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Apple Helped FBI Identify Alleged Owner of World's Largest Torrent Site
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No kidding, one involves possible loss of revenue for Apple and the other possibly involves saving lives and preventing terrorist attacks....
FBI: can you help us crack a terrorist's phone, who just killed 16 people it might help us save lives and prevent more terrorist attacks.
Tim Cook: I don't care if it will prevent dozens of attacks, save hundreds of lives Apple will never help you or turn over any data on our customers.
FBI: Would you help us stop someone who runs a website where people are torrenting ITunes files and causing Apple to lose money?
Tim Cook: Just kidding, what info on our coustomers do you need.
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Apple lost money through the torrents of iTunes files. Apple is not concerned abut privacy when they aren't losing revenue. Cracking a terrorists phone who just killed 16 people won't help Apple's bottom line, while stoping people from torrenting their files will help their bottom line.
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pretty long response trying to justifying the blatant hypocrisy that Apple displayed refusing to crack a terrorists phone while helping the FBI on a something that Apple is losing money from. It's beyond pathetic and outright disgusting how people justify Apple helping the FBI pointlessly shut down a torrent site while refusing to help crack the phone of a terrorist who killed 16 Americans.
Tim Cook: I don't care if it will prevent dozens of attacks, save hundreds of lives Apple will never help you or turn over any data on our customers.
FBI: Would you help us stop someone who runs a website where people are torrenting ITunes files and causing Apple to lose money?
Tim Cook: Just kidding, what info on our coustomers do you need.
[doublepost=1469380124][/doublepost]
Apple lost money through the torrents of iTunes files. Apple is not concerned abut privacy when they aren't losing revenue. Cracking a terrorists phone who just killed 16 people won't help Apple's bottom line, while stoping people from torrenting their files will help their bottom line.
[doublepost=1469380506][/doublepost]
pretty long response trying to justifying the blatant hypocrisy that Apple displayed refusing to crack a terrorists phone while helping the FBI on a something that Apple is losing money from. It's beyond pathetic and outright disgusting how people justify Apple helping the FBI pointlessly shut down a torrent site while refusing to help crack the phone of a terrorist who killed 16 Americans.
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All about money. All about business. All about profit. What Marx said was and still is really true, for capitalism.
The scenarios are totally different. The data on your phone isn’t data that Apple owns or is such that Apple feels that itself has the rights to have access to. Nowhere in the SLA does Apple say that it even has the right to do such a thing for anyone. In short, it’s not Apples data to access and it never created the process to get that data by design.
The iTunes purchase information is something that does belong to Apple, it’s something that an Apple customer would reasonably believe Apple would have, and would resale provide to law enforcement. In fact, such information is something that customers agree to provide to Apple.
The same cannot be said of the information that has nothing to do with Apple and there is no reasonable expectation that Apple would or should have access to. Plus you are comparing purchasing and transaction information (which isn’t secret) to what the FBI wanted, which would amount to something that didn’t even exist at the time. The request was even done under different means. The two things are miles apart
it always amazes me how far some people will go to defend Apple, actually it's disgusting, pathetic and down right disturbing. Tim Crook...I mean Cook, gave up a customers information when it would hurt the bottom line and Apple profits Apple but wouldnt after a terrorist killed 16 people.
Marx was both right and wrong, but nothing could ever be so simple.
Business is one thing but "with power comes responsibility" being one of the differentiating issues often overlooked.
How the hell you conflate two totally different cases to try and prove your point is truly amazing.
Apple ALWAYS gives up iTunes/Apple ID info when the Feds lawfully ask for it. They did so with the Cali terrorist case just so you know.
What the FBI wanted was for Apple to break encryption which would affect EVERYBODY.
providing iTunes and Apple ID info affects ONE person.
I can't tell if you just don't understand the outright hyprocrisy or if you just don't care but What ever helps you sleep at night....
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The hypocrisy is in your head. Breaking encryption is not even in the same neighborhood as providing iTunes account info. As I said Apple provided EVERYTHING about the shooters they had.
Wow that's some serious blind cult like locality you're using to justify Apples behavior. Apple gave up personal information on a user when it was hurting their profit margins but refused to help to possibly prevent a possible another terrorist attack, I wouldn't expect the zealots or cultists to be honest and hold Apple accountable for their outright hypocrisy.
Don't get me wrong, I'm glad that Apple helps me protect my up skirt photos, or dressing room photos taken without consent of innocent women. It's just hypocritical to claim Apple will 100% protect and defend the information and data of its users 100% of the time.
What part of the info I shared that Apple gave up EVERYTHING they could on the shooters did you not understand?
They gave the FBI full access to his iCloud account which includes purchases, location data, text messages, pictures, purchases, call logs. EVERYTHING they had access to.
And by the info given in this article. Apple gave the FBI less access here than in the terrorist case.
But you are the one living in a bubble believing all others who want base their arguments on ACTUAL facts are somehow "Apple apologists"
Wow so a guy that murdered people they won't help, but a guy that ran a site for pirated digital content was okay to hand over? Doesn't fully add up to me.
