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

With Power comes responsibility

[unDiWahn]

And if you're going to give people the ability to do something illegal, you've got to at least make an effort to intervene.

It's like handing a kid some candy and saying, "here, don't eat this".

Re:With Power comes responsibility

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree to that. Whenever you buy a CD burner you should have to sign a contract allowing any copyright owner to break into your house if they suspect you might use it to illegally distribute music. After all, selling a CD burner is like giving a kid some candy and saying, "here, don't eat this".

Re:With Power comes responsibility

[PD]

Unfortunately, that's why I don't have an open wireless access point. If someone started hacking through my DSL connection, the nice men with the badges would be knocking on my door. This would probably happen right when I was busy doing something else.

I see this as a bit different than Starbucks though. Starbucks only gives you a connection. If you bring a laptop with a burner in, Starbucks should not be liable. This place looks like they're providing the entire computer, with a burner installed. If they're going to do that they need to watch themselves.

Re:With Power comes responsibility

[unDiWahn]

Slight difference in the feasability. I mean, seriously, what're they _supposed_ to do with high speed access and a cd-burner. It's not like there's anything else to do on the net, right?

Well anyway, you can't regulate handing out a cd-burner, but you can regulate a computer under your control.

And who said anything about breaking into someone's house? Now you're just being provocative.

Re:With Power comes responsibility

[crow]

I disagree.

If you own a gun shop, you don't have to ask why the person wants to buy a gun. (You have to do a background check, but that's the limit of your responsibility.) If you rent cars, you don't have to make sure your car isn't used to violate traffic laws.

In most areas, you're free to conduct business selling merchandise that can be used in an illegal manner, provided you are not advocating illegal usage of your product.

"With power comes responsibility." I agree. The customer has the power, and the responsibility lies with them.

(Now if the cyber cafe was advertising in such a way as to encourage illegal activities, then it's a different story.)

Re:With Power comes responsibility

[IainB]

>It's not like there's anything else to do on the net, right?

lemme see...

linux

game demos

SDKs (java/perl etc) i used to use easyeverything regularly to download and burn lecture notes etc... there are infinite possibilities, including burning NONcopyright mp3s.

iain

Re:With Power comes responsibility

[joshki]

If you own a gun shop, you don't have to ask why the person wants to buy a gun. (You have to do a background check, but that's the limit of your responsibility.) If you rent cars, you don't have to make sure your car isn't used to violate traffic laws.

not quite true. The law may not require you to ask them why they want to buy a gun, but if you sell them a gun that they re-sell to a minor or commit a crime with, you can be held responsible. I know the shop I go to is very strict -- if they even suspect someone may be buying a weapon for an illegal purpose, they refuse to sell to them.

Re:With Power comes responsibility

[frankie]

If you own a gun shop,

You picked a very bad example, Crow. For starters, Britain banned private ownership of handguns 5 years ago. Hunting weapons require a license, and the license application asks why you need one.

Remember: USA != Earth

Re:With Power comes responsibility

[JabberWokky]

Can I sue the British Phonographic Industry for preventing people from burning my music - which I toss out onto Gnutella and other P2P for distribution? All the songs I've recorded in 2002 have gone to either online radio stations or distribution networks (some of the online radio station work isn't freely available). They are blocking my legal marketing and distribution network, and preventing my listeners from being able to obtain my work.

Bloody Brits, I... wait...

--
Evan (no reference here)

Re:With Power comes responsibility

[TRACK-YOUR-POSITION]

if they even suspect someone may be buying a weapon for an illegal purpose, they refuse to sell to them.

Is it possible they're just acting like decent human beings?

Re:With Power comes responsibility

[skaffen42]

So if I make a copy of a copyrighted book using the copier at my local Kinko's should they be responsible? Or is it my responsibility for making the copy?

This is the same as prosecuting an ISP because someone used the bandwidth they bought from the ISP to download a pirated MP3.

Re:With Power comes responsibility

[nelsonal]

That's why the computer makers can tacitly support burning music. However, if you're the provider of the service that allows people to do illegal things, then you will be shut down. A better example using guns is if at a rifle range some idiot goes about shooting customers one day, you can believe that getting shut down will be the best possible outcome for that owner. Especially if it is later found that the owner did little to prevent such activities.

Re:With Power comes responsibility

[joshki]

My point was responsibility. The law is not necessarily the only definition of responsibility -- so, yes, it's very possible they're acting like decent, responsible human beings.

Re:With Power comes responsibility

[topham]

Yes and No.

While you may not have to ask why someone is buying a gun, or renting a car you must still act in the publics best interest.

If you knowingly sell a weapon to someone who intends to commit a crime with it you can be held responsible.

If you rent a car to someone whom you know will use it irresponsible you could be held responsible (by the authorities, or by your insurance company!).

In this case the store is responsible because they controlled the process. They handled the burning of the discs, not the customer. Had it been done 'Hands off' it is quite possible the issue would have not existed.

Re:With Power comes responsibility

[C0LDFusion]

It's not like there's anything else to do on the net, right?


What do you think you're doing right now? I hope Slashdot hasn't started hosting illegal music. I'd like to keep the speed up on Informative posts.

Re:With Power comes responsibility

[C0LDFusion]

For starters, Britain banned private ownership of handguns 5 years ago.


So, you live in a police state. He's using an example. I mean, if we used an example based on gravity, I guess it's be a very bad example, because gravity differs, depending on your location in the universe.

Re:With Power comes responsibility

[C0LDFusion]

No, you can't sue. You don't have several billion dollars...or pounds or whatever. Once you get money, the courts will listen to you. But nowadays, government is a function of the corporations.

Re:With Power comes responsibility

[C0LDFusion]

In this case, if they see you making photocopies of the latest Steven King or whatnot, they will most likely tap your shoulder and ask you to leave. You can make copies of a couple of pages, but you can't copy the whole book.

That's why Kinko's and Staples and the others have signs all over the place that say "Duplication of Copyrighted Materials Prohibited" right next to the "We already suspect you of copying plans to make dirty bombs." sign.

Re:With Power comes responsibility

[TRACK-YOUR-POSITION]

Okay, so bringing the discussion back to the topic at hand, by letting people use my CD burner without watching them I'm being irresponsible? Since we've now left the domain of abstract legalism, the difference of scale between dead people and copied music becomes important--the potential of dead bodies compels a decent human being to restrict his fellow man, the potential of stolen music doesn't compel much of anything.

Re:With Power comes responsibility

[ThaReetLad]

I disagree.

Unless you are someones legal guardian you have no legal obligation to prevent them committing a crime. If I see a man with a knife about to stab someone, I have no legal obligation to try and stop them under UK law, so long as I dont actively assist them. I may have a moral obligation, but thats a matter for me and my own sense of self preservation.

Re:With Power comes responsibility

[Fat Casper]

And if you're going to give people the ability to do something illegal, you've got to at least make an effort to intervene.

The downloading music function of a computer is totally separate from the CD burning function. If I don't have a fat pipe, an internet cafe is the best place to grab the latest version of my favorite distro. The fact that the BPI (RIAUK?) bullied the cafe into taking away such an incredibly useful feature pisses me off. When you consider how small a dent this puts into music piracy, it is even more contemptible. The cafe's terms and conditions did not allow people to make illegal copies. This is just another example of the litigation and extortion business model. It's pathetic, and I hope that EasyInternetCafe manages to get out from under this.

Re:With Power comes responsibility

[peg0cjs]

Actually it's perfectly legal for me to copy the entire text of anything I own. If I want one copy of the latest Stephen King novel for my upstairs bathroom, one for downstairs and one for beside my bed, I am well within my fair-use rights to make such copies.

