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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.
If my ISP decided to shut me off because someone else accused me of something, and they didn't even bother asking my side of the story, I think I'd be more than happy to terminate my relationship with that ISP.
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.
Interested in open source engine management for your Subaru?
I believe that, in such as case, it should be possible to countersue both the ISP, the MPAA and the company doing research for both.
Something like "Unfair termination of service" or "Violation of service agreement" as well as "Slanderous attacks" seem totally possible in this case. Anybody with more legal experience cares to comment?
Chilling, nonetheless... =(
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
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.
You could probably filter out Ranger Inc's IP addresses out at your firewall.
They fingered this guy from a Usenet post. Either someone forged the IP address, this guy had his computer compromised, or he actually did it and is crying 'foul' because he was caught. It's hard to say what is up with this article. But it does bring up perfectly valid points about the enforcement of a penalty without due process.
Remember, You are unique...just like everyone else.
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
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?
_______
2B1ASK1
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.
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.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Nope; it looks like they recklessly fingered a private citizen as a criminal and disseminated that "mistake" for the express purpose of causing damage to that citizen. This is technically known as "libel" (I assume that the message to the ISP was in written rather than oral form; in the latter case, the term is "slander".)
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
Just because the ISP or anyone believes someone probably did violate copyright laws doesn't give them the right to take action against you. That is, if you believe in being innocent until proven guilty.
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.
Will I retire or break 10K?
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?
In Murphy We Turst
Who provides service for the MPAA? Somewhere along the line, they have to connect to the Net, just like us. What if a bunch of people just started accusing them of copyright infringement and getting their service cut?
Or, perhaps more effectively: What about senators and representatives? They often quote an awful lot of stuff; surely one might feel some of it is in violation. And of course, the beauty is, there doesn't have to be a violation, just an accusation of one.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
You don't need judicial review to be deemed a threat to society. And just because *your* definition of a threat may not be equal to *somebody else's* definition of a threat, or society's, doesn't mean you're free and innocent.
Who it was that bragged about 'internet freedoms' and 'new reality' and stuff? Here it goes - every step you take is watched. You have absolutely no rights. Your access can be terminated any second without explaining a reason or giving you any chance to explain. All burden to prove your innocense is on you. Nobody has any obligation to even listen to you.
Does no sound like too much of freedom, does it? Does sound as a 'new reality', though. Free people of America, get used to it. It will get worse - how many times would it take for ISP to make 'access history' and share the data? One complaint from MPAA - and you lose your broadband for life. Sounds good?
-- Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes.