When Telecom Companies Search Your Home for Piracy | Hacker News Reader

When Telecom Companies Search Your Home for Piracy

motherboard.vice.com

221 pointsThorondor118 comments

> ... and his use of a web service that hides a site’s hosting provider (Lackman says it was the immensely popular service Cloudflare), meant that there was a real risk that Lackman might destroy evidence if they didn’t conduct a surprise search.

TIL Cloudflare makes you suspicious in the eyes of the law. Lawyers are truly great humans. /s

Law is an industry entirely based around charisma and precedent. Entirely "(s)he said, (s)he said". It's quite boring on a technical level, because maths are rarely involved. And quite frustrating on a human level, because judgments are based more on the judge's previous meal and night's sleep than the case facts.

I find it weird that they just took down the site and took over the twitter account during a search. Nothing has been ruled illegal. It’s like if someone sued Google and decided to take the search engine down during the initial search for illegal material. How is this legal? And even if the site is deemed illegal, how does that allow them to hijack his twitter account?

I'm more and more concerned about shit like this. I'm not doing anything illegal now, but that doesn't seem to stop companies from destroying your entire life if they even think you have done something illegal.

I feel like if I'd have to have anything that could be seen as remotely shifty behind additional encryption layers, preferably with a way to destroy the records completely at a distance.

I don't understand why searches can be done by private parties, with no police present. This seems extremely wrong to me. How can this be?

Perhaps something buried in the 20 pages of legalese that you consent to as “terms of service” when you “sign” your ISP/cable TV contract by saying “yes” into the phone when prompted?

They had a bailiff, so presumably they’d already been to court and got a court order.

If you refuse entry to a bailiff they’ll just call the police and knock your door down.

Depending on the local PD the police may be substantially less than thrilled that someone else is essentially serving a search warrant in their jurisdiction without a warrant. If the bailiff mouths off to the cops that respond (which he could very well do, bailiffs don't exactly have a lot of practice being polite with those that stand in their way) he could very well wind up being the one in handcuffs. You have nothing* to lose and plenty to gain by calling the police.

*Applies to non-white trash white folk only.

> they’ll just call the police and knock your door down

Not in this case they won't. They are absolutely not allowed to use force, even (legally) reasonable force, to enter. As such, if the defendant isn't home, they can't enter at all.

Also, the defendant is legally allowed to refuse entry. Or more precisely, they may only enter if the defendant permits entry. However, if the defendant does not permit entry, they may be in contempt of court.

And yes, I know the last bit is perverse. Apparently that's deliberate (at least it was in the English law from which the Canadian law was derived).

> And yes, I know the last bit is perverse

They would rather have it dealt with quietly in a court room than have a breach of the peace. In this case its your neighbors being protected not the defendant.

Predatory entities like huge corporations or legal trolls have the process of producing a court order entirely automated and an individual is simply unable to defend oneself without reacting accordingly at the right time. e.g. in the process of copyright trolling in Germany, one at some point has only 14 days to reject the claim sent from the court, otherwise the process automatically by default favours the predatory entity.

The concept of intellectual property was invented to further certain economic goals. It provides a social good. There is no doubt about that but it has a drastically shorter history than the concept of physical property (which predates written records to my knowledge)

The legal system has evolved many safeguards over the years related to improper search, self-incrimination and due process.

I find it curious how easily the latter is sacrificed in favour of the former without anyone suggesting we need to continually reevaluate the degree that the former provides us benefit.

I think this is partly a language problem. Intellectual "Property" has now become merely Intellectual Property without the quotes. This sleight of hand has led many to forget it's origin's and contingent nature and to treat it as some kind of natural right rather than a concession from the state to further commerce and creativity.

I think it's mostly a money problem. IP owners have a lot more money with which they can influence politics than people pirating movies.

Isn't that a systematic problem? Money should not influence politics

Should they not?

Money is free speech ... :-P

Doesn't pure Capitalism require that money rules?

Pure capitalism has no government that would suppress armed pushback

Pure capitalism relies on government to enforce contracts.

