You know how you're getting old Mongo? When you start rejecting the most popular and efficient technologies due to ignorance and an unwillingness to learn.
Mongo wrote:Torrents are a gateway for infection: viruses, spyware, malware, etc.
Just turning on your computer and plugging it into a network is a gateway for infection. Everything you do on the internet opens a door to some sort of infection. As someone in IT, you should know the top method of infection is email attachments and fake popups on the Web. Should we also never open Outlook, or Firefox again?
The fact is, Torrenting is one of the safest ways to avoid downloading infections. As I stated before, Torrent sites are setup like forums, where people talk about the files within the torrents. If it's a fake, poor quality or infected, people will warn you. Stop trying to control people with wimpy little scare tactics. Stay alert and you will avoid infections.
Mongo wrote:It also promotes illegal file sharing.
Torrenting is a file downloading technology, it's not an organization promoting anything. It just so happens that it is the most popular and efficient file downloading technology around, of course the pirates have moved over. Before this it was Gnutella (Napster & Limewire), before that it was FTP, Newsgroups & IRC.
Mongo wrote:I would hate to know any of those IT people you know. They sound very unethical and I wouldn't want them to work for me.
You see because most Pirates are young computer enthusiasts (future IT workers) that can't afford to pay thousands of dollars to play with and learn all the software out there. They build these communities to help each other out, and of course your future IT workers need to learn this shit somewhere, what do you think that young kid you just hired who knows Server 2008 Enterprise inside and out payed $10,000 just to learn it? Get real, he torrented it, installed it and practiced everything he knows today. A lot of these Enterprise packages cost thousands of dollars, how do you honestly think these kids learn this stuff? THEY PLAY WITH IT!
In my college class every single student was into torrenting, ALL OF THEM! Not a single one of them wasn't pirating something, my teachers even acknowledged this as a learning resource. I honestly can't believe you live in some fantasy bro where this not the case. All I can say is reality check time, and if no one you know uses it, they are either 1. lying to you, cause they know your ignorant towards it or 2. they are old fucks like you. LMFAO
Mongo wrote:How would you like to do work on a project and not get paid for it?
That argument is getting old with me, as it doesn't matter how much money I spend on a piece of software. The programmers who did all the work don't get paid by royalty, they are hourly/wage workers for a larger corporations who makes the real money while they throw enough peanuts at them to keep them working.
In my option Software should be Free to all "end users" I'm totally down for charging for support and enterprise fees, as that's where the real money is anyhow. The future is Freeware (Not free as in Free Beer, but as in FREEdom) and Open Source software. Mozilla doesn't seem to have a problem pulling in millions off of Firefox alone, software that I may remind you is totally free to end users.
As for Music and Movies, the current use of Gnutella & Torrent to as they say illegally download them was self created by the industry. When Napster first came out, they had a a chance to harness its power for profit, but instead smashed the bee hive. They actually caused multiple replacements like the once popular Limewire to pop up everywhere decentralizing the problem instead.
Here in Canada we are working on a realistic solution to this problem. Here 1.6 billion music files were downloaded, on iTunes price model of 99 cents per download, that's about 1.6 billion in lost revenue.
Here's the scary part only 38 million downloads were legally purchased. The ratio of shared to paid downloads is 98:2 (98% shared files vs. 2% purchased downloads). Now does this actually mean 98% of down-loaders are criminals? Should we all of a sudden jail 98% of the population? I say "NO!", when 98% of people are doing something, it's time to change the model, not the laws and force people to stop what is obviously natural.
The Solution:
The only real solution is to tax the media usage, like they do in some cases for blank CD-R and DVD-RW. A lot of thought has gone into the idea of charging a $5/month tax on all high-speed internet connections. This would bring in 500 million - 1 Billion a year. This money would be distributed like it is with the radio station taxes, where they actually hire people to monitor radio stations. They then cut them a royalty cheque based on how often their songs get air play. A similar system could be used for peer to peer downloads as well, solving the issue. It's too bad giant greedy corporations would rather keep 98% of the population labeled as criminals. Short term profits are more important than a real long term solution for the good of the people.
I simple refuse to believe 98% of Internet users are criminals, it's stupid to be repeating dumb-ass brainwashing mantras started by the true evil here (Money hungry corporations). If they are losing any money, it's only because they refuse to get with the times. They want to go back to the good old days when they had complete power over the media.