How ethical is it to download movies and TV using torrents?

I have just completed a Cyberethics course and I was forced to consider this question in depth as part of an assignment. Given that I had to answer a specific question, I couldn't really put forward what I truly feel, so that's what this post is all about.

I have long considered that paying a fair and reasonable price for content delivered in a timely and reasonable manner to be of no issue whatsoever. Let me put that out there for y'all. If I have access to a wide catalogue of TV shows or movies, they're priced reasonably and the available in a timely fashion I see no reason to have take other measures to get the product I want. In researching the essay for this course, I had to read a whole bunch of journal articles and I won't bore you to death with those, nor will I bore you with proper citations.... From this research, the core matters that affect a person's decision to download or pirate digital content appear to be:

• price
• availability
• time to market
• quality
• perceived unreasonable behaviour by content producers

and in some cases a simple unwillingness to have to pay for everything (for whatever reason). I'm sure that if you are an Australian, gentle reader, that you will know all too well the Australia Tax. If you aren't an Aussie, then this is a new thing to you. The Australia Tax affects us all down here, particularly back in the day when it was expensive to transport things to our island continent. Nowadays though, it costs very little to transport digital media under the sea and into the country. The tax is applied to Apple and Microsoft software, to hardware, cars, digital content. APC Mag has a list here: http://apcmag.com/overcharge.htm/ It's a bit old, but you can see the overcharge. 

This article started it all: Downloading movies and TV is not a crime from the Sydney Morning Herald. The writer makes some great points and I will echo them here. According to Australian law it's not a crime to download movies or TV per se. It is instead a breach of copyright. The crime of theft can only occur if the owner of a piece of property is permanently deprived of it - and that doesn't work when applied to digital media. The owner still has it, and can still market and sell it. Applying copyright law to try to enforce the preservation of copyright as been spectacularly unsuccessful. I remember as a young chap watching while Napster was sued and the MPAA, RIAA and ARIA started going after downloaders. Universities protected their students, and now even ISPs are protecting their clients, refusing to give data up about the end users. I remember while still at Uni hearing about the people that were being chased and the recording and movie industry wailing at their loss in profits - think of the poor actors! Only getting $10 million a movie when they could get $20 million! Think of our profit margins - oh woe is us! And then seeing them record the largest profits ever. Those poor souls. I really felt for them as I contemplated getting that latest new release from the internets. 

Down under we get a limited catalogue of content available. Netflix, iTunes, etc all only release a subset of their products to us. Why? Some licensing bullshit. Clearly to do with maximising profit margins. What these idiots are failing to recognise is the market in Australia is hungry for content. So hungry we were allegedly the largest downloaders of Game of Thrones last year. While the media morons all shook their heads and bemoaned those evil downloading Australians, they failed to recognised why we were engaged in this behaviour. The reasons above a directly responsible for this. Game of Thrones, as an example, is available only on Pay TV. I personally do not have Pay TV. Why pay $70 a month for something when I hardly have a chance to use it? I would literally only be getting it for GoT. Also, in this attention economy, I resent paying for a service and then having to pay my attention to ads. That's double dipping. More thieving bastardy on the parts of the media moguls. This year, GoT will air completely on Pay TV before it is available on Free to Air. I understand how Free to Air works - I pay with my attention to the ads. That's OK. I'm cool with that. I'm not cool with having to wait those extra months to see my shows though. Can I buy them off iTunes in a timely manner? Can I see it on Netflix? I'm not sure. What I do know, from a mate, is that I could download in high definition a copy of each GoT episode an hour after it airs from torrents. That's how you meet audience demand. Supply the content that's wanted and do it in a timely manner. No geographical restrictions on what you can get to watch or listen to! It's supposed to be a free market and yet it clearly is not. 

I should also note, that the stuff we can occasionally get is up to 400% more expensive than what might be paid for it in USD. Now, not only do we have an increase in price because the Australian Dollar isn't worth a pinch of goat shit, but the bastards gouge the arse out of us anyway. Are we honestly supposed to be happy with that? Do they expect us to toe the line and simply get on with bending over and allowing the media content producers to have their way with us? I don't think so. And the evidence is clear that Australians aren't doing it vis a vis the top downloaders of Game of Thrones. Imagine for one stunning moment there is an executive in these content houses with a semi-functional brain, beyond just wanting enormous profits. This relative genius could see a massive market that is being undersupplied and misunderstood. If GoT was available in a timely manner, reasonably priced - maybe a couple of dollars per episode or something, then imagine the profit difference! I'll just do some maths for you now.