There's no capitalism without government, that would be anarchy.

Whether it's big government (with welfare, education, etc) or not, is another thing. But capitalism, pure or not, requires police, army, courts, and so on, and by extension, a tax system to fund their operation.

Else, it's just might that enforces anything it wants, and there are no contracts other than between people of equal power (since the more powerful can just steal whatever people with less power have).

Pure capitalism specifically doesn't rely on government with anything - even courts and enforcement would be private. It's much more complex, I recommend you to read something by Ludwig von Mises, he answers what you said on top of saying why it'd be more fair etc. And yes, pure capitalism is anarchy but that doesn't mean there would not be order.

Of course these terms were redefined a lot during the last 100 years. We might simply misunderstand each other because each of us uses a different definition made by another person and taught by another school of thought as well as different university/professor.

Anyways even if there was a government and law enforcement etc, in pure capitalism having more money would not help, government would be strictly neutral and the civil law minimal. If the government helps a company it's definitely not pure capitalism regardless of what the exact definition is.

>Pure capitalism specifically doesn't rely on government with anything - even courts and enforcement would be private.

Doesn't make sense to have private courts since anybody with a large enough power (e.g. hired thugs) can take them over.

If you mean that the individuals in such a scheme would agree to pay each to have a "private court/police" enforce their contracts etc, then that's the same as government, just one without voting (and presumably there would be some way to settle how those courts/police would operate too, which might end up as a contract itself, but people will have to agree to its terms first, so there's some voting there too).

>If the government helps a company it's definitely not pure capitalism regardless of what the exact definition is.

How that makes it anything more than wishful thinking though? If the government officials pocket money to favor one company, that's fully compatible with the greed and egoism that's essential for capitalism (according to Adam Smith and co “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest").

What would prevent them to do it under the table, aside from morals?

>If you mean that the individuals in such a scheme would agree to pay each to have a "private court/police" enforce their contracts etc, then that's the same as government, just one without voting

Actually, there is voting. Those individuals are voting with their money. But, this is more direct market signaling rather than being relayed to a "representative" in our "republic".

>Those individuals are voting with their money.

In that case, a person with more money will have more influence over that police/court etc to favor them.

How's that different (except cruder) than the current scheme, where the do it through influencing government first? It just makes it more explicit and removes any counter-balances.

You're thinking about it on a too small scale, but there are many more factors - it's not just a single transaction! Consider what happens to stocks when a company does something unpopular.

I reiterate my recommendation of Ludwig von Mises. His books are really good and it's worth a read even if you completely disagree (just like I read Marx). He tried to answer every question you've written here and definitely more in detail and better than I ever could. There are even individual texts online (taken out of his books) where you can read about a single issue - the texts are not even that long, 20 minutes a piece.

I'll have a look, thanks.

As for that though:

>You're thinking about it on a too small scale, but there are many more factors - it's not just a single transaction! Consider what happens to stocks when a company does something unpopular.

Their success might not depend on popular demand or any stock market. They might have control over something valuable like oil or water supplies, which is not very elastic in its demand.

A company's success always relies on customers; the key here being elasticity in supply because then customers can simply sidestep the offending company by creating a new one. Of course the company might somehow gain a natural monopoly, however I think that technological progress will solve that for us - there is a lot of water in space and oil will be replaced by electricity/hydrogen pretty soon anyways, definitely earlier than any entity at all including governments would be able to control even a single resource planet-wide.

Then there is the people factor - people are not dumb, they simply will not sell their water/oil resources if they see someone trying to build a monopoly.

IMHO oil company influence on the government is a major hold up of electrification (actively opposing nuclear power plants and so on) - without that influence electricity could be much cheaper and electric vehicles in bigger demand, government funds could be invested in research of batteries etc.

The assumption of modern anarchists is that contrary to the past, a single individual today is very powerful and independent thanks to technology and the riches it comes with - and they could use that strength in combination with other individuals to resist corporations and shape the world around them. Consider that just 100 years ago mere communication between ordinary people was almost impossible on longer distances, today ordinary people are able to buy a tank or a small fighter jet (of course in a group - BTW I actually have a friend that owns a tank and another friend that owns a fighter jet, of course gunless).

