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Danish Anti-Piracy Organization Bills P2P Users
faaaz writes "The danish anti-piracy organisation Antipiratgruppen has billed approximately 150 p2p users an amount of up to $14,000 each for sharing copyrighted material. The organisation says 'Pay up, or we'll sue!'" There's also a Reuters article.
If this organization isn't government sponsored, this sounds a lot like blackmail. I mean, pay or we'll sue? Who'll they have to go to? The big record companies, so pay up or we'll turn you over. And what guarantees does anyone have they won't turn around and sue anyway?
Since when has this country used intellectual elite as a pejorative term?
This is exactly what the majority of slashdotters have been screaming for. Go after the abusers rather than the technology. It'll be interesting to see what the comments on this thread will be like. Let this hypocrisy begin... now.
Seems like the anti piracy groups are getting desperate and taking the law in their own hands. I hope some of these cases get to court, and that they lose big. That will put an end to this stupidity...
Otherwise their actions are about as threatening as the BSA's. Right?
Yea but who are these guys?
is it M$ thats chraging the pirates?
is it adobe, or macromedia, or whatever company who's software is being distributed?
no.
its just some company who's supposedly against piracy, who is gonna make a profit off of piracy.
will adobe or M$ or anyone else see that money?
i highly doubt it.
all they are doing is basically going around and saying pay us, or pay us and some lawyer to protect your ass.
definately not what we've been asking for
Stop over-analyzing your analizations
Unless they had actual physical proof that the file in question was the copyrighted material I cannot see how they could sue them. Screenshots are a joke (give me 30 min and Photoshop and I could make a credible screenie of Kazaa with anything I would want on it). Also all they have is a file name on the screen. Just because it's labeled Adobe Photoshop it is not necessarily that (the amount of mislabeled stuff on p2p is pretty signinficant).
That having been said, I do enjoy watching slashdotters squirm in their pants when accused of hipocrisy. ;)
Can't say I'm an expert on the Danes, but if this were the US, that's exactly what they'd be getting ready to do.
Since there was no purchase agreement between the "buyer" and "seller," the seller has to put a dollar value on the product by invoicing the "buyer." This way, they can take the cases to CIVIL court (suing for non-payment under much looser juries -- preponderance of evidence rules instead of reasonable doubt, etc., etc.) instead of waiting for the government to get involved with CRIMINAL charges.
This is completely ridiculous. If any of the victims of this fold and just pay, shame on them. IINAL, esp not a danish one, so I don't know how the court systems work over there, but I have a feeling this same case in America would be thrown out of court. Unless they can explicitly prove they were sharing data with users who did not already have a license to the data (which should be protected under Fair Use). And unless they have subpoeniad the receivers of said data, they have no case at all. However if I had been one of the victims of this suit, I think it would have caused me severe emotional distress, and slandered my good name. At least that's what my counter suit
would claim.
Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. It's just that yours is stupid.
For example, I'm in a small, unsigned punk band. We distribute our music over P2P because it is a lot cheaper than getting webspace to host stuff and paying for bandwidth. But right now, we have to compete with all these ultra-shitty, ultra-popular bands like Metallica and Jon Bon Jovi for the eyes and ears of P2P users. On top of that, it gives us a bad name. People look at me funny when I say we distribute our music on KaZaA, like I'm some kind of criminal.
When we clean out the abusers and criminals from P2P and let the real people, the small-time, unsigned artists, get exposure, then we will have won. And I won't shed a single tear for these people who are fucking it up for the rest of us.
Software piracy is victimless theft.
downloading copyrighted works is theft ?
Jeez, man, what if I let other people read some of my books?
IANADL (D is for Danish) but I thought theft was a criminal matter, not civil (especially in the ammount of $14,000). And if you just pay the bill, do you get to keep everything? If not, then it's not really a bill...more like a fine. Seems like they're trying to get the best of both worlds here...they want your money for things you allegedly owe them money for, but they don't want you to keep what you've now paid for. And what if someone disputes the validitiy of the screen caps?
do not read this line twice.
