Internet Cafe Fined for Letting Users Burn Downloaded Music

prostoalex writes: "EasyInternetCafe, an international operation with cafes in major Western European cities, is fighting the attempts of British Phonographic Industry to fine it for letting customers burn the downloaded music to CD's. It managed to lower the original fine of 1M British pounds to GBP 100,000 so far."

Comments

Re:Where's the Crime?

[Zen Mastuh]

But, what burned me was their note that "copying copyright material" is illegal.

What burns me is their obliteration of the past perfect tense. "Copyright material" means material on copyrights. "Copyrighted material" is material protected by copyright. There's a critical difference between the two expressions--copyright material can be freely copied but copyrighted material has restrictions on copying. English has a multitude of tenses because they allow an idea to be expressed unambiguously.

We've already seen so many problems with ambiguously worded laws being misinterpreted by judicial activists of all three flavors (liberal/conservative/aristocratic). Throw an increasingly misused language into the mix and we'll see much more confusion regarding the rights that people have or don't have.

Back to the topic at hand, I think it should be illegal for a corporation such as Target--which likely has a small army of litigators--to make official statements which are untrue. Their notice should state that "copying copyrighted material without express permission of the copyright owner is illegal" and should also mention the classic exclusion for a single backup copy. Also I think it is quite sad that permission has to be obtained from the copyright owner and not the creator of the copyrighted work.