Slashdot Mirror
Aussie Students Face Jail Over Music Sharing Site
An anonymous reader writes "SMH this morning is reporting that three uni students may be jailed for their creation of a music sharing web site. Ok, piracy is not a good thing, but jail is just a tad extreme, don't you think? I hope ARIA (Australian version of RIAA) are pleased with themselves. What burns me about this article is the quote: 'Counsel for the Commonwealth, Paul Roberts, SC, said Ng was well aware he was acting illegally. Not only was the site camouflaged - the web space had been let to him by a teenage boy in Perth - but Ng had co-written an essay for his information technology law course on "open source software licensing."'
Not entirely sure what OS licensing has to do with music piracy."
Looking for the Paris Hilton porno tape? Look no further than Freenet.
s nr QhkXEiBw/parissexmovie_256k.wmv
CHK@qGlSiCK3HPMx38fCuSPlo81ws2AMAwI,LRhfAE-DMDc
(Remove the spaces that Ashdotslay inserted into the key)
By the way, this is a good opportunity to remind everyone that the power of Freenet is its anonymity. As the Hilton family threatens to sue anyone offering the video, one method of distribution stands impenetrable. Freenet.
*not only* was the website camouflaged...*but also* the student was interested in so-called "open source" software.
Book 'em, Danno.
FFS...we're getting our asses kicked here.
when will the situation improve?
On a final note, I don't think anything really needs to be said about how his paper on "open source software licensing" is somehow evidence of culpability. A hefty roll of the eyes goes out to the genius who thought that up.
Somebody should buy that kid a vowel.
For sure. Open source software licensing, music sharing for free - fricking communists! They should all be locked up.
Anyone ever seen "Born Yesterday"? Great line from that movie that applies here:
"I want EVERYONE to be smart. A world full of
ignorance is too dangerous to live in."
I hate stupid people.
------
"Will the highways on the Internet become more few?" --George W. Bush, in Jan. 2000
Do they know any other letters to use than those three? By the way, everyone notice that even across the world, the recording industry is a four letter word:)
I apologise for my horrible spelling, it's 2 AM
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
What burns me about this article is the quote: 'Counsel for the Commonwealth, Paul Roberts, SC, said Ng was well aware he was acting illegally. Not only was the site camouflaged - the web space had been let to him by a teenage boy in Perth - but Ng had co-written an essay for his information technology law course on "open source software licensing."' Not entirely sure what OS licensing has to do with music piracy."
Obviously anyone that chooses to write an essay for an information technology law course on "open source software licensing" knows at least SOMETHING about copyright. Such as, for instance, the fact that there is a such a thing as copyright law and that freely trading copyrighted material might violate it.
That quote had nothing to do with insulting your precious open source sensitivities. It was about an information technology law student obviously knowing when he's breaking copyright laws on a computer.
> Not entirely sure what OS licensing has to do with music piracy.
If he knew anything at all about open source, and especially if he advocated it, that makes him an evil terrorist.
Look, for every other crime, you do time in jail. Why should copyright infringement be any different? This is nothing other than the willful violation of copyright laws. A service with no other reasonable purpose than breaking the law should be considered violation of the law, just as someone who had set up an on-line drug trading site would be in violation of drug laws even if they personally weren't selling the crack themselves.
Piracy advocates used to say that there is no alternative to piracy, that there is nowhere else to get music online. Thats not true now; with the success of anti-piracy enforcement, there is a flourishing legal online music marketplace, and everyone should realize that if this new business horizon is to be truly successful, the illegal alternative must be suppressed.
Counsel for the Commonwealth, Paul Roberts, SC, said Ng was well aware he was acting illegally. Not only was the site camouflaged - the web space had been let to him by a teenage boy in Perth - but Ng had co-written an essay for his information technology law course on "open source software licensing".
sort of speaks for itself.
a consideration in sentencing is the deterrent factor on others. jail doesn't seem unreasonable for a profligate offender who wontonly disregards the law.
the part about open source is entirely irrelevant - and it throw's dirt on lawful members of the community. give him an extra 6 mo. for that.
You should apologize for the entirety of your post, not just the spelling.
I liked it though.. read it "Well, COME OUT..."
I do not think they should be going to jail. A fine at worst. I myself pirate software, music, and movies.
However sometimes I find myself feeling a little sympathy for the RIAA. I'm sure many Slashdot readers program or otherwise produce software for a living. Do you ever worry that widespread piracy hurts your salary and even your employability? When I talk to average joes who are getting a new computer I ask what software it comes with or what software they're getting and the usual answer is that they're getting someone they know to burn off all the software they need. Is this healthy for the many professional software developers? (Which I suspect a sizeable number of you are)
We need a new music distribution movement.
Open Source Music Licensing
1. Someone posts a blank [ insert fav music editor of choice ] file
2. everyone adds one note and then reposts it
3. After thousands of people have contributed, release it on CD and P2P.
4. Profi... I mean, uh, watch as it dominates the current 800 lb. gorillas of the music arena. No one could match the raw emotion, tonal diversity, and freedom from coherence such a piece would possess.
Except maybe John Cage.
-You may license this sig for only $6.99.
Reminds me of what USA citizens might face if they were to (gasp) post a link to the Paris Hilton movie (Freenet: CHK@qGlSiCK3HPMx38fCuSPlo81ws2AMAwI,LRhfAE-DMDcsnr QhkXEiBw/parissexmovie_256k.wmv).
It may seem off-topic, but it isn't, really. A movie was filmed consensually. It's being distributed - with disregard to any possible copyright - by one of the involved parties. And the other party involved is threatening lawsuits six ways from Sunday. Pot, kettle, black... You performed a work, you knew it was being recorded, you're well aware of this whole new-fangled "internet" thing, why is it someone else's fault when things start getting distributed? To be honest, the parallel between the Hilton tape and every MP3 out there is quite clear.
I'm disappointed to see that yet more college kids are facing punishment for writing what amounts to essentially an indexing service, but here in the US, that seems to be the status quo. As in, he who has the status, has the quo.
The RIAA is winning because they have money. The ARIA will win for the same reasons. It sucks, really.
I wish I had mod points. I would mod down your original washed up joke, as well as your pointless correction of your original washed up joke. Oh well, I'm sure somebody'll get around to it.
