD screeners (or pre-release albums).

Inspite of all those movies and albums being free, here's what they made

Die Another Day made $430 million before the end of the calendar year (in contract the previous Bond movie has only made $360 million to date (released in 1999 when only Napster was there))
Harry Potter made $930 million
The Fellowship of the Ring made $870 million
The Two Towers made $926 million
Get Rich or Die Trying hit the number one slot in the first week in many countries, selling just under 1 million records in that week in the US alone (12 million worldwide by the end of the year)

Anyway my point? Out of the 50 highest grossing movies of all time, only 4 were made before torrents being used by the masses (circa 2002-2004). The film industry has benefited heavily from piracy.

In fact artists like 50 cent released tracks to pirate sites to hype up their albums, notably Disco Inferno which led to The Massacre selling 1.14 million in a week, only the MMLP has ever beaten that record.

Post: #44

Does anyone know if oldpiratebay or kick ass torrents is better?

Post: #45

Oldpiratebay has proven extremely good for me and I found nearly everything i needed.

Post: #46

(01-22-2015 02:40 AM)alex3948 Wrote:  Oldpiratebay has proven extremely good for me and I found nearly everything i needed.

Unfortunately all the former peers and seeds that certain torrents used to have are now gone. I cannot download anymore.

Post: #47

Thepiratebay.se is coming back up, if you go on http://www.thepiratebay.se, there is an interface, but it's disabled and there is a 9-day countdown.

Post: #48

Swedish government. Wastes so much time and resources to take down a website. Allows isis fighters get back to this country with a job waiting for them when they arrive.

Logic at its finest...

Post: #49

Pirate Bay is back up....

Post: #50

Anyone know the new Kickass Torrents site??