Well, to put it in perspective, the first guy didn't kill anyone important to Apple. The second guy was giving away something that Apple wants to sell. So clearly one guy hurt Apple more.
If Apple and other movie/series providers put the price at a reasonable price, then torrenting will not be a problem. As is, it is a problem.
I think that Apple should learn from the likes of Netflix. A subscription service, that is around 10 dollars/euros monthly and you have access to every movie/series on iTunes, this would not be major problem.
I think that Apple should learn from the likes of Netflix. A subscription service, that is around 10 dollars/euros monthly and you have access to every movie/series on iTunes, this would not be major problem.
Apple has always said they are cooperating with law enforcement. They aren't standing above the law! Jesus.
As for the terrorist, the problem there was that officers had supposedly messed up so that the iCloud backup was wiped (otherwise Apple would gladly have handed it over!), and then the FBI asked Apple to build a loophole into iOS to unlock a device. Then it became a whole different ball game, since backdoors are never safe and can easily fall into the hands of the black market. Even if Apple only distributed it to FBI, someone at FBI could leak it.
So Apple basically said "Sorry, the only thing you guys have got now is an encrypted device, and even we don't have any methods/routines to simply decrypt it".
Problem is that every movie/series on iTunes is pretty much every movie/series that exists.
Netflix has a limited catalog that rotates licenses. The Netflix movie catalog is rapidly shrinking too as they become just another channel of original shows. There are 33% less movies on Netflix Instant than there were in 2014 (television numbers are down 26%, even with the addition of original shows). 1/3 less content and Netflix is hiking prices this month.
In April, there were 4,300 movies on Netflix. There are 65,000 movies on iTunes.
Last year, Netflix made a net profit of 14 cents per subscriber, per month. If they added less than 100 of the 60,700 movies missing from their catalog, they would have lost money.
Based on Netflix's catalog/price, a service would have to charge $130 per month to offer the 65,000 iTunes movies.
But then there's the issue of Netflix's license fees in the first place. They are too low to sustain a movie on the release date. Netflix is where a movie is dumped once it has exhausted rentals and cable licenses because they pay nowhere near what a (non-blockbuster) movie needs to break even. A $500,000 indie would be lucky to get paid a $25,000 license. That size movie is typically released in 20 theatrical markets and makes around $200,000 theatrically. So, to break even, they need to make at least $275,000 elsewhere before dumping on services like Netflix.
Clearly I've thought a lot about this, because I really want a true Spotify of movies to exist, not the HBO clone that Netflix is turning into. All of the services are fighting each other with original content instead of bolstering their library in general.
When you crunch the numbers, you start to realize why. Movies cost 20-100x what an album costs to make, easy. Just the score to most movies costs more to record than most albums. A blockbuster pop album could cost a few million, but then you've got blockbuster movies at 250 million. For every tiny $100,000 indie movie, you've got the $5,000 (or less) home studio album.
For a Spotify service to work with movies, budgets would have to go way down (they should really go down in general anyway... It's getting ridiculous). Then people would have to be willing to spend WAY more on that service than $10 a month. I'm talking $50 a month (generous when my earlier math points to $130 under current variables). Then it would have to get way more subscribers than the 75 million Netflix has. All of those things would make for an utter failure.
So here's the thing. When you think all of that through like that, it puts the $5 rental into perspective.
We all want cable companies to unbundle channels and let us only pay for what we want. That's already what we have with movies today. You pay for what you want to watch and only what you want to watch. Some renters may watch only 1 rental movie a month and they're saving a ton. Then you've got people watching 20 but the current system doesn't make you subsidize them.
It's not a bad system when they just stick to $4.99 rentals. The timed digital purchase pre-release crap needs to stop. I don't know what the hell the studios are thinking on that. I'd guess at least 25% of piracy on those movies, during that purchase-only window, are lost rentals.
I've got my own album (and thousands of advanced amateur photos as well) and frankly, I WISH people were pirating my album. At least that would mean people were listening to it. Hell, it's on Spotify; that means it's already FREE (Spotify *IS* pirating because they don't pay squat unless you have MILLIONS of plays and even then it's chump change compared to traditional radio). As an "Artist" I want people to enjoy my art. Otherwise, my existence as an artist has no meaning at all because an artist who never has anyone see/listen to their art, doesn't really exist.
No people whine about pirating because they feel they are "entitled" to MONEY. I can't stress this enough because money is the EVIL society is based upon. This in turn is based on the Capitalistic "economic" system we use where some "number" in a bank account or some piece of "paper" means you have "something" more than your neighbor. The whole system is flawed. You have the ultra-rich and the ultra-poor and few in-between. Yet we continue to use this system even though it SUCKS for 99% of us.
