Slashdot Mirror
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.
Sounds alot like my ex-wife.
Free Instant Site Inclusion
I mean, going after those who actually possess and distribute something that they have not legally purchased? Sounds legitimate to me.
When men used to be men
If I were these guys, I'd consider myself getting away with a slap on the wrist.
Software piracy is victimless theft.
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?
Okay, so assuming this extorti...I mean apparently-legal action goes through, who gets the money? Is this anti-piracy group going to go out and distribute the monies to the appropriate copyright holders? Who decided what price to set for the various downloaded artifacts? Certainly there's a significant markup here.
Assuming a CD has, on average, 15 songs, and you can get a CD for $12 at Best Buy, $2.67--that's a 250% markup on each song.
And, who is going to ensure that paying these folks will prevent future prosecution by the copyright holders? Do I get to keep the songs and movies that I downloaded if I pay up?
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.
When I watch Buchanan and Press, and see Press describe mp3 as no bigger a crime than not stopping at a stop sign, I realize it's finally beginning to hit the public at how much power RIAA is getting. People are getting sick of it, and if RIAA doesn't watch it, they'll find a lot of young people taking office and changing laws.
BRING IT
Where's my services rendered, where's my product delivered, and where's the sales agreement which was signed that justifies you billing me?
They've got a term for this in America, we here like to call it extortion.
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
Before any of you americans start quoting your constitution, please remember that this is Denmark and the law is different there. Why not wait and see what happens first, eh?
Maybe it would be a good idea for them to sell the content they've downloaded on eBay to raise funds for paying the bills or hiring a lawyer... Yeah, I'm sure that'd solve all their problems.
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
How 'bout I send a bill to Kazaa for 'stealing' information about me that is used to provide ads that bother the shit about me? Oh wait, I can't threaten them with legal action like they can.
Slashdot: Where people pretend to be twice as smart as they really are by behaving like children.
LONDON -- In a unique crackdown on illegal file-sharing, a Danish anti-piracy group mailed invoices to alleged pirates demanding compensation for downloading copyrighted materials off the Internet, an attorney for the group said on Tuesday.
The Danish Anti Piracy Group (APG) identified 150 alleged pirates asking them to pay a combined $133,600, said Morten Lindegaard, an attorney for the group. The biggest offenders face a bill of $13,360.
"We are demanding full payment for the use of these copyrighted materials," Lindegaard said. The APG has worked with the Danish branch of music trade body International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, to crack down on online piracy. The decision to seek compensation for downloads opens up a controversial new front in copyright holders' ongoing campaign to curb consumer piracy on the Internet, a phenomenon blamed for a decline in CD sales and upswing in the free trade of video games, computer software and video games.
The tactic is drawing protests from some technical and legal experts who insist that without the violators' computer it's impossible to prove the existence of copyright violations. Others question the size of the bills.
"In this case, we're talking about compensation for the damage the Anti Piracy Group claims its members have suffered. It's the courts that decide the amount of compensation to be paid due to copyright infringement, not the victim." said Martin von Haller Groenbaek, a Danish attorney specialising in IT law.
KAZAA, EDONKEY USERS TARGETED
In each case, the Danish users were accused of downloading copyrighted materials from file-sharing networks Kazaa and eDonkey, two popular so-called peer-to-peer (P2P) networks in Denmark, Lindegaard said.
Lindegaard, 29, and his helpers -- four Danish university students -- developed a software program that monitored Danish file swappers on the two P2P networks, honing down to the users' Internet Protocol, or IP, address to confirm they were logged on from Denmark.
The program also traced the files shared and the time at which they were downloaded. After reviewing the evidence, a judge ordered the users' Internet service providers to pass on the violators' billing addresses.
In each case, the alleged pirate first learned they were being investigated when they received a bill in the post, which began arriving late last week.
A spokesman for the Danish Consumer Council said they received roughly 50 complaints from the fined individuals. After an initial investigation, the council determined the APG complied with local data protection laws, the spokesman added.
STUDENTS, PROFESSIONALS FINGERED
Lindegaard said the accused range from high school students to professionals. They downloaded materials ranging from Eminem songs to the latest Star Wars film to the video game, "Grand Theft Auto."
"The top 10 computer games, music and movies -- it's all there," said Lindegaard.
The alleged pirates were billed based on the amount of files they shared. For a single music file, they were charged $2.67; $26.70 for a movie and approximately $50 for a video game, Lindegaard said. But technical experts threw into question the fairness of the bill, pointing to the fact that copyrighted material from time to time is distributed for free across the Internet in a legitimate manner.
For example, major record labels allow users to download select songs from new album releases off the Web. The tracks typically expire after a period, but in some cases the deactivated track may still appear on a users' hard drive.
Also, the labels, movie studios and video game makers have increasingly distributed bogus files on P2P networks that resemble the genuine article, down to file size and title, to frustrate would-be downloaders.
"How do you know each of these copyrighted materials is illegal? That's the big issue here," said Urs Gattiker, a professor of technology and innovation management at Aalborg University in Denmark.
-Magiluke
Earl Grey, Hot.
...not the artists. Why should they get any? Like in Napster case...
Also it's interesting as the people in The Register note, that proving, even with the lower standard of civil action, that particular user had real movies or who exactly set up p2p on particular computer might be a little problematic.
Looks like a scare tactics to me.
The moon is not fully subjugated. I demand a second assault wave preceded by a massive nuclear bombardment.
...now we know what Step 2 is.
Step 3: Profit!
The article says that they are billing by file name. This method has its own, shall we say, limitations. I would imagine it would be embarrasing to take the p2p users to court only to have them show up with recitps for the material the rightly own.
Cheers,
-- RLJ
The article on theregister says they have to pay for "illegally downloading copyright material". The article on slashdot says "for sharing copyrighted material". The article on reuters says also for downloading material.
So what?! Why put funny things in the slashdot article?!
Otherwise their actions are about as threatening as the BSA's. Right?
$16 per CD and about $60 per full length movie How much for each p0rn JPG?
1) the evidence used are screen shots (can be faked)
2) the file names could be misleading (i.e., the file's contents not illegal)
3) which family member used the computer?
Basically, they are saying pay us $60 bucks. Otherwise, they will take you to court.
However, if they take you to court, you might win!