So long as I don't sell it to someone else.

Re:With Power comes responsibility

[C0LDFusion]

But they don't have to risk letting you. Unless they don't give you a reason and as long as you are a straight white guy, they can kick you out if they choose. Of course, if you're gay, non-white, or female, they can't, because it's discrimination, but that's a story for another day.

Pound?

[n-baxley]

How many Euros is that? Oh wait...

Re:Pound?

[C0LDFusion]

1 Dollar = 1.4 Pounds
1 Pound = 7,000,000 Euros
Bonus Question: How many Euros to the Dollar?

This message is in jest to all the goofy countries that thought the Euro was going to ADD value to their currency.

Re:Pound?

[C0LDFusion]

Unfortunately, your post referred to a date just under one month old

Of course, if you didn't want to take it in jest, I could pose this ACCURATE reading. As of August 10, 2002:

Currency Conversion:
1 USD = 0.656297 GBP
1 GBP = 1.57050 EURO
1 USD = 1.03072 EURO

There, are you happy, Mr. European who can't take a joke?

Now,
If you = satisfied,
end rant

Where's the Crime?

[renehollan]

Unless the copyright holder hasn't given permission, this is perfecty legal. Thre is plenty of copyright music on the internet that is free to download and copy.

Oh, I see, this is one of those, "punish the tool maker because the tool can be used to comit a crime".... On that note, I demand that the courts have everyone else executed because they might otherwise murder me -- people can do that, ya know.

In a similar vein, I noticed my local Target store offering a service to copy video tapes to DVD. Since I have a lot of VHS tapes taking up a bunch of space, this would be a great thing for me were it not for the fact that they charge some US$35/tape for the service. But, what burned me was their note that "copying copyright material" is illegal. Ever hear of "fair use" dweebs? Even the DMCA doesn't apply here since there is no access protection on a videocassette (macrovision is part of the VCR).

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.

Re:Where's the Crime?

[renehollan]

The bad grammer would burn me too, except this isn't the wording of a law, but rather Target's legal opinion.

Still, your point about the dangers of ambiguous wording in laws is noted.

Re:Where's the Crime?

[Star Stealing Girl]

I noticed my local Target store offering a service to copy video tapes to DVD.

Are they intending to copy copyrighted material to DVD or is this service intended for transferring home videos and the such to DVD for archiving?

hrmm

[luphus]

Seeing as the computer/burner/net connection is functioning basically as an appliance here, shouldn't they perhaps go after the person who actually did the bad deed? Isn't that a bit like suing the laundromat if someone runs someone elses kid through a permanent press cycle?

nwp

Liable no more than Kinko's is

[David Frankenstein]

Why should their liability be any more than a photo-copy place "allowing" you to make illegal copies? The Kinko's around here have signs warning about illegal photocopying, but that appears to be the extent of it. Since there are plenty of legitimate uses for a computer with CD burner, I don't think that the cafe should be held liable.

Re:Liable no more than Kinko's is

[throwaway18]

The CD burners in easy everything were not self service.
You saved your files to a network drive then took your ticket to the front desk. The orange sweat-top clad wage slave on the till would have a look at how much data you had and offer to delete some to make it fit on one CD. It would be equivalent to going to kinko's and asking the staff to photocopy a book for you.

When they charged UKP1 (E1.5) to burn a CD the 4 writers per store were often all in use. I stopped going when they put the price up to E7.5 including a supplied blank.

Their system was fairly crap, on several ocassions I descided to leave when the trains started around 6am sunday morning having been there
for a couple of days (no toilets!) and would still be there at noon after ftping my files to a different computer because the till computer could not see the network share of the original one.

I'm told the security is improved now but an aquantance of mine figured out how to install linux on the machines, the staff had no computer knowlege and never noticed us using bash on the console and the lack of the annoying banner ad bar. The firewall meant giving shells to people on IRC meant using cron and netcat to make an outgoing connection with a shell attached. They reboot all the machines every few days which copys a fresh image over the entire harddrive.

