Convicted Copyright Troll Lawyer Reboots Pirate Honeypot Scheme from Prison
torrentfreak.com
torrentfreak.com
How is that not "granting permission" to whoever subsequently download the video?
Seems like an easy defense would be having the site add a small section about that in their TOS.
And regarding downloading or acquiring or even purchasing: it has never been up to the consumer to know who has the authorization (license) to distribute a work. We just assume Walmart/Target/Netflix/Amazon etc has the rights to sell us whatever we consume. It isn't our problem.
We have a regime that is ripe for abuse by these honeypots.
That much is true, but when it's the rights holder that's uploading the content, then it's not copyright infringement because they chose to upload it to be shared, while actually having the proper rights to do so.
With DDL hosters there's quite a few that put in the ToS how by uploading a file that publicly accessible for download, you confirm that you have the right to do so, as these services usually do have a ToS as they are mostly run by legit companies.
While with a decentralized p2p network, as bittorrent is, there's really no way to enforce a system wide ToS.
> Torrent sites frequently track uploads and kick users off that don't upload
Not "sites" do that, but communities centered around trackers do that to ensure that there's actually enough upload bandwidth and not just a bunch of leechers that only download but never contribute with their upload bandwidth.
I don’t see any regulatory framework or statute or case law that matches it
You can’t assume the rights holder is giving tacit consent to non-license holders to share. You can assume they are mitigating bandwidth constraints using the bittorrent protocols. Assuming the other seeders are pirates like “you” is the bad assumption here. Relying on autoseeding software to distort the legal reality is the bad assumption here (someone else mentioned this).
That is how you reconcile it.
If you are sharing things you dont have a license from the creator or another license holder to share, it is copyright infringement. If you are sharing things you have that authorization from then it is not.
Note this isn't universally true. For instance, download is copyright infringement in Japan. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_sharing_in_Japan
It seems they slipped up and made a little mistake, though!
> YouTube Class Action: Same IP Address Used to Upload ‘Pirate’ Movies & File DMCA Notices [0]
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Legally, it’s complicated. If I upload code to GitHub with no license attached, it is technically “all rights reserved.” As in, you have no right to use it at all. If someone has no way of finding out their legal right to use my code, they aren’t allowed to. Same with YouTube: if I make a movie and put it on YT, that’s not an implicit license for you to copy elsewhere.
Logically, it being on a torrent website, you would think it would be different because seeding is a thing, but the law says otherwise.
The problem is that the law doesn’t make a distinction between “seeding” and “distribution”. They’re one and the same.
Disclaimer: IANAL
In that same vein, a torrent site could have something like this on their upload page: "By adding this torrent to the tracker, you certify that you have the rights to distribute the file, and you hereby grant permission to distribute the file to every user of the site." I don't think Hansmeier could pull off his stunt anymore, as he just granted permission to everyone to do what he was trying to catch them doing.
Something like an affirmative checkbox on torrent trackers would be a better thing, but it would only prevent situations like Prenda (which are rare).
Rights-holders already go after them; this would have the effect of protecting everyone else. At least, that's my theory (but IANAL).
Note: Youtube has similar terms (the Youtube license) granting all users the rights to reproduce AND modify all videos. Now I wonder if you can do information laundering. i.e. "I was granted permission by Youtube" to appeal a DMCA.
In this man's case, he should probably be forbidden from ever owning the copyright to anything again. Anything he utters with his own mouth should go straight into the public domain. That would put an end to this horse shit from him.
Given that he has never victimized the public, worry about whether he "continues to victimize the public" is obviously misplaced.
I see a huge problem with it, if you were sent to prison for abusing copyright law for your personal gain.
You can be treated as a nuisance by the court, if you demonstrate a tendency to file meritless suits, but Hansmeier didn't do that either. He was sent to prison for lying to the court; the merits of his copyright suit don't enter into it.
And again, even if you're formally a nuisance, you can't be barred from the courts. That would be a travesty of justice. You just get your suits viewed more prejudicially.
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/26/us/computer-internet-rest...
Can you imagine if we allowed someone’s entire right to the courts be removed? In that instance, you wouldn’t even be able to challenge your lack of rights. That’s not right. But by advocating for no access to the courts in one instance, there will be people advocating for more. So we draw the line somewhere and say your right to the courts can’t be taken away.
I’m also ignoring how you’re ignoring the actual reality of the Prenda scandal. It wasn’t over copyright infringements lawsuits. It was about lying to the court. Sure, they filed frivolous lawsuits, but that wasn’t why they were arrested.
Paul Hansmeier isn't in jail for abusing copyright, or for doing anything the courts thought was wrong relating to copyright. He's in jail for misrepresenting facts to the court. The entire case against Prenda was that they represented to the court that they were agents of the copyright owner, when in fact they were the copyright owner themselves. There was nothing, legally, wrong with their suit.
And yet everyone seems to think of the Prenda case as a victory against copyright trolling. It is no such thing! Why would Hansmeier lose rights to own copyrights, when he didn't do anything wrong with the copyrights he had?
The minor point here is that what he's suing for has no connection to his misbehavior. If lying to the court in a copyright lawsuit doesn't bar him from suing for libel, there's no reason for it to bar him from suing for copyright infringement.
The major point is that malfeasance in a lawsuit can't get you barred from the courts, for the obvious reason that people can still commit crimes against you even if you once misrepresented yourself in court.
It's much like a mob boss, who keeps running his empire from prison. This is generally frowned upon by our correctional system, and can be resolved by monitoring mail, revoking visitation privileges, and punitive stints in solitary.