/. impressions on this issue are, largely, not very thorough, although I feel that they have the right idea (restrictive copyrights a la intellectual property is not true property; like wealth back by something of worth versus an economy based on the idea of worth, it's the presentation of worth that seems to satisfy some people and dis-satisfy others).
Anyways, I think the anti-piracy group is approaching this correctly. But they need to flesh out who they are representing and whether payment is legitimately made to them and not to the person harmed. Just because someone floats around saying they represent someone doesn't mean that, if harm is shown, the money is going to the right folks.
How do THEY know that the person hasn't legally purchased the CD?
They don't, and it does not matter. The person does not own the copyright so he cannot legally distribute the material.
By the way, I guess both articles got some basic facts wrong. I don't think they are going to be sued for downloading but for offering copyrighted works. IMHO, this is what the **AA should have been doing all along instead of trying to block new technology.
And to answer all those comments that the anti piracy group cannot know what the files contain and should not have the right to set the fines themselves: You are right!
Just consider this fine as a generous offer. If you think it is unfair, then let the police investigae exactly what you have shared, and a court decide what you should pay.
It will be interesting to see where all this will end up...
)9TSS
I'm sorry. I have to anal about this. Look through the Danish or United States laws passed on copyright, and you won't ever find the word "piracy." That's because the word piracy -- which is used to describe boarding someone else's seagoing vessil without permission and plundering -- is totally unrelated to copyright infringement in the English language. The reason the word "piracy" is used is because "copyright infringement" doesn't sound as bad. It doesn't sound as bad because it is not as bad. When you literally steal goods, you are depriving them of something. When you infringe on a copyright, you are depriving no one of anything but just that -- a copyright.
The reason this is important is, (1) people need not be confused by words that don't actually exist in their used context, (2) you can talk seriously about what constitutes "copyright infringement." If you make a personal copy, is that copyright infringement? Legally, no. But because piracy has no legal definition, the copyright holders are free to apply the word at their discretion. Ie: Watching a DVD on Linux is piracy. -- there's no legal definition for piracy, so prove it wasn't! Now simply watching a DVD on Linux is not copyright infringement, and I can prove it because there is a legal definition of copyright infringement.
When you use the word "piracy" you loose credibility with me. You are buying into the myth that copyright infringement is a legal and ethical parallel for stealing. In reality, there is no such thing as intellectual property or piracy of that property. There is a right to copy a work, and copying a work without that right is something else entirely.
-- Ken Kinder ken@_nospam_kenkinder.com http://kenkinder.com/
I seem to recall that the FSF can only sue a GPL violator if the violation is on a program that the FSF has the copyright on. The general rule, then , would seem to be that only a copyright holder can sue for copyright violations.
So, who the hell is this anti-piracy group? And what gives them the right to sue on behalf of George Lucas, Eminem, and Rockstar Games?
If the Anti Pirat Gruppen had used their (admittedly quite reasonable-sounding) tools simply to report the violations back to Lucas/Eminem/Rockstar et al., and then let them sue, I'd have little problem with this.
As it is, though, I can't help but wonder what Anti Pirat Gruppen is planning to do with the money. This sounds sort of like if I saw a burglar breaking into my neighbor's window, and I said, "Hey, buddy... tell you what, how about you climb back out that window now, and pay me $100, and I won't call the cops on you."
I wonder if Lucas and the others have heard about this... and what they're planning to do to Anti Pirat Gruppen as a result.
Kai MacTane: Web developer for hire in San Francisco
Certainly, go after the abusers. But don't expect to tread on law and common sense while you're at it!
4 of my friends and I getting together and doing this in the USA would get us all thrown in jail for fraud. Why? Because I don't have any affiliation with the owners of the material that is being infringed. Sure, I could go out and gather information on everyone who is downloading or offering for download copyrighted information, but to actually use that information requires the support of the coypright holder. Basically, I can't sue you for infringing Eminem's copyright, only Eminem's label can bring that suit because they are the copyright holder.
