Metanet Forums

http://torrentfreak.com/the-copyright-l ... gle+Reader

Sounds pretty mens rea to me. Intending to deceive people to get a law passed?

I guess I'm skeptical that I'm being given the entire story here because it just doesn't make sense to me: in the same way that hiding child pornography doesn't stop child pornography, covering up file sharing doesn't stop file sharing. If this is why TorrentFreak is saying that the copyright industry doesn't care about children, it would stand to reason that they don't care about file sharing, either, which seems pretty obviously untrue. It could just be bad journalism but... still.

I agree that it sucks that the anti-piracy groups are using child pornography as a way of forcing censorship upon people, that censoring child pornography does nothing to deal with the problem, and that the phrase "child pornography is great" is in bad taste, but the headline and conclusion of the article is ridiculous. The copyright industry is not supporting or promoting child pornography as the headline might suggest, nor is it "actively trying to hide egregious crimes against children"--rather, it's actively trying to exploit egregious crimes against children to further its own ends, which I think we already knew. It's still morally corrupt behaviour, but not as outrageous or despicable as suggested by the article.

Tanner makes a nice point, too. And it's not bad journalism--it's not journalism at all, it's propaganda from the founder of the Pirate Party.

Duchess of Awesome wrote:I guess I'm skeptical that I'm being given the entire story here because it just doesn't make sense to me: in the same way that hiding child pornography doesn't stop child pornography, covering up file sharing doesn't stop file sharing.

No, but it does mitigate the effects of file sharing on stock prices, which are largely a function of perception. Investors are a flighty bunch, and anything that makes a company look irrelevant means less investment.

The copyright industry is not supporting or promoting child pornography as the headline might suggest, nor is it "actively trying to hide egregious crimes against children"--rather, it's actively trying to exploit egregious crimes against children to further its own ends, which I think we already knew. It's still morally corrupt behaviour, but not as outrageous or despicable as suggested by the article.

I agree. They're making the argument that banning child pornography makes it harder to catch producers, by forcing them to use darknets to distribute it, but they'll use darknets whether child pornography is banned or not, so that's kind of a baseless conclusion.

As to the headline, I thought it was immediately obvious -- before I even read the article -- that TorrentFreak were referring to 'child pornography' as a political issue, not as in 'the copyright industry collectively enjoy looking at pictures of children in sexual situations'. Maybe better stated as "the copyright industry absolutely loves talking about child pornography".

Propaganda from the ol' pirates. They could be taken more seriously if they weren't so sensational in their tactics. Stoners, pirates, drunks, assholes: Please let law-abiding ethical people argue your cases for you. You are hurting your own causes by arguing for them, and there's smarter unbiased folk who can do a much better job.