Australian cable provider suing people who streamed event via Facebook
abc.net.au
abc.net.au
They currently own nearly all of the landline market, large portions of the Internet provider market, and the mobile carrier market. This randomly Googled page looks about accurate:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/326147/number-of-broadba...
The guy streamed from his personal Facebook page, and answered the call during the stream, what could his defense possibly be?
I think it's dangerous to let Foxtel sue this guy for streaming something that's going on inside his own home (albeit, a view of his TV).
Or another example: a person I know got done for embezzling a five-figure sum from a business. She got off pretty lightly (though not scot-free), because she used those funds to feed and clothe homeless people; she wasn't doing it to profit. The action and the damage to the victim was the same, but the intent made significant difference to the legal opinion.
I would say that a lot of people who watched it on the streaming were not going to pay anyway, so the loss was probably minimal in reality.
If you really wanted to watch and did not have the Foxtel or the money you could have gone to the pub, or a mates, anyway.
Ah, yeah, so "exactly this thing can't happen". Logic 101. Guess DRM was a terrific success then.
They did. Right before access was cut, a code was watermarked on the TV, I assume it was per-box as a number so they knew who it was to cut access to.
Just really fascinated with the technicals of how they'd do that.
They tried showing an image, but the owners would just stick something covering the watermark so they wouldn't be caught q
It's for inspectors to see that it's a pub license, which is more expensive than a home one.
The volume in the glass changes daily so you can't just put a sticker or overlay on to replicate it.
Why not just get the home package and run it through your own overlay system? The fatal flaw here with this design is that there's nothing in place of the glass. With enough tinkering (a pub subscription and a home subscription to play with, and maybe a fortnight to a month, if that) build something that exactly reproduces the watermark. 1080i-capable HDMI capture systems are expensive but not 5-figures (or even 4-figures) expensive nowadays, and most satellite feeds don't even justify 1080i anyway. Do satellite receivers do HDCP? If they do, RGB video is still very very very good quality for 1080i, and reference-quality RGB capture systems aren't 5 figures (probably very low 4 figures). You could just output via HDMI or whatever of course.
To complete the setup, you could have one place receive a legitimate broadcast, and (alongside the TVs/projectors) run that through a capture system which would do differential frame analysis to heuristically figure out what watermark is displaying at the moment. This location automatically pushes the current watermark type out to a bunch of other places - for a nice small fee.
Of course, the above is said from an honest academic-security standpoint. :P
The fees the place with the legit subscription would impose be significantly less than the ~£400+ pub subscription fee.
But, you know... I just realized... there's nothing stopping the place with the legit subscription simply just retransmitting/forwarding on their own signal to a bunch of other places. Duh. And that's so simple I'd be surprised if it isn't already being done in at least one place in the wild. (I have no idea if it is, I only just thought of the concept.)
Yes, it's illegal either way. But the intent is very different. With the role technology plays in our lives now this use case (a few friends) it's more akin to inviting those mates to physically attend the viewing, in which no law was broken.
Looks like Dazza needs a few more mates: https://www.gofundme.com/9rp4a2-legal-cost
Can I watch it with my dog?
With my friend?
With my friend and her kids?
Can I watch it during a birthday party? There will be 20 kids and their parents around, is that ok?
Can each of said parents have a conference call with their buddies to watch and discuss the game? Is there a limit on the size of the tv? Can I mount a 10x5 monitor setup so people across the street can see as well? Can I project it on that publicity board? Can I twitch my reaction to the game? Can I stream the screen? Oops.
Be creative.
Also,
"It's stealing. It's no different to video piracy
or music piracy,"
one of the fight's promoters
Ignorance of the laws of copyright doesn't make it any less illegal.
Also he'll be in civil breach of his cable contract too, which will have a rebroadcast clause in it.
Streaming on Facebook is rebroadcasting.
I can't understand, with even the most basic knowledge of copyright, how you can think it's not illegal?
The guy was a total idiot, he will be fined, probably very heavily given he continued after being asked to stop and being informed that he was commiting an illegal act. Maybe even jail time.
What you are saying is we should adapt, mold, conform, comply the law, all the time, without thinking. Laws come from the past and these scenarios come from the future. Who would you rather please?
Your future you, who might end up away from home but still wants to watch the fight? So he sets up a stream he can access while on the train, for example. And he shares it with a friend on the next seat. And his brother, from outside the country, so they can discuss it together. Yes, this is broadcasting. Just because you can't set it up, you don't know how to do it without googling, or simply don't conceive it to be possible, don't limit the guy that finds out how.
Or would you rather please that guy that calls you and informs you that you should stop, because something as vague and as distant as "copyright law"? Sir, please stop. Your intent cannot be monetized further. Please wait a few years until we develop an app/device/system that allows you to view the stream remotely so we can charge you.