So, when these "university students" gathered all this infringement data, the first thing they should have done is contact the copyright holders to see what the copyright holders wanted done about it... Another alternative would have been contacting the proper authorities to have them bring criminal charges if any are warranted. Threatening the infringers before taking either of those actions is not "policing copyright". It's something else entirely called "extortion". Basically these guys are saying "We've got the goods on you, pay up or we'll tell." Last I checked, extortion carried a worse criminal penalty than copyright infringement.
This isn't to say money couldn't be made by policing copyright. This very group could have done something much closer to legal by contacting copyright holders worried about infringement and getting them to bankroll just such an evidence gathering service. The data they've already gathered could even have ethically been offered free as a sample...
I don't download stuff from Kazaa, Gnutella or even Limwire because I don't have them installed on my computer for one, and don't have the time to do this. But I must say that when I read things like some big organisation suiing the hell out of some teen or twenty year old (for whom $14000 is a hell of a lot of money) then I realise why I dislike the internet more and more. I remember working in an internet agency in the napster days where my coworkers downloaded about 200 Gigs of CD's in a couple of months and nobody really cared. Those were young guys who didn't really have the money to spend on dozens of originals, and they were fun, nice people and we had a good time listening to good music while coding websites for our soon-to-be-bankrupt agency. The net was fun and interesting. There were thousands of interesting sites and nobody was all too worried.
With the crash of the internet boom and the lack of cash, it seems as if all the ugliest bunch of greedy scum has crawled out of the woodwork to try and resttrict peoples lives and freedom so that they can rape them for as much money as possible. Christ it's like big brother in 1984. They watch everything you do, strip you of all your privacy and then have the fucking balls to pretend to be righteous about it as well.
Perhaps some time we'll have the last laugh...
Antipiratgruppen (in Denmark often reffered to as APG - or AGP by morons who can't tell the difference between an organization and a hardware interface...) has a pretty bad track record with respect to their ability to abide by Danish law. My personal favourite examples of their behaviour are the following two (restated here to the best of my recollection - any fellow Dane may correct me on the facts as best s?he can):
1) They at one point were questioning a 14-year-old boy without calling his parents and without him having a lawyer present (in case you are wondering - Danish law does not allow for this).
2) They showed up at a private appartment or house with a court order (most likely gotten from a technologyimpaired judge), entered the suspect's house, and then proceeded straight to his PC where a "computerexpert" (whatever that means) proceeded to look through it for illegal materials. This was done without the suspect was allowed to watch what they were doing (which he is entitled to according to Danish law).
It should be obvious that APG is loathed for their methods, not for their goals. Most tech-litterate people agree that it is fair that they attempt (and most often fail) to stop copyright infringement, but we (I like to consider myself tech-literate, yes) feel that it is a shame that the Danish media doesn't take a more critical stance towards APG. Basically, they print/run whatever propaganda APG has manufactured about their latest bust, unless some other organization (like the public office for consumer rights (Forbrugerrådet)) raises questions.
Personally, I am of the opinion that they should just roll over die if they refuse to change their methods (and I just don't see that happening).
________
Entranced by anime since late summer 2001 and loving it ^_^
Actually music piracy HAS killed people. There was an article posted on CBS (CBS Report) recently about how the same sort of violence that one finds in the drug dealing crime circles is starting to appear in the music piracy circles.
There are very few real things in this world...this isn't one of them.
This is one of the people presued by the APG. He calls himself Siffan and he runs a danish website. Unfortunately his website: http://www.siffan.dk/ is mainly in danish.
He has written his version of events that happen when the APG came with the courtorder.
In short, it goes something like this: The APG came with a courtorder to see if he had an eDonkey-server up and running on his computer. They tell him he has the right to a lawyer and the presens of the police. He tells them that there is not running an edonkey server, but ther was some time ago...