Re:Liable no more than Kinko's is

[IainB]

>They reboot all the machines every few days which copys a fresh image over the entire harddrive.

the glasgow store reboots each machine when you log off, wiping the disk (and any data you haven't copied onto the burning machine)

s/present tense/past tense

iain

Re:Liable no more than Kinko's is

[throwaway18]

>the glasgow store reboots each machine when you log off, wiping the disk

I know, that was the case in all the stores when I used them two years ago.
I was refering to the two day cycle. Around 3am every day they get everyone in half the store to move to a PC in the other half then reboot all the machines including the 25% which are frozen, displaying BIOS error messages or "Slackware linux Login:"

Since nobody ever had a pen we used the handle of a Mcdonalds plastic spoon to poke through the hole in the underside of the bench to prod the power button and restart crashed machines ourselves. Unless there was a woman in a skirt on the other side of the wooden partition, in which case we got the staff to crawl on the floor for us. :-)

Macrovision IS on the tape

[hope1ess]

While I agree it should be fair use to backup one's VHS tapes to DVD, you're way off on Macrovision. It is very much in the tape-encoding, specifically so they wouldn't have to force manufacturers to adopt their technology. For a complete explanation of how it works, check out here.

Re:Macrovision IS on the tape

[renehollan]

Gak! You're right, of course. I'm so used to seeing Macrovision in hardware (like graphics and MPEG2 decoder cards with TV-outs), I just assumed the VCR hardware added it to a clean video signal.

Still, since the recorded signal is analog, and not digital (ignoring digital video tapes), he DMCA probably still does not apply.

Re:Macrovision IS on the tape

[hope1ess]

The case is England, the DMCA already doesn't apply =p

Re:Macrovision IS on the tape

[renehollan]

Er, the point about VHS to DVD transfers was a side issue. I presumed that people would know that the implied jurisdiction was local.

Re:Macrovision IS on the tape

[funky womble]

'Fair use' doesn't apply either. We get charged a levy on blank media but don't get any fair use rights in exchange.

A bit confused at first

[Zamt]

I thought it said British Pornographic Industry. You ever notice that even though a lot of people steal pr0n, the porno industry never freaks out about it with the whole "We're losing billions!" schitck.

playboy sues lots of people

[hope1ess]

Just look around on google, you'll find that lots of "independant" porn sites, who use stolen images, get shut down all the time. It's just so easy to automate the process of setting up new servers on free-hosting services, that the porn people can keep ahead of playboy's lawyers...

Re:playboy sues lots of people

[Zamt]

They are actually going after the people who try and steal their content, not Kazaa or Morpheus or CD burners. Bit of a difference.

the question is...

[GoatPigSheep]

Why would an internet cafe have cd-burners at all? How many people actually go to these places to download an iso of linux or use the burner for any other legal reasons? The internet cafe owners obviously knew what they would be used for, and deserve whatever fines they got.

Re:the question is...

[TheJZA]

Should the user sue the RIAA back. Users have the right to do whatever they want with their private property. Once the data is in your hardrive IS your private property. That makes you able to do whatever you can do with that technology and distribute it as you please. Basically because is your code...

old technology?

[Izanagi]

British Phonographic Industry

A Phonograph?

So, they're still unaware of USB pocket drives...HEHE

i misread it ...

[morcheeba]

I thought this was related to internet cafe fined for letting users burn but thankfully not.

Re:i misread it ...

[PhxBlue]

Don't feel bad. The first time I read it, I thought it said, "pornographic," not "phonographic."

Cake Pictures.

[dnahelix]

Have you seen where you can get an image 'printed' on a cake. They use edible dyes in an ink-jet type device. They wouldn't even put a picture of Angela Anaconda on a cake for me because the woman there had 'seen this on TV' I couldn't believe it!