Politics are controlled by two things:

(a) money

(b) popular revolt (or vigilance)

Without (b) there's just (a).

There's some kind of moral value in there some where isn't there? a little shred of human decency? At least for a month or two when the politicians first get started?

In some few specific cases? Sure. On average/over time? Effectively never.

It's easy to adapt one's moral values to what brings in more money.

"Yeah, I'm getting these paybacks from companies, but I do it to support my campaign, else this scoundrel, my opponent would have gotten elected, who would have voted for very bad policies".

Besides, long term, the system self-selects against too much morality. If they can't trust you to keep your mouth shut and play the game, you wont get the support you need to get to the next level.

The one willing to put up with everything and anything, either participating, or keeping their mouth shut and pretending to be above it while still allowing it to happen, becomes President.

Money (USD) is controlled by one thing:

* The FED

That's just an agency.

He who has the money controls the FED too.

That ship sailed long ago (at least one or two copyright extensions ago in the last century) when copyright and patents ceased to serve their intended purpose and started being used to protect business turf in perpetuity.

The websites offering piracy services or advertising/promoting the availability of pirated content should simply be blocked at a national level. It seems to be working well enough in Australia: piracy visits are down 50%, piracy volumes are down 25%. This is following their DNS-based blocking of sites like ThePirateBay a few years ago. Its certainly better than suing people.

Let's start by dialing back the ridiculous DRM, which makes it a lot more convenient to pirate content, rather than pay for the DRM-laden official releases.

No thanks.

I prefer to help content rights holders fund increasingly broad DRM capabilities which enable control of my devices by unknown third parties. Can't wait until the next "innovation" like this gem comes out: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootk...

What ridiculous DRM?

I can use Google for piracy, should that be blocked as well? Search for "NameOfMovie watch online free" and either the top links will be just that or the "DMCA Blocked" link at the bottom will be another website containing exactly that.

Should we block Google?

If not, under what situation would we block other sites? They also just 'link to content' rather than host it themselves.

The industry generates a list of URLs which are submitted to an Australian court to review, then ISPs are instructed to block them.

Of course there are loopholes, but a 53% reduction in vists to piracy sites after about 14 months indicates that the blocking was effective.

https://www.smh.com.au/technology/site-blocking-hinders-fewe...

> Of course there are loopholes, but a 53% reduction in vists to piracy sites after about 14 months indicates that the blocking was effective.

How do stats like that even get generated? Don't they assume that one knows literally all piracy going on?

Just because there was a 53% reduction in visits to certain piracy sites, who's gonna say those 53% didn't simply go to other, not tracked/blocked, sites to get what they want?

Does that translate to more media sales? Is all the "whack-a-mole" game even worth the revenue increase? In any case does the increased revenue benefit the australian population?

Fairfax owned SMH were one of the major groups lobbying for these measures, largely due to impact on cable TV sales. It's no surprise they claim they were successful, and it's not one we can consider overly credible.

Around the time these rules came in, Netflix became a thing, and Australian networks started to compete by removing the pattern of putting shows on TV two years after being shown in the US.

I remember when they were promoting a big deal around cliffhangers in Lost, but anyone with ThePirateBay had seen the next two seasons. The fact this situation is largely addressed is why most people around me stopped pirating.

Does this perhaps coincide with services like netflix gaining in popularity?

It probably helped, but piracy site visits were down 53% in 14 months.

https://www.smh.com.au/technology/site-blocking-hinders-fewe...

> There is no doubt about that

Yes there is. Look up dominant assurance contracts.

Why is it that people don't even think there could be doubt that the fundamental idea of copyright is sound? Why do they not look up if there have been arguments the opposite way? People are been given handwavey arguments for why the free market can't do this, why the free market can't do that, why this requires government intervention. And then they buy the reasoning that if not for copyright, there would be no incentive to provide intellectual goods. And then they immediately buy the conclusion that we ought to have copyright lengths of 70 years, that we ought to apply copyright automatically to all created goods. Soon they tell you that actually copyright was a natural right all along!