The AGP has an "IT-man" with them... he is allowed to look at the computer to see if there is a server running (according to the courtorder) He agrees with Siffan, but then he browess through his harddrive and finds illegal software and mp3 files... Siffan was not comfertable with this,and points out that most of the mp3s are legal copies of his own cds. but agrees that he has illegal stuff on his computer and desides to be cooperative. Now AGP wants to take his computer with them. Siffan now says he wants a laywer, he is not able to get one a the pressent time, but the APG will not delay the case to the next day. So it ends with the APG straling off with his computer and some cd's.
The next day a lawyer representing the APG calls him and ask him to give up his right to have the case tested in a civil court or he will sue him within 14 days.
That is about it. It's late and I'm tired... But I hope you find this intresting.
Ask me no questions, and I'll tell you no lies...
What I see happening here is a classic example of scare one and the rest will follow. I don't know much about Danish law, but I will assume it is roughly similar to other European countries. If all they have to go on is screen grabs of files names, then the don't have a leg to stand on, like the expert said without access to the alleged offenders computer they are largely unable to prove the case.
Also consdider where the files came from. If they have screen grabbed an image of what is in someones share list, all that proves is they have a file called 'such and such' on that users HD. If the user downloaded a file from another user and APG had some way to monitor that, then that probably breaches all sorts of privacy and computer misuse laws. But, if the user had downloaded the files from computers belonging to AntiPiratGruppen then you are getting in to the realms of entrapment, plus you must ask if AntiPiratGruppen wasn't breaching copyright itself. All this is speculation, but it leads me on to an important point.
It is certain some of these 150 so called 'Pirates' will pay up. They might not pay the full amount, they may negotiate a lower price and it will be because they are scared of what AntiPiratGruppen may or may not do to them. Once one person pays up APG will shout that fact from the roof tops and it will no doubt have the effect of scaring others in complying with the wishes of RIAA/BSA/FACT etc and leave P2P well enough alone. Effectively they will be using bully boy tactics to succeed. Regardless of your view on the legality and morals of P2P, you must admit this is a not a good thing as it sets a dangerous precident if it works.
Any defense lawyer worth his weight in golfballs would demand proof that the screenshot was not doctored with a graphics editting program.
Trolling is a art,
in the case of photoshop, i dont know of anyone who is willing to drop 500-1000 bucks for a single program. do the makers of photoshop give a rats ass? i doubt it. the fact that photoshop can be downloaded for free by those gosh-darn pirates just means that more people know how to use photoshop. almost no one is going to buy photoshop on their own at that price. however, if most of the people who are into graphic design and what not can use photoshop well, then it goes a long way towards making photoshop the industry standard. what does this mean to adobe? damn near every graphic design business is going to buy copies of their software at huge prices. a business wont pirate the software because it can mean MUCH stiffer punishment for a business than for a simple home user. if adobe wanted, they could incorporate much better copy protection into their software other than "enter your serial number". but why would adobe want to do this, if it can enoy huge profit margins from business by practically letting all home users have their product.?
microsoft does this same thing. they barely have any copy protection built into windows. however, by being the industry standard, they can charge OEMs fees to install windows on the machines they sell. i dont know of a single person who has actually paid for an upgrade in windows, but i know of plenty who have bought new computers with windows preloaded.
Wouldn't this be a form of extorsion? I mean, how the hell can they prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the "screenshot" they have are of...
- illegal copies
- files intentionally put up to share outside the contrtaints of acceptable use
- actually the movie / mp3 / warez and not a zip file containing data files
Beyond this, how hard can it be to make a Photoshop special containing a different ip!? Gimme a break.
Each case that I can think of should be able to be argued in court. Maybe someone heard of this fancy new software (Kazza, whatever), loaded it to see what the fuss was about and never uninstalled it while all the time it's in the Windows startup and showing fully legal software / programs or mp3's. Many people I know install software unaware of what it's actually doing and never uninstall it.