Fuck that guy.
If none of the scenarios resonate, then that's fine. But understand that people will want to do new things. Some will be deemed illegal, some will be acepted. Some can't be stopped.
Refusal to think about new scenarios dooms us to whatever was decided before we were born.
Enjoy your retro life.
There's an existing law and just because you're rebroadcasting using Facebook Live instead of a video camera doesn't suddenly make it any less illegal.
You can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig.
Rebroadcasting copyrighted event = illegal.
Rebroadcasting copyrighted event + Facebook live = ?
Figure it out.
We can come up with another scenario about waving your hands while hopping on one leg and pressing the stream button on Facebook Live of a copyrighted show while facing west and singing omm-pah loom-pah and sharing that stream with every 3rd member of the New York Symphony Orchestra.
Is that illegal?
Yes. The only relevant bit of that ridiculous thought experiment is "copyrighted show...sharing with".
I'll add that this is breaking the law twice, once with the origin and second with Facebook as violation of their service.
Otherwise, the parent doesn't make any sense in his ramblings.
In the worst case he would get banned from using Facebook, which nowadays can have can be negative based on the capacity user is engaged with it (using it as an online identity manager for logins, social consequences etc.).
But can't help but notice that:
1) you also can't (until now) put lipstick on a man and call it a woman, but look at what new "scenarios" people have come up with recently.
2) You had something about being happy with half a brain, but deleted it. Glad to see you have more than half.
Now you are equating bootleg DVD with facebook live. I understand that, while you don't make money with streaming on facebook (do you?), you still end up with notoriety, some kind of social credit. However, still a longshot from "selling pirated copies".
Was there a business model in my scenarios? Did this guy, clueless as he is to what is deemed illegal in 2017, monetize it?
As for your "copyrighted show[content]...shared with", do you talk with people? Tell me, be honest: have you ever shared something, in the privacy of a phone call, intimate moment, or at dinner, about a book you read? When you exit the movie theather, do you comment "out loud" what you saw?
In this new scenario, I am specifically asking if someone, ever, has wanted to rebroadcast to the world what he just acquired from a book or movie, to start a conversation.
Because now we get into the "how detailed can the sharing be", and I'll ask you if 240p is "low detail" enough, or if I omit the weather and words longer than 6 letters, and you'll say "but only if in black and white and without sound", and I'll ask if I can share the sound in another stream, and if is illegal for a third party in Iceland to assemble the two streams, and you'll get angry and either punch me, or call me stupid again.
I also deleted the bootlegger comment at the same time as well as I realised he'd not personally profiting from it so it's materially a different scenario, so I agree there.
But, I think you're looking at it the wrong way. The quality doesn't matter. Even if it were at 4 px density and colossally compressed audio. Sharing exemptions tend to be limited in scope, lending the physical copy so you can't use it at the same time, less than X number of people at a shared screening, etc. Some of the scenarios you can come up with are technically illegal, just no-one's going to enforce them. You might not remember but back in the day coaches weren't supposed to screen films from video tapes and it was explicitly stated in the copyright notices, but they did any way. They probably still do. But if a free cinema had set up and just started screening bootlegged films, they would have got raided and convicted because of the difference in scale.
Say I share a TV show or two with friends electronically. At worst if the law found out they'll tell me to cut it out. If I start hosting the TV show on a website and 100,000 people download it, you can be damn sure someone's going to ensure I'm going to feel the full scope of the law down my neck.
It's the same with this. If it hadn't got shared outside his friend group, even if they found out, no-one would have probably bothered doing anything apart from maybe send a warning not to do it again. But he knew 100,000+ people were using his stream, he was identified, contacted and he declined to stop. That he was ignorant of the law, or he was sharing in a newish way is not a defence.
From my pov, this isn't even new, my old housemate used to stream football games from illegal streams every weekend, I don't really see how this is any different just because it's using Facebook.
In the US, it is a violation of copyright law, if "people across the street can see it..." or if you "stream the screen," as that creates a "public performance," which, presumably would be unlicensed.
Note to self: don't let security cameras or baby cameras record the inside of any books I am reading, when in the US.
This may not be a perfect system but it's still better than having the law rewritten for ever conceivable edge case scenario that random folk can dream up.
I think it's pretty easy to discern private viewing from public viewing.
You're not allowed to distribute the content. Don't tell me that those people didn't know they weren't supposed to stream someone else's content on Facebook.
And what should, or should not be done is so subjective it's meaningless.
Definitely.
It's up to the customer to read them, but you agreed to them.
While it's not fixed, it's generally thought to be fewer than 91,000.
It's all based on intent. His was fine, until he forgot that the medium used was putting him in the violation in the first place, but the cherry on top was not limiting the access to the people the stream was meant for.