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: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.)

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.

i misread it ...

[morcheeba]

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