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Aussies Face Jail Over MP3s
An anonymous reader writes "Two Australian students have been charged over music piracy offences, according to this story on Australian IT. It's short on details, but presumably they weren't running a P2P network. The maximum penalties for breaching copyright under Australian law is 5 years jail."
What's the idea in this news item? That people can get jail time for breaking a law? As long as unauthorized distribution of copyrighted material over internet is illegal, this is a direct consequence. No news, really.
The important issues are when new laws are passed or when business wants to stretch the limits of existing laws. However I see nothing in the article that would suggest either.
It's funny how officials think they should give a few people the maximum sentence to 'act as a deterrent'. That's like saying we should kill 10 jaywalkers a year randomly, and when we do we'll paste their pictures all over the TV, with remorseful family shots, etc. Jaywalking? This is what it gets you!
"'Yrch!' said Legolas, falling into his own tongue."
BTW - another article about this can be found here.
I heard that your library burnt down and destroyed your only two books - and one was not even coloured in yet.
and these MP3 problems get worse every week.
If anyone in public office reads this
and can advocate for better solutions,
send me email and I'll donate to you.
If you feel strongly like I do,
try donating to EFF
Cheers, Joel
And how is this different today? Small inventors will invariably violate patents. Dragging the major hardware company to court doesn't get them anywhere. The legal costs are astronomical and the best you could hope for is a settlement which doesn't leave you with less than before. Even big businesses admit that they can't ensure that their products don't use others' patents without license. So much for patents.
However, this is a copyright issue. I have a very hard time accepting that I'm supposed to pay twice for the same information if I want to listen to the same music in my car and in my home, or that I am not allowed to use my MP3-player because the information is not available in that format and I am forbidden to convert it myself (would have to circumvent copy-prevention systems to do that -> DMCA). I can also not understand how something which has been created decades ago, which has been milked for every drop of revenue, which has become part of our culture, is still not public domain and probably never will be. It is my belief that people *want* to create, regardless of the economic value. I do value the input of truly creative people and therefore I think they deserve copyright, but if the current copyright system is the result, I'd rather rely on their inherent drive to create.
The piece of information I want the most at this point is the source of these numbers. Everytime I read these articles and come across figures such as these, I smell bullshit. Are they pulling these numbers out of their arses? Is it fuzzy math? (i.e. one download equals one lost album sale) If it's the latter, I say they need to start producing *real* numbers, and not these mystical figures. IMO, claiming one lost album sale for every download is like charging a retail burglar for the MSRP value of every single item in the store, regardless of whether or not it was actually stolen.
We want some answers and all that we get
Some kind of shit about a terrorist threat
- Ministry
"If you knew that there was a small chance that the police would kill you for it, would you stop doing it?"
Not really, how many people belive it will not happen to them? Look at smoking, the packects say on them "these things will kill you and give you cancer" but people still keep on doing it.
Up the percentage killed and over a (shorter) period of time people that are inclined to jaywalk will be removed from the gene pool thus a form of darwinian(sp?) natural selection will prevail reducing the number of jaywalker/stupin people.
This would scale well to other situations...
"Things that you own end up owning you" - Tyler Durden (via Diogenes of Sinope).
I find it amusing that people assume that there would be no more new music if people weren't getting millions of dollars for making it. I'm not sure if this is what you're assuming, but I'll use this time to rant anyways.
Music was around a long time before record labels. Moreover, when music is driven by the dollars that it brings in, it tends to suck. I would have absolutely no problem with the record industry coming crashing to earth and half of the crappy musicians in the industry having to get real jobs because they can no longer live off the royalties.
Music, without the record industry, would be incredible. It would be written by people who actually have some interest invested in making music.
Down with the RIAA! Stop buying CDs, pirate it off the 'net!
------
"Will the highways on the Internet become more few?" --George W. Bush, in Jan. 2000
This is a misnomer. The DVD medium lends itself to kneejerk buying : it's a movie your friends may have raved about, it has special features. You buy it because it's about 10-15 bucks, and then you watch it once, don't enjoy it, and indeed it does gather dust. Or, you're a business traveller and you want something to watch on the plane, you impulse buy a DVD that looks OK at the airport in 5 minutes as you rush to get to the gate, to watch on your laptop. You never watch it again.
I have done all of this. Half my DVD collection is unlikely to be watched again. Indeed, I would never have bought VHS tapes the same way, because I never had a portable VCR... but I have a laptop with DVD, a PC with DVD, and a home DVD player. Add to that quality, nicer form factor, special features that may make the DVD as a whole more valuable than just as a movie. And of course let us not forget that we can watch a particular scene and freeze it really well, just to see if there was indeed a hint of beaver in that sex scene ;-)
Add in special features and extra content, and you have DVDs that you might buy (especially if you have a reasonable income) on a whim.
Now, the scary thing with mp3 / DivX (why have I seen no articles about DivX and mpeg traders?) is that there are students being taken to court, fined and jailed. Students don't have much of a disposable income, and are bound to be ahead on the technology curve. I don't understand why they're being persecuted, because they are the ULTIMATE consumers of the future. Sure, I've downloaded the odd movie, but I'm in an income bracket now where a couple of DVDs per month is going to be par for the course for a long time. A lot of my friends, graduated say over 5 years ago, also have big DVD collections.
