To extend your (frankly poor) metaphor, he wouldn't be a drug dealer if all he did was hold up a sign pointing you towards your nearest drug dealers and he never actually gave you any drugs.
18 USC § 2 - PRINCIPALS
(a) Whoever commits an offense against the United States
or aids, abets, counsels, commands, induces or procures
its commission, is punishable as a principal.
(b) Whoever willfully causes an act to be done which if
directly performed by him or another would be an offense
against the United States, is punishable as a principal.
Regardless, what's wrong with discussions about legality. A huge feature of any discussion board is that people can share opinions, debate, and correct each other when wrong.
I'm not sure if I'm mis-remembering you or if you used to have a different attitude on here, because in my head when I see your username I think of someone who's helpful and a good contributor to HN, but lately the comments I've seen from you are snide, snarky and not useful. I hope that either I'm just seeing the bad ones and missing the great ones, or that you're just going through a patch and will be back to your old self. Or perhaps I'm just wrong and being unfair to criticise you, but just calling it like I see it - if it was someone unknown making these comments I just feel they'd be getting downvoted to hell and for the most part ignored.
I'm sorry you feel I'm being snide. I don't intend to be. Regardless, each successive HN "legality" discussion drives me further towards some conclusions (here I'll use 'nerd' as a shorthand for "people such as myself who come from a tech background and like to argue on HN"):
* Very few nerds have taken the time to learn even basic facts about how the legal system works
* To a nerd, the legal system resembles a rule-based system, like a Sendmail configuration file
* Nerds feel entitled to reason through rule-based systems on nerd terms; in particular, nerds feel entitled to demand that all rule-based systems manifest themselves and are evaluated in the same terms that a programming language is
* Nerds generally feel pissed off when they inevitably discover that no legal system works on nerd terms
* As a result, nerds rarely read actual laws or statutes, and can generally be counted on to read only the first paragraph of any Techdirt story involving the law, enough to confirm their suspicion that the law is a gigantic broken computer program that is being systematically exploited by giant corporations to screw them out of free DVD rips.
Nerds are mostly wrong about this stuff.
MEANWHILE, 'citricsquid isn't even wading into that particular debate. Rather, he's making an argument that nerds should find colloquial. "Don't bullshit us", he says, "because we all know what The Pirate Bay is. We're nerds, for Pete's sake. Most of us could easily build The Pirate Bay ourselves." NO NO NO, says the rest of the thread. Whuh? WE SAID NO, the thread continues, BECAUSE IT'S MORE IMPORTANT TO CAPTURE THE GREATER TRUTH THAT THE LAW IS AN EVIL SCHEME TO SCREW US OUT OF FREE DVDS.
This is similar to an epiphany I had when reading a blog post explaining intellectual property through an analogy of the "color" of a portion of code. How intention and legal action shape the color, whereas software people tend to think only of the actual bits that represent it. Why independently coming up with an arrangement of bits could be fine while possessing that exact same arrangement from a different source is not. (It's the color of those bits.)
I just tried searching around but unfortunately could not find that post. I'd like to reread it. Anyone know what I'm talking about and have a link to it?
Another fun quirk of message board legal arguments, besides the propensity for participants to sincerely believe that only computer programmers possess the ability to reason about rule-based systems, is the belief that laws they don't like (or, more likely, that are inconvenient to their arguments) must be some terrible quirk of the fucked up US legal system. Sorry, no!
The laws are fucked up because of pervasive unethical political practices in the U.S. (and the entire world for that matter) where laws are made from the top down by those with the most money as opposed to the bottom up as our founding fathers intended via our representative democracy. (Side note, the internet is changing all of the above through the forums you denote as irrelevant as well as social media)
In regards to programmers calling the shots, I think you would be hard-pressed to find a group of people as intellectually capable percentage wise to make unbiased judgements on the nature of our laws.
They are certainly more capable that the majority of clowns in Washington.
I'm not sure that comments have a long enough shelf life for people to bet.
Part of what put me on my recent CISPA jihad is that CISPA is a case where I think nerds actually had a chance of collecting the context required for informed debate; unfortunately, the CISPA debate got hijacked by militant activism.
