Hi guys, I just wanted to call out an inappropriate term I’ve seen used sometimes: Civil Disobedience. It’s not just civil disobedience when you pirate something privately, you need to do it publicly and dare the authorities to do something about it.
So an example here would be to set up a massive leech party and advertise it specifically as civil disobedience. Say all manner of things from all manner of copyright holders would be transmitted, and try and get news coverage. That’s civil disobedience.
Just downloading a movie because you want to watch it is not. OK thanks for your time.
You must log in or # to comment.
Reminder: Civil Disobedience (like any demonstration) requires you plan for and control the way the media covers it and have a target audience and desired response from them.
If you’re just getting yourself and others arrested/fined so some people who already agree with you can read about it on some blog, you’re doing the fed’s job.
+1. I was giving an example but you really need everyone involved to sit down and think through the way things are going to work. Every successful act of civil disobedience is thoroughly planned out.
effective civil disobedience requires that. just because the thing isn’t effective doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.
Just to add: you don’t need to justify your piracy. It doesn’t need to be a grand moral act. There’s free stuff out there on the internet and you’re getting it. You’d be stupid not to. It doesn’t need to be any more complicated than that.
Sometimes you just want to watch better call saul and there’s nothing more to it.
+1, it’s fine to just share.
Also I guess a finer point: Non-commercial filesharing is not piracy, we just call it that (somewhat) ironically because this is how the industry wants to label us. Almost all the laws imply a profit being made.
Honestly its hard to read through the comments where one person is explaining how they’d pay for x but not z for whatever reason.
My wife pays for X and y, and I pay for Z because I get next day delivery and Z is just kinda included in that. I would prefer for my wife to not pay for X and Y because they’re profiteering cunts (as is Z but I like next day delivery).
Wife won’t stop paying for X and Y because she doesn’t understand how R works. She doesn’t understand how X and Y works either but they do work all the time and R doesn’t because I’m still learning.
The other day I couldn’t get R working properly. While I was trying to fix it she went and paid for Z to watch the thing I was trying to fix on R.
Wife doesn’t understand why that was a massive insult.
Have you ever tried pirating these letter
I am currently working on a system that will allow me to get rid of all the letters but one. A pirate loves R but he always loves the C
Just downloading a movie because you want to watch it is not. OK thanks for your time.
Counterpoint… Seeding is a public action… And thus me downloading it and seeding for a 6-12 months is exactly Civil Disobedience (especially on my 8gbps pipe).
As someone else said, that’s “passive resistance” and it’s fine and good. Just being a pirate is fighting the good fight.
“Having sex with your bully’s mum is passive resistance; Having sex with your bully’s mum while looking your bully in the eye is civil disobedience”.
especially on my 8gbps pipe
Title of your sex tape!
Tldr; “I dont like how people use a term so i am going to make up a whole new definiton”
Passive resistance is a large part of civil disobedience. Civil disobedience does not need to be public.
I do agree with op, that downloading a movie to watch is not civil disobedience.
I think it’s the other way around. Civil Disobedience is a type of passive resistance, but I think we’re both saying the same thing here. You don’t just have to do civil obedience to have passive resistance, and other techniques are equally valid. The two even go well together.
For example if a small number of people do a civil disobedience, you can quietly seed as well, so even if they’re all jailed the seeding will continue.
“Civil disobedience is the active, professed refusal of a citizen to obey certain laws, demands, orders or commands of a government (or any other authority).”
You are incorrect and this post is wrong.
I feel bad for anyone who walks away from this thinking “civil disobedience only applies to things you do publicly.”
It’s not very active or professed if you do it privately with existing tools.
I want to speak with your English teacher.
Torrent using I2P and share the magnet links to the torrents while making fun of the authorities. To be more spicy, send the magnet link of the anonymous torrent to the rightsholder and mock them for being unable to find you. Then take a screenshot of the message and share it on social media for clout and dare others to do the same.
Start with Nintendo and work yourself through the most litigious companies out there. I’m sure the MPAA would be delighted to be taunted.
I’m sure that’ll go over well.
Is there any alternative to i2p torrenting if you want to torrent without a VPN? Other than living in a third world country.
Not that I can think of 🤔 But maybe others may know.
The lawful fear us. The smart support us. The high bandwidth join us.
We are a squad. We are Torrentimous.
See: Grey Tuesday
https://www.eff.org/pages/grey-tuesday
EDIT: The entire purpose of Civil Disobedience is to force the governments hand by making clear how unpopular what they’re doing is. It’s intended purpose is absolutely to change the direction of representative government.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/fiery-socialist-challenged-nations-role-wwi-180969386/
Eugene Debs going to jail for speaking against the War and breaking anti-sedition laws in the process is an example of Civil Disobedience. You sitting on your fat ass not risking anything and pirating an episode of The Real Wives of Orange County or some other useless fucking pop-culture drivel is not and will never be Civil Disobedience.