Banks, restaurants, brandnames for clothes, dead tree publishers... these have all been known to give students breaks in order to keep them when their income starts coming in. This is the mistake the record industry is making, because they are missing the whole point. Students have always bootlegged, borrowed and stolen music. I can't quite understand it. The regular consumers are NOT doing this. It really screws with my mind to see this kind of intellectual property fascism. Consumerism is not the be all and end all of the whole world economy, let's hope that sooner or later a bit of clemency starts to happen especially, I have to say, in the US (by virtue of its being the biggest, most hardcore consumer economy in the whole world).
Conversion Rate Optimisation French / English consultant
Imagine if the headline read "Aussies Face Jail Over Slander". It really is a scary prospect! Slander is a civil matter and cannot result in criminal action being taken against the defendant. Copyright infringement is also a civil matter, but recent changes in law have criminalised certain acts which facilitate copyright infringement (such as the creation of circumvention devices) and it is probably this that the three in question have been charged with. This is "news" in that it is unprecidented for someone to face jail time for simple copyright infringement in Australia, but its probably just bad reporting.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Did anyone of you actually LISTEN to the music they're producing the last years? I love P2P because it allowes me to get only the good stuff. After I got that I burn it (the GOOD stuff) to a CD-R where I paid taxes for. That is the new business model here and nobody/nothing can/will change this evolution.
Let's say there is no IP, but there is no program that satisfies my needs. There is however a website that says I can put down $100 and either get a program with specified feature list within 6 months or get $110 back. If the price and "interest" are chosen correctly, I will be motivated to invest if and only if I need the software. Freeloaders will be able to use the software, but they will not get any customer support unless they buy it, and they will not be compensated for waiting. In the same spirit, manufacturers of "cheap knockoffs" will chip in to produce innovations. Or, fans of an artist will pay him/her to record a song.
Sure, this system has it's own problems. For example, some independent expert will be needed to verify that the new program fulfills the promise made to investors. Or, companies would have to establish their reputation. But the current patent/copyright system has problems as well.
Basically, without IP rights, inventors or engineers will still be compensated for their innovation, but the amount will drop off over time and nobody will be able to live off 20 year old inventions. They would have to keep innovating. The result could well be better for an average user/listener/consumer.
Living in Australia, I wonder how long it will be before the partially Government owned Telstra discovers that I've been downloading DeCSS (for playing DVDs I actually owned) and send police to lock me up in jail for 5 years.
Makes me sick when there are people who are actually comitting crimes that harm people and society aren't even getting jail terms.
how is this for an idea you moron:
punishment that fits the crime
kid with a few thousand crappy quality 128kbs mp3s of the latest worthless tripe spewed out by the riaa?
guilty: 15 days community service, 3 months probation.
what are you gonna do lockup every kid around the globe for having copies of something they could record with a tape recorder and boxload of tapes off the air for free anyway?
or are you saying it's the quantity of songs that turns it into stealing? tape a few hundred songs off the radio with a cassette deck, you don't hear dick from anyone, not your teachers, not your parents, not the goddamn riaa.
but now that can collect a few thousand low quality 128kbs mp3s and NOW IT'S A PROBLEM?
i think not.
it's all about money and power.
so sure it's stealing. but if you don't believe in DEGREE or simply don't understand the concept...then you truly deserve a severe ass kicking.
my rights will be completely fucking trampled in the RIAAs pursuit of so called pirates (what were preschoolers called 20 years ago, when they had bag full of tape cassesetts...pirates?).
all for the billions that they pull down.
here's something else for you:
100 years ago, creating duplicates of anything WAS NOT TRIVIAL.
(god you are such a fucking dense moron, i hate that i'm even explaining this to you)
therefor the cost of duplication was high and was factored in.
as technology has progressed, it has become easier and easier to duplicate art.
until you see realistic price adjustments...i.e. music CDs under U.S. $5 then you'll always have a gray/black market.
Not that it means anything I suppose, but it's amusing how blatantly obvious it is that it's not the entertainers (singers, etc) but rather the **AA who are out for blood.
I wonder what would happen if one of their own were found to have a collection of unlicenced music. Any bets on if it would even see the light of day?
There are 10 kinds of people; those who know ternary, those who don't, and those now hunting for a dictionary.
Maybe yes, maybe no. If ten people listen to the song on the radio and don't buy the CD is that theft too?
The media company has entered into an agreement with the station to air the song, it's a form of advertising. If 10 people hear the song and don't buy the cd, it's an unsuccessful attempt. If ten people download an illegal copy it's piracy. What's the difference? Control of property. Illegal copies potentially deprive companies of making a living
Different medium, different scale, same concept: I lean out my window and take a photo of the bum who is currently pissing on my building (I hate this city), print some copies and sell them with the agreement that you may display in your home or office or sell the copy you have. That's it, accept it or don't buy it. You like my picture, buy it and proudly display it at home. After a party, your friends admire my photo, take it to kinkos and burn copies for themselves. You've deprived me of the opportunity to sell my photo to those friends and broken our agreement. It's the same as ripping and distributing mp3's. OTOH, If I get my masterpiece displayed at the radio station's annual art fair, 10 people look at it and don't buy it, once again it's failed advertising...
At the bottom of the endless pile of paper work which characterizes all regulation lies a gun.
Alan Greenspan
And that's the answer to the likes of the RIAA. Laws are supposed to reflect the beliefs of society in general, not special interest groups. If society believes that the present copyright laws are a mistake, people must not behave like sheep.
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.