Convicted by the Movie Cops

Reckless Visionary writes "Salon has a great article about what it's like to get on the MPAA's bad side. It's a first hand account of what happens when you are accused of violating the DMCA and commentary on the "guilty until proven innocent" nature of today's copyright laws." Pirate movies. Lose access. You are guilty. And this guy was on vacation when it happened, so there's no need for accountability. Hope you don't depend on your net access.

Comments

Innocent until proven Uncooperative

[imadork]

Nigam also told me that if I told him my friend's IP address, he could find out exactly what had happened in his case. I told him I'd have to check with my friend first. Kutner then said that if my friend were truly innocent, he wouldn't have anything to hide.
The thing is, he didn't have anything to hide in the first place, and he was still accused.

I used to think that there was nothing wrong with the "if you're really innocent, you would have no problem with this" attitude. But now I see that it's a rather clever way to get people to give up their rights.

By that logic, since I'm really innocent, I should have no problem with letting the Goverment (or Time Warner) look at all the files on my hard drive whenever they want to. I do have a problem with that, not because I pirate music, but because I just don't want them in my hard drive, and I shouldn't have to cooperate with them if I don't want to. (Remember... I haven't even been charged in a court yet, and they're cutting off my access!)

I also have a problem with the "proprietary" techniques that are used to find copyright violators. How can you determine the difference between an illegal copy of "Titanic" and a two-hour streaming file of my dog on her floating raft in my pool named "Titanic"? The answer is that one has better acting, and the other has a bigger boat, but I can't believe that an algorithm can tell the difference between the two when they're all just bits anyway.

How would you feel if the cop pulled you over and said "You broke the law back there, but we can't tell you how we caught you because that's proprietary."? This is no different.

Re:Innocent until proven Uncooperative

[mcfiddish]

Wouldn't you love to live in the United States of Nigam? I wonder if instead of

"if my article had a moral, it should be that piracy is illegal",

he meant to say

"if my article had a moral, it should be that privacy is illegal"

Re:Quick (legal) question...

[isorox]

Anybody with more legal experience cares to comment?

On slashdot?

lol!

methods

[twitter]

The MPAA looks for people who are distributing movies in any form that they are not authorized to. It uses Ranger Online's software to monitor multiple areas of the Internet, including IRC, Gnutella, Usenet, Web sites, auction sites and ftp sites. It does this on an international basis. When it finds a location that is distributing copyrighted material, it identifies the owner and the host of the material. Citing the DMCA, it sends a letter and notifies the alleged perpetrators that they are infringing on a copyright.

When I asked exactly how they find an instance of piracy (for instance, what search parameters they use), Nigam told me the methods were proprietary information.

Heh, judging from the results they must be using MS Access to keep their records! Nice work. Just a few minutes ago, I was talking to a looser who likes to traffic in warez and movies. While bragging of getting "Spy Kids" two weeks before opening, he was no more worried about getting caught than my grandmother. GET A CLUE, MPAA!
GET A LIFE, PEOPLE! Run your own ftp/http site and provide original content. Get movies from a theater, if you must, or rent them. Geazer! A whole week of bandwith consumption for something dumb like "Spy Kids"? And that crap is competing with me for Slashdot? GRRRR! You don't need this garbage, and it's providers are powerless when you quit demanding it. Sigh of relief.

I wonder what kind of cyber brains are looking for child porn. Loosing email is one thing, having your house raided and all your stuff broken/confiscated is another.

Re:Quick (legal) question...

[sien]

Yes, as one of the net's chief 15 year old legal experts I'd just like to say that under the 'Really Big Bad Companies' legislation passed by Justice Jon Katz you have recourse to the provisions provided for any geek to sue any company that makes lots of money that you don't like.

Practical joke

[heikkile]

Anybody want to send an anonymous letter to MPAA complaining that pirated materials are distributed from 204.253.162.16 ? Let them try to shut down the connection and see how EFF would react?