The whole thing is diseased. At least have some doubt.

Reading their whole post, their opinion seems to either be similar to yours, both of you end by rejecting it as a natural right, or they are the most devout absolute monarchist in centuries.

There really is no doubt that it provided some good, there is doubt that it provided a total benefit or if that good was worth the cost.

I actually do but I was trying to state a reasonable middle ground and sow some seeds of doubt. The general consensus seems to be that intellectual property is an unbridled good and so moving the needle a small amount towards doubt seemed like a good first step.

> The concept of intellectual property [...] provides a social good. There is no doubt about that [...]

There's definitely a doubt about that. Not only about copyright but even about patents. Nearly all most influential discoveries were not patented.

And when it comes to copyright there is vast amount of data how disregarding copyright improves peoples lives and economy developments. Outside US there are whole industries running on pirate software thay wouldn't exist if copyright was enforced.

Media companies behave like warlords claiming an absolute monopoly on media content distribution and treating accordingly anyone they might perceive as competition.

So according to the article you don't have to let them in to search your residence (although you may be held in contempt) but these fine individuals turned up with a locksmith?

IANAL but sounds like a case of bad faith if I've ever heard it. Should've forced them to use the locksmith and then had the cops charge them with burglary.

I'm not familiar with Canadian law, but under UK law which I suspect is similar, this is called a Civil Search Order[0] or Anton Pillar Order.

"A search order is probably the most draconian order the court can make" [1]

However there is no forcible power of entry and there is no right as such to require entry, however the judge granting the order can hold you in contempt of court and jail you if you do not grant entry. An independent lawyer must be present who is not directly acting for the plaintiff to represent the subject of the order. It's very very expensive.

Edit: Canadian law does appear to be based on UK law to some extent [2]

[0]https://www.inbrief.co.uk/civil-court/search-orders/

[1] https://uk.practicallaw.thomsonreuters.com/2-204-8056?origin...

[2] https://www.mnp.ca/en/posts/civil-search-warrants-in-canada-...

From [0]:

> That if the defendant is a woman living alone, that a woman must accompany those executing the order;

This seems oddly sexist.

Protecting only one group from dangers that overwhelmingly apply only to that group is not bigotry.

It says in the article that it was an Anton Pillar Order. They scewed it up though, everything said by the defendent was ruled an interrogation and thrown out.

Most of these companies are not run by very bright people. Their businesses are only still here because they are a government oligarchy.

> "everything said by the defendent was ruled an interrogation and thrown out."

No, the article says that ruling was overturned later.

This is why castle doctrines and stand-your-ground laws exist and should exist, imho.

So you can get shot by the police? Neither of those is ever going to give you the right to overrule a court order with a gun, and doing this in a country where people are routinely shot for mere suspicion of having a gun is extremely risky.

It's not that simple.

Castle laws and a high likelihood of any particular household being armed tends to result in the sort of shenanigans like described in TFA not happening at all because it becomes an unnecessary risk from the point of the people who are approving it.

The (IMO) best example of this is abuse of no-knock search/arrest warrants. When you kick down someone's door in the middle of the night they're likely to shoot at you if they can. Yelling "police" won't be enough to prevent someone from shooting back a lot of the time because people don't generally have the best situational awareness after being woken up at 3AM by a bang. The police are well aware of that any no-knock warrant has a chance of killing on of their own which would result in a lot of questions being asked and a need to justify to the public their actions that lead to the death of the officer. Getting officers killed because you wanted to play cowboy when it wasn't strictly necessary is not something the police unions and professional associations take kindly to. No chief wants that on their record. This is why sloppy/unjustifiable use of no-knock warrants is rarer places where a large chunk of the population (particularly the lower classes) are armed.

It's not about you personally being able to shoot back. It's about having the ability to and how that affects the risk/reward equation for the people calling the shots who have to think at the statistical level.