This is like me sending random letters asking to be PayPal'd or expect to see me in court! If people comply... well then thanks!
Which by the way would be like holding people up for ransom?
Maybe this story affected the Danishes, eh?
Cover your eyes and click this link!
Can they go after me for merely having this stuff availbe on my computer, or do they have to go after the people who have downloaded it? If im plying my car stereo and someone comes by and makes a tape of it, its not my fault, is it?
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
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).
So, if someone pays the bills, he can then legally digitally own everything he got billed for! With no EULAs in sight, presumably.
In the instructions made to install Kazaa (Full)without adware (cydoor, et al), one of the things to do was to delete the ~/KaZaa/db folder and replace that with a dummy file by opening notepad and saving a blank file as "db" (no extention). As a result of this, all downloaded files in (~/Kazaa/My Shared Files) would appear to have "failed" in Kazaa, and the downloaded files would remain in their *.dat files. It would also NOT include them in your list of files shared. You'd then have to rename the files with extentsions before exiting Kazaa or else you'd lose them.
So...if you want to download on P2P you could probably take these measures and be okay
$cat
Ok, now think about for example Kazaa without all those evil pirates. Guess what - this cool technology wouldn't exist and wouldn't be used without them.
The names of the files can be rather incriminating, since it isn't likely that a file named "U2-Sunday Bloody Sunday.mp3" is anything but that song, by that artist. Coupled with the fact that these users probably have hundreds of similarly named files, it won't be easy to dissuade a jury of your peers that you were not illegally obtaining copy righted music. Yet, with this being the only evidence that they have to go by, a defending lawyer might be able to prove that there is reasonable doubt - especially if the files are no longer present on the culprits system at the time of a law enforcemnet raid (if that ever happens over there).
The most obvious answer is to stop pirating. A person can come up with all of the self serving rationalizations that they want, like "I wasn't going to ever pay for it anways" or "the industry charges too much", but in the end, you obtained material that is explicitly protected and must be obtained through a legitimate sale in an illegal manner. Pay up.
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.
Could you pick another name?
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
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.
I think this is the most brilliant piece of marketting yet. First they jam up P2P with blank mp3s to put people off using P2P and then they send those people a bill for accepting the blank mp3. $10 for a loop of nothing?
:)
Do they have a copyright on the blank loop? If not I think I should hurry up and copyright it
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
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.
do they get to keep their downloads or is this like a fine that one pays to a court?
III.IIVIVIXIIVIVIIIVVIIIIXVIIIXIIIIIIIIVIIIIVVIII
Keep copyright law where it should be, a civil matter. Why the heck the goverment thinks copyright protection should be worthy of arrest let alone jail time is beyond me. In most cases copyright infringement is just that infringment on someones rights as sole distributer, not theft, as there is no loss of goods to the victim. This strikes me as being the appropriate response to the matter.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
You should therefore radically reduce the number of files you share. The ideal situation is a net with ten million users each of which host exactly one file (popular files get hosted by more nodes than rare ones, of course). Let the RIAA deal with that!
Do you believe in death after life?
BUT, putting that aside. Some points:
Too all those "They can't make me pay cause I didn't sign anything" or "Go ahead, sue me for not paying the bill.": You guys missed the point. This bill is an option. They are being nice to you. They are saying; OK, look, you're busted and, deep inside, you know you are busted. We are giving you a chance to avoid court and make this go away as if you were legit. Just pay this bill and you won't go to court. Oh, don't agree? Want to deny it? Won't pay? Fine. We'll take you to court. Oh... NOT for not paying this bill. You are right, you didn't sign or receive a service for THIS bill. Nope, we're taking you to court for the copyrighted material you have stole and are redistributing.
Too all the photoshop wannabe's with this: we could fake those screenshots. Do you honestly (stupidly) think that all they have are some dot-matrix printouts of some screen dumps? Think people. They probably had notarized witnesses present while capturing the data, or cops or the equivilent - for one. And they probably DID download the files from your computer and categloged them neatly with the IP your ISP DHCPed to you along with the records from the ISP where you dialed up from or which IP they gave to what MAC address on who's cable modem or what IP went to what DSL caller.
People - listen. This is not a troll or flamebait. Remember something
If you are not doing anything illegal - you have nothing to worry about!
Obviously legal users of P2P networks aren't concerned, they are happy. All those bandwidth hogs trading illegal stuff are being forced off. This is a GOOD thing remember? You have said you actually want this right? How could you possibly complain?
Before replying, think: only the thieves have anything to worry about - and you aren't a theif are you?
What is the legal right of a 13 year old?
Are they holding the Parents of minors accountable?
Are they providing cushions for the all the smacked asses they have caused?
Yo Grark
Canadian Bred with American Buttering
Canadian Bred with American Buttering
You weren't the one downloading the movie/CD, you are legaly making a backup, and allowing other people who also own that movie/cd to get a backup...
Everyone can make an MP3/divx, but not everyone understands it enough to make a good MP3/divx...
Before user-friendly mp3 programs, I know lots of people who used Napster just for that...
That would be the basic argument in the USA, I'm unsure about the Danish argument tho...
~~~
Click here, you know you wanna!
umm as owners of copyrights they have every right to tell you to pay for their works or else be brought to civil court. The fact that you can make a deal to delete the copies and get half off makes no sense unless you view it as possesion of the works for the time between the download and the agreement, but in the US that would break first sale doctrine.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
I'm confused. It says that they were targeted for downloading a file. But then later in the article, it says that they were charged according to the files they shared.
How are the 2 related?
Not only that, but I thought that obtaining files was fine, but distributing them was not fine.
Otherwise, if I was these kids, I would go buy every single movie and album that they ever downloaded ASAP. Can't get in trouble downloading something you already have, right?
That's right, we don't really know. I guess it's time to go to court and then figure out the laws then.
*I* am not the one copying it. I own it, i put it on my computer. *THEY * copy it by downloading it. The digital/analog copy dosent matter for this point.
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
Better then the american approach of having the FBI raid your house and confiscate all your computers, never to be returned...
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Hold on, they have to pay and delete the files from their harddrives? So, if you steal from a store you have to pay for the item and return it? That makes no sense. If they pay for the material, they should at least be able to keep it. Not that they should have to pay at all, but this seems even more rediculous.
It's not 'loss'. There is no right to profit. It might be potential loss, but you have no reason to believe that all/any who download would buy otherwise.
