Disclosure of Pirates’ Identities “Compatible with EU Privacy Laws” | Hacker News Reader

Disclosure of Pirates’ Identities “Compatible with EU Privacy Laws”

torrentfreak.com

55 pointsgslin48 comments

And I thought the "pirates" referred to armed people in boats capturing cargo ships, not copyright infringers.

It started as a scare tactic that goes back all the way to when people "pirated" music by recording radio on tape.

The idea was to turn public opinion against copyright infringement by using terminology associated with violent crimes, such as piracy and robbery.

Ofc it backfired spectacularly, with the "pirating" community adopting the term and reveling in it. Who could have known that using a term that the general public immediately associates positively with countless novels, movies and other works of fiction, radiating a flair of adventure, swashbuckler charm and the freedom of the carribean seas, would fail to turn public opinion against something :D

The use of "pirate" for copyright infringement goes back to at least the 19th century and was originally used of books. By the time taping off radio started, the term was already well entrenched.

This is especially weird because there’s another usage of pirate in the form of “pirate radio.” This refers to radio stations that broadcast illegally, without a license. They also have a kind of swashbuckling reputation!

No doubt, Radio Caroline and Radio London both operated offshore

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Caroline

In the strictest sense the didn't broadcast illegally because they were at sea outside of the jurisdiction of any country.

Apparently this usage goes at least as far back as the 18th century!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_infringement#%22Pira...

Reminds me of that photo of Winston Churchill with the Tommy Gun, the Germans tried to spin it as him bring a gangster but it just ended up looking "cool".

https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/winston-churchill-tommy-gun...

Nowadays it's looking a lot more like Robin Hood the outlaw rather than Blackbeard, with movie studios, record labels, and book publishers taking up the roles of Prince John, The Sheriff of Nottingham, and Sir Guy.

Final part of the article: "The Advocate General’s Opinion is not binding on the Court of Justice. It is the role of the Advocates General to propose to the Court, in complete independence, a legal solution to the cases for which they are responsible. The Judges of the Court are now beginning their deliberations in this case. Judgment will be given at a later date."

The big argument against piracy is that it doesn't allow people to get paid for their work, however, with these recent Hollywood strikes and how people are getting paid $0.08 residuals I don't see how piracy makes anyone any worse off.

Arguably donating $50 to a writer and pirating everything is better than paying $100s to these streaming services.

Maybe WGA SAG AFTRA should make their own subscription called the "pirate pass" where pirates can pay the people directly for their work without all the overhead. If I was a pirate I'd $50 a month to get a pass.

The whole point of the strike was to fix this. And they got what they wanted when the studios came back to the table after they saw how completely wrecked Drew Barrymore got in the press and by the public when she scabbed.

The hypocrisy here is amusing. Interestingly also that piracy is de facto legal in many EU countries, at least as far as individuals downloading.

No it isn't.

Mostly authorities ignore it but probably is not legal.

Because prosecutors realize it generally looks unpopular and there's much better things they could be doing with their time in favor of the public interest.

They use the same legislation to go after people selling iptv server access but won't go after someone watching pirated movies in his living room.

In many EU countries it's decriminalized, hence me saying it was de facto legal.

What hypocrisy? There are almost no comments here.

Article/story, not comments.

>piracy is de facto legal in many EU countries, at least as far as individuals downloading

It's not legal, just the police in most countries have bigger fish to fry than people downloading mp3s and blu-ray rips.

But, try pirating content in Germany and you're guarantee to receive an angry letter with a fine from some crooked law office, threatening to sue you on behalf of the IP holder if you don't pay the fine. It's basically a legal mob shakedown.

Granted, this is more of German thing, as German laws makes it the European stronghold of copyright/IP trolls, while most of Europe doesn't bring out the jackboots for small-time internet piracy the way Germany does.

> It's not legal

I said de facto legal. Emphasis on the de facto.

It differs in EU countries though, and I recall reading at least some explicitly won't take action against consumers downloading on a home internet connection.

De jure is opposed to de facto, so saying de facto de jure doesn't make sense regardless of emphasis, hence the confusion

I never said de jure. What a weird comment to make.

Of course you did, that's what "legal" means

Wow. No. You clearly misunderstand 'de facto' and 'de jure'. That's fine, not going to argue the point with you. Take care.