In my eyes this would be similar to someone looking in my parked car window and casually wondering if they could get away with stealing it, but not attempting to. Oh, and no, I don't use any P2P software.
This just sounds like some company crying wolf, getting sympathy from the courts and digging their failing business out from Chapter 11 by padding their wallets with law suits.
My good sig is in the laundry
Gee nice flame
Thanx, guess that's better than a "shabby" flame.
why is it that everybody else here seems to agree that one of the issues is theft?
Maybe because those who take the time to think about what they say have less time left over to hit the "submit" button?
So if copyright infringement in this case is not stealing, why is it not?
Because data is not the same thing as material goods. There are numerous dialogues on this topic. Here is one easy list to remember on a related topic. The gist is that having copied a peice of data, I have not in any way diminshed the original data. It is quite plain that copying a file off of your hard-drive is very different than taking a beer out of your fridge and drinking it. In drinking a beer I've lowered your beer count by one. In copying a file I diminish your data count by none.
Okay, so data is different than physical objects. But what does stealing mean?
----From dictionary.com----
v. stole, (stl) stolen, (stln) stealing, steals
v. tr.
1. To take (the property of another) without right or permission.
2. To get or effect surreptitiously or artfully: steal a kiss; stole the ball from an opponent.
3. To move, carry, or place surreptitiously.
4. To draw attention unexpectedly in (an entertainment), especially by being the outstanding performer: The magician's assistant stole the show with her comic antics.
5. Baseball. To advance safely to (another base) during the delivery of a pitch, without the aid of a base hit, walk, passed ball, or wild pitch.
---------------------
Clearly sense 1 applies here, but in the case of copyright infringement what is owned by the copyright holder (exclusive right to authorize copies) is only partially subsumed. The infringer does not put their name on the registered copyright document and begin sueing others for infringement (that would be plaguerism, which is much closer to stealing), they merely disregard the exclusive granted right.
What *is* stealing?
1) Breaking, entering and leaving with physical goodies.
2) Credit card fraud.
3) Pretending to work on company time. (like posting to slashdot for instance)
4) Lieing on income tax returns.
What *isn't* stealing?
1) Trespassing. Land, has many characteristics in common with other physical property. And yet, occupying that land without permission is not considered stealing. It is trespassing. Stealing the land would require taking full ownership, not just partial unauthorized use.
Looking over this list, it's plain that copying data without permission (copyright infringement) is very different than other activity associated with "stealing". If anything it has more in common with trespassing, another activity that only affects part of a property right. But even trespassing deals in limited physical goods whereas copyright deals with unlimited logical goods.
Because of this and similar issues, copyright and property laws have very seperate paths of evolution. Even today, you would not go into court being unsure whether you were charged with stealing a physical good or infringing on another's right to copy.
This isn't to say copyright infringement is "okay" or that it is not a crime. Merely that it is not the same thing as stealing. It also doesn't imply that wielding teams of lawyers and a weighty judicial system against "joe sixpack" to squeeze more cash out of him is a morally agreeable or ethically defensible activity.
This is to say copyright infringement is not the same as stealing. It also implies the motivations of anyone pushing the infringement=stealing notion are suspect.
Be specific please.
You asked for it!
If we want to talk about software IP rights in terms of 'ownership' and 'theft', we can define theft in terms of the unwillingness of the owner to part with what is rightfully his. We can then argue the 'rightful' part of this argument relative to IP, but applying the term theft is perfectly reasonable--in terms of whichever of the *thousands* of defintions of 'theft' you'd like to argue. ('Piracy', no matter how misapplied a term, has become a defacto term. There's no more use arguing it than arguing that your neighbor's hot tub isn't really a 'Jacuzzi')
I agree that this isn't necessarily a moral discussion, but one of laws--although I question your assertion that morals are arbitrary. This again sounds like convenient justification.
