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

Guilty until proven innocent? Gimme a break

[bconway]

How many times have we seen this before? They had their connection to their ISP discontinued! This is hardly a conviction, nor would I in any way consider an ISP to be a government body. Okay, so it was an inconvenience, and the matter was settled, but the ISP was just doing what they felt was right in trying to resolve a problem, and inadvertantly targeted the wrong user. It's not like they were thrown in jail for visiting the US by Adobe. Come on.

Re:Guilty until proven innocent? Gimme a break

[Monte]

The point is that if you are paying money for a service you expect that service. They expect the money and you expect the bandwidth. If an organization which apparently can't even accurately determine the source IP of the traffic they are monitoring just needs to point a finger to get your access shutdown then that seems to be a violation of the contract you have with the ISP.

Only on Slashdot would people take broadband access as an inalienable right. This has nothing to do with innocence, guilt or the jury system, and everything to do with the terms of service (ie, contract) that you enter into with the ISP.

Let's take a look at that contract, shall we?

If the author's service was with Time Warner, then she was probably a Roadrunner user. I'm on RR too, and here's an exerpt from the agreement I've got with the NEO (Northeast Ohio) branch - I would imagine hers is similar if not identical:

Time Warner Cable NEO Division and ServiceCo each shall have the right at any time to change or discontinue any aspect or feature of the Road Runner Service, including but not limited to content, hours of availability, Equipment and System Requirements. Either Time Warner Cable NEO Division or Subscriber may terminate the Road Runner Service to Subscriber at any time.

You can find the whole load here

Oops. Looks like the ISP can pull the plug any time they want to, for any reason they want to, and there's exactly jack squat I can do about it.

Eeek! My precious high-speed pr0n, er, business net access is at peril! Whatever shall I do?

Make sure that I'm not dependent on RR for my business needs, that's what. A 56 modem and a serial cable is pretty much all I need to do that. And luckily I can remember how I used to do things before the cable modem was around.

Time Wanker and the MPAA did this pair a favor - now that they understand that their broadband access can evaporate they'll (hopefully) get some backups in place. Perhaps there's a lesson for all of us...?

Been there done that

[isorox]

Something similar happened to me when I ran botf.com

The day after I left for a 3 week sail in summer 1999, my ISP received an anonymous tipoff - at least they wouldnt tell me who, although I have an idea.

The ISP shut the account down straight away, including email access. They then emailed me on webmaster@botf.com with an explanation. Naturally it was unreadable, as I couldnt log in.

About a week after I left I popped into an internet cafe to see what was going on, unfortunatly I couldnt read my botf email, hence had no contact with my ISP.

when I got back, eventually it sorted itself out. I refused to pay for the time though, and as the site had pretty much crumbled to bits (3 weeks with no site means people dont come back), I contacted my credit card company and told them to hold payment.

Why did they shut me down? I had 5 mp3's for download - these were mp3 versions of the wavs freely available on microprose's site. I had had permission to mirror the samples on my site.

The (5) samples were also in a zip file.

The ISP had heard about these files, obviously not researched them or contacted me - and just shut the site down ASAP.

I will never use them again, needless to say. I hadnt been with them long, having just moved from a wonderful ISP, that unfortunatly couldnt offer me the facilities I needed. I have 2 domains with them now, and couldnt be happier with allwebco. Unfortunatly I forget the name of the ISP that shut me down - I think they went out of buisness.

These mp3's were legal, but because of the hysteria of "mp3 == bad" arround then (and still arround today), I lost something ver dear to me.

Ahh well, the game sucked anyway :)

Re:Copyright law is CIVIL not criminal

[Zaknafein500]

Civil law, not criminal law, governs most copyright cases. The only right the accused gets in a civil case is the right to trial by jury. All that "innocent until proven guilty beyond reasonable doubt" and "right to remain silent" jazz applies only to criminal cases.

Someone please mod this up. This is the absolute truth. In civil law, the defendant does not have near as many protections as they do under criminal law. As a matter of fact, in civil law, you can even be required to testify against your own interests. There is no "pleading the fifth" like you hear about in criminal cases.