What?
Let me be one of the first hundred people or so to say, "GOOD!" For far too long every post where anyone dares say anything that even remotely links P2P and piracy is instantly modded down and disagreed with under the guise of freedom.
Well, it's not about freedom. It's mostly about stealing music and movies.
People stole stuff, or at a minimum, engaged in the redistribution of it. Those people should pay.
Break the law, get in trouble. Oh, and don't explain why it shouldn't be against the law, and how it's better for record companies for us to share music. That's a rationalisation of the sickest kind. It's still illegal, and if the people who do it could spent one tenth the time they spend stealing things actually trying to change the law and they'd get it changed.
Nah, I'll keep stealing stuff until someone busts me.
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.
The only problem is that they are NOT doing that. As it even states in the article (RTFA?) there appears to be no proof that the songs on those computers are illegal (ie they own the actual CD. They also make a mention that there doesn't appear to be proof that the files displayed on the screen are actually songs. That is of course a very "lawyer" thing to say but it DOES matter in at least US courts; but it isn't like it would have been too hard to at least check a few of the songs and try to get the judge to believe that if 20 out of 200 songs are real than the other 180 are real.
:)
... what I said above would include NOT busting me for downloading Metallica, Ride The Lightening because I do own that CD but it is scratched beyond repair. I legally own the CD and I have every legal right to have the song. The only gray area is who is allowed to provide me with the replacement data. It would be understandable for the publisher to want to charge me for the costs invovled with providing me the data again but certainly NOT to charge me for another licence. The key would be once I were to become in possesion of that data again, unless they observed me getting it they would have no way to tell if I got it from my own CD or someone elses, and it wouldn't matter if they did observe because they would have to prove I denied them revenue which I did not since I am in possesion of a legal licence. So far I know of no case law or legislation that would actually make me quilty of anything if I were to get a copy of that data from another legally licenced data source (aka friends CD).
... we want our FAIR USE RIGHTS facilitated (not expanded) by technology not abridged by it.
... or at least my interpretation of the VAST myriad of opinions that should NOT all be lumped together as, "Isn't that what SLASHDOT has wanted."
But the important thing here is that they do NOT have any proof that those people are in possesion of the songs illegally. To my knowledge there is no law against posting your songs up on a network. [wait for the whole point] They could of course make a case that you are putting them up there with the express intent of facilitating piracy (ie Napster) but that isn't what the people are being charged ($$$) for since it would be a criminal charge not something they could send you a bill for.
The individuals could of course say that it was simply the easiest way for them to make their own, legally obtained music available to themselves when not at home.
No this is not what Slashdot has wanted all along. What we have wanted all along is for them to bust people who are DOWNLOADING / possesiing songs they don't have the licence to; versus the simple act of posting a legal song. Of course the "posters" who do so for profit should be shut down because no matter if they own a real licence to the music they do not have the right to distribute. That is the discriminator: you have no way to deny inent to distribute if you are engaging in the business of selling the data. Remember the rules of logic and debate in the court room are very specific compared to a conversation in a bar or a chat room. Afterall how do you think OJ got off???
Back to the point
To put it simply
That is what Slashdot has wanted
If you can't be good, be good at it!
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/
Actually, send them an invoice for your time and upset in having to read an article about them on Slashdot. It makes as much sense as random organizations sending out bills to people, regardless of what the reason is.. You can even threaten to sue them if they don't pay up.
May we never see th
"Piracy" is only illegal under very particular sets of circumstances. Also, those criteria are subject to revision.
Amateur "piracy" is pretty irrelevant.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
You hadn't heard? They were granted a patent on "a method of transferring copyrighted bits between two computers via a large scale electronic network" last week. It's such an innovation! After all, such innovators should be able to sue their way to the top, shouldn't they?
Yes, that was sarcasm, for the humor-impaired.
This is a very important distinction, because in America, I believe (IANAL, so correct me if I'm wrong), the AHRA allows downloading for personal use. The 9th circuit court of appeals stated (in the Napster case) that sharing isn't so protected because you are making the file available to a wide audience, but copying for your own personal use (which is what downloading is) is protected. Whether the same protection applies to movies or not is unclear, since I think the AHRA applies to music only.
I know nothing about Danish law, so I don't know what their situation is, but I'd love to know if these people receiving bills are merely downloaders, or sharers, and which activity are they being billed for. Can anyone fill us in? The article is indeed self-contradictory on this point.
If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
Know how I sniffed you out?
I'm sorry, but the only reason I even bothered signing with a label was to SELL MY STUFF. Make money, that's all.
There are *SO* many reasons to sign to a label!
I mean, don't get me wrong. Even with all these advantages there are significant disadvantages:
No actual recording artist these days is naive enough to think that labels are solely useful for printing and sales.
But what do I know. I'm just looking for anonymous gay sex.
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
in kazaa;
"How 'bout I send a bill to Kazaa for 'stealing' information about me that is used to provide ads that bother the shit about me? Oh wait, I can't threaten them with legal action like they can"
If you have kazaa installed on a filesystem that supports permissions and you deny yourself write/create permission to the directories that kazaa stores its ads in then it can't show you the ads and doesn't complain.
*zap* no ads in kazaa.
Plus adaware can make the spyware safe.
But remember, the procedure I describe here is purely cosmetic.
Have fun!
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
Pay up or we'll sue? Isn't that fucking blackmail??
evil adrian
If they are civil, how an organization that is not in any way related to the original copyright infringement can seek any damages? Their lawsuit would be pointless, they have to go to original copyright holders and ask them to sue -- something that is very unlikely to succeed being a horrendous waste of money.
If criminal, "anti-pirates" have obtained an information about alleged crime, and withholding it from authorities and demanding payment from alleged perpetrators to continue witholding it. Sounds like they have already commited a crime of extortion.
I am not sure if Danish law works the same way, however those things are usually pretty similar everywhere.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
No, threaten to sue is perfectly legal.
Help fight continental drift.
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...
Sweet! There's still a Communist party in Canada, which means Communism must technically still be legal! Noice! I can pirate to my heart's content!
Karma: Non-Heinous
......the artists of the pirated material. Its amazing - another greedy bastard has found a way to make ridiculous money off of someone elses work.