So currently, for arguments sake, 3 million Australians are downloading GoT. That's 3,000,000 times $0 in profit.... which is... just using my calculator here... $0 dollars of profit. Bravo content producers. But here's an amazing thing! If that product was available via iTunes or Netflix or <insert other gouging content provider> for even just $1, then the profit would be... more calculations.... $3,000,000! Holy shitballs Batman! And that's per episode! What an amazing thing! I just fell off my chair! (much of this is sarcasm - I have not literally fallen off my chair, nor do I own a calculator). I would think for a quality TV show like Game of Thrones, I would happily pay up to $5 an episode. But it has to be delivered at the same time as it airs, it has to be in high def and the catalogue I'm choosing from has to be broad. On iTunes, Game of Thrones is $3.49 / episode (10 episodes) or $32.99 for the season. But according to this article http://exstreamist.com/game-of-thrones-season-5-will-be-on-itunes-after-it-airs/ Game of Thrones won't be available on Australian iTunes until after the season finishes. Guess what thieving bastards - you're not getting my money then and I'm not waiting that fucking long to see a TV I really like. I'll get it by other means. I'd pay $3.49 an episode if it came day of each episode airing but if think I'm going to wait and then still pay then I suggest you see a neurosurgeon because half your brain is non-functional. It's shit like this that makes an average, happy to pay person like myself say: "Right, time to learn how to use this torrent thing!" and then set up a VPN to another country, wrap it all in encrypted tunnels and show the big middle finger to the establishment. Screw you thieving bastards!

You can probably tell I get a bit cranky about this. Equality for all I say. The only people "suffering" and I use that term in it's most loosely possible way are the execs watching their profits only reach stratospheric heights instead of astronomical heights. 

So is it ethical? Well that's up to you isn't it? 

Who owns the data?

Firstly, let me make it clear I am not a lawyer - IANAL. So naturally I was left stressed and scratching my head at a recent and very difficult situation.

A client of mine was having a shake up at the top end of the company. I don't know why and I didn't ask. The boss was on leave, directed in some way by the Board of Directors and I was being given conflicted requirements - one boss saying "Don't do anything - stuff is happening in the background" while the boss appointed by the Board was asking me to do various things to essentially keep the business running.

The way I've dealt with it, and I think it's probably the way to remember for the future is to request, in writing and signed by a large number of the Board members a document to give you permission to do as requested by the Board appointed Boss. I asked for the Board chairman, two other board members and the CEO or Boss to sign the document - thus ensuring a majority of high level stakeholders were involved in this process.

The key thing about this to remember is that my organisation was working with their organisation not individuals working with other individuals. As much as I might have a relationship with a member of that organisation, the important thing is that it's a relationship between two businesses. The Board is the controlling entity of that other business and the document you get from them means that if they aren't behaving there is a limitation to liability for me - I have been directed in a manner that I can reasonably indicate was from a legitimate controlling entity.

At the highest level too, the business's data all belongs to that business - not to the people working there. This can be tricky of course if there is some intellectual property involved but that's what the courts are for. At any rate, in this particular instance, once I had that paper shield (as it were) I went ahead and performed the tasks as requested. If I'm ever challenged on that, I can simply say - here is the document signed and presented to me by the Board of Directors. There isn't a higher power in the organisation so as far as I'm concerned as an IT Professional then I have to do as they ask, or we lose a client. I think as long as what I'm asked to do isn't in contravention of any ethical or moral strictures then this can work well.

I hope you, gentle reader, don't get caught in the middle like this. It's very uncomfortable and must be handled with some care. Good luck and have a good lawyer - like I do (thanks AP!)

The Fundamentals of building Client Networks

Recently I've been thinking a lot about the best way to help my clients understand and engage with their IT networks and systems. I have also been thinking a lot about how to best manage and look after these systems for my clients in a sustainable way. In order to do this I've been looking at the fundamental basic building blocks of my client base and considering the commonalities. The reason for understanding these commonalities is to put into place simple guidelines for developing and maintaining a network. Each network will of course have certain unique circumstances but if the fundamental infrastructure is well understood, these unique aspects of each network will be easier to manage.