Back to the article, a judge is much less likely to give the ok for some corporate lawyers, a locksmith and a bailiff (i.e. not a bunch of uniformed police officers) to go poke around someone's property if there's a chance that it could provoke an armed confrontation (which could end in a way that could come back to bite him/her).

If Mr. Lackman resided in a "rough" trailer park in a state with castle doctrine and constitutional carry (which as an aside tend to actually be almost free of violent crime) I guarantee at least one employee in the courtroom would have giggled a little when the corporate lawyers described where they wanted to go and what they want to do. It would be like someone asking to release some tiny bug fix on prod on Black Friday, sure it would probably work fine and nothing would go wrong but you'd get laughed at for asking because it's just not worth the risk.

On the other hand - if the court orders a search of someone's property, I want it to be carried out. We can sit here and argue that the court should have never ever issued such order in the first place, but the law has to be followed.

If the court orders a search of someone's property, it should be done by law enforcement, not be the accusing party.

In a criminal case, sure. In a civil case, law enforcement isn't involved at all (at least in old English common law based countries)

I guess that why a bailiff was present - as an officer of the court authorized to oversee such matters.

So now we're giving companies with an axe to grind the judicial power to enforce the laws themselves? That seems like a really good idea.

The what now? They are not enforcing anything - the court is. They took the matter to court and essentially said "look, we have all reason to believe that person X has our property on their premises, we ask for permission to enter those premises to recover our property". And the court says "ok, but in order to make sure there is no funny business, I'm sending an independent lawyer and technical experts appointed by this court to accompany you". That sounds absolutely fine to me, no?

It's like if someone rented your car and didn't return it at the end of the rental period - that's not theft, or at least it would be hard to prove it as such, so at least right off the bat, it's not a criminal case. It's against the contract you two had though, and you would have to sue the rentee in civil court - and yes, the court would absolutely allow you to go to the yard where the car was kept, and recover it yourself - they would maybe send a bailiff with you, but not an actual police officer.

Is that "allowing private citizens/companies power to enforce laws"? Of course not.

1.) Running a website that allows other people to upload their own software for others to download is hardly comparable to stealing a rental car. He can hardly be said to have "had the claimant's property on his premises".

For comparison, Github takes an equally "laissez-faire approach to policing content on its site". Should the creators of Github be raided, questioned for 9 hours, passwords handed over, and the website taken offline, just because a user uploads something that a megacorp doesn't like?

2.) "I'm sending an independent lawyer and technical experts appointed by this court to accompany you" - they are actually appointed by the claimant, not the court.

1) and this brings us back to my original point - we can sit here and argue that the court should have never issued such order in the first place. But because it did, I want to see it carried out(or maybe let me put it this way - I don't want to see the power of search warrants neutered, just because courts sometimes misuse them. They are hugely helpful tool for law enforcement, and we should definitely work against courts issuing them frivolously or under pressure from corporations).

2) Quoting from the article: "One of the lawyers represented some of Canada’s most powerful telecommunications and media companies: Bell, Rogers, Vidéotron, and TVA. The other was there to be an independent observer on behalf of the court."

> I don't want to see the power of search warrants neutered, just because courts sometimes misuse them.

This isn't a search warrant though.

He was there to be an independent observer, but he is appointed by the claimant, see the link posted elsewhere in this thread: https://www.inbrief.co.uk/civil-court/search-orders/

Even if the car example was valid, which I'd argue against, and even if the company itself would be allowed to go onto your property to obtain that car, which I'm not sure that actually can, the comparison would still be invalid.

The search isn't limited to just the data which that say you have stolen, but are allowed to basically get copies of anything digital you own, even things which have nothing to do with the matter at hand. Medical documents? Well, the hard drive they are on could contain stolen data, so they can copy the entire harddrive. Confidential data of clients you have? Same thing.

This is the big problem as I see it. Not normally would pictures of your family be taken in evidence for an unrelated crime, to be gone over later by some unseen third party.

Here they just hoover up everything and once it's out the door you don't know what happens to it or who's looking at it.

It seems to me like these companies were able to use a legal form of intimidation to shut down someone offering a competing technology platform.

Not a pirate but a competitor.

