[POLL] Do you use Bitorrent?

[aiasib]

Here in Sweden a law was passed to deter net users from using Bittorrent to download illegal media by allowing prosecutors to more easily obtain the private information of users from their ISPs. Since, then Sweden's entire internet bandwidth has dropped by one third from 120Gbps to 80Gbps (estimates vary) anyway

So I'm wondering,
1. Do you use Bittorrent?
2. Would you still use it if a similar law passed in your country?
3. Is this a privacy issue? considering your ISP may hand out your address
to anyone who wants to prosecute you for visiting certain sites or
downloading certain content?
4. Is piracy theft?
5. Is piracy depriving artists and production houses of potential revenue?
or would pirates not consume media at all if they couldn't get it for free?

[LeonOfTheDead]

1 of course
2 it's already illegal to download something a keep it for more than 24 hours if you don't have an original copy
3 ...privacy, what's privacy?!
4 yes
5a yes
5b what?

on a personal note, only a minimum part of movies/lyrics deserve the prices they are asking for them (here, 15/20 € for an audio CD, from 10 to 25 € for a DVD). This is not an excuse, but it's one of the reason why piracy has spread out.
I, for one, buy what I like, and don't download if not really interested to check if it's good or not. I would never pay 20 € for a movie I never saw before.

[LTSmash]

I would never pay 20 € for a movie I never saw before.

Blu-Ray's go for $30 for a d-list movie. How anyone can even purchase those at full price is so beyond me.

[f6fhellcat13]

I have heard from a reliable source (the son of an Epitaph Records higher-up) that bands make the vast majority of their money touring, and that record companies take a lotta the cut from albums.
As to the poll, no comment.

[cmcpokey]

I have heard from a reliable source (the son of an Epitaph Records higher-up) that band make the vast majority of their money touring, and that record companies take a lotta the cut from albums.

that is very true, and is one of the reasons so many artists start their own labels these days. with the relative ease of producing CDs compared to vinyl, it isn't very difficult to do.

as far as torrents, i have tried them, but lack the patience to make the stuff work, and deal with a lot of the bugs with them. im getting more into freeware and open source, and we are using a lot of it in my various programming classes.

[Dino Scuderia]

Bands make the bulk of their money these days off of ring tones.

[Roentgen]

NZ now has something similar, except they just have to SUSPECT you downloading illegally, and they'll ban you from internet permanently after 3 strikes.

It Fails.

[kingofthering]

1. Yes for somethings.
2. Yes.
3. Yes.
4. Not always. Someone along the line had to buy it. I for one will go out any buy said item if I do like it, but not everything I like comes out in America.
5. See above.

[LeonOfTheDead]

that is very true, and is one of the reasons so many artists start their own labels these days. with the relative ease of producing CDs compared to vinyl, it isn't very difficult to do.

as far as torrents, i have tried them, but lack the patience to make the stuff work, and deal with a lot of the bugs with them. im getting more into freeware and open source, and we are using a lot of it in my various programming classes.

it's not that difficult.
you find a reliable a secure site (like isohunt for instance), search what you need, click on the file with the best seeds and leeches (fell free to ignore what they are), click for download, and instead of "save as" or whatever you win/mac/linus says, click on "open with bittorent" or similars.

Talking about freewares, trough University I'm getting all recent Microsoft stuff, like Visio or Vista.

[cmcpokey]

Talking about freewares, trough University I'm getting all recent Microsoft stuff, like Visio or Vista.

ditto for me.. although, i dont think they have vista. but all of office, mathtype, and a bunch of other fun stuff. im going to try and get Maple and MatLab as well (math programs), but i'll have to do a bit of digging for those.

[f6fhellcat13]

To any Americans in college (living on campus), what is the situation with torrenting? I have heard, that if the school sees you're using certain websites marked "illegal" they kill your internet and report you. Is this anything close to correct?

[coolieman1220]

1. i do, still do but not as much. since i switched to Verizion Fios fiberoptic, (which is lightning fast) i got an e-mail after downloading a movie saying that i have broken copyright infringement laws. and they could cut my internet servcie which sucks.
2. probably because there prolly is someone who does it more then me to get the blame first
3. yeah seriously, what is privacy
4. nope, capitalism sucks, they still make huge bucks so why can't us little guys get something free.

and yeah i heard something similar in college campuses.

[RacingManiac]

To any Americans in college (living on campus), what is the situation with torrenting? I have heard, that if the school sees you're using certain websites marked "illegal" they kill you internet and report you. Is this anything close to correct?

Back at my school, when I used to live on res, the main source of file sharing is dc++ on school network. There used to be Hundreds of TB of all sorts of stuff from apps to Anime/TV series, movies to mp3s.....How that works under the school admin was beyond me, it sure didn't help my marks though....lol.

Torrenting have issue as they block off most of the ports used by bittorrent...

[Rockefella]

Back at my school, when I used to live on res, the main source of file sharing is dc++ on school network. There used to be Hundreds of TB of all sorts of stuff from apps to Anime/TV series, movies to mp3s.....How that works under the school admin was beyond me, it sure didn't help my marks though....lol.

Torrenting have issue as they block off most of the ports used by bittorrent...

At Rutgers its the same way when you lived on-campus. A group of people called 'ruxan' ran an on-campus hub accessible only by students using university internet access. Like you said, 100's of tb's of files at transfer speeds of 800 kb/s to 1.2 mb/s. DVD-rips in 5 minutes was awesome.

[zeppelin]

I listen to more music than I know what to do with, and try to watch as many movies as possible too (call me a connoisseur of media arts), so I can't realistically purchase everything I see or listen to. The way I see it is, I like to hear albums and see movies before spending the (often outrageous) prices for them, however I purchase copies of albums and movies that I feel deserve the price. On top of that, I see movies in theatres, and go to a lot of concerts as well (where a larger portion of an artist's revenue is derived). People who exclusively download and never purchase however are leeches, and should at least support artists they truly like to some degree.