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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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.

Pound?

[n-baxley]

How many Euros is that? Oh wait...

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.

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: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

[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.

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.

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."