Torrent Site Founder, Moderator and Users Receive Prison Sentences
torrentfreak.com
torrentfreak.com
At this point, the US should repeal the law completely, and let the chips fall where they may. Hollywood says we'll see a loss of culture (fewer movies, songs, books).
Let's find out.
Seems like some scapegoating is going on here: (2011) http://www.slashfilm.com/infographic-hollywoods-waning-creat...
If the countries/regions were large enough (like say, the whole EU, or China or Australia or whatever else), that'd really put the US in a bad situation. Either compromise and fix copyright laws, or 'fight back' against countries powerful enough to threaten them in return. How far would anyone go to 'save' the status quo?
"The Hamptons is not a defensible position."
~ Mark Blyth (prof. of Political Economy at Brown), on the recent rise in populism rejection of traditional politics (e.g. Trump, brexit, etc)
One would hope so. Commercial culture is dishonest and shit, and crowds out everything interesting.
Let's find out."
This is obvious a reckless idea.
I personally think that copyright should last maybe 10 years or so, so we're kind of on the same side of this.
...but arguing that hundreds of thousands of careers, billions of dollars of market cap, etc., should all be potentially destroyed because "I wonder what will happen? YOLO!" is a bad way to approach the debate.
A more apt comparison would be "The US should make a law that all software must be released open source." Would we all be out of jobs if that happened? Maybe, but it's at least a debatable point.
Repealing copyright law would render the GPL and all other OSS licenses unenforceable. Are you sure that's what you want?
The most important, I think, is an understanding of the first-sale doctrine[1], and how it differs from reproduction and distribution rights.
Many advocates for piracy argue that distributing copyrighted materials on the Internet is no different than reselling a DVD they previously bought. However, the distinction becomes more clear when we consider that by distributing a movie or song through the Internet, we are also making a copy of it. Modern computers have made it incredibly easy to make a copy of a work, to the point that it doesn't even feel like we're copying something. Because of this, it doesn't feel wrong to share a song or movie.
The actual amount of lost sales is immaterial when addressing the binary question of whether or not someone should be allowed to share a movie publicly on the Internet. The right to reproduce and distribute a copyrighted work to the public is solely that of the copyright holder - whether your doing so results in them losing money or not.
The question of appropriate penalties, though, is much less clear, and I think it's a shame that prosecutors and rights-holders have pursued defendants as viciously as they have. In many of these cases the judgments are unfairly strict (or at least appear that way), which just makes the MPAA and RIAA look more evil, and hurts everyone in the long run.
Also even the "right to reproduce and distribute a copyrighted work to the public is solely that of the copyright holder" is not an absolute when you look at things like mechanical royalties.
I can definitely see that it's not a simple issue, and I think you're right to point out the nuance that I didn't acknowledge.
Compulsory mechanical licenses are an interesting beast for sure. I'm not really sure what to make of them from an ethical standpoint.
There's this interplay between the law and ethics as to how much your ethics are shaped by what the law currently says, vs the law being shaped by the communal ethics of people. I think when you reference a detail of the law (say first-sale doctrine) as a black-and-white first principle for your view of ethical IP handling it feels like there's not much room to move the ethical line. If there is some kind of absolute author moral right to first-sale, why even put a time limit on copyright or patents etc?
Personally I feel that people should be able to make a living (and more) from producing creative or useful work. Everyone benefits from that. I think the legal details beyond that including copyright terms, exclusivity, first-sale, reselling used software, importing of trademarked goods, mechanical royalties, license agreements, patent pools. All of that to me is ugly hacks on ugly hacks to try and make a workable system out of it. And I don't care if people throw all of it out so long as they can still come up with a viable way for people to make movies, make video games, make music, make medicine and make useful software applications while still being able to support themselves and their family that doesn't just depend on charity.
They've been lending books, mags, cds, movies, etc. for longer than I've been alive
Personally, I think IP is nonsense, but a lot of people disagree with me.
Which is why copyright should simply die. It's need has been replaced. The car has been invented and we're in court defending the horse. It's silly and backwards.
Luckily for everyone the actual law is pragmatic. They don't set out some set of philosphy and then enforce whatever is concluded by these axioms being applied. The rules can be made arbitrarily to mitigate practical harm and neither the "but every number is technically in pi!" or "only rights owners have the right to control copying!" have any real world weight.
As far as we understand the number pi, every single combination of digit is part of it at some point. So technically Pi already contains a copy of any of your work and your future work even before you think of making it!
Doesn't that make digital copyright laws completely obsolete?