So thinking of all of these things, I've looked at the commonalities in my clients and found they can be grouped into several broad categories:

• sites with a single server, single location and a small (less than 30) number of users. They may have some mobility but generally only a small requirement.
• sites with multiple servers but only a single location and between 25 and 50 users. Again, some mobility but not a lot - potentially they'll want more.
• sites with multiple servers, multiple locations and 25 plus users. Requirements for mobility including file access and remote VPN access.

Although these categories are quite broad, they cover 90% of the small to medium business clients I tend to deal with. These clients are all important to me, and given I have a finite amount of time to work with them, its critical that understanding the fundamentals and underlying structure of the networks doesn't need to be re-discovered every time I'm on site. How then to ensure efficient support of clients?

Firstly by grouping sites into the broad categories I mentioned earlier, I have a quick higher understanding of each site. By building each network following standard procedures there is plenty of efficiency to be gained and also it's a lot easier to explain to a client what is on their network.

Secondly good documentation is key. It's not just writing stuff down, but having it available to review when you are onsite - and this means there are several things that have to be in place:

• data must be available via some sort of mobility
• data must be secure
• data must be organised and detailed

Having the data secure is incredibly important - if it's available using some type of web interface, it has to be SSL secured and the passwords have to be strong. Although this seems obvious, it doesn't seem to be well executed. Having data organised and detailed is the key to keeping client networks well looked after.

Thirdly using the same basic ideas to build each network type mean that if the key support staff member is not available, other support staff can easily work out what is where and how it's set up. These basic ideas also make it far more efficient to produce quotes and proposals, and, I've found anyway, that development of new ideas can be more easily implemented into proposals and integrated into networks.

Recently I've noted that lately I have been speaking with businesses that aren't currently clients of mine and I've found some over-complicated and under-documented networks. By applying some of the basic principles I've touched on in the post I'm able to start getting these networks back under control. I've found that the easiest way to do this is the following:

• determine what the client needs
• determine what the client wants
• determine what the client already has
• determine what the client actually can have
• document it all and discuss at length and in as non-technical a manner as possible

These are the fundamentals of building client networks and they are also the fundamentals of recovering a client network from a state of disrepair. The major difference is that the former causes a lot less pain than the latter.

Questions?

AB out.

Understanding a network

Recently I've been spending time with several prospective clients and I've found a few quite horrible things. The common, awful things stem from a complete lack of disclosure by the incumbent IT support consultants. In one instance, one of the clients aren't even allowed to have administrator access to their systems! They can't add or remove users, or perform any basic administrative functions. They are being kept in the dark and spoonfed bullshit by the IT guys. So when they get a hugely expensive proposal to upgrade their systems, the first, maybe even the second time they fall for it and finally they call someone else in to look at it.

What I've found is awful - barely ethical behaviour by the IT consultants, systems with non-genuine software and lies to the client. Networks that are probably capable of so much more being poorly managed - even by basic standards. For example, several of them have multiple sites with poor data delivery - but rather than look at the bandwidth as an issue, the IT guy is telling them the servers are under performing, but an analysis of the system shows plenty of overhead available in disk, cpu and memory capacity. The bandwidth is the problem, but again, rather than work on that, and fix some poorly configured routers, there are inaccurate reports of server issues - for example "the server is running out of RAM, that's why it goes slow..." but checking the RAM shows that there is plenty free and the system isn't swapping at all.

I just find this completely unethical. Why not consider some different options if things aren't working properly? It's been my experience that a client is willing to accept that new ideas come up and give different options for an office to be more productive. It's also been my experience that a client won't be looking to replace an IT consultant unless they are very unhappy and willing to risk the potential for damage to systems for the opportunity to get a more reliable system that they can trust and at the end of the day that's what this is all about - trust.

Without trust then the relationship is over. It's very obvious but people get lazy and without checking to make sure they are looking after their clients, well sloppy behaviour becomes prevalent and then its time for someone else to take over, with the client paying an awful lot of expense both in time and pain of changeover, plus the loss of valuable site knowledge.