slashgirl writes “From the article at cbc.ca/arts: “U.S. law enforcement agencies moved to close down the Elite Torrents file-sharing network on Wednesday.
According to authorities, Revenge of the Sith – the latest Star Wars movie, which landed in theatres last week – was among the files being swapped by the network’s members.
”
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I wouldn’t call this censorship
Artists should have a reasonable expectation of making money from their artistic efforts; even if they are making obscenely inflated profits (58 million in revenue in one day for Revenge of the Sith). What I don’t agree with is the way the industry is unreasonably extending copyright they way they did with the Mickey Mouse Act, and how gubmint is now playing fast and loose with copyright by allowing censorship-by-proxy with scene cutting software for DVDs. To me, this is a very clear and present double standard morality.
I *WOULD* call that censorship
When you shut down a whole publishing site for publishing one-piece of copyright violation, that censors every other piece of data they may be publishing.
We’ve never done that in the cases of printers, but we’re willing to do so in the case of digital media.
BitTorrent stuff is used by non-copyright infringers, for non-copyrighted works (say GPL’d stuff, for example). But all of those uses are prevented (at least from that website).
— Ender, Duke_of_URL
Re:I *WOULD* call that censorship
Well, I picked censorship only because I didn’t really see anything else on the topics list that seemed appropriate.
I agree artists should make money they’re entitled too. Although, watching a show on City Tv, called Back in… and they were doing 1982 and one of the top music related news stories was how blank tapes were causing record sales to fall…Doesn’t matter–they always blame the new technology.
The biggest thiefs in the record industry are the labels, anyhow.
s/
Well 🙂
Yell at Blake to provide another topic category.
*I* agree with you that it is censorship. Granted it is censorship done because of theft, but that doesn’t change it.
The issue of artists getting paid is a seperate issue from the government’s removal of means of information distribution.
Some books donated to a library may be stolen, if they’re placed in circulation and later found to be stolen, do you shutdown the whole library? In this case, yes you do.
Being mad at labels is another issue (which I semi-agree with you on), but that too is a seperate issue.
— Ender, Duke_of_URL