Nevermind that said movements survive on the concept of copyright and respecting the creator's wishes. Standard copyright doesn't even do that anymore, considering most creators of original content hand it over as a work-for-hire and aren't even able to assert moral rights (most copyrighted work being produced in the U.S. or for U.S. companies). So it's possible the prosecutor is attempting to trace the connection between open source and piracy that simply doesn't exist.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
magnatune.com
The Internet's nature is peer to peer - 20050301_cs_profs.pdf
Honestly, I can't think of a better use for Intellectual Property laws then throwing college students in jail. I'm pretty sure we all learned back in the 70's how dangerous students can be. If we're lucky, the RIAA, FTC, and FCC might form a special ops team that hunts down and "neutralizes" pirates in their sleep.
People walk out of the store I work at with items in their pockets all the time. The younger ones who are caught get yelled at and a picture snapped, and sent on their way. If they're older or been caught before, they get a trip in a cop car to the station and MIGHT possibly spend the night.
Hang me, I'm a pirate.
Paul Roberts, SC, said Ng was well aware he was acting illegally. Not only was the site camouflaged - the web space had been let to him by a teenage boy in Perth - but Ng had co-written an essay for his information technology law course on "open source software licensing."' Not entirely sure what OS licensing has to do with music piracy."
While the article was poorly phrased, I seriously doubt that it was an attack against the Open Source community. The author was implying that Ng was somewhat about copyright law, and that he probablly knew well that the site was illegal. It was trying to make his infraction seem more blatent, because he allegedly knew he was doing something wrong and still did it. Although, I would see little connection between software licensing and music copyright law, I guess it helps paint him as a bad guy. Bad journalism, definitely; but an attack on the Open Source community, highly unlikely.
--
Adobe's anti-counterfeiting softw
That's a damn good point and I wish I had considered it. :\
I jumped to the same conclusion as the submitter when I read the paper this morning, but quickly realised the point that was being made.
I apologise for my horrible spelling, it's 2 AM
2 AM? For most true geeks, that's like mid-afternoon.
- Peter
INsigNIFICANT
*Sung to 'Down Under' Men At Work'
... men at work were are they now
Travelling in a fried-out combie
On a hippie trail, head full of zombie
I met a strange lady, she made me nervous
She was using a sniffer and watching my serivce
And she said...
"Did you use a pro-gram called Napster?
Where students thieve and swap music faster?
Can't you swap, can't you swap a bit faster?
You better run, you better take cover"
Trading songs with a man in Brussels
On a T3 his network had muscles
I said, "Do you use KazAa or Napster?"
He just smiled and called me a hackster
And he said...
"I come from a land down under
Where beer does flow and men chunder
Can't you hear, can't you hear the thunder?
You better run, you better take cover"
Yeah
Trading warez in a chan on the efnet
feds are sniffin my whole damn co-nnect
I said in the chan, "MP3's I got plenty
Because I come from the land of plenty?"
And he said...
"Oh! "I come from a land down under
Where beer does flow and men chunder
Can't you hear, can't you hear the thunder?
You better run, you better take cover"
Yeah
MoFscker
i'm actually having my lunch now.
I find it a bit odd that if you add an N to the end of ARIA you get a familiar oppressive orginization...
Ok, piracy is not a good thing, but jail is just a tad extreme, don't you think?
...?
Recall that Australia was Great Britain's prison state, during the heydey of the Empire.
What's next -- condemning hardcore Ausssie offenders to Tasmania
-kgj
-kgj
given the effort that is going into anonymous (sp?) trading P2P systems, it seems amazing that there are still sites out there that host MP3s that are not squeaky clean.
/.er when it comes to the RIAA / ARIA / "assorted recording acronym", but these guys were painting a large target on their foreheads and saying "come and get us".
I have as big a chip on my shoulder as the next
Jail is over the top, but if you wanted to get away with doing dodgy things, these guys failed miserably.
Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!!
Not entirely sure what OS licensing has to do with music piracy.
They are both hated by people with copyright-based monopolies.
#!/bin/csh cat $0
We have a free will.
This means nobody is making you buy things at gunpoint.
This also means, that if you stop buying music, stop "consuming" music and overall just don't touch anything provided by these *AA people, two things will happen:
1. You will always be safe from litigation
2. They will be hurt due to lost sales
And there is not a goddamn thing they can do if you choose to take this strategy!
Read a book instead. Or listen to the existing records you might have. Or get an instrument like guitar and learn to play.
Out of principle I wouldn't use Earthstation if I were you. They put a backdoor into the client. Its supposedly clean now but still...
Here's the slashdot link
malware in earthstation
He is a theif. He deserves to be in jail.
Hello? - He's charged with breach of copyright, not theft. One is a civil offence, the other a criminal offence. They are not the same.
Get your facts straight, coward. Thank you.
"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) --
People also missed the fact that they have not been given a jail sentence yet, they may get community service etc. or the chance to appeal. They knew it was illegal, do the crime, do the time!
There was an unknown error in the submission.
"Counsel for the Commonwealth, Paul Roberts said..... Ng had co-written an essay for his information technology law course on 'open source software licensing.'"
Hmm, who is this Paul Roberts? I decided to check him out. A little snooping around led me to an article BY a Mr.Paul Roberts about the Commonwealth of Massachusetts QUESTIONING the effectiveness of Open Source Software, as well as this link detailing Mr. Roberts life from 1841 to 1910 - a life beginning in Gates County, NC.
Finally I discovered this picture of a CD.
All coinsidence? I will let you decide.
My understanding from reading some previous article is that the site did not serve MP3s but merely linked to MP3s found online.
IN THE LORDS EYES!!
Is it just me or does it seem the RIAA and its cronies are missing the entire point of what's going on here?
When technology has evolved to a point where file sharing can easily bypass copyright laws en masse, its not the laws that need changing: its the way the industry operates. The answer to technology is technology - not lawsuits.
Not by much though :P
Bloody Aussies think they have it bad because your Charles Ng (allegedly) violated copyright laws. Why don't you come to the U.S., and see what OUR Charles Ng was like! You'll see just how easy you've got it down there!
They were helping people stealing music. In the US you can get 5 years in prison or up to $250K fine or both for doing this. It's in every god damn DVD for Christ's sake, you can't even skip this portion.
It's about time someone recognizes the fact that digital copies cannot be controlled. Not even if you're the RIAA. Not even if you're the ARIA. Produce some value-added content and you'll get people to purchase. Period.
"That quote had nothing to do with insulting your precious open source sensitivities."
Reconsider the use of your rhetoric if you are trying to make a legal point and not just stir up sh!t.Scene inside a smokey pub:
Grey hat: "So, you're writing up on the Ng case?"
Writer, peering into empty glass, "Yeah, guess so. Another beer?"