Now don't get me wrong, I'm not advocating pro-piracy or anything. I just think that our laws made in the 17-18-1900's and monkey-patched to these days are not prepared to handle digital matters. We should reboot our legal system. At least it's digital-matter version.
What happens in France when you are fined damages far in excess of your wealth, do they garnish future wages?
But it's not nebulous. Help others commit a crime, you are an accessory and you are liable for fines and prison.
I don't know if I understand that for the mods, unless they got some money from the site.
I really don't understand it for the users, unless again they got money from the site.
As I understand it copyright infringement is only criminal if it's part of trade.
The article describes those users as downloaders, which to me means the rights holders can sue for damages as a civil action, but not that the state can prosecute as a criminal case.
Yes, potentially some people will go out to see the movie if they cannot pirate it. But not all. And it's hard to prove either way.
That's not the same as "stealing a car".
Me downloading a movie is normally civil. This new case turns it criminal.
Copyright and patent violations fell under criminal law some years ago. There was a long battle in the EU to stop this happening. The movie industry won. In France the law was passed under Sarkozy iirc.
When you download a movie, this is now a criminal offense. However the sanctions are mild (warnings) for first time offenders, and only turn to jail time for those making a lot of money from it (I think, IANAL.)
In all cases however the rights holders don't sue, it's the state that sues. Big win for the content cartels as they get these cases prosecuted for free now.
I don't think their motives are relevant.
Otherwise, it's like saying I own a big warehouse where I allow criminals to meet and exchange illegal items, but pretend I play no part of it.
I agree there are some gray zones on this for torrent activities, but when you have indexes with top movies of the week with filenames and metadata pretty clear about the content, how can you defend that?
“To all the [anti-piracy groups and authorities]: You are a lot of vile shit, destroying lives of people who are already struggling to pay their rent, their food, their bills,” he said.
Right, it's only pirates who have bills to pay. The people who make content get their homes for free!
“Why all this? Because they wanted to watch and because they didn’t necessarily have the capabilities to buy a DVD / BluRay or go to the theaters.”
If you own a computer and an internet connection good enough to torrent blurays then you can afford a DVD and a cheap player, certainly a theatre ticket. "Didn't necessary have the capabilities" is pure rationalisation - it's a fantasy entirely divorced from reality, intended to let him tell himself that he's a good person really.
The content makers / publishers / distributors never see a cent of the secondhand DVD market.
Downloading pirate films is similar in that sense.
Ok, the argument could be made that the secondhand market props up the primary market, but I don't buy it. I don't think people buy new DVDs with the thought of "I'll be able to sell this for $2 to the pawn shop after I've watched it" as a motivating factor.
And, there is no secondhand market for digital media. Media piracy is the flea market of digital downloads. So an argument could be make that media piracy severs that sector of the market we would only buy secondhand DVDs anyway.
Also 2x adult theatre tickets, AUS25 each, costs as much as my monthly Internet connection bill. I know there are a lot of Australians who would not be able to justify that expense.
typically no vendor gets any profit from having the original buyer resell whatever they bought from the vendor.
IP does have things specific to IP only, but the reselling part is on par with pretty much everything else out there getting bought and then sold again.
1) Japanese games publishers did want to prevent second hand sales, so your question isn't as bizarre to the rights holders.
2) They do see some of that money. I can afford to buy some new games, but only if I can sell my old games. I can only sell my old games if someone buys them.
I agree with you, though.
That's what I responded to.
Even still, it's not your God-given right to consume media. If you can't afford to watch a TV show or movie, that's unfortunate, but that's how it works.
"Starving artists" that eventually succeed do so despite this cartel, and not because they were enabled by it. Meanwhile piracy has created an ecosystem where actual "starving artists" are giving away their music for free because they know that people who enjoy it will pay for it anyway, and can meanwhile enjoy the benefits of unlimited exposure to potential new fans.
When it's to the point where I can push a button and have a TV show pop up on my NAS viewable on all my devices in a few minutes (yay Sonarr) or try to find somewhere to go buy it in some weird DRM-encumbered form that I can't even copy to my phone, well, I know what I'm doing.
I can't be assed to pay for things anymore. My sheer laziness is more valuable to me than other people's hard work and I won't even try to deny it, put me in front of a computer and I go into complete utilitarian mode.
This probably applies to more people than will care to admit it and it's exactly why the "piracy is a service problem" attitude is the only one to really put a dent in piracy in the past decade.
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12517875 and marked it off-topic.