The bottom line is, if you're a US, British, Canadian, Russian, or one of any number of citizenry, you're obligated by the laws of your country to respect copyright, patent, and other IP-related laws. If you don't, you hurt the people that depend on these laws to make a living. If you don't like the laws, go lobby against them!
I work as an application developer. I'm not a rich man, I'm just a normal guy making a decent living. The team I work for _depends_ on people adhering to these laws to generate revenue, which ultimately generates my paycheck. If the laws change, hey, I'll go find something else to do. Consulting sounds interesting. In the meanwhile, every company that steals our software and can't think beyond convenient, bullshit semantic arguments against copyright laws puts another one of my team closer to the reduction-in-force list. You live in a country that enforces a system. You profit from the system. Respect the system until you can legitimately effect change in it.
But hey, these labels like 'piracy', and 'stealing', are inaccurate and heinous, right? So you'll just do your part for the cause not by some active means, but just by copying the occasional CD or app. They're just bits and bytes, words on a page--it's not hurting anyone--right?
I did ask for it and I appreciate the time you took. Having said that, there is an obvious issue of "unfairness" here about using the judicial system and a large team of lawyers against somebody who will clearly be outmatched financially. Further, it is not the case that I think the motivations of the dutch association are not suspect or even remotely pure. Nor am I dismissive of the ongoing (and previous)discussion here. Passing over all of that...
But to say that it has been discussed before is not to say that there is consensus. When you say that what is going on on P2P networks is solely copyright infringement, and not stealing, I would argue that misses a couple of pretty fundamental concerns:
1) It feels like stealing. It may be a weak argument to resort to "intuition" but I think most of us here have a sense that we are "taking" somebody's property without fair compensation. Pretty close to dictionary defintion 1. (And btw, just because your definition #1 state the item has to be physical, don't mean it is so!). This may not capture all P2Pers, but it sure captures a lot of them: notably, all those who do it because the RIAA is "screwing them" or because the record companies aren't providing the distribution channel we are asking for (the internet). I think it captures alot of the other excuses for not paying for music too...
2) I think we need to distinguish between just "any old file" and a file that is music, and clearly valuable to the owner and artist. I have taken "something" without compensating the owner, and without their permission. When I take something of value without paying for it, over P2P, I think I have met dictionary definition #3. If it is something that somebody would normally be financially compensated for, it becomes theft. That it is an idea is irrelevant, I think. I would even say that the P2P network provides the "surreptitiously" part of the equation. (Not very many but the most injudicious would advertise publicly their enormous collection of downloaded mp3s today!)
So is copyright infringement different than stealing? I think that may be stretching it. It feels far more natural to me to say that it is a subset of stealing, with some unique attributes. But you know what else: I think using the word stealing is useful, because it forces us to think about the issue in a way that pays attention to morally right and wrong.
To say somebody committed copyright infrigement is to only faintly damn them. Joe Sixpack would say "WTF is copyright infringement" and leave it at that. I feel that it almost lets us all of the hook of confronting the issue: is it Wrong? (Big "W" on purpose!) Or is it not? To ask if it is "theft" and "Wrong" is a little more powerful and meaningful (and again, intuitively more comfortable) than to ask if it is "infringement".
If they insist on doing this, I think the material should be pro-rated on the encoding quality. If you d/l mp3s that are encoded at 128k, this is not equal in value to the uncompressed CD by no means. How can 'they' expect to sue for full price of the CD for an inferior product?
The media companies seem to forget the quality standard. They seem to forget that most downloadable media files are inferior to the store bought product, which further proves that the downloaders will eventually BUY this stuff if they like it.
I'm not a regular downloader of copyright materials, but when I do.....if I like it, I buy it. If I don't, why keep the shit laying around taking up my HD space. Besides, there's a ton of stuff out there that's not for sale by the media companies at any price, like recording outtakes and unreleased bootlegs. These items are only valuable to hard core fans anyway and by no means would the media companies ever consider releasing them....well, then again, there was the Beatles Anthology series. That was worth buying simply because the quality was so much better than the boots.