No one wants to try any other system. We sit and watch Star Trek and see how life COULD be if money weren't the focus of our lives. If people with talent could use and develop that talent for the benefit of society we could progress not only technologically faster, but "spiritually" as well. But our entire focus is on money. As I said, it would be great if anyone just heard my music, let alone make money from it. I'd love to make money from it so I didn't have to work a real job, but "spiritually" speaking, I'd rather people hear my music for free than not hear it at all. Those that try to make a living from it are the ones that scream about "pirates" when in truth no one is watching or listening to their "Indie" stuff AT ALL. They're not losing money to pirating. They're losing it to a big corporate culture where you have to put hundreds of thousands or millions into advertising in order to get people to even NOTICE a movie or album. People don't listen to or pay for things they don't know even exist!
In an "ideal" world, people would support artists that they like/enjoy while information itself would be free (as in the free exchange of ideas). People would pay for moves they enjoyed. This doesn't work and socialism doesn't work because people are GREEDY and LAZY and won't work unless they feel they can get massive rewards. Otherwise, you'd have people paying for other people not to work (the reason poeple HATE welfare). People would also get their money back from CRAP they didn't like it at all (believe it or not, there are movie I feel I should have got my money back and then some because they WASTED MY *TIME* and TIME has inherent value for people's lives whether you believe it or not. In other words, if you suck as musician (like most of these pitch corrected "hotties" the music industry pushes who have NO REAL TALENT other than LOOKING GOOD) you should get another job (try modeling if you're that attractive). But as I said, the ideal world doesn't work. Star Trek doesn't work. People are GREEDY. PERIOD.
Yet it's this SAME "GREED" that drives piracy. Why pay for something if you can get it for free? I can copy a page out of a book at the library, so why not tape a song off the radio? All these people on here wishing "pirates' would "DIE" need to look in the mirror. Who over the age of 30 hasn't taped a song off the radio or watched a movie at their friend's house or traded video game cartridges (all NO NOs in a Capitalistic society where NOTHING should be free and libraries shouldn't exist). It's the SYSTEM that's a failure. Rich people don't pirate (unless they are cleptos like Wynona Rider). I would wager most people who pirate movies feel they are getting back at a system making BILLIONS off their $16 movie tickets and $8 sodas (which ARE rip-offs). I'm not suggesting there's great solutions given human nature, but I'm seeing a lot of people that simply don't comprehend both sides of the story or they'd have more empathy for human nature than "they should all just DIE". Well, they won't buy your movie/album if they are dead and so there's be functional DIFFERENCE at all! Oops!
Back in the days before MTV, real musicians existed and that's because radio doesn't show what people look like. Even though MTV is no longer music television, we are more media focused than ever. Janis Joplin would have never survived in today's world as a musician. At best, she could have wrote material for Demi Lovato or someone to sing. That's just the way it is because people have the attention span of flies unless they're turned on.
They aren't lost sales for the most part. When I was a kid we went to "computer user groups" and people "shared" (yes copied) C64 games. I didn't understand all this stuff back then, but what I do know is that my family was dirt poor and we would not and could not have bought even a tiny fraction of those games. Yet playing those games lead me to buy tons of games later on in life when I could afford them and even back then sold some computer hardware (the "one" Christmas present). Send me to jail back then and I wouldn't be buying ANYTHING now. Society functions on more than just whether someone watched a movie from the library or paid $16 to see it at the theater. Sending that guy in Poland to jail will cost us money to incarcerate him. How does that "help" society? Put him to work doing something useful and raise his taxes instead.
This is true as well. My older brother copied all those games on the C64 but he almost NEVER played any of them. I think he just liked to see what the games looked like. He wasn't much of a gamer at all. And back then we didn't have YouTube or any other methods of seeing the world outside a small town. All that software copying/trading served a purpose of advertising, believe it or not.
If you've got $20 to buy one album, there MIGHT have been ONE sale, not 5000 sales. The odd thing about pirating, though is that people who couldn't afford all those other sales may listen to that music and find an artist that they DO really like and go see their concerts and buy their merchandise, etc. But if they could only buy and listen to ONE album, they would have never found them and never supported that artist in the long run. People are short-sighted about these things. I need people to find my album now. They can support me as an artist some day if they appreciate what they hear. But people don't think like that because most people are brain dead. They just see "criminals" everywhere they look. The problem is that MOST people have violated copyright laws at some point in their life and probably didn't even know it (try reading those license agreements; you're not allowed to have more than one copy or computer backups, etc. but people don't even read them, let alone obey them). Oh, but we're not talking about THEM. Just those bastards using torrents.... (i.e. the law doesn't apply unless you happen to "hate" that one use).
I like your whole post and now I am curious about your album, any place other than Spotify where i can listen to it?
I like your whole post and now I am curious about your album, any place other than Spotify where i can listen to it?
It's on iTunes, Amazon, CD Baby and probably some other places. The only trouble here is to point someone to it, I'd be giving away my real identity which I normally prefer to keep separate from my discussion forum profiles (otherwise I'd use my real name on here). I suppose it is Mac related in that I made it with Logic Pro on a 2008 Macbook Pro. Logic Pro is pretty awesome software. I hope Apple doesn't find a way to ruin it too some day.