-- 7 string electric violin + live loop samplers
A lot of folks seem to be hung up on the "how do they know that "Half-Life.zip" is actually Half-Life, the game. Fact is, it doesn't matter. Under US law (yes, I know, it's Denmark, so YMMV, but I'm pretty sure the same holds), if you buy a kilo of powdered sugar from an undercover cop, you've just committed a drug crime, so long as there's reasonable evidence to indicate that you _believed_ that you were buying cocaine. By the same token, you'd have a hard time making the argument that you like to download files entitled real_slim_shady.mp3 because you like the name, but had no intention of actually getting an Eminem song.
>>
When you make an otherwise very good post about language, you lose credibility with me when you can't distinguish between lose and loose.
IANAL, but "Me too".
They can sue in court for non-payment of the bill, which they'll probably lose, because there was never an agreement from the "buyer" to pay for the wares of the "seller".
They can, of course, not sue for non-payment of the bill, and instead, sue for civil copyright infringement. That suit, they might win.
But I still think linking a frivolous bill ("Pay $7000 for no reason at all!") to a non-frivolous claim of copyright infringement ("If you don't pay the frivolous bill, we'll file suit against you for $14,000 for copyright infringement") is ethically questionable at best, and under some legal systems may even be illegal.
If they wanted to do it right, IMHO, they'd have filed suit for $14,000 for infringement, and then offered to settle out of court for $7,000. There may not be much practical difference to the warez-d00d getting the subpoena, but IMNSHO there's one hell of a legal/ethical difference.
Disclaimer: IANAL. Can any US or Danish lawyers clear this up?
I think your a little confused. I thought that "Slashdot" wanted the people who burn the stuff and sell it on the black market (who earn profit off of piracy) to be caught and thrown in the slammer, not "innocent" P2P nodes.
Actually, what I would like to see is a 11 year old minority girl who has random MP3's of her favorite American artist (of which her and her minimum wage working class parents can't afford to pay for the overpriced CD's) to be thrown in jail. Once that gets released to the press, it will destroy the RIAA/MPAA.
If that happened, I predict a private concert for the girl by her favorite artist and a basket of free CD's on the TODAY Show or something
Then the RIAA would creep back into the dark corners of the corperate industry and never bother "poor innocent P2P nodes" ever again, and perhaps actually think up a better buisness model instead of throwing of thretening and throwing their customers into jail.
is downright weird. Get this: I may go to the library and borrow a CD, make a perfect digital copy of it at home and take the CD back to the library. I may also borrow a CD from a friend of mine and make a copy of the CD. However, I may not receive a copy of said CD from my friend. The difference is that in the last case I had "outside help" in copying the CD. Thus, it wouldn't save my a** a whole lot to show up in court with the physical media and pointing to it - it would still have been illegal. On the Danish site Newz.dk a couple of guys have pondered if they should make a few "APG target marks" consisting of files like "Harry Potter CD1.avi", "LOTR_TTT CD2.avi", etc. containing nothing but junk data or something they have a legitimate right to distribute (Linux ISOs might be great for this. They are the right size too ^_^). It would be interesting to say the least to see APG look real stupid in court then.
________
Entranced by anime since late summer 2001 and loving it ^_^
Yeah, I think the time has come for some laws protecting from non copyright holders sueing others for violating laws and gaining the profit themselves. About as bad as the piracy itself IMHO.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
According to a posting by an eDonkey user who got busted (edonkey2000.dk/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=4117 - it's in Danish), the screenshots are of the files you're sharing. eDonkey has a file listing feature, so you can check out what the other clients are sharing.
;)
It seems to me that it's that it would be pretty hard for APG to find what you're sharing or downloading if it wasn't for the listing feature, unless they're willing to set up a client or a server and start sharing illegal stuff themselves. So that's one more reason to use eMule in stead of eDonkey, since it let's you disable the file listing feature.
I'm thirty-(mumble) and married, etc. My parents recently gave me three garbage bags full of old cassette tapes that I'd left at their house aeons ago.
Among the gems, a tape of some favorite LPs! But for a crackle or two, "perfect", er, analog copies :) (Actually, only one crackle that my ear could detect. The copies are perfect from my point of view)
They were albums that a high school friend had owned. I think the bands in question withstood my "piracy" and survived for years. Certainly the record companies in question did ;)
Someone evil hacker must have broken into my computer and illegally installed that file sharing program. Windows *is* known for its weak security, you know. How can I possibly be liable for what a hacker (and weak windows security) did with my computer?
-- Give me ambiguity or give me something else!
No, you deprive the rightful/legal owner of the copyright the revenue that illegal copy would have bestowed upon them. That is why it is considered theft. That's why it's not only illegal, but immoral.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
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...
The AHRA states that making recordings of copyrighted material using certain methods is not actionable in and of itself. You can't be charged with making a copy of a CD with your DAT player. That's a separate issue from whether copyright violation occurred... it's about the actual tools and items in use and whether such use is legal.
You can copy for personal use, yes, but not when the original material is not yours to copy in the first place (as it would be if it was illegally distributed).
- IFPI - The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry
- NCB - Nordic Copyright Bureau
- DMF danish site - Danish Musician Union. some english info
- DAF - Danish Artist Union
In addition, the members of APG isQuote from the site:
The transfer of rights to NCB is organised in the following way: rights owners in the Nordic countries and the Baltic States transfer all their rights to the national performing rights society. This society administers the performing rights and transfers the mechanical rights to NCB. Thus, NCB represents virtually all copyrighted music in the Nordic and Baltic areas in connection with recording and the manufacture and distribution of copies of recordings.
So this is basically a group representing many, if not all copyright holders for the material in question
We'll be seeing more of this as the corporations struggle to maintain their dominance.
They won't be around much longer, as their business model crumbles, but for now we still have little alternative. A few good independent music sites that run on a donation basis, but nothing has made it 'mainstream' as far as I know.
The problem is that it's idiots like copyrighted-file-sharing p2p users who provide ammunition for the RIAA, MPAA etc to put anti-piracy measures in place, and make all us anti-DRM people look bad.
That just ruins it for the rest of us who legitimately copy media for personal use.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
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 ^_^
But Photoshop was overpriced to begin with, imoho.
They were looking at machines running P2P software, Kazaa (sp?) in this case. If your MP3s/OGG files are not being shared they don't care about you. (Yet.)