A non neutral party can plant "proof of piracy."

Even if they didn't do that, what happens when you share your house with one or more room mates? Are all of you electronics and your social media accounts, or even worse, bank accounts, in danger, because, well 'someone in this house is suspect of doing a boo boo, so we're confiscating everything'?

While I agree that it should be done by law enforcement, the court order already requires that a lawyer with no connection to the case should be present, as well as court appointed technical experts. I think that's a pretty strong protection.

Who pays for that independent lawyer?

If the accusing party, is there not a conflict of interest?

Unjust laws should result in a bullet to head of anyone who tries to carry them out.

It is the only way to justify tyranny.

> Deep-pocketed companies, on the other hand, “not only have the resources to pursue [perceived harms] to the point where individuals don’t have the ability to defend themselves, but also to advance mechanisms with fewer safeguards,” Israel said.

Does anyone else feel this shouldn't be the case? Clearly, the amount of money in your pockets shouldn't decide the quality of legal representation. We need to evaluate alternate proposals that fixes these gaps.

I'd say the law should pool together the defense and plaintiff budgets and split it half and half for each parties lawyers who then would auction for the right to represent.

Thus giving each party comparable lawyers, driving down the cost of legal representation and giving everybody a fairer process.

He was smart for calling a lawyer during the search, but he committed a major error by providing login credentials for his machines. Yikes.

> he committed a major error by providing login credentials for his machines

At the point when one is forced to unlock electronic devices on request even during security check on the airport, one is simply unable to identify when some legal bullies exceed their authority.

> providing login credentials for his machines >

I would not recommend doing so without consulting with a lawyer either, but how does this work in civil law? There is no assumption of innocence in civil law as I understand it.

If one did not do what one is accused of, but refuse to prove that by not participating in discovery, can then the other party ask for a judgment against you?

He was stupid for opening the door or talking to them at all.

That is just awful...and all this time i thought Canada was a far freer (as in liberty) place to live. Huh.

When it comes to individual protections specifically around searches and especially speech protections, the UK, Canada and Australia are far less free than the United States.

I wonder if there's a Linux package that can wipe your server/ computer when you input a specific code when logging in?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18153862

> “I never saw this as hurting [rights holders],” Lackman told me. “People run sites that link to content—torrent sites. Those are the people who are stealing the movies.”

typical feigned naivete

How come pirates making decent money with sites like this always seem to be woefully unprepared for any sort of legal action being taken against them?

What is there to gain? They know they're boned as soon as they get sued. Might as well just take the money instead of giving it to a lawyer.

They meet my 2 Rottweilers and my German Shepard?

If they do anything more than bark they will be put down.

You will be left with your dogs dead even if you are innocent.

If they come to my house and hurt my dogs, that is not going to end well.

True. It won't end well for the dogs.

But the representatives of these companies are not armed forces. It would be very wrong if they were able to use any force beyond air pressure coming from their throats.

Someone hurts my dog, on my property, with no warrant? And they aren't even cops?

They better bring more than 30 people with them is all I'm saying. And some EMT's because I live like an hour from the nearest emergency medical treatment.

Canada is NOT a democracy, is a "protectorate" of UK crown, so do not be surprised. Canadians are NOT citizen, they are, formally, subjects of her majesty the queen.

In continental Europe such an action is simply illegal: only officers can enter a home, only with justice permission or for danger-life situation. Also any IT device can't be sized looking for digital proof, they must be imaged locally with image given to the defendant with relative hashes and a proper chain of custody. Of course sometime police forgot doing that and in MANY cases any proof became simply invalid in court.

Dear "citizens" freedom does not came from "ether" and stay forever, must be conquered and kept. Business as usual and classic Chomsky frog principle are the best weapon few people have to shift between representative government to corporatocracy.

> Canada is NOT a democracy, is a "protectorate" of UK crown, so do not be surprised.

It is not a protectorate of the UK crown, it is a separate constitutional monarchy that happens to have the same sovereign as the UK; like most similarly-situated ex-British states (and Britain itself), the substantive form of government is a representative democracy.

