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Penthouse.com Goes After Usenet Posters
Shibumi writes: "
Penthouse.com is starting to pursue legal action against persons who post material to Usenet from their pay site." At least they're going after the poster and not the usenet servers.
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If people were violating the copyright on GPL'ed stuff by not following the license, I would support taking legal actions against those people to.
People who don't like the strings attached to someones copyrighted works should go find some other works that don't have those problems. Whether the copyright holder is MicroSoft, the author of a GPL'ed work who won't release it under the BSD license, or Penthouse, it makes no difference. There are always alternatives and by using those alternatives you will send a message that you don't like the strings the other people have attached.
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No Metallica mp3's, no Penthouse Pictures. It's starting to look like everything associated with the word 'wank' is being banned.
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...that's free as in handjobs, not free as in speech.
Cool, now we can have lots of new laws lobbied for by Penthouse magazine. Perhaps they will press for censorship of Usenet to filter out all the filth and smut that corrupts our children and damages Penthouse's business.
Alternatively, every model used by Penthouse could have a barcode tatooed onto her buttocks, so that pirated pictures can be easily and automatically recognized.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
They have an interesting point that you don't hear from the music industry or software industry:
"Second, and equally important, is the fact that our pay site is an adult site. It is for adults only and we mean it. We take the responsibility of limiting access to our site and our content to adults very seriously."
You have to give them some credit there: with that one sentence, they actually got the parents on their side. For once, the liberals and Bobby G are on the same side!
What's your damage, Heather?
But I only post the articles honest...
"Do you think we could wipe out world hunger forever if scientists figured out how to make AOL's Free CD's edible?"-
Yes Metallica should go after the users trading the mp3 files, not after napaster. The users are commiting the crime, not Napaster.
Think about it, go into a head shop, buy a bong then go smoke some weed out of it. When Mr. Police Man sees you smoking pot, who is he going to arrest, you or the head shop.
What law did the head shop break? None. What law did Napaster break? None.
Did you break a law when you started smoking pot? Yes (At least under the current laws in the United States). Did you break a law when you started trading copyrighted mp3's? Yes (At least under the current copyright laws in the United States).
Did usenet or [insert isp here] break any laws when they made there newsgroups public? No. Did you break any laws when you posted copyrighted porn to these news groups. Yes (At least under the current copyright laws in the United States).
So who is responiable you or the head shop? Who broke the law, you or the head shop? Who should get fined or put in jail, you or the head shop?
Napaster *CAN* be used for legal purposes as what the company claims, as bongs and newsgroups *CAN* be used for legal purposes as what the companies claim.
You can used Napaster to trade legal mp3's (like self-written, self-produced material) as you can use both bongs (for smoking tobacco) and newsgroups (for posting self-produced material). All which are pretty legal.
Does anyone use these things for legal purposes though? No not really, maybe 0.00002 % of the entire population.
Please take responiablity for your actions, even if sometimes you actions are illegal and may laid you in jail.
"`Ford, you're turning into a penguin. Stop it.'" -THHGTTG
alright then, we're agreeing.
but then I feel Metallica does have a legitemate beef with Napster since it's quite obvious that Napster was not making an effort to enforce its T&C by shutting down users trading copyrighted mp3's. In not enforcing its ban on pirated material, Napster was assisting in the crime of pirating. They DO have the necessary information to track down a user and ban them since they collect the personal info when you register.
Based on this, Napster should have complied with the lawyers instead of fighting them tooth and nail. If they had complied, then Napster would have established itself as a genuine article that wasn't JUST created to pirate mp3's, but to trade mp3's that were allowed to be traded.
They are pursuing action against one single individual, who was COMPLETELY mirroring absolutely EVERYTHING in near realtime, from Penthouse's internal pay-site to Usenet.
Literally hours after being put up, shoots were appearing on Usenet.
In the time since the story (May 2) another person or two have taken up the 'mirroring'. I haven't heard whether he/they/(she?) have been brought to task yet or not.
Penthouse magazine contains pictures of naked women?? I was so busy reading the articles I never noticed!
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Officials entered the subject's premises, which were then searched and all computer equipment and storage media found there were seized and placed under seal.
Why is it that they always sieze computer equipment in these cases? It strikes me as rather strange. I mean, if someone was distributing photocopies of a magazine from a car, then they wouldn't take the car off you after you had been caught, would they?
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This is really good IMHO. Not that people are stealing porn, or penthouse is showing off it's huge uh legal team, but they are doing it the right way.
See, they go after the poster, the one that commited the crime, slap him with a small fine and embrass the hell out of him so he doesn't do it again, penthouse gets from cash from it and everyone is happy.
If penthouse decided to go after the news group or hosting provided, this would be a bad thing almost as stupid as if Metallica went after Napaster instead of the users.
Metallica could learn a lot about the way penthouse is handling this. Like I said a million times before, dam Metallica really needs to get some porn and just fsck chill out.
"`Ford, you're turning into a penguin. Stop it.'" -THHGTTG
for Rob to post a link to Penthouse!! I'm on to you Rob Malda........
I happen to agree with the many postings to the story of Open Source Leaders Speak About Napster, that copyrights should/must be respected - for many reasons, notably that the copyright laws also are what protects GPL et. al.
Even so, I've been worried about the fuzz of napster, where the lawyers seemed to have had a hard time comprehending what exactly napster is and what exactly napster is not (the napster guys merely provide a service - some people are abusing that service, but not the napster-guys) - and in the name of "copyrighting" and "protection of property" (be that intellectual or not, depending on taste in music...).
It's good to see, that penthouse have taken a slightly different approach, and understood what USEnet is and is not - and have attacked the "problem" in the right way: by tracking and going after the people, not the medium.....
I just PRAY that they (being penthouse or the legal systems in various countries) will keep it that way, and not trying to enforce additional requirements of either the ISP's tracking the identity of every poster, scanning the postings etc....or even worse: that eventually it makes someone going after (gasp) the servers, to where the offending material is being probagated.
But for now: credit to Penthouse. They have very good points, they have the law on their side - and they seem to be doing the right thing with it....
-- "Life is a bitch - and she hates me..."