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
The article states, in part:
"APG monitored the file sharing networks for available files with Danish IP addresses - and went to court to get the users' personal details from their ISPs, armed with screen shots of, for example, the KaZaA window showing the files on the user's hard- drive."
First, since when did naming a file after a popular song become illegal? Second, were the files checked to make sure that the associated file did, in fact, violate copyright? Third, did the people submitting these screenshots swear to the authenticity of the screenshot (ie, not forged)?
My
Limekiller
All the more reason to use the same open proxies in other countries that spammers use. Heh. Of course you can't run a server that way so you would be a leech, but it is a whole lot harder to trace.
Them having more money than you entitles you to rip them off? I suppose that gives the homeless the right to steal from you?
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
A more interesting question is why should I pay THEM?
Even assuming the copyright infringment was proven, still why should one pay some random organizations for all the CDs he had? Obviously this Danish organization does not own the copyrights of all the CDs that were traded. So who they are?
MSDOS: 20+ years without remote hole in the default install
Not a hell of a lot.
Are they holding the Parents of minors accountable?
I would assume so. Parents and/or legal gardians are responcible for the actions of minors. This case would be no different.
Are they providing cushions for the all the smacked asses they have caused?
Yes. Nice $14,000.00 (US) cushions.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
I thought P2P was supposed to be decentralized and less traceable? Hmmmmm?
It isn't unless you design a program to be anonymous, and most P2P are not. (Yet?)
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
is a form of theft, just for the sake of argument, the term 'piracy' would still not apply. The correct term would be, oddly enough: theft.
Nobody has jumped aboard your property, not even your landbound property, cutlass firmly clasped in gnashing teeth, and robbed, burned, pillaged, raped, or otherwise commited various violent felonius acts.
Nobody 'pirates' an apple from a street vendor. They steal it. Period.
Of course that's just for the sake of argument. There is a difference between a crime and a tort. That's why most countries have a distinct division in the courts between wrongs that are criminal and wrongs that are civil.
For wrongs that are criminal you owe the state a penalty, most often taken as incarceration. For wrongs that are civil you owe the wronged party money. You owe the state nothing. Note that Danish party feeling they have been wronged threaten a civil suit, not arrest. The simple reason for this is that *nothing was stolen.*
They may well have been deprived of a right, but they were NOT robbed.
Why, because in any civilized society such wrongs are not criminal.
When you infringe on a copyright you invoke a debt to the copyright holder. That's all, just a debt. You have taken nothing from them, you have deprived them of nothing other than monies which *should* have been due to them. You did not raid their cash box and remove funds from it.
Ethically, morally and legally you have done nothing worse than not pay your phone bill. At least by the legal tradition prevailing in most countries.
When you take the services of the phone company and do not pay they have the right to seek redress. That redress is generally limited to the *actual debt* and perhaps a bit for expenses. The offense isn't even a tort ( such as wrongful death). It's just an unpaid debt. Period. There are legal limitations on the collection of unpaid debts, as there should be.
Of course in their current religous zeal to protect certain special interests who, by law, don't actually deserve such protection, the American Congress had recently made various aspects of copyright and patent violation actual crimes. This turns all of legal history and philosophy on its head and is, well, criminal.
KFG
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...
Oh, just shut the fuck up. If you can't bother to examine even the factual parts of the opposition's arguments (to start with, copyright is a government-granted monopoly, which may or may not be a good thing but is sure as hell not a generally acknowledged moral right), then you don't get to play. The discussion of whether and when that monopoly is a good thing is where the bit about "overpriced goods" comes in.
Become literate in this discussion and try again. Alternately, if you're a troll, grow up; parrotting a genuine naive viewpoint (if one rather painfully so) is a boring troll.
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.
Let's take a trip down memory lane. Me making a copy of a CD for a friend technically violates the copyright, but only the dumbest and most opperesive states would bother to enforce it. What monetary damage was done by my "perfect" seleveless, artless copy for my friend? Generally zero as my friend would never have bought the thing in the first place but has an inferior copy which might lead him to buy the "real" thing. We could walk further down that road to tapes where courts upheld your right to do just that. We could go even further back before acid paper and comercial pulp printing and find much weaker copyright laws. We could go back even further and find that for the majority of human history writers expected no finicial reward for their efforts and considered it an honor when others would publish their work.
What I see comming is some awful invasive world where others think they have a right to search my personal effects at will. They have screen shots of the victim's computers? They must have been windoze users, but the precident is disturbing. Suppose my ISP is pressured to not allow connection from "insecure" platforms that do not allow such spying? Well, screw that. I don't go places where people treat me like a criminal. I'm not intersted in RIAA music, I never ran Napster, nor have I ever fooled around with newer music sharing junk. I want to share my own work, not that of others. These jackasses seek to prevent others from publishing their own music. If they get away with it, soon other forms of publishing will be prevented. We are on the road to Tycho.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
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,
And who has more of it--RIAA or young people?
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
Nice post. I agree by and large.
* they sell your shit
Yep, they arrange with both brick and mortar retailers (B&N, Tower, HMV, Sam Goody) and digital retailers (Amazon, CDNow) globally to put your music in their bins. Now, how good your placement is, how much in store advertising you are given is based on how much your label likes you, and how many CDs you'll probably sell. Moby? Front and center. End caps. Posters. A "rub Moby's bald head for luck" cardboard cutout at the door.
Fluffy and the Puffboys? 2 CDs in the "F" bin.
* they distribute your shit
Well, they sign with distributors, but ok, they manage your distribution.
* they promote your shit
True, but again, the amount and energy of that promotion will be very different for Linkin Park than for up-and-coming punk band Pus Casserole.
* they book your shit
Touring? Don't you have a booking agent? A sponsor? You might think about that.
* they speak "on your behalf" in these kinda situations
Again true, but the RIAA is much more of the "industry voice." And yeah, label attorneys are typically pretty good.
I mean, don't get me wrong. Even with all these advantages there are significant disadvantages:
* you must sell or you are dropped
* you get a fraction of what you'd make on an indie
* you often end up owing the label money
* occasional legal nightmares
These are minor to you? As I said, I spent fifteen years in the business, and I know of a few multi-platinum artists that either never recouped, or have such gargatuan legal bills that any profit is long gone.