And further, having a monarchy (or even being "a \"protectorate\" of [a] crown") says nothing of the legality of private companies searching citizens homes...

Sorry for my poor English, not my motherlanguage. You are right being a monarchy says nothing of the legality of private companies searching citizens homes. However being a monarchy means NOT being citizens, peer between peers and thet's a very very very important thing that may justify anything else.

Symbols are symbols but still have their importance.

English may not be your first language but you clearly are not in possession of how constitutional monarchies work.

Even in the UK British people _are_ citizens, so could you please stop repeating this nonsense? https://www.gov.uk/check-british-citizen

Canada has it's own rules on citizenship and you can find them here: https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/se...

The word for 'citizen' may have such a meaning in your native language, but I'm afraid it does not translate.

You ignore the most basic fact of freedom, that it lives in the hearts and minds of the people. It doesn't really matter what's written down on paper, the Canadian people would not follow the Queen.

No, I do not ignore but it doesn't matter what people think if people live in such form of government, symbols still matter.

Do not forget that nazism, fascism etc do not born as "bad guys with many guns and ammunition", they born as founded small political parties and they grow, not so suddenly, thanks to a certain political environment, certain economic environment and a small laws at a time, following what we call now Chomsky frog model. They start to be "bad guys" when they feel strong enough.

I do not say that Canada will evolve soon in a new nazi country of course, but I'm pretty sure it will evolve in a corporatocracy more and more powerful and Canadians have less symbolic and democratic/formal weapons to fight that change.

Well history proves you wrong. The last British monarch that ignored the will of Parliament had their head cut off in front of a crowd. There is no divine right of Kings anywhere in the Commonwealth.

Ever since the restoration in 1660 the deal has been that the monarch has to follow the will of the people as expressed through Parliament. For example Charles 2nd wanted to convert to Catholicism but couldn't for political reasons.

That was further strengthened by the Glorious Revolution and the Bill of Rights 1689 and the Act of Settlement 1701.

Your assertion that Canadians are somehow more likely to fall to corporatocracy because they live in constitutional monarchy is just naive ignorance.

I know we are supposed to be all up in arms about his rights and certainly that is a big issue, but at the same time... he was running a questionable / edgy website... "he took a laissez-faire approach to policing which addons made it onto his site."

At some level, given the history of previous issues like this, what did he expect?

> what did he expect?

A fair trial?

Who said the real world was fair?

Sure, it is an ideal thing to hope for a fair trial and due process, but if I stick a target on my back by doing something edgy, the last thing I would expect is to get treated fairly as a first reaction to something.

That's a valid point, but it doesn't mean the absence of a fair trial is something that should be ignored, and it's quite reasonable to demand a fair trial in a situation where one has been denied to you.

Yet corporates seem to routinely take a 'laissez-faire' approach to policing and get away with it. No one is banging on Google's or Uber's door with orders.

Businesses seem to get away with more, protected by law and due process, and with recourse to lobby and challenge and even if found guilty merely fined while individuals lives can be turned upside down, with processes and records that have far reaching consequences.

There seems to be a fundamental imbalance at work here.

It brings to mind that recent case of a Facebook user who posted a recent movie on Facebook which was downloaded 6 million times!

The uploader is facing prison, but Facebook is seemingly above reproach.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18004544

In my humble opinion, this guy deserved what happened to him, which was justified in its entirety.

He was an enabler of technologies that allowed sharing of information for enjoying content without permission from authors of said content.

Also, in my humble opinion, this should cover anyone that provides links, including search engines.

Furthermore, again in my humble opinion, copyrights should be permanent, and I really see no reason why someone should stop enjoying the success of their creation as long as their creation is popular. If there is demand for something, why shall it not produce profit?

Permanent copyright? So you're saying your great-grandchildren should be entitled to reap the benefits of something they did not create and has nothing to do with them, long after the death of the original creator?

Permanent copyright might in the end be a good thing, because it's so completely unworkable in real life, that we'll be forced to put in place enough exceptions as to make copyright in its current form extinct.

