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

J'accuse!

[havachu]

From the article:

If we are accused again of distributing copyrighted material, we lose our accounts for two weeks instead of one, and face banishment from our ISP.

McCarthyism is alive and well in America. A little finger pointing is all it takes, and you are discredited forever.

Re:Guilty until proven innocent? Gimme a break

[JoeGrind]

Give you a break? The point that you don't seem to think is a big deal has nothing to do with the punishment. 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.

Not having the ability to surf for pr0n is one thing. However, lots of people use their connections for business uses. It supports their livelihood. When you consider that, it sounds a little more important.

The last point is that the idea of being innocent until being proven guilty by a jury of your peers is one of the tenents of the US, where this action occured. A lot of people jumped on boats and sailed across the see to avoid this sort of behavior. Without that, this sounds could be the Salem Witch Hunt, the Red Scare, or the Inquisition.

Right now it's just being able to check your email. But as we depend on bandwidth more and more in the future it becomes more important. Consider that.

This is getting out of control

[eyeball]

Has anyone thought of filing a complaint with the MPAA's ISP, and telling them you have found evidence that there are copyrighted materials being pirated from their IP address? Create a dinky little mp3 song, then send a screenshoot of a text-based gnutella session saying it's being offered on x.x.x.x. Hell, why even stop at MPAA.. How would WB feel if they were down for a week? Or Disney? Or your congressman's web site?

Re:Guilty until proven innocent? Gimme a break

[KMitchell]

Today this may be an inconvenience, but give it a couple of years. Would you consider it an inconvenience if your phone was turned off for suspected wrongdoings? How about your electricity or water? Hmmm... We think you're growing something you shouldn't be in there... better shut off the water until we're sure that you're not...

While Internet access will never be as "critical" a service as heat or water, some of us would suffer very real economic damages if our net access was interrupted, and this is only going to get more and more common.

Re:Quick (legal) question...

[thryllkill]

Unfair termination of service" or "Violation of service agreement" as well as "Slanderous attacks"

I have no legal experience but I am pretty sure most ISP service agreements include clauses like, "...can terminate service at anytime, with or without notifying the user, for any reason deemed appropriate." or some such garbage. Take a look at your ISP's agreement, just what did you agree to???