Here's another one for you to ponder (and reply to if ya like.) Whose count do you accept when royalty time comes along? Every six months I get at least twenty phonebook sized royalty statements, telling me how many copies of a particular album sold in Burkina Faso, Singapore, Trinidad and Tobago, South Africa, Israel, Anguilla, yada yada. I get an equvalent sized package from my publisher, with similarly arcane Excel effluvia. I think I read one once. Reversed, they make wonderful scratch printer paper, but otherwise, they mean little to me (except for the attached check which is always disappointingly low.)
I wouldn't even know where to go to get an independent auditor but I know of a few bands that did, and let's say...their figures differed from the publisher and label. A lot.
Basically, the labels/publishers tell you how many sold, and the band usually has to take that word as gospel. You comfortable with that?
In short, while there are big issues, I think labels DEFINITELY have a function. MP3.com proved that mass Internet distribution is a joke. The labels may have an 85% failure rate, but they are damn good marketers, and Kazaa would be much less popular without BMG music.
What films do people request on IRC film channels? The ones all over TV and print advertising. What CDs are most anticipated by the unwashed masses? The one's most heavily marketed. They watch the QT trailer for Nemesis with drooling glee. They hear a new Korn CD is forthcoming on radio and TV. And what do they say?
"Hey I gotta download that when it comes out."
Labels and film studios are neither anachronisms or useless. They still serve an essential function, and you're right - no signed artist would think that their label is merely a manufacturer.
Things have to change, but labels aren't going anywhere.
"The pie shall be cut in half and each man shall receive.....death. I'll eat the pie."
Nah, I'll keep stealing stuff until someone busts me.
Its a copyright violation, not stealing.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
IANAL, but
;-).
They do not have the right to take matters in their own hands. The court system is not a tool to be bargained with, and I am sure a judge will see things cleared up. You should even be able to get a nice compensation for being threatened.
Take those letters to the police NOW.
And the best part ? Extortion is a criminal offence (it is here). The person who sent those letters is personally liable. If you get the police on his tail, he has a chance of finding himself in prison for a few months (and for the very least you could get his computer confiscated and his house searched), and he will have to personally foot any bills the court grants you (and if the company pays them, they will have to pay big money on taxes for doing that).
That $14000 is much better spent on a lawyer, in my opinion.
Keep in mind that they play this by the numbers, if a sufficient number of people move against them, they will lose money on this, and the court will not let them make "examples" of anyone.
BTW do not forget to tell newspapers, magazines, as well as anyone who cares (and a few who don't) about this. Because we live in a democracy and a LOT of people use kazaa
"Who are they screw-heads, and why should I PAY them?!"
They're representing the Danish record industry as well as individual artists... in other words... they're about the same as RIAA, but in Denmark.
Why should you pay them? Ask yourself why anyone should have to pay for things you try to sell?
Faggot wrote:
You're not a real recording artist. I am.
Michael J.? Is that you?
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
"When you infringe on a copyright, you are depriving no one of anything but just that -- a copyright."
Well, you deprive them of money that they might have received had you actually purchased the software.
MIGHT - is the operative word. And there is not MIGHT in a theft. Then something had been stolen, someone has been deprived. No might about it. That's why its not stealing. And this is not about semantics or splitting hairs - there is an important distinction.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
I assume you're implying that it's a recent addition...
An online Websters dictionary from 1828 defines it as
A 1913 Websters Dictionary defines it as:
Maybe it's just me but I think that 175 years later it's time to accept that language changes.
-rrAbsolutely! So many slashbots state that "I never would have bought the music anyway, so it's not lost revenue"
What they fail to realize is that if you don't want to pay for it, then you, GASP! don't get to view, listen, or use use that content!
Begun, this browser war has.
How does one "loose" credibility?
Maybe he means that their credibility breaks loose and starts rolling back and forth across the decks, eventually falling into the sea and sinking out of sight, never to be seen again!
You're using her as bait, Master!
... of extortion.
A company cannot send you a "bill" for a contract you never signed, stating "pay up or else". This is not an electric company talking about getting reimbursement for an unpaid bill. This is a company with which these people have no agreement sending them threats which amount to, "give us money or else".
A straightforward company would simply inform the police if they believe these people to have committed criminal acts and the culprits would be arrested, or simply serve them a summons in the case of a civil dispute.
MORTAR COMBAT!
From reading through some of the posts it appears the RIAA is already winning the war. No one appears to find the implied illegality of copying a file in your possession an incongruous proposition anymore.
This is the core of the issue, not "pirates" or "artists" or other fictions. The problem with the RIAA and its discordant crusade is the fact that it runs against a widely accepted social norm - I have the right to copy my files. This is where the RIAA is weakest and is the only avenue for its defeat. If this idea is forgotten, the RIAA wins. Everyone else loses.
Young people, as a group, have much more money than RIAA and it's members. I mean, RIAA gets pretty much all it's money from perhaps 1% of the money spent by those young people.
Now, since RIAA is a concentrated and organized special interest that can get very good return on every dollar spent lobbying, while young people who donate money to the other side simply lose that money, RIAA spends a lot more on lobbying, and have more political influence.
It's the same as how many other small special interest groups control things at the expense of much larger groups. Search for "public choice theory" for an economic theory background.
And what guarantees does anyone have they won't turn around and sue anyway?
:)
This sort of "blackmail" is nothing new. It's the same sort of "blackmail" that patent holders use to extract money from patent infringers.
Here's a hint: If you want to make sure they won't sue anyway, make sure you have something in writing.. Even if it's only an invoice (stating they wont' sue if you pay), they are still implicitly offering a contract, and therefore bound by that offer (giving accept the contract's conditions), which a judge will most likely rule in your favor (unless you live in a backwards country).
Oh yeah, IANAL, but I watch Judge Mathis...
"Communism is like having one [local] phone company " - Lenny Bruce
My post was a joke.
Took a train across Denmark the summer before last. Commented to my buddy's buddy in Koebenhavn, "Wow, so many wildflowers between farmers' fields. Totally unlike Germany. Beautiful."
He said, "Yeah. That's the law here. They have to grow 'em."
So given that I'm favoring the legal system in Denmark - from that one slim evidence (coercive though it be) - what do you, as a Dane, expect from your courts?
For bonus points, detail what you Danes intend to do to resist the imposition of what's left of the U.S. Constitution on the rest of the world.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
Those fiends!