Yeah, I'm not the confused party here

"De facto, (Latin: "from the fact") a legal concept used to refer to what happens in reality or in practice, as opposed to de jure ("from the law"), which refers to what is actually notated in legal code. "

Eh, I guess I will argue it a little further. You absolutely are the confused party. Perhaps English is not your first language? You've provided the definitions for de facto and de jure but they don't support your point, at all - you still show a fundamental misunderstanding.

If something is de facto legal, it means it is practically legal. That's exactly how I used it. I didn't say de jure as to say something was de jure legal would be redundant, and simply saying the word legal does not mean I said, or even implied de jure, as you rather ridiculously asserted.

You're entirely and completely wrong here, and seem to have no concept of how these terms are actually used in practice.

But since you seem to be the type who likes to argue for the sake of it, have at it. I'm curious how long you'll keep this going to avoid admitting fault.

In Switzerland it's pretty legal :) Okay, they're not in the EU, but I guess it's still an example.

https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/business/intellectual-property_...

Yep this is why I use Switzerland for my VPN exit.

Sharing is not legal there though. But downloading for personal use is.

It’s the same in Germany. You don’t get in trouble for simply downloading material. It’s the automatic upload happening when torrenting they usually base their case on.

Germany has quite the difference between file sharing and streaming. Copyright lawyers got their initial foot into the door through people also uploading during torrenting.

In Portugal there is an exception for copying copyrighted material for personal and noncommercial purposes.

The lobby does try to twist the letter of the law to serve their interest, but it is legal

The Portuguese exemption only applies to copyrighted media where the person doing the copying is doing it from a copy that they already owned and obtained legally, it in no way permits you to stream or torrent content from the internet.

It's not that clear cut. Such restriction to self owned content is not in the law at all, but is frequently raised by pro-copyright proponents as an interpretation.

Assuming there is no material misrepresentation of how this system operates, I would find it hard to argue that it is disproportionate to keep record of an IP address that somehow makes publicly available a file with copyrighted contents.

I too would, from a pure self-interest perspective, like to share e.g. media with impunity, but for the sake of evaluating this opinion it's not reasonable to assume a position where copyright doesn't exist.

I'd be interested in arguments against this opinion.

It is hard to argue against your position. TFA expounds that storing data required to prosecute a crime is proportionate. That sounds reasonable and hard to argue. In my eyes there are two points, however, that could be argued.

1) The data retention duration. France is holding some data sets for 13 years now without a charge forthcoming. I'm no expert on French law (or law in general) but it being a full-fledged liberal democracy with the rule-of-law, I guess there is some kind of a statute of limitation with regards to copyright infringement and I would find it hard to argue to keep the data beyond this point. Mind, the statute of limitations could be long-running (in Germany it usually is 30 years, unless the law says otherwise)

2) Seriousness of the crime. Under EU law data retention in the first place is only allowed in case of serious crimes. What is a serious crime? I think it arguable that copyright infringement is not a serious crime. To be not a serious crime it must fail to be a crime or to be serious. I think both positions can be argued, albeit being serious seems to be easier to unhinge.

But I'm not going to argue any of these ;)

Data connection retention is 1 year in France, not 13. This sounds like something related to taxes (eg. Invoices).

(Also, this law was ruled unconstitutional but shenanigans ensued.)

> To be not a serious crime it must fail to be a crime or to be serious. I think both positions can be argued, albeit being serious seems to be easier to unhinge..

AFAIK something qualifies as a crime if the law says you can get a jail sentence for it (and vice versa). So it's not something you can argue in favour or against, you just have to look at the current legislation. But you still got a point for the seriousness, since it's not a violent crime there's room for discussion here.

Crime is basically anything that's listed in special part of the criminal code (the general part talks mostly about the definitions and criminal procedure and also contains this provision; the special part is the actual list of crimes with punishments which don't have to include jail time to sill be considered crimes).

The two previous post are sort of legal positivism. Nothing wrong with that, I have read Kelsen, too -- but one could argue that copyright infringement should not be on "the list", IOW is not a crime. This, of course, would be a much more foundational discussion.

>Mind, the statute of limitations could be long-running (in Germany it usually is 30 years, unless the law says otherwise)

No https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statute_of_limitations#Germany

Thanks for correcting me.

Keeping track of the IP address is one thing, but then using your ISP’s database to link this back to a person with the intention of holding this over their head if you ever need to sounds like a form of extortion to me.

Or is it fine when it’s the state doing it?

That sucks

But myh GDPR

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