You seem to be an admin there. I hope you still accept what I am going to say. A lot depends on what you accept from those insitutions, and from your own government.
When RIAA people say, 1000000 downloads = 1000000 losts sales, they know they lie and deceive the court. Yes, they should tell the truth to their best knowledge, yet they say something else. I see such lost sales claims as immoral, and probably illegal in most cases.
In previous post we seen some people called all torrent users and supporters (of the technology) as criminals.
Yet for many countries it isn't illegal so they aren't criminals. But calling someone who isn't a criminal (and can be identified as a person or group) vilates their rights for good name and can be a crime in most countries. Same goes if an user does it, same goes if a publisher or RIAA does it.
And we can't expect people to follow laws of other countries where they have no business. Since US people won't follow our laws about guns. Neither US nor Hungarian people follow laws of islamic countries and of course we would be called criminals in North Korea.
Assuming that what is illegal here is a bad thing everywhere and judging and attacking other people is a double edged sword, and isn't valid since such attacks can be used against anyone.
But as long as such attacks are allowed, lost sales arguments are accepted even if they are proven wrong, but showing why such those stuff is bad isn't allowed, even by your staff, then the 1.000.000 downloads = 1.000.000 lost sales kind of arguments will continue.
Since we let them work.
Since we let them attack even kids, families, etc.
The moment where the question will be based on a simple thing: Copyright laws never meant to be a protection for publishers, but it was meant to be a protection for authors and end users, and is now abused for something else, the whole question becomes different.
Becomes different, since at this point the whole piracy question can be seen from a different light. Why countries collect money to make copying by end users legal? Because that was a right copyright was supposed to protect, yet support the authors (copyright owners) but don't compensate for the losses of publishers and distributors. And interetingly it can cover the royalties...
Normally copyright was important, since it was easy to sell books without paying a cent for an author who made selling his works possibly by writing them, and this was immoral.
People copying works for themself and friends was common and it was a normal and fair behavior, since noone took extra profits from works of another.
It was almost like patents, copyright was there to protect the authors and users from people making profts on others work, without providing anything in return.
As you see, any comercial warez distribution (selling accounts to ftps, torrent sites, fake ratio on torrent sites for money, etc) is highly illegal and against the spirit of the original laws.
Copyright wasn't intented as a tool to control markets, demand inflated prices based on monopoly (monopolies and such strong arm tactics aren't nice) and currently some companies have a monopoly or dominant role with products of certain kinds and abuse them freely.
You live in a democracy.
When you cast your vote, speak with your politicans (representatives), etc. you can speak up for the values important for you, and it can be fair handling of copyright an IP in general.
We live in a democracy.
When we cast our vote, we can even speak with the politican (even with most corrupt ones) that some values are important for us.
We see a free market. We know we can also cast our votes with the purchases we make. Not only when we buy products, but we also vote on the stock markets.
You are in a free country. You run a board, it is up to you what you allow on it, if people don't agree, they can ask for explanation, try to resolve it in a civilized matter, but your staff has the final say anyway, and all users have to understand that.
But the decisions of your staff can change how effective some tactics is. How effective portraying people who pay for permission as criminals, lieing about lost sales both publicly and court can accepted. Freedom comes with a responsibility.
You aren't only an admin, but you are a gamer. You know that the gam is important for us, aand we buy products because we support them, how we like these products also make us want: others do their purchase as well. Since this hobby is important for us.
But if you think a bit: The pirates you can see are gamers, the defendants in the case all bought their books, since they spend all their money on hobbies. They can't spend more. And they paid for a permisson to copy books, and use this as a chance to promote the game and attract more gamers, and more sales.
And this is what makes me say: Losts sales arguments are bad, since 99% of te pirates still buy as much as they can. No lost sales there. And they promote the game.
And if n losts sales, but many pay for a permission to copy: Then they aren't criminals, they aren't evil, they aren't villains. And people who portray them differently, people who knowingly lie for this, people who know they violate others rights to their good name willingly and knowingly... I don't repeat an oppionon about them, don't repeat how it can be turned around, since it can be something not welcome.
But I have to add some thing: if the lost sales, the "they are criminals even if they don't break laws" etc. arguments and the hate fueled them is ok, and showing the problem with it is bad here, can be bad for you, then I don't wonder about the arguments from RIAA.
And if the abuse of copyright laws by publishers, RIAA, etc. will continue, then soon we will see people who want a fee they can raise for opening a PDF file. After all, you copy its content to the ram. And maybe to video ram too. And you copy without a permission now, and if they would get the cover price for all such copying they would get money, and with this you caused them lost sales. And the same arguments will be used again. And this is why some people are in Pro Torrent side of the argument.