I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i
I actually think it is a good thing. Piracy is still illegal no matter how much we may like it. I would also be pleased to see some of those people downloading child pornography get slammed and may some software to track their usage and IP's and pass them onto authorities for further investigation.
So is it illegal now to download media that you already own? How does this organization determine who is downloading content they already own?
As for child pornography. I think it is disgusting and wish it didn't exist. However, I don't think people downloading it should get into trouble for it. Here's why: I went on Kazaa the other day and did my usual search for "amateur" and then proceeded to download every file that came up. When I was checking out the porn, to my horror, one of the files was child pornography. I assure you the file name did not indicate this in any way. I immediately deleted it, but it already ruined my porn viewing for the night. I was furious. So now how do you determine who is intentionally distributing or downloading child pornography? Even if it is written in the filename, people like me who mass download stuff may still get it (which sucks, but its a risk we take).
And back to illegal thing. I download amatuer porn. There is nothing illegal about watching some guy bang his wife, or some chick get naked in her dorm room.
If you want free music, make and support free music. If you want free software, make and support free software.
This point I sincerely agree on. I'd like to add: make and support free amateur porn!
Zoot!
Interesting approach, making the copyright violators pay. While I am still against it, I think its better than the US method of fining them $500,000. Instead of a flat rate, the list price of each item should be payed. If I bootleg Serious Sam, I shouldn't pay $50, I should pay $20. Aso, shouldn't the person who payed up for the IP in question get to keep the file?
13 year old white supremacists are shitty web designers.
Here is a quote I pirated from the Oxford English Dictionary. Note the date:
1668 J. HANCOCK Brooks' String of Pearls (Notice at end), Some dishonest Booksellers, called Land-Pirats, who make it their practise to steal Impressions of other mens Copies.
I'm sure he'll run his next post by his editor. (unless he's a she... but you get the idea)
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.
Let the correction of misguided statements like this begin ... now
Show me the proof. Show me something beyond filenames and IP addresses, which is what both articles appear to be implying is the main source of evidence for billing these people. Filenames alone don't cut it. If I'm missing something else here in these articles, by all means, someone correct me, but I have not seen any definitive statements that anyone looked at the actual digital content.
I am not naive enough to think that NOBODY was pirating copyrighted material. But before you go convicting someone without a trial (which is what this organization is essentially doing by simply billling them). Screenshots of filenames on people's drives constitutes proof? Bullshit.
Here, how about this? I'll create a directory on my drive. Let's call it "/home/stwrtpj/al_qaeda_plans". Now let's copy some files in there from other directories, but lets give these files name like, oh, I don't know "plot_to_kill_george_w", "destroy_america", "smite_the_infidels", aaaaand "plans_to_blow_up_hoover_dam". Now let's take a screenshot of Gnome's file manager proudly displaying those filenames. So does this mean I'm a terrorist? Does this give anyone the right to pursue civil or criminal charges against me? No. "plot_to_kill_george_w" could contain a freaking grocery list for all you know.
So, no, Slashdotters are not going to be hypocrites for the most part. I for one am not. Show me the proof of what they are allegedly doing and I'll be the first to agree that some restitution is in order. Until then, all you have are filenames and supposition.
Karma: Frotzed (mostly due to the Frobozz Magic Karma Company)
I like the Mirriam-Webster website more anyway. Who's to say what dictionary defines the language other than the dictionary's creators?
May we never see th
...DUH!
So if one day you forgot to lock your bachelor pad before going to work at Pizza Hut, some guys walk right in and steal all your appliances. They then proceed to go to their fence and sell your stuff.
They get caught in the act of selling. So you're saying that you should go to jail for fencing your stuff.
If I read the article and the warning correctly, it's a "pay up or meet me in court" letter. Well, maybe those hit with that letter ought to call their bluff. Let's see if the Group is willing to go after these people!
In a normal world, I wouldn't give them much of a chance, simply because it's nigh impossible to prove that the label truthfully describes the contents. Or that the "return address" wasn't spoofed by someone else. Not only that, but if this was a "sting", i.e. posting the data themselves, then they would be the guilty party for offering the works in the first place.
Well, speaking as a guy who actually lives in Denmark.....
Since Summer 2001, various forms of digital copying have been legal in Denmark. Before that, Danish law on this area bore obvious marks of being written by people who had no idea what the whole thing was all about (prohibiting all forms of digital copying without prior permission -- bye bye Internet :) ). The laws are confusing, though. According to Forbrugerrådet (the "Consumer's Council" -- I'm not sure if you Americans have a similar organization), Danish citizens are allowed to:
We are not allowed to:
(from Forbrugerrådet's web page)
I hope this helps shed a little light on the situation.
Six sick
LOL!
I wanted to take you seriously until I noticed all your info at the top:
"by Faggot (choads.gay@com) on Tuesday November 26, @05:34PM (#4763431)
(User #614416 Info | http://gay.com/) "
If you couldn't take the time to fill out some decent info, how can I take your points seriously? It's like a politician going to a debate in a clown suit.
A Danish Law from April 2001 actually makes this possible.
It gives the copyright holders the right to collect evidence and present this to a judge. The judge then issues a warrant based on the evidence (yes no 3rd party is involved). The warrant can be for a house search or in this case to get information from a isp based on the ip's they collected. The law has been used to raid netparties as well.
The problem is that all this happens outside the criminal courts, they run all the cases as civil law suites.
I hope they stepped over the line, and that our silly goverment that doesn't know a power button from the reset button, changes this absurd law.
Look a pig that flies (sponsered by S O N Y)
www.filetopia.org for P2P chat and file sharing using strong encryption and IP hiding.
xGSV Consolation of Dreams
with a shareware demo, the install would be decently huge, and adobe would have to host that file somewhere. with piracy, its all on the p2p networks, so adobe pays no bandwidth costs.
some companies might just say "all we really need is the demo version" or something like that (my school did that with mcafee antivirus). not a smart way to run a business, but many business managers arent very smart about the technical aspects of such things. if you offer no shareware, or a shareware version thats crap, then companies cant do this.
with a shareware version of a product, you would still run the risk of not enough people using your software. they might opt to get something with all the features they need, and learn that, for much cheaper than adobe is prepared to offer. personally, i almost never use shareware, unless its fully functional even if i dont pay (WinZip). seems to me like adobe (and many other software companies) know exactly what theyre doing.
as a programmer, though, im not saying you should be happy people are pirating your stuff. im saying that you should be happy people are pirating your stuff if it means that it will cause your program to become an industry standard, and you can charge 10 to 29 times what you should to businesses who want to use it.