Grey hat: "It's on me. Look, I need you to throw in some comments about open source. My bosses say if I can get the words 'piracy' and 'open source software license' into the same web article, I get a thousand. I'll split it 50-50 with you"
Writer: "Ng did mention he studied software law. I'm sure that includes open source licenses. Sounds OK."
The grey hat is Michael Speck, who has provided this delicious quote to explain why the forces of law and order have to immediately jail every DJ and MP3 swapper in town:
"Music piracy helps finance organised crime and international terrorism."
Now it all makes sense, huh? Those underground DJs were actually working for Bin Laden in between mixing Mary J. Blige.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
Michael Speck, spokesman for the Music Industry Piracy Investigations Agency said while police had estimated the scam cost $60 million, the real figure was more like $200 million.
Mr Speck said the men deserved to go to jail. "These people made off with the equivalent of three million albums," he said. "If you walked into David Jones and took three million CDs, you'd be expecting to go to jail for a very long time".As a developer (film fx software), I'd not only overlook, but probably encourage low-income students to use pirated versions of my app("third party demo versions", I call them). It's not like it's costing us a sale, and any exposure to our software will encourage them to ask for it when working at a real studio.
OTOH, I frown upon studios using cracks professionally, naturally enough. If you're using the results of my work to generate an income, you should contribute to my income. If you're just playing around, be my guest.
Of course, my employer may have different views, but that's my opinion.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
> the music industry alleges the pirated music cost
... - if so, that's hardly the fault of Mr Ng and his cohorts.
> it at least $60 million
That's one f*ck of a lot of Kylie!
Let's do a bit of maths on this. A CD in Australia costs around $20-25. Let's round this up to $30, to give ARIA the benefit of the doubt.
An average CD contains about 10 tracks.
I'm going to assume that ARIA used something resembling base-10 mathematics... $60 mill equates to 2 million CDs, or 20 million tracks worth of downloads.
That's one track for every person in Australia.
Let's further assume that each track was a 3Mb MP3 file, which is probably a bit on the low side. The 20 million tracks that were downloaded works out to about 60Tb of data.
Are we supposed to believe that these guys, using a site running from a suburban bedroom, managed to share 60Tb of data? **Maybe** ARIA's lawyer is assuming that each track that was downloaded from this site was copied to another 10 sites, and from each of these to another 10,
Does anyone have any more info on this case? Preferably, something a bit more credible?
People who steal go to jail. Despite what most Slashdot readers think, just because a lot of people are doing it doesn't mean it's leagal.
Most discussion so far seems to center on whether the punishment fits the 'crime'
remember it is only a 'crime' because it is a threat to a huge corporations outmoded business model. These kids should be lauded for making a stand against our greedy oppressors.
and dont go on with any shit about protection of the 'artists' - they could make a lot more money by using the technology to distribute direct and taking the whole cut rather than a miniscule percentage.
If all musicians made their music easily and cheaply available, 'piracy' would disappear - there is no money in it after all. The artists and the consumers would be better off - the only losers would be the record companies.
and to the guy who compared it to software - you can usually make more money out of being the guy who wrote the software that everyone uses because its good and free than the software that no one uses because, although its good, it costs $500.
He is a theif. He deserves to be in jail.
I don't know about the state of Australia's penal system, but here in Texas going to jail is synonymous with being beaten, tortured and raped. I find it difficult to believe that anyone, outside of the most uncontrollably violent criminals, deserves to visit these places.
How someone could sleep at night after putting three young men in such a place over COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT is a mystery to me.
Google here seems to come up with http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01707c.htm -- these guys don't seem like they were oppressive (though they did apparently deny the divinity of Christ)... nor do http://www.arianmusic.com/... unless you meant ARYAN or NAZI...? But back on topic, I don't quite see that ARIA went about it the right way. All they needed to do for these students it seems was to have shaken their tree enough to give the students the (figurative) runs enough to scare them, erm, rough them up a little.
Jonathan Ah Kit - Lower Hutt, New Zealand - jonathan@metalab.unc.edu
It's 1:55 am and I just finished supper.
Four or five hours of work and it will be time for a nap.
*Wipes tears from eyes* Now where did I put those mod points?
What really p****s me off is that the same organisation that pretends to stand up for performers rights won't pay up when they have to:-
g e/0,4459,7804707%255E10431%255E%255Enbv,00.html
When a heavily backed singer with a number one album can't get paid what is happening to the little guy? See this article regarding Delta Goodrem and her number one album. -http://entertainment.news.com.au/common/story_pa
I'm not for breaching copyright but these guys are screwing the system for everyone except the big record companies!!!
How you make someone eat ten cigarettes is your own business.
Jail is nothing more than criminal education.
Oi! We're following _your_ lead buddy ;)
We're threatening to jail 20 year olds, you're giving 12 year olds $2,000 fines and threatening grandma!
Cheers
Stor
"Yeah well there's a lot of stuff that should be, but isn't"
We're talking about the civilized world here...
I understand the ideas behind free software and I couldn't code my way out of a paper bag.
It is folks like you that make people think of open source zealots instead of open source advocates.Guess what, bub, Linux or any other open source software will never go very far into wide adoption if its only for programmers.
That depends where you are in Texas.
In my county, you might be the only inmate.
A friend of mine spent 30 days in jail once back in the late 70s.
When his father needed him to drive a tractor, the sheriff would turn him loose for the day in the custody of his father. At the end of the day, his father would take him back.
They'd also let him out to rake the leaves of the courthouse lawn or to run down to the drugstore for a hamburger or a book to read.
One Saturday night, someone booked for drinking and driving, public intoxication, or something like that broke his tv set. He was a bit ticked off that the sheriff wouldn't let him out for a little while on Monday to go buy another tv set.
thief
n : a criminal who takes property belong to someone else with the intention of keeping it
Seems to fit the definition to me.
No, not at all - it contains numerous remote backdoors and other malicious code, and the developers refuse to do anything but threaten people who report them.
What the lawyer did not say:
The lawyer was making an insidious attempt to vilify Free Software with his questionably legal attack on information sharing. That would be an added benefit for an industry that wishes to eliminate OSs that have the ability to disable DRM.
The record industry is steady on course to destroy all freedom on the Net for a few quarters of profit. This is the essence of greed.
All data is speech. All speech is Free.
Been typing report all evening, I read that as a special ops team that hunts down and "neuters" pirates in their sleep.
Now that would definitely stop piracy in its tracks!