Yes, absolutely.

If one creates a timeless piece of work, then whoever inherits the rights to this should enjoy the benefits as well.

By your humble opinion do you think links are copyrightable? Why are links a problem? If for example I post hxxps://thepiratebay.org/torrents/some_id is that to a copyrighted content? What if that link was to my free book I decided to post for free? What if now the website changes that link to a pirated movie? Do you think that links have a permanent quality?

Just because something could provide access to copyrighted material via illegal means doesn't mean it should be stopped or blocked.

I don't even think I should go into the permanent copytight, it sounds more like a troll statement than anything...

> Just because something could provide access to copyrighted material via illegal means doesn't mean it should be stopped or blocked.

And your justification for that is? you failed to give one.

The possibility of links being changed to something else is not one, because it would never happen that you post a link to your own work named 'Venom' for example, and then a third party comes and changes it to 'Venom, the movie'. This has never happened and it will probably never happen.

No links, should be copyrightable, links should be permissible: if you have permission from the author, only then you can post a link to to it.

> I don't even think I should go into the permanent copytight, it sounds more like a troll statement than anything...

Not a troll, I am deadly serious.

My justification is blacklisting rather than whitelisting. You are not born guilty and have to prove you are of a good character. Just because you can commit a crime does not mean we should ban everything you can use to commit crime.

If I link to Venom the movie I still have permission from the pirate bay to link to it. The pirate bay or the uploader (who actually created the file itself and the description to that file) will be the author. [if you don't think the uploaded is the author of the new file checkout what you get charged for in the UK for downloading a child pornography file -> creating a NEW child pornography file. obvs not supporting child porn but i still feel this is a bit excesive]

Like links are nothing more than pointers. It's like saying if you had permission from the author of this book can you only tell other people.

As for the permanent copyright -> Your work is not original it's a remix (there is a great video on youtube). You never come up with an original idea. It's always influenced by others. So this kinda kills the whole "original idea" myth we have. Let's say you have to write a short story no more than 5 words. There are just N possible combinations you can do. What you should have copyright until the universe ended because you wrote every single combination? Just because you were the first person to go to the moon does not mean you own the moon. Why should it be any diff with the 5 words sentance you were asked to write?

I'm assuming this was sarcasm. But to be sure I'll provide an opposite view:

A [farmer|musician] has [a plow|a guitar], and he uses it to [grow food|play music]. This provides value to other people, so he sells the results of his work. When he dies, the [plow|guitar] is inherited by his children, and they decide if they will use it and do necessary maintenance. If a [farmer|musician] stops working, there is no reason he should get paid.

As creating copyrighted works is a lot harder than cloning them, it is reasonable for the creator to get a temporary monopoly. But the important word here is temporary. If you take a few weeks to write a song, you might get at most a few years of this monopoly. After that, it's time to get working on your next creation.

What's the right time period? For a song, maybe a year. For a well-reasearched book, maybe 5 years. If you keep working on it after release, an extension might be acceptable, but even then 10 years should be the maximum. 75 years after your death? That's insane.

> I'm assuming this was sarcasm.

Unfortunately for you, I am deadly serious.

> If a [farmer|musician] stops working, there is no reason he should get paid.

There is no such thing as 'stops working'. There is a thing called 'stops providing value'.

A farmer that does not produce anything has stopped providing value to others.

A musician's the music of which is no longer desirable also has stopped producing value to others.

> it is reasonable for the creator to get a temporary monopoly.

No, he doesn't get a monopoly through copyright. A monopoly is a state where within a domain, there is only one producer. You can't say the domain of music only contains the song creator.

> After that, it's time to get working on your next creation.

You haven't presented any reason for doing so.

> What's the right time period? For a song, maybe a year. For a well-reasearched book, maybe 5 years. If you keep working on it after release, an extension might be acceptable, but even then 10 years should be the maximum. 75 years after your death? That's insane.

If your work is so good that it has mass appeal over a span of 100 years, then why not get paid for it? why do you want free stuff like this? after all, we are talking about a piece of work that would have almost unprecenteded success.

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