If the claimer has a eg. screenshot of something shared it's the users responsebility to prove that it's NOT illigal.
In SOVIET RUSSIA maybe - but not in Denmark or anywhere else in western Europe for that matter.
--
Reverse outsourcing: it's the future
APG monitored the file sharing networks for available files with Danish IP addresses - and went to court to get the users' personal details from their ISPs, armed with screen shots of, for example, the KaZaA window showing the files on the user's hard-drive. The courts obliged and ordered the ISPs to deliver the personal details of the incriminated users. Then the bills were in the post ... landing on the mats of the unfortunate downloaders over the last few days.
There is an epidemic of misuse of the word 'downloader'. They are looking for people who are posting files. If you have no files shared, you are not seen and the only way you would be caught 'downloading' is if you were 'entrapped', by being offered downloads from the Kopyright Kops, if you will. Then they would record your name as you are downloading.
I generally respect the register, but the article is poorly written. This does not have to do with downloading, it has to do with offering your stuff up on the P2P networks for others to download.
Chris...
It does not matter what you do, it's wrong.
I think the point of the parent's post is that the APG would only pick one person to sue.
It's not about the money. It's about scaring file sharer's. And if they can get one case to stick, make an example out of hir, then the next batch of letters they'll send out will probably be more than 150, and the return %% of money for payment will probably be higher, AND people will start dropping from P2P.
So to repeat... Let's say all 150 don't pay. (Doubtful, but for this example) The APG isn't going to go "aw shucks" we didn't get any money. They're going to pick the best case they have and sue them.
This is exactly what Aimster did.
But they got shut down anyway. Can't remember the exact reason, but take your pick!
If I were one of these people, I would be saying "thanks for the warning!" Since a screenshot of a list of titles is legally meaningless, it's time to delete illegal files from your hard drive, get together with all those other recipients of bills, and sue the living daylights out of Das Gruppen for attempting to extort money under false pretences.
Unfortunately these yogurt heads are probably too disorganized to get it together (despite being capable of tracking down a copy of Titanic in Danish on KaZaa...
It Is the Nature of Information to Transgress Artificial Boundaries
Just because you don't agree with the facts doesn't give you the right to try and supress it! Idiot.
What I wrote is correct. Stealing is when you deprive someone of something. If you steal a sodapop from a store, they have lost that item. They have payed for it, now they can't get the money back because you took it. When you copy something you don't have the right to copy, nobody loose anything. They MAY be deprived of the money would have payed IF you bought it. That's the difference. But there are a lot of people who still need to understand that if we have idiots who will moderate it as a troll.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Another interesting question is: "How did they collect this information without violating the law?"
I admit that I didn't read the article, but since I also don't know the laws of the relevant jurisdiction, that's a bit irrelevant. (I assume that this is Germany, since that's the place that seems friendliest to this kind of vigilanteism.)
It seems to me that I recall the EUC being reported as having very strict laws regarding privacy, and electronic snooping, and transmission of data about individuals. Still, I suppose it depends critically on the exact phrasing.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
It is not fun watching my country dissolve into a police state, and it is getting a lot worse now than Denmark (thanks to the EU) is adopting the DMCA almost litteraly, which mean even "common sense" usage like playing a "protected CD" you paid for under Linux is going to be illegal.
Oh, and selling Region 1 DVD's will soon be illegal as well. We can still import them privately, but many small shops selling imported R1 DVD's are going down. It is even going to be illegal to resell American comic books, but at least the national comic book publishers are not planning to enforce that part of the law.
I'm a bit surprised this is news, as it has been going on for a couple of years. APG *is* representying a specific set of companies (or rather branche organisations), and they do not care about content not originating from one of the members.
They are evil though, they systematically lies to the public about technical matters (like claiming MP3 files are illegal), try to pressure ISP's to block them, run scary campaignis in TV spots, show no mercy to kids, claim ridiculous damages,confiscate hardware even when they have found no unautorized material on site "to search further". They did successfully lobby a change in the law so they can confiscate private property on "reasonable suspicion", something only the police could do before.
They would fell quite at homne at Wolfram & Hart.
We totally lack an efficient civil liberties organization to stand up aginst these guys.
Thanks to a recent change in law, these people can enter my house and confiscate my computer "for examination" on suspision alone. They still need a foged (kind of minor judge) to give permission, but before only the policy could do the above, now private organizations have that power.
They also try to pressure ISP's and lawmakers to ban technologies that *can* be used for illegal purposes, like bloking mp3 files.
And with the DMCA becomming adopted to EU law next year, I *will* be doing something illegal when I watch my own legit DVD's under Linux.
Copyright violation is mostly civil law. There are a couple of areas which kind of cross between civil and criminal law, and that is one of them.
And as such, they have the authority to sue on behalf of their clients.
They do not care about material not copyrighted by their clients, but since their clients are branche organizations, that covers a lot of material.
Try distributing your music on Furthur, not Kazaa
It is legitimate P2P where the bands
actually want to be listed and have their
live shows distributed for free. If your band
is not listed, contact them, and they will add
your band.
You're in better company there (think
Fugazi, not Bon Jovi).
http://www.furthurnet.org
IANAL either, however one salient fact is likely to be that Denmark is not a common law country. So while UK law is markedly similar to US law, extrapolation from US to Danish law is going to be problematic.
Another major issue that should be considered is that most countries other than the US have severe penalties for abusive lawsuits, ranging from payment of the winner's legal fees to fines. Certainly in English law an ill founded threat of litigation over an intellectual property claim is itself actionable - as Prince sports discovered when they tried some domain name grabbing.
As such I would be suspicious of cliams that the group would have made the threats lightly or that they are likely to be ill founded. The copyright owners have a pretty sound claim that the users of the P2P networks are infringing their copyright. Clearly there is a legitimate case that can be built, clearly the copyright owners are employing local lawyers with expertise in the field. I certainly would not place a great deal of faith in chat room lawyering working from third hand accounts...
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/