But there are cases where nerds clearly have little to offer. Look at the old Reiser threads if you want to groan about very smart people looking dumb talking about the law. "There's no such thing as circumstantial evidence! If you can't find a body, you have to acquit!" Similarly, in most cases revolving around computer hacking and unauthorized access, nerd mentality does more harm than good; nerds tend to fall back to arguments like "if it's common knowledge how to bypass some control, then bypassing that control can't reasonably constitute unauthorized access".
Would you agree?
Most programmers' opinions on the law (like most people in general) fall into one of two categories: fundamentally mistaken (e.g. "sharing an encrypted file can't be copyright infringement because they didn't copyright the encrypted form") or merely indignant. That's not to say a programmer can't be well-informed, but just that it's hubris to think that programming knowledge alone can give you some keen insight into the law without actually studying the law.
On the other hand, I definitely stop and read when I see something by, say, grellas — because I know what he'll have to say is very likely to be the result of study and careful analysis.
(And for the record, I don't pretend to know a lot about most aspects of the law. I'm not trying to act high and mighty here. And that's why I feel so apprehensive about blindly trusting programmers about this sort of thing — I know how much I don't know.)
2. The decision is for ISP. So no argument regarding the piratebay is valid at all.
3. The ISPs are not fitting into any of those rules.
4. If ISPs must block access to the pirate bay, then it must block access to every connection that would infrige a law if the territorial barrier were removed. In this case, a US/UK person accessing something that is illegal in the US/UK but not illegal where the pirate bay is being hosted.
consequences of number 4 would include:
AT&T DSL will have to block access from California residents to http://dmv.ny.gov/, as that site promote speed limits and GPS placement on the windshield that are illegal in california.
if it's interpreted as that once, thanks to incentives from the recording industry, why can't it then be called out later?
(this is base on watching law&order, not real life, that's why i'm discussing it here)
censoring child porn websites: right, censoring copyright infringement website: wrong.
Not sure I understand the difference? Either you're for censorship of websites, or you're against it, you can't pick and choose.
Second, even if by law it is, legality isn't binary. Both murder and stealing a bottle of milk from a shop are illegal, you wouldn't say "either you're for life inprisonment or you're against it, you can't pick and choose" would you? Not only can we pick and chose, our legal systems do pick and chose, and they always have done.
RE: your point that open space for people to link to shouldn't be illegal, is it ok then to create a CP linking website? Would you be OK with this?
Strictly speaking I don't think it would be illegal as long as no content on the site itself contravened the law. If you can differentiate it from a search engine that gives the links in SERPs then I'd back it being made illegal though - if you can't then Google/Bing/etc. are illegal if you can make the SERPs return a link to illegal content. Indeed a link site would be useful for the police as they'd have their job done for them to some extent. A site owner with only links would on the balance of probabilities have visited child pornography sites and so, in the UK at least, have broken the law.
This could lead to some verification being required for registering domains. Maybe then only domains verified by a domain registry as traceable to a person would be allowed to be routed. That could be automated.
I'm not saying that's how things should go but it doesn't seem too much of a stretch to think that things could go that way?
What I'd like to see in general is some balance. There needs to be a quid pro quo to tightening copyright restrictions. Giving us fair use privileges in the UK, like being able to make backups, format shifting and such would be a start. A reasonable copyright term, equable to patent terms would be better. If no such effort is made then it's all just business buying laws to suppress the masses AFAICT.
To consider UK "fair dealing" anything akin to US "fair use" is to not understand the scope of either IMO.
At the moment "format shifting" (but not time shifting) is still illegal, but no-one enforces it and it's going to be changed. (I haven't kept up; maybe it has already changed.)
As you say, being allowed to make backups is tricky if you're not allowed to circumvent technical protection measures.
I would think though that it could be seen as advertising child pornography if you provided the links that were all to child porn or that the links were labeled as child porn.
Copyright infringement: should not be illegal
Downloading films + music for personal use? Should get warnings and eventually a small fine if the issue persists (not £X per file downloaded - a download != a sale).
Commercial copyright infringement? Large scale should result in a few years of jailtime at the most + seized profits. Smaller scale should vary but should be lenient with profits seized.
We have never in the modern age in any modern first world country ever had an extended time WITHOUT copyright to see what would happen. Everyone just assumes every artist, developer, and investor would disappear overnight and everyone would turn to stone as content is freely distributed.