“Civil Disobedience” when no one sees what you’re doing is just “disobedience.”
Did you even bother to consult a dictionary before you wrote up this silly gatekeeping nonsense?
There is nothing in the definition of civil disobedience that says it needs to be public.
There is nothing that say we have to openly challenge the authorities.
There is nothing that says we have to get the medias attention.
Civil disobedience is the active, professed refusal of a citizen to obey certain laws, demands, orders or commands of a government (or any other authority).
The “refusal” part is where you challenge the authorities.
The “professed” part is where you do it publically.
The “media attention” is the bit where you are not an idiot. If no one knows you went to jail, that’s just willfully breaking the law.
“Media attention” doesn’t appear on your quote nor the entitreity of that Wikipedia article.
The other two are merely your personal interpretation of how you split the phrase “professed refusal”
Professed can as easily be satisfied by going on a piracy forum and declaring your allegiance to the movement.
Refusal is what piracy is. The act of ignoring copyright law, is the refusal.
“I do not agree with copyright law and will not be restricted by it” – This statement satisfies “professed refusal”
I do not have to petition my senator.
I don’t have to stand on a street corner with a sign.
I will take it further and claim that you or anyone else adding arbitrary rules to how one must practice civil disobedience is antithetical to civil disobedience.
Since you capitalized it, I suppose you’re referring to the writing of Henry David Thoreau? Maybe worth mentioning if somebody wants to read it. Dude sat in jail to oppose poll taxes. I don’t think it needs to be public or advertised but it should be overt.
For example I don’t stop for metering lights. Everybody can see when I do it. Sometimes nobody sees. But I don’t feel the regulation is just and so I must oppose it. I’m still waiting to get a ticket so I can challenge metering lights in court.
I’m curious, what do you have against metering lights? I’ve never encountered them, so I had to look them up. It seems they are installed to maintain the flow of traffic on off ramps and reduce congestion.
Metering lights are on during certain hours regardless of the flow of traffic. When traffic is going fast, they provide no benefit and actually make it worse by decreasing the merge speed of cars already half way down the ramp. When traffic is crawling, they also serve no purpose. They only help when the ramp is fed by a stoplight of tailgaters, and freeway traffic is heavy but flowing around 40-60 mph.
But they always increase emissions by bringing cars to an additional full stop and acceleration. Brake and tire dust emissions will also be significant during a full stop and acceleration.
The government in California is authorized by regulations to put up stoplights as a safety device. They are authorized to manage traffic. But they are not authorized to use stoplights to manage traffic, only as a safety device.
Many of our ramps are too short without metering lights. I wouldn’t be surprised if they actually decrease safety overall. There’s enough going on getting on the freeway safely at speed without having to follow a bunch of additional rules (there are many) while flooring the accelerator.
I’ve been ignoring the lights for about 10 years. If I have to stop because of a car in front of me, I will, but if one of the ramp lanes is open, I go. Sometimes this means passing a stopped car who’s following the rules, akin to cutting in line. I feel bad about it but I didn’t make them stop in the middle of an on ramp - a stupid light did.
This is not pedantry I can support.
Did someone say it was?
Leeching probably isn’t civil disobedience. Maybe even seeding things for preservation’s sake isn’t.
But wouldn’t seeding popular/current things be civil disobedience?
You must do it “loudly”. You have to seed in front of the prime minister, or get the news to cover you doing it, and put your real name out there.
The definition I see says it’s just…
the refusal to comply with certain laws or to pay taxes and fines, as a peaceful form of political protest.
So…I think you’re wrong in this.
refusing to respect the law in private is still civil disobedience. I wouldn’t say that it’s as effective, but it is still civil disobedience.
like this television tax thing in the uk. if everybody just stops paying it, the system would still fold even if they don’t go out in the streets talking about it.
I feel like this post has devolved into nomenclature. My intent was not to tut tut people for using the wrong word, it was to say that Civil Disobedience is actually quite powerful, and we can use it to enact change at the government level.
yeah but that’s not what you said. you tried to correct people’s grammar without bothering to look up the grammar that you were correcting first, so this thread is about grammar because that’s the thread you made
A file sharing party would be so dope!!!
My friend, you seem to be too young to have gone to a leech-n-lan. Those were indeed the days… yarrr…
I think perhaps encrypted thumb drive party might be the way now!
