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Convicted by the Movie Cops

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the stuff-to-think-about dept.

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.

2 of 454 comments (clear)

  1. Innocent until proven Uncooperative by imadork · · Score: 5, Funny
    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.

  2. Re:Quick (legal) question... by isorox · · Score: 5, Funny

    Anybody with more legal experience cares to comment?

    On slashdot?

    lol!