Pardon, Is This Your File?

Teknogeek writes "The BSA says piracy is thriving. At least, according to this article. Note one interesting statistic: '...the group found that 57 percent of respondents never or seldom pay for copyrighted works they download. And 12 percent admitted to pirating software.' How much do you want to bet that 45 percent gap is freeware and/or open source?" On a similar note, an Anonymous Coward writes: "MIT Technology Review reports on the process of scanning the entire internet for digital signatures matching copyrighted work (watermarking not required), and automatically emailing threats to the offenders and their ISPs."

Comments

Radio Ads

[dead sun]

Around the Milwaukee area there have been some radio ads about how ex-employees can "get back" at their former employers by reporting suspected piracy. It doesn't even have to be real, it can be just a mean spirited act of vengence to get the good old BSA fired up now. And they're advertising this.

My question is what legal right do they have to storm in and do an audit? I wouldn't think that they'd just be allowed in, and I'm pretty sure they would have to go through legal channels to squeeze money out of people, unless they're dead scared. If a company is pirating and destroys all the evidence before the BSA gets them in court what sort of case do they have? I mean, "Yes your honor, we took a lead from an ex-employee hell bent on vengence, and we have no real evidence," doesn't sound like a case winner to me.

Whatever, my boss would just give them the finger if they showed up here, then probably call the cops.

Re:Article Says:

[alan_d_post]

From the GNU site:

Publishers often refer to prohibited copying as ``piracy.'' In this way, they imply that illegal copying is ethically equivalent to attacking ships on the high seas, kidnaping and murdering the people on them.

If you don't believe that illegal copying is just like kidnaping and murder, you might prefer not to use the word ``piracy'' to describe it. Neutral terms such as ``prohibited copying'' or ``unauthorized copying'' are available for use instead. Some of us might even prefer to use a positive term such as ``sharing information with your neighbor.''

Re:Since when does copyright imply a contract?

[GeorgeH]

Reminds me of when I was in high school. This was 1997 and the school had to be online (just don't ask why the emperor is naked). So the school sprung for a new lab of 486s running Windows 3.11 and a box that had a 56k modem and a TCP/IP stack that did NAT - now the school could harness the power of thespot.com and the Trojan Room's coffee pot.

Before you can let anyone actually use the computers, of course, you need them to sign an agreement saying that they won't do anything evil, like express negative opinions about the school online. Personally I never saw an end to the school's dictatorial powers that would necessitate signing away any rights, but I'm sure that there were some lawyer-parents who would if their perfect child got in trouble for downloading pr0n.

So I was reading the agreement and anyone who signed it agreed not to download copyrighted material online. I pointed out to the vice-principal who was handling the signings that all material online was copyrighted, either explicitly or implicitly. She said that if I was downloading copyrighted material I was pirating software. I finally convinced her that it was only unlicensed software that was piracy (I'm still not a fan of that word) and she said I should just sign it because they weren't going to enforce it anyway. I didn't sign and didn't use the Internet at school that year, not a big loss as the only thing the computers were used for was seeing Yahoo.