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Originally Posted by GoNative
Steven generally the sites that have 'this can't be viewed in your country' thing is not really about censorship but proprietry rights.
I have no problem with governments taking action to limit illegal activities on the internet, expecially things like child pornography. As long as any laws allowing censorship are purely restricted to illegal activities and not blatant political censorship (like what happens in China) then I have no real problems with it. The devil though would be in the detail of any such laws and whether they could be open to misuse by governments.
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While I'm not trying to defend any of that stuff, one people get the power to censor a little bit they seem to want to keep on going.
And who's to say what is illegal or not? There are certain people who take their morals and try to spread it on everyone else... I think that's what this will boil down to. I think a law like this will be misused by any government.
With websites like google and youtube and wikipedia and things like that you get a lot of statistical data. I could imagine programs being made that could search for certain words or phrases in that data and link it back to certain websites or people and having certain things erased or changed automatically without even a human being touching it. The internet is so huge that I could imagine that kind of automation being used, which would damage a lot of what the internet has going for it. It could just be me overthinking it though... at any rate, while I'd like to see certain things gone, I could see how removing one thing on the internet could create a snowball effect that could result in the removal of more and more stuff.
As far as torrents go... I think we all know that most of it is bad. I think certain companies purposely put infected data and faulty programs on those websites though making a risk that a lot of people don't want to take.
While I may sound like an idiot for saying this, I'm sick of programs being too oversafe about piracy. This is bad for legit customers as sometimes programs just don't work. I've been there and done that... pirated programs work better in that sense because you can get through all that BS. And when you contact these companies about real problems with their software they put you through all kinds of flaming hoops when you need help from their supposed "all star service" or whatever the hell they claim they have. It's kind of a catch 22. You can get software legitamately and risk it not working, or you can get it pirated and have it all cracked and easy to use (which will make them that much stricter about it). You can always buy the software and get the pirated version that actually runs when you tell it to. Ironically, I've bought a music CD made by Sony and there was some kinda funky anti-piracy program in it that made it impossible to burn onto my computer. It's a shame I couldn't load that music onto my Sony MP3 player
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Another use of torrents/p2p is the transfer of large data files... like for music projects or stuff for movies. It can take a couple of days to get a set of burned CDs or a flash drive somewhere over the mail, but you can download some data in a matter of hours at te speeds they have today. To be honest though I don't know how many pros actually use torrent/p2p sites for that... I think FTP transfer is more common (and more private).
I think this is a great topic of debate though. This looks like media companies trying to protect the share of the pie that they have, which is slowly being picked away at. I think itunes and things like that might have something to do with it... youtube does as well. Common people now have a chance at producing their own stuff and selling it/providing it at their own will. The internet allows basically unlimited distribution. With the technology that has been created in the late 90's up through the 2000's all that was left for the indpendent folks was a way to distribute (which is what those companies helped with). With digital transfer that isn't really an issue any more.
I've never seen them in America before (I haven't been there in 2 years), but in Japan I've seen a lot of TV/Computers lately. With digital TV coming into play soon over here, I don't see the point in buying a new TV when I could buy a computer/TV for the same price or less. With that I could watch Youtube and stuff on my TV as well. I think this is what we're talking about. The internet is gonna be making its way into our livingrooms. Some people aren't comfortable with that idea for moral reasons and some people aren't comfortable with that because people are taking some bites out of their bigass piece of pie.