That's more than triple the Police's (almost certainly already inflated) estimate of $60m - at AUD30 per CD that's around 2,000,000 albums, and yet there were only 7,000,000 'hits' (and probably a lot less 'downloads'). Who's to say that any, let alone all, of those 'hits' would have converted to sales? Even if each were a download, at AUD3 per track (averaging 10 tracks per CD) I only count $21m - an ORDER OF MAGNITUDE less than the ARIA estimates and a THIRD of the police estimates! Who are they trying to kid?
It's also worth noting that the website contained CD collections (Pimpology, Blazin' Up, Spades and Club Ace) compiled by 'aspiring DJ' Tommy Le, in which case they weren't necessarily copying music for the sake of it (and certainly not for profit), as ARIA would have you believe, nor were they adopt[ing] nicknames to avoid detection, as asserted in the article.
I am going to go spend that money I might otherwise have spent on CDs on an Electronic Frontiers Australia Life Membership and I urge others to do the same - it's only AUD110, or AUD16.50 through 1 July next year. That's less than USD12 for international readers! (your money goes further down under)
The problem is fair use, and although I don't agree that these sites/people with GB upon GB of music shared and copied should be allowed to get away with it, I also don't agree with the RIAA's position that (for example) music sharing in iTunes over the internet should be disabled. The former is blatant and evil, but the latter is a means for people to share and enjoy music they've bought, and clearly can only help their sales. Apple tied it down to limit the number of connections, and as it was not (in its natural guise) an automatically advertised service, it could only be used to stream audio from people who you knew. The fact that people abused it was, in my opinion, completely besides the point. People have been abusing cassette decks, CD writers, amateur broadcast etc. for years.
The point that always seems to take its time to worm out here is simply that the RIAA have seen their market shrink, due simply to much more competition for peoples pocket money, primarily from DVD, but also from the current generation of gaming consoles. Unfortunately I believe there are too many overpaid and underworked people in the music distribution industry that have managed to find the time and resources to lead this witch hunt in order that they can continue to justify their tenuous positions. It's not going to change while government continues to bend over backwards for them and ordinary people turn a blind eye and don't realise their own rights. CD has had its day as the sweet spot medium, no-one is replacing vinyl anymore, some people (me included) think that the quality of output has decreased, and in this context their sales are actually pretty good! I like to buy my music when it's been out a while and has hit the sales racks now, it means I have more money to spend on DVDs and games, and hopefully it hurts these idiots more into the bargain. :-)
It's one thing to copy an mp3 from a pal or grab a song off the internet, but at least you or I are not making money of the labors of innocent artists!
Until the RIAA and organiztions like it clean their own house, I see no reason why people should be held in any way accountable for downloading an mp3, especially when many of the same songs are available free on the radio!
Until talentless hacks like P. Doody are prevented from stealing music and brazenly claiming it as their own, I declare all lawsuits and damages claimed my the RIAA and its ilk to be null and void.
The double standards END TONIGHT!. Please send this to Puffy Doodles for consideration. Only he can stop this madness! Won't someone think of the children! Friends don't let friends download illegal Muff Poody mp3s!
Something I've been curious about for a while now is exactly why it is that more often than not, when a industry-prompted bust like this goes down it's the operator of a website that is the target.
I mean, who illegitimately downloads music from the web? If it happens at all, it can't possibly be a significant problem to industry when compared with the likes of KaZaA, etc.
- SMJ - (It's not just a name: it's a bad aftertaste.)
I'm Australian, and damn, that's the truth ...
The Internet's nature is peer to peer - 20050301_cs_profs.pdf
Association. Mention something bad and then mention something you want to appear bad. It's a dirty trick but you'd be surprised how many television watching and newspaper reading members of the public fall for this kind of crap! We need counter-crap and a voice!
fortunately we've managed to send them your way :-)
The Internet's nature is peer to peer - 20050301_cs_profs.pdf
I do believe it was a sharing web-site...
now, sit down and shut up
How about supporting local music? Say you buy 1 CD per month, use that $30 to go and see a local band. The money will buy your entrance to a gig with the chance to hear two or three bands and a couple of beers.
I have some friends in bands and they do it tough ... keep in mind that there are some very good local bands that will never get contracts because their music is not comercial enough.
Section 107. Limitations on exclusive rights: Fair use Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A [setting forth copyright owners' exclusive rights and visual artists' artistic rights], the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include:
1. the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
2. the nature of the copyrighted work;
3. the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
4. the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.
This is what I use for my legal disclaimer and you could check out some of the spoofs I've done in the past on CNN, ABCNews, Republicans, etc. (antioffline.com), as well as daily copying copyrighted news. It's public domain. Which from what you state, I gather you're implying that if you photocopy a newspaper you could be sued... You could if you sold it as your own for profit, but not by using it. BTW, my legal mumbo jumbo was written for me by someone in the law field considering the shit I had/have to deal with.
Am I breaking the law copying news?, if you think so, then you are too since you copy it to your machine without permission when it gets cached.
MoFscker
Bravo! Bravo! The RIAA and MPAA are no different to drug dealers, peddling their addictive wares and getting understandably pissed when people steal from their stash.
Not to mention that 95% of the MP3's out there are ripped by muppets.
I am one of many. My idea is not unique, nor do I expect my voice alone to sway you. I speak in a chorus of opinion.
"' Not entirely sure what OS licensing has to do with music piracy."
Their grand inquisitor must have done some thinking while he was polishing his instruments of torture and figured that slipping a mention of unrelated blasphemous acts of software development into a story about a court case against three musical hretics is swatting two files in a single stroke
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
He is a theif.
Repeat after me:
"i before e, except after c"
He deserves to be in jail.
Not while such crimes against spelling and grammar continue to go unpunished.
You sir, belong back in school. Thief, the 'i' before the 'e'. - anyway
.au jails are full, it costs $50,000 per year to house them, plus the risk of the commonwealth paying upto $4 million if one of these non-cons are bashed senseless- as happened to a guy with an unpaid parking fine.
His defence is/was shithouse. Technicalities should have ground this one to a halt. Good questions to ask:
Does the ARIAA have the right to represent anyone?
Do you blame the hoster, providers/indexers, or the downloaders, encoders, ISP's? - how to you apportion blame?
What proof down one have that anything was downloaded, that meets the law of evidence?
How would you like to apportion blame between the defendants?
Can the case be kicked out based on the blatant untruth of the value of the damages?. Most MP3 downloaders move on to the next site, or kazza, so probably only a dozen or so real sales might have been lost.
No money changed hands.
Is this case covered by the Australian Broadcasting Act?
In any case
Double Jeporady? If this person is found 'guilty' , are the downloaders innocent? Can two or more people be found in breach of copyright for same ONE event.
If *RIAA says 'yes', then claimed damages will have to be divided. This is the same weird logic for fining public libraries because they are hosting 'books', and providing an indexing service for 'borrower's.
The case is not so simple.
God, that is dry wit at its finest.
Last I heard of them they were living the life in Brazil. Still making music, mind you.
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
you mean bush didn't take over au yet?
Since piracy has been regarded as a hanging offence for several hundred years, they're getting off pretty lightly.
Unless, of course, they weren't guilty of violent maritime theft. In which case, why accuse them of it ?
I do not worry about piracy harming my industry. The impact of software piracy on the livelihoods of professional software developers such as myself is negligible. Less than five percent of global software development budget is for retail software. If anything, piracy represents a net benefit to us due to widespread education via hands-on experience. Better yet this experience is obtained in a context in which the users must think for themselves instead of pestering the helpdesk.
They won't choose to do this unless the alternative is admitting to a crime. A credible case can be made that this lowers the operating costs (printed documentation, media, packaging, warehousing and delivery, and most of all support) of retail software provision, so even in a retail context piracy is quite beneficial.
I should like to point out that with software is like love: the more you give away the more you have. Copying others' software (or music, or book, etc) does not deprive them of the use of it. The "right" to extort monies for the use of ideas is entirely artificial and quite recent, and it is important to remember that when law is used as a weapon it is tyranny, not justice. There is nothing intrinsically right about law. Slaughtering Jews was entirely legal in Nazi Germany.
You know, there's a frightening number of people out there (and here!) who believe this stuff.
He is a theif. He deserves to be in jail.
You are a flamebait. You deserve to be sodomized with a broomstick by a prison guard while Bubba knocks out all your teeth so you can give better head!
"No beer until you finish your tequila!" -Leela's Dad
Interesting point - DJs of all kinds sample each others (and mainstream artists') work all the time. At what point does sampling stop and piracy begin?
OK, so it's somewhere short of the complete song, but there seems no consistency in test cases - everything from a single line to half a tune has been in some court case or other.
Chris
***********
- Read fiction at www.espressostories.com
- Read fiction at www.espressostories.com
And take power away from the corporations, and restructure our social system to suit the needs of the people.
The same thing is happening the world over. It's not about Australia, or the US or Europe, it's a global issue. I'm sure it's been discussed here somewhere but the UK have just brought a new copyright law into effect, basically the EU version of the US's DMCA.
All I Want For Christmas Is My Constitutional Rights
I think it is past time that the community had some input into sentencing guidelines for cases of computer crime. Two university students with a history of being of good character, and very likely to go on to be law abiding, productive members of society face up to five years (per offence) in jail for giving away music.
Using the 99 US cents that Apple's iTunes service charges for songs, the 1000 songs on the computer had a commercial value of around $990. If the students had stolen a car worth $990 would the DPP be recommending jail time? If they had stolen $990 worth of CDs during a house burglary is there a realistic chance that they would face jail for their first offence? Either of these non-computer crimes would have a more traumatic effect on the victim.
A crime committed using a computer deserves a sentence in line with a non-computer crime involving similar levels of victim impact, financial loss and inherent malice.
For me, music is mostly something that happens in the background to keep the CPU slightly above idle. It acts as real-time tool to monitor that the machine is still running fine - and that you can still monitor the machine whilst in another room. That is rather cool.
.. what he manages to do is completely unnatural.
.. its just heaven sent. Its like he just gets up on stage and then God Himself takes over and sings through him. There is no-way that Guy is only 22 years old, he must be 2200 years old to have reached that level. You have to watch it to see what I mean. He basically does to vocals what Linus Torvalds does to code ...
As far as musical content, I cant think of a single 'artist' who's CD I would willingly pay for.
Except Guy Sebastian (Australian Idol). I dont normally watch that sort of stuff, but it was playing in the background, and suddenly this freak gets on the TV and starts singing. I was totally moved when I heard him sing
I have since watched the American Idol videos - they are good some of those dudes, but you can see that they put in an effort. Guy puts in no effort at all
Oh - I would buy the Keith Beukelaer CD when it comes out as well - especially if it has those dance moves that he does so well. He does for music what Bill Gates has done for software, so from that point of view I would buy a legal copy of his CD, just so that I can interract coherently with those less fortunate than myself.
Oh, not the same Aria I was thinking of. Bleh, mate.
Later,
Patrick
Sharing or not, he did keep it for himself also. Lose the attitude.
Hey Fucko - you man enough to make me lose the tude?
BTW is it true that music industry shills get to fuck a musician of their choice?
I've done my time in an Australian Uni.
Does some Queen's Counsel honestly expect me to believe that music piracy and "open source software" are the only things that they can book these guys for?
(If yes, they must be some of those "boring" geeks that I resemble^h^h^h^h^h^had about so much!)
Before I proceed, IAAA (I am an Australian)
The RIAA is known to have a liking for fun with numbers so lets examine the $60 million in damages they're claiming.
First, a few assumptions:
1 CD = 10 songs (on average)
1 CD = AU$25 (on average)
therefore, a song costs $2.50 on average.
In order to claim $60 million in lost revenue, the file sharers must have either had 24 million songs on offer, or had 24 million transfers of the songs that they did have on offer.
1 song = 3MB (on average)
24 million songs = 72 million MB.
It seems unlikely that a backyard operation would have 72 terabytes of storage dedicated to mp3 sharing...
Perhaps the ARIA (RIAA) are counting the number of songs downloaded from the site?
We've already established that
1 song = 3MB (on average); and
24 million songs = 72 million MB
Now assuming the best possible situation where this guy could get ADSL broadband in his home at a fully uncapped upload rate of 8Mbps (1MBps), which is impressive in itself since in Australia the cost of bandwidth is phenomenal:
72 million MB = 72 million seconds
= nearly 2.3 years of sustained traffic at the maximum his network connection would allow. IF it were capable of the above speed.
Is this another case of ARIA/RIAA pulling numbers out of it's arse?
Try replying to the correct post next time.
I buy all my music at www.allofmp3s.com :) 10$ gives me about 10 albums encoded in the highest quality (you can choose yourself). Don't know how they actually manage to stay in business but this is a marvelous site. They say that they have agreement with music labels, but look at their collection -- it's extensive. I doubt any label company will allow an album to be downloaded for 50c-1$. So, host your web site in Russia!
Eh, Russians..
17 USC 107
Australian fair use is much more narrow than American fair use. Australian copyright law does not grant a broad exception for private copying of audio or time-shifting of television programs the way USA copyright law does (section 1008 for private copying of audio; Sony v. Universal for time-shifting of TV). While the "such as" in the first sentence of 17 USC 107 is interpreted to be illustrative and not limitative, Australian fair use's corresponding language is limitative.
Will I retire or break 10K?
I remember buying 1000's CD when they came, with promises of full, quality digital recordings for life.
- Then my cd's started breaking after a year or so.
- Then the internet happened, and the recording industry started selling digital music? Hell no. That was 1990.
Its now almost 15 years later, there is VERY LITTLE to buy digitally, unless your AMERICAN, and own an IPOD.
In the meantime, I have payed dozens of extra taxes on my data cd's, to immoraly sponsor a dying industry.
GIVE ME MY ALTERNATIVE ALREADY!
And untill then, and untill I have my data cdr's taxes back, Ill feel completely morally right to "violate some copyright" which is NOT a crime.
To be honest, the whole copyrights thingie is a moot and ancient law product that just DOES NOT work in a world of perfect costless digital copies. Its the LAW that needs an overhaul, not my morals.
"/Dread"
Why anyone feels sorry for someone who knowingly and willingly breaks the law so that they can save themselves from buying a $15 CD
Problem is, some CDs are sold for as high as $32 in the United States. That's 32 U.S. dollars, not 32 Canadian dollars, not 32 Australian dollars. Explain that.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Smart is not the opposite of ignorance
Do you merely question the lack of parallelism (a noun being compared to an adjective), or are you trying to make a point? What does "smart" mean other than "having knowledge"?
Will I retire or break 10K?
those book people make the RIAA look really really nice :D
Oh please. You are just another slashbot weenie. You are all flab and facial hair. Get back to coding.
I wonder if the RIAA-equivalent in Australia would ask for the same punishment if they were their sons.
I think asking yourself this question every time you doubt the effectiveness of a punition may help a lot..
-- There are two kind of sysadmins: Paranoids and Losers. (adapted from D. Bach)
As I understand the law (but IANAL) copyright infringment is not a crime it is a civil infraction.At least when not done for profit.
Can one go to jail for a civil infraction?
I ask because I want to know. How does it work in Oz?
In italy, for example, a judge recently ruled that it is OK to copy software provided it is not done for profit or sold to a 3rd party.
How is including spyware on the data session of hybrid Corrupt Discs not an anti-privacy measure?
Will I retire or break 10K?
4. Some songwriter who had a hit several decades ago pops up out of nowhere and sues everybody who contributed, claiming that their song is "substantially similar" to his song and that subconscious copying is no excuse (Bright Tunes v. Harrisongs).
Will I retire or break 10K?
I have no time to code now that your momma is giving up her pooter for $1 a pop - welfare check must be late.
A fairly good friend of mine (who shall remain nameless, for obvious reasons) who is in his final year of high school had the cops come around in the wee hours of the morning and seize his two computers - lock, stock, and peripheral. He wasn't deeply involved, had some brief correspondence with the main characters or helped them with the website or something, but like most of us had a goodly collection of mp3s on his computers.
As a result, he lost access to his machines - and the work stored on them - until a few weeks ago.
When anyone gets raided, it's pretty offputting. To have it happen to you in the final year of high school, when you're focussed on getting uni placements that may determine your future, the actions of police came across a little heavy-handed.
Luckily he's a bright kid, and it getting on with it.
Charging DJs for playing bootlegs is pretty moronic too, though I'm sure that's been dealt with on
Antiquis temporibus, nati tibi similes in rupibus ventosissimis exponebantur ad necem.
why not put them in a detention centre. I for one 'don't like it', and I call upon all retired judges and lawyers to come to the aid of anyone who faces such charges.
I am well aware of the fact that Combs's publisher usually licenses the original musical works, but I can think of one exception: "It's All About the Benjamins (rock remix)", which some claim contains an interpolation from "I Don't Like the Drugs" by Marilyn Manson. I can find no evidence that Combs's publisher licensed that from Manson's publisher.
Will I retire or break 10K?
He said the Commonwealth did not seek jail for UTS computer science student Tommy Le, 21, who has pleaded guilty to breaching copyright by mixing music and distributing his compilation tracks on the site.
Actually, the legal definition of a 'thief' and 'stealing' requires 'the taking of property with intention to permenantly deprive its owner of the its use', not 'keeping it.' You are still a thief if you steal something and sell it (i.e. not keeping it). You are NOT a thief if you COPY something as you have not deprived the owner of the use of it by taking it.
Read Pynchon.
I remember the days when the worst you could expect was a good booting from the Prime Minister !
behaviours.
actually, everything on this planet is part of the creators' 'prior art'. no moretoll 'man' can honestly cullame to 'own' anything.
now, the greed/fear/ego based purveyors of unprecedented evile are attempting to give music/literature/artists, & most of the rest of US, a bad name.
lookout bullow. you know who to consult with/trust in re: matters of the heart/mind/wallet?
Of course, on an individual basis, we all have free will. We have the binary decisions:
buy music - don't buy music
and
copy music - don't copy music
available to us. Unfortunately, however, the marketplace consists of a lot of people who don't read Slashdot and generally aren't at the right end of the normal curve. Furthermore, when you take millions of such binary decision and place them together (i.e. the world music market) you no longer have a binary model, but instead you have a continuum. On average, your 'free will' isn't going to make a whole lot of difference - the market will just roll right on without you.
Ok, piracy is not a good thing, but jail is just a tad extreme, don't you think?
The article doesn't contain much fact, but if the article is resonable correct, then I think it's alright if the people behind have to go to jail. No doubt they knew it was illigal.In a minimum security prison (where non-violent offenders like music pirates are usually sent) there is a compartivly low chance of rape or violence.
That said, Australia's gaols are still very awful places and I would judge the effect of an institution like that on a university student with no criminal history involved in a minor crime, would be far from positive.
By the way: Gaol is how we Australians spell Jail if anyone's wondering what on earth I am talking about
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
The linked story appears to be noting more than record company propaganda dressed up as news. Let's start with where they got the $60 million figure? Do they really expect us to believe that these kids out did Apple iTunes three and a half times? 17 million $0.99 cent iTunes so far. Not likely.
/. linked story has Paul Roberts, Counsel for the Commonwealth, saying "Ng was well aware he was acting illegally". In my link the story has Ng telling police he believed "Mp3WmaLand operated in a legal grey area". If that is really what happened then Mr. Roberts as the prosecutor should know and is now lying.
This story goes into a bit more detail and is worth a read.
I understand some files may have been simple rips but some of the allegedly infringing files that got these kids into trouble are club remixes they did themselves. That is, they created new works by sampling a song, pulling it apart and putting it back together with different beat, and uploading the remix. This is what DJ's do. It may technically be infringing behavior but it's not the kind of thing one would expect police action and possible jail for even if you did upload the final song.
The
Now if you liked the bit about the open source software licensing in the first story, you are going to love this one. In the second story the industry's anti-piracy lawyer draws a comparison between Mp3WmaLand and Osama bin Laden's terrorist cells. Geez, Give me a break! What these kids did is absolutely noting to to with the "T" word. Here is some irony for you, isn't terrorism a small group trying to coerce a large population with fear, and the use or threatened use of force?
Ok guys its time again for the very confusing, but hopefully effective "FREE NG" T-shirts!
I hate this world sometimes really i do.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
How about a simple car analogy?
Situation 1:
You own a car. Person B steals your car. You have no car. Person B now has it. Person B sells it. Profit for Person B. Person B is a thief.
Situation 2:
You bought a license which authorizes you to use a car, which you paid for. Person B makes a copy of the car, which you own, but technically isn't your intellectual property. You still have "your" car. Person B has a copy of "your" car. You both drive a car. Person B could sell his copy of the car. You still have "your" car. Person B is not a thief. He just has no taste for wanting a copy of "your" Robin Reliant.
"If anyone needs me, I'm in the angry dome."
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
says it all.
They deliberately break the law and steal and distribute thousands of dollars (at least) of other people's property. If some guy on the street was doing this with physical CD's he'd get plenty of jail time, so why are these students any different? I know many fools on this site likes to support thieves like this. And they all kid themselves that the RIAA (or it's equivalent) are the bad guys and they're sticking up for rights, etc etc... but lets face it, they're thieves like anyone else who steals property that does not belong to them. Don't do the crime if you can't do the time. I have several friends who are struggling to get a foothold into the music industry partly because of piracy. They feel even more strongly about it than I do.
The big commercial software, music labels and movie studios are becomming more and more like big brother in 1984, using all the technical means at their disposal to become almost a law unto themselves (can someone explain to me how the fucking hell someone get's jailed without even profiting from the piracy?). And as for the quaint notion that some countries are better than others with respect to piracy, I think that is simply deceiving oneself*. Everywhere where those greedy disgusting bastards can bribe the officials in power in some manner, the same draconian prosecution will be applied.
Sooner or later one of these accused will commit suicide or will murder a prosecutor and then we really will be in our wonderful fascist superstate.
*The ironic thing is that Iran is one country where no copyright laws apply as they feel that God is the source of all innovation.
So, if their justification of having kids serve years of jail time is 'they were well aware they were breaking the law' - why is it that the **AA's - who have been judged with price fixing time and time again, and whom I'm positive were absolutely well aware that price fixing was also breaking the law - have never been served with jail time themselves? Here we have kids sharing songs - wrong indeed - but to a very limited audience, as opposed to a very powerful organization fixing prices to a demographic much, much larger. Why is it not then appropriate for the AA members to serve even longer jail sentances?
Geesh. I'm not saying they didn't break a law, but since when can a person be jailed for breaking civil law... which last i heard copyright infringement was a civil manner...
---- Booth was a patriot ----
"This is what needs to be done", the prime minister said, "music sales has been going steadily down recently, as consumers no longer are blindly taking abuse and buying music".
"The music industry has been fatally damaged", an ARIA spokesman who prefers to remain anonymous said, "people are actually boycotting our products, and the artists are starving."
The law makes it possible for ARIA official to first throw people who do not buy music in jail, exposing them to hours of listening to ARIA products and depriving them of sleep. If that doesn't brainwash them sufficiently to voluntarily purchase more music, they will be taken to a record store at gunpoint, and forced to purchase products chosen for them.
ACs who post boycot cries on /. will be shot right away.
A US Senator who carries the nickname "Disney" has pledged that the law will also be implemented in the United States tomorrow, and that it will be exported to other countries shortly thereafter as a part of Trade Agreements.
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
They ran mp3wmaland.net, which was shut down about half a year ago, and they were prosecuted about three months ago and were jailed. The whole story was rather grim ... deejays subpoened at clubs for playing illegal bootlegs, police raids into bedrooms and seizing everything, complete incomprehensibility of the fact they have broken the law and face jail, by the three responsible."
1) The fact that somebody else caught in a similar situation might say "but I didn't know it was wrong" should come as no surprise.
2) As they say, ignorance of the law is no excuse anyway -- even if they didn't know it was wrong, that doens't mean that they can just do it with impunity.
3) The DJ example is especially bad -- I don't know the specifics, but I'm assuming that these are professional DJs that are paid to play parties? That's a professional use of this music. They're paid, in part, for the music that they bring.
Here's what I do: Bitty Browser & Andromeda
It certainly is.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
I suppose in Australia they haven't heard of him, but in the U.S. it's a little like walking around named Hermann Goering. Not everybody knows Goering's name, but you'll run into heavy shit often enough to want a change.
I have the privilege of going to university with one of these guys...
:-)
Unfortunately, the only class I share is (and I'm serious)....
Ethics
Yeah, Captain, we camouflaged the tank. We rented a parking lot on a treeless plain and parked the tank in the middle of it. The enemy will never recognize it, since the lot belongs to someone else.
The "loose" isn't what's doctored. What's doctored is the highlight. Perhaps "Actual text of dialog box" would be more accurate.
-- yerricde"SMH this morning is reporting that three uni students may be jailed for their creation of a music sharing web site. Ok, piracy is not a good thing, but jail is just a tad extreme, don't you think?
Make them clean up after a weekend long concert. Don't forget the latrines and toothbrush...
Not entirely sure what OS licensing has to do with music piracy.
It's part of a future marketing campaign.
[Although, I thought TCPA would be sold as a solution for hackersterroristspedophiles, which are feared more than "music pirates".]
"Provided by the management for your protection."
Not recommended in the western world.
Increasingly I see this disturbing trend of posters to Slashdot trying to turn the people who are being stolen from into the real enemies. And increasingly I see sentences that allude a injustice against the criminal rather than the victim. Trying to garner support by making the companies sound like big bad guys for throwing their weight around (for really protecting themselves).
I hope ARIA (Australian version of RIAA) are pleased with themselves.
That seems a foolish type of statement, but I see it a lot. I'm sure they are pleased that they can protect their product, the same as any other type of business would be. The last thing I want to hear is foolishness about the young men's lives being ruined by the big bad company; these young men ruined themselves ... isn't that just human nature ... and then to complain about it too. When I was young, there were always perceived consequences for your bad actions. Why should we be taking away or lessening the consequences that are rightfully within the law?
I think I see what's really happening out there. A lot of people pirate illegal software through P2P, regular web sites, etc. And people have gotten away with it for a long time. Now that the big companies are finally stepping up to protect themselves and their products within the boundaries of the law, we are seeing a lot more legal action taken against the common user. And I think the people who share files (which most of us do) are starting to act like scared rabbits -- they are afraid it will rightfully catch up to them too. And so we see an increase of postings trying to garner emotional and other types of support against the big bad company, which is legally protecting itself. Such obscured support somehow helps us to feel better about what we're doing, or makes us feel that it's really all right and the bad stuff can't happen to us, when we're in a supportive community that does the same. A twisted self-help group if you will.
However I predict that a low percentage of file sharers will actually go to jail, but instead large fines will be put against most. From what I see in the news, I know the music is absorbantly more expensive when paying for it through fines instead of the regular off-the-shelf price. It's a gamble for all of us.
But if we lose, we certainly don't have the right to complain because we are the robber. If I go to a casino and gamble, then I can't complain when I lose my life savings. I had the choice.
2. They will be hurt due to lost sales
I wish, but that's just not true. First off, they don't just own new music, the own a vast amount of America's cultural heritage. Are people never supposed to be able to listen to Hendrix and the Beatles? Never listening to (RIAA) music is just not an option. Second, they have managed to get laws passed such that they get money every time you buy a blank tape, audio cd, etc. This means that even if we were to completely stop patronizing the RIAA, they would still be making money.
The only way to fix this situation will be through legilative changes. Boycotts aren't going to recurce copyright terms and void legislation. Political action is necessary.
Life is too short to proofread.
... America's cultural heritage. Are people never supposed to be able to listen to Hendrix and the Beatles?
Aren't the Beatles those guys from Liverpool, England?
It's a country founded by exiled criminals.
Seriously, I think it's sick how the government of Australia treats copyright issues. It honestly makes me glad to be an American.
Mod parent up
Vote for new mod!!! Score:-2,Imbecile
Ok, piracy is not a good thing, but jail is just a tad extreme, don't you think?
Shop lifters sometimes get jailed for their offences. Most get fined.
Why should it be any different for software piracy? It's just the same as shop lifting.
I still have a hard time comprehending why some (not most, but some) people who are so quick at denouncing GPL violations, make not much of a case out of stealing (musical or software) property.
Aren't the Beatles those guys from Liverpool, England?
Being a foreigner doesn't mean you can't become part of another country's culture. Schwarzenegger and Bruce Lee would be a couple more good examples.
Life is too short to proofread.
There are also weird words
Sure, but we can start on the easy ones first, and then work our way up to the exceptions.
1. You will always be safe from litigation
2. They will be hurt due to lost sales
And there is not a goddamn thing they can do if you choose to take this strategy!
-----
Nothing?
3. Complain to the government that those evil anti-capitalist types are pirating your stuff--as evidenced by the lower sales numbers--then get draconian, protectionist legislation passed. Lock opponents in jail, enslave the rest.
4. Profit!
Sometimes I long for a way that things were such that companies had to assume legal responsibility for their products working correctly, rather than getting away with covering themselves with weasly disclaimers .
Perhaps if companies had to face more responsibilities for their products - whether computer software or dvd/cd player 'software', then perhaps they would not be so quick to rush off and jail people in situations like this.
Instead, because of their better financial situation, they can bully their customers, who increasingly have fewer and fewer avenues of response.
URL: http://xanga.com/lvirden > Quote: Saving the world before bedtime. Even if explicitly stated to the contrary, n
Don't let the Aussies get all of the credit!
Title 18, Section 2319 of the US Code:
"Any person who commits an offense under section 506(a)(1) of title 17 -
(1) shall be imprisoned not more than 5 years, or fined in the amount set forth in this title, or both, if the offense consists of the reproduction or distribution, including by electronic means, during any 180-day period, of at least 10 copies or phonorecords, of 1 or more copyrighted works, which have a total retail value of more than $2,500;"
You can search the US code here.
The same language is going into The FTAA Treaty, meaning all of North and South America would face prison for the same crime:
"[4.1. Each Party shall provide criminal procedures and penalties to be
applied at least in cases of willful trademark counterfeiting or infringement
of copyrights or neighboring rights on a commercial scale. Each Party shall
provide that significant willful infringements of copyrights or neighboring
rights that have no direct or indirect motivation of financial gain shall be
considered willful infringement on a commercial scale.
In criminal procedures, remedies available shall include imprisonment and/or
monetary fines sufficiently high to deter future acts of infringement and
with a policy to remove the monetary incentive to the infringer. Each Party
shall further ensure that such fines are imposed by judicial authorities at
levels that actually deter future infringements.]"
Visit the Open Music Registry today. It's not in the best of shape, but don't complain.. help it get better.
If you know musicians, get them to release their music under the EFF's Open Audio License, register their songs at the OMR and release the songs on the p2p nets.
If you're a listener, sort through the songs at the OMR and give good feedback.
Just like OSS.
That's the recipe for a Jail-free and Big-Media-free future!
Why put people in jail for robbing the liquor store.
'Counsel for the Commonwealth, Paul Roberts, SC, said Ng was well aware he was acting illegally. Not only was the site camouflaged - the web space had been let to him by a teenage boy in Perth - but Ng had co-written an essay for his information technology law course on "open source software licensing."' Not entirely sure what OS licensing has to do with music piracy." Anyone who understands OSS licencing has a pretty good grasp of copyright law, especially as OSS is specifically designed to present an alternative to traditional copyright law. It would be impossible that this person didn't know he was breaking the law. His crime is made doubly worse by the fact that instead of simply trying to build an alternative to copyright law as with OSS, he decided to go out and break the law instead.
Slashdot: Playing Favorites Since 1997
All crime, no matter how petty, should be met with execution. That's the only way.
... it's the tape which supposedly has hotel heiress Paris Hilton banging her boyfriend (recorded by him with her knowledge). Arguably, she has a right to try and restrain its distribution. Though, arguably, if she had made no fuss, people would forget about it almost instantly. I hear it's pretty lame anyway.
Freedom: "I won't!"
The argument can be made that the 'theft' involved is any revenue that would have been made had to purchased the content, rather than downloading it.
At any rate, copyright violation can be prosecuted criminally (at least in the US; I suspect other Berne