Or maybe we would just go massive kickstarter style (with some kind of contract guarantees unlike the current system) where the funds people have pay people to make the stuff they want, which is then free for everyone to consume since it is free to reproduce.
It is broken to control content at the distribution level when distribution and replication cost nothing. A really, really import thing to consider - the people who consume currently copyrighted material do not have infinite funds to consume. They spend their disposable income on limited selections of copyrighted materials. If they didn't have to pay for them, but knew their funds were needed to see that future works were created, they would not go buy 15 cars over 3 years and have nothing to watch on tv, they would give money to the shows and artists they like.
There MIGHT be a slight recession if that happened though, because without the "need" to pay for the things people want, they might take the time to pay off massive debts they have or get a savings buffer. But they could already do that, they just don't have the self restraint to. And if feeding off the inability of people to manage their own lives effectively is the only way for MAFIAA affiliates to stay in business, perhaps they should fail.
At that, why don't they fail? Of all the industries, film has been subject to upheaval approximately never. For the last century the big 5 have been established and held their power base with an iron grip. Independent film is nothing compared to them, indie games vs publishers is not even close to as bad as that situation. The major movie studios have no competition to theaters besides outside media forces but never to competitive "startups" because they control the market.
The Kickstarter model works fantastically well for creative people that already have a following/track record.For someone trying to connect with an audience the first time, not so much.
At that, why don't they fail? Of all the industries, film has been subject to upheaval approximately never. For the last century the big 5 have been established and held their power base with an iron grip. Independent film is nothing compared to them, indie games vs publishers is not even close to as bad as that situation. The major movie studios have no competition to theaters besides outside media forces but never to competitive "startups" because they control the market.
Not so: the biggest jolt to the industry was antitrust regulation in the 1940s, as discussed here - though paradoxically, in a way that's vaguely supportive of censorship: http://mises.org/freemarket_detail.aspx?control=178
The restrictive copyright model works fantastically well for creative people that already have a following/track record. For someone trying to connect with an audience the first time, not so much. Even the few musicians who hit it big with a debut album have actually worked very hard beforehand to persuade a record label to sign them, with very little reward.
They don't have to be experts, they just have to be good enough. If the decision is 100% of profits goto a label or 30% go to Apple if I just learn how to use iTunes, I think they'll choose iTunes...
Publishing means to make public and that isn't anything special any more, it's been commoditized.
I call bogus. I've only funded a single Kickstarter project, but it was a completely unknown musician I discovered while browsing Kickstarter. There's no way I'm unique in this.
Not everything has to be 'for the greater good' or for the 'long term benefit of the new age economy' or whatever in order for people to support it.
Are you saying people who defend copyright. Conciously are only being fair to a small subset of the population. But unfair to the majority. And a net loss to humanity. And still they defend copyright?
I don't think so. It seems to me, those who defend copyright have the opinion that copyright is a net benefit to humanity. After all pros and cons are summed. Which I strongly disagree.
The point is that it isn't necessarily favoritism as anybody could create copyrighted works so I wouldn't see it as 'unfair' unless you had to apply to the government for copyright or something like that.
Besides copyright is a net benefit if it helps intellectual property get produced.
I am not arguing that IP would not get produced if it were not for copyright as that is clearly not true. However I'm not sure it is to everyones benefit if creatives had to work 8 hours a day at 7/11 and then only produce on nights/weekends or that they had to hope for some kind of handout (which could well just be companies wanting to advertise or politicians wanting to create propaganda).
Whether it's a net benefit to humanity, however you measure that, is neither here nor there. It probably is, but those are not the grounds we're arguing on.
It's sort of like defending privacy. You don't defend it cause of some net benefit to humanity. Who knows, maybe the world would be happier if there were no secrets. You defend privacy because it's fair on an individual level.
Why shouldn't I be able to make back-up copies of the DVDs that are bought with good money? Why should the descendants of Tolkien be able to censor any works of art that includes hobbits? Why should Time Warner be able to censor me from singing happy birthday in public? Why should Google be blocked from bringing out-of-print books to the public? Once a work is published, I don't see why an author should be able to control what's no longer theirs, any more that I would expect a plumber to dictate what I'm allowed to do with the plumbing in my house. Both plumbers and artists labour, and they deserve rewards for their labour, but they do not deserve the right to control my use of what I have purchased from them.
For me, the right of sharing culture is a given, and the right to restrict other people from sharing culture is at best a necessary evil.
There's a difference between sharing culture and outright ripping people off; if you think this should be prohibited, you aren't really categorically against copyright, only its current implementation.
The difference is that one cassette is much more expensive than 15 megabytes of magnetic storage, and the gas to go from a friends house to let you copy their tape is much more expensive than the electricity and internet bills to transfer the data.
But it is such a common misconception that it is stealing - it is duplicating bits of data on magnetic storage that, by nature of the physical properties of the device, are extremely easy to replicate.
Yes, it is "hard" to understand the concept that once released, the content is no longer under the control of the creator. But defying the physics of physical storage only causes what we have now - big corporate lobbies are pushing to destroy all personal privacy to make sure no one uses the inherent properties of the technology developed in ways they don't desire.
And that will destroy the internet and society at large if left unchecked. You can't take away personal privacy and expect anything less than collapse. The only solution is to accept the reality that digital content is infinitely reproducible for free, and go from there. The old brick and mortar model just does not work.
That's not an argument against copyright, really. As empiricists, we should be automatically skeptical of any social change that hasn't been tested or observed before, since we can't meaningfully predict its results.
The fact remains that while it may be unenforceable to use copyrights to restrict personal use of content, commercial use is a totally different animal. This includes things like film screenings in a commercial cinema, live musical performances, broadcasting, adaptation to other media, and use in advertising. It's not hard to imagine a future where content creators compete to emphasize these over merely selling copies of their work.
> Of all the industries, film has been subject to upheaval approximately never.
Not true. Television and VCR's were major upheavals comparable to the impact of the internet today.
And they fought both as if the world would end and, when they failed, they got wonderful profits from both.
What they can't stand is another player controlling distribution channels. They realize they are not in the content creation business - they distribute content.
For example if you saw something with a $100,000,000 target and $0 in donations, if all you could afford was $20 would you bother to put that in?
Also people are often quite bad at knowing exactly what they want. Let's assume that the iPhone had been a kickstarter project, I'm not sure how much the initial development costs were (for the software part at least) but I'm really not sure whether they would have raised it by just asking people if they wanted a phone with a touchscreen.
Given that, inherent to the way kickstarter works, it wouldn't actually cost you money unless the target was met, of course I would.
I personally, along with a significant portion of the society (and the majority of youth) view copyright infringement for personal use desirable, but copyright infringement for profit undesirable. I would not punish the first at all, while the second should bear the fine of, say, 20% of yearly profits of the company (punishment for the owners), + jail time for the responsible persons (e.g. the president/CEO, or a lower employee if they are proven responsible).
things I don't like other people doing::???
Saying where to get illegal things: under dispute
You also have to think carefully about what a link is. Is a magnet link - essentially a hash of the content itself - a link? If so is posting the checksum of a piece of software copyright violation?
It would be like prosecuting the people who print the telephone directory for advertising drug dealers because some of their numbers are listed.
It's important to mention that in the UK this is an absolute offence. If the image is in your possession then it doesn't matter how or why it's there - intent is irrelevant.
This is important for people responsible for various servers, for example.
There are narrow exemptions - "I did not view the images and I did not know they existed" is one; "The images were unsolicited and I did not keep them" is another.
(See page 4)
(http://www.nominet.org.uk/digitalAssets/3249_Child_pornograp...)
I'll let you know if I get arrested.
Copyright violation (unless as part of trade) is a civil offence.
CP and CI are galaxies apart morally, imho. Also, people's views on copyright infringement seem to immediately swell when it's their copyright being infringed upon.
Yes, you're right. I have no problem with censoring child porn. However I have a problem censoring the Pirate Bay.
The response of the courts should be proportionate and based on reason and facts. We shouldn't censor any website that dedicated to explaining how to litter (which is also a crime). We don't give the same prison sentance or the same fine to all crimes. Our courts have a long history of different crimes requireing different responses.
The child porn argument also strikes me as an appeal to emotion.