One thing you learn over the years is that people make up everything. I can't recall the exact quote but the character Frank Underwood once said something to the effect of "the law is the law, but the law is people and I know people". Meaning he could control the situation regardless.
The opposite also happens and you can see cases like this or Shkreli, Dotcom and others where they think being edgy on top of minor crimes will not get them in hot water because other people do worse but keep on the low down, but time and again you see these guys being made an example of, probably because a bunch of people dealing with their cases also start disliking them personally.
So I guess like, don't behave like an asshole generally, but specially if you're also committing crimes. Kinda like not breaking traffic laws if you have a dead body in the trunk.
>> probably because a bunch of people dealing with their cases also start disliking them personally.
More likely because those people remain naïve about the real world. In a past career I had some interaction with IP enforcement lawyers. They were stuck in the past then and have not really evolved. Their understanding of "the internet" extends only to those things discoverable via google search. Megaupload was knocked down because it was so visible. Piracy is more alive now than ever, but as it is no longer visible via Google, the likes of the MPAA and IRAA cannot see it.
> Piracy is more alive now than ever, but as it is no longer visible via Google, the likes of the MPAA and IRAA cannot see it.
How so? Google is a major distributor of most pirated material through YouTube and their search engine still makes finding stuff easy. I'd argue that p2p is nearly irrelevant nowadays and server-oriented distribution is the main model.
Probably the largest source of piracy is the widespread normalization of VPNs. Once upon a time VPNs did not advertise so as to not attract IP enforcement attention. They constantly shifted host locations to stay ahead of blocklists.
Now VPNs openly advertise on youtube, touting the ability to "access contend not available in your country". That's piracy 101 stuff, at least it used to be. I just watched a youtube by LLT on how to bypass encryption to rip your own Blu-ray disks and upload the resulting files to your plex server. Even talking about such tech was considered criminal only a few years ago. The laws haven't changed. We just now have a generation of adult decision makers who have grown up with piracy as a norm.
There's way more. I'd risk saying google drive has more pirated content today than MegaUpload and Rapidshare combined ever did, just based on the size of the user base and basic knowledge of long tail distribution. Other than that today you have so much piracy on discord, telegram, p2p communities stay strong, and of course the first rule of usenet is you don't mention it.
While having a sabnzbd+*arr setup isn't particularly difficult to a technical person, the general opacity of its underlying workings (NNTP? News articles, providers? Block accounts?) has kept lawyers outside of USENET for decades.
A decade ago, I had a successful book business online, which included used college textbooks. I had IP lawyers (the same that represented the music and movie industries) send me threatening cease and desist letters on at least 2 occasions accusing me of selling counterfeit books.
At that point, I had gotten really good at spotting counterfeits, so I really doubt we were selling any counterfeits, especially when they couldn't come up with a single instance. The publishing companies continue to do this because used books cut into their profits.
I just sent my lawyer after them and they never came back.
Amazon and the publishers eventually came to an agreement that there were certain textbooks they just won't allow to be sold as used on their platform.
Wow. And I'm assuming the publishers are now sprinting into the arms of rented, time-limited e-textbooks with DRM, and either eliminating or discouraging the sales of physical books that they can't fully kill resale of.
My wife asked me last week to help her get a textbook in a format that could be viewed on a reMarkable tablet, which can read PDFs but won't work with arbitrary DRM schemes. I checked my options and found the publisher selling some DRM crap, and some clearly illegal sites selling DRM-free PDFs. Since I found plenty of people vouching that they'd received what they bought, I chose to (using a Privacy card number) willingly buy from the criminals, since they were the only ones willing to provide me what I needed: an unencrypted PDF that we can actually use on the device we want.
I know publishers are afraid someone will email the PDF to the whole class, so that's why college textbooks probably ought to be folded into tuition, that way (1) publishers can get paid for the correct number of copies and (2) someone who actually has to pay the money (the school) is somewhat in the loop on textbook selection. It's broken now since those actually paying (students) have no say in book selection.
Colleges and universities started moving towards the book fee instead of buying books years ago. Many institutions already do the folding book costs into tuition.
Matt Levine is great at writing about the difference between laws as written and how they work in practice. He's pretty fascinated by some of the cases where the two diverge sharply.
He's at Bloomberg right now[1]. His main output is his 4-times-a-week column Money Stuff, but he also has a podcast and writes in other venues. I love his writing!
Sometimes this translates even down to the individual level. I've watched a lot of police bodycam videos and it's surprising how many people make their situation worse by being loud obnoxious tightwads when calmly answering questions and handing over your license would have you on your way in 5 minutes.
I get what you're saying, but being an obnoxious tightwad isn't actually against the rules, and it's not OK that there are some societies in the world where being an obnoxious tightwad towards a force ostensibly tasked with PROTECTING their fellow citizens (including the obnoxious one) will take this as a cue to 1) violate your civil liberties/rights, and/or 2) commit bodily harm to your person, and then 3) get away with it primarily without consequence.
I am scared of the police. In the rare times I have to interact with them I am overwhelmingly polite and cautious because I know that they have the ability to fuck up my day, and maybe my life.
But that's a HORRIBLE status quo. That is a bug in our society that needs to be eradicated.
Plus, I've got basically every privilege that exists under the sun, so luckily I have to encounter this problem only very rarely. I can't imagine what it must be like if you have the misfortune of being born in the wrong place or looking the wrong way, such that you have automatically tense/hostile encounters with the police continuously. At some point it must be exhausting to try to maintain this composure the entire time.
>I am scared of the police. In the rare times I have to interact with them I am overwhelmingly polite and cautious because I know that they have the ability to fuck up my day, and maybe my life.
What are you doing to justify feeling like this? Is it just out of abundance of caution? When I interact with police it's usually for boring reasons - like I broke some petty law and they justifiably question me about it (and more often than not just let it slide, but they don't have to -after all they're just doing their job).
I'd still be more likely to say the officer is making their situation worse. Take away the false dichotomy of loud and obnoxious vs calm and compliant and consider someone who doesn't answer irrelevant questions and is waiting for the officer to do their job (calm and not compliant). That person might have their situation worsened by the officer who thinks the person they're talking to is obligated to answer to the officer's whims.
(Based on what I've seen of police body camera footage.)
Anyway, I'm not really familiar with Kim Dotcom's case. It sounds like he's been more on the "loud and obnoxious" side and the authorities involved are not city response officers; it's hard to draw a parallel. Just pointing out that "you're just making it worse for yourself" is something a schoolyard bully would say to the kid who's too small to defend themself but refuses to comply.
This kind of exactly misses the point the comment you're replying to is making. The point isn't that just complying and handing over your info is the ideal goal. The point is that, pragmatically speaking, it's a lot easier to just do that and move on with your life than making a big scene about standing up for your ideals - because A) You're not going to change shit in that situation anyway and B) It's just going to make it harder for you.
> Something a schoolyard bully would say to the kid who's too small to defend themself but refuses to comply.
Yeah, probably right. But, also, yeah, easier sometimes to just appease the bully and move on with life.
Most of those aren't defending any ideals, they are making content to put ads around at the expense of tax money in the form of wasted police activity to engage with them.
"Obnoxious tightwad" is in the eyes of the beholder. Asserting your Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights won't make you popular with the police, and yet you're far safer asserting those rights than getting overly talkative and compliant with the police. [0]
The tricky thing about a principled stand in favour of civil liberties is that you spend a lot of your time defending scoundrels, because it's their civil liberties that are most in danger from the mob and government. And once their rights go, yours are sure to follow.
I've heard it articulated as "There are no rules, only consequences." which I take to refer to the Legal Realism idea that the rules are just what we bind each other to. The written rules only matter if some "powerful" entity (like the government, or a mob, or civil court) is committed to holding you to them.
I understand this as "if you're willing to suffer the consequences, then there is no rule."
E.g. a millionaire might be fine getting a speeding ticket, so that particular rule might as well not exist (except in Finland? where they scale speeding tickets to income)
At least for Shkreli he wasn't wrong. Massively increasing the price for a drug is legal.
> [1] On August 4, 2017, the trial jury found Shkreli guilty on two counts of securities fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit securities fraud, and not guilty on five other counts which included wire fraud.
Granted, the case started in 2015 probably in response to him hiking the prices in 2014 but the thing he was being an edge lord about isn't what directly did him in. However, Capone didn't go to prison for murder either.
The opposite also happens and you can see cases like this or Shkreli, Dotcom and others where they think being edgy on top of minor crimes will not get them in hot water because other people do worse but keep on the low down, but time and again you see these guys being made an example of, probably because a bunch of people dealing with their cases also start disliking them personally.
So I guess like, don't behave like an asshole generally, but specially if you're also committing crimes. Kinda like not breaking traffic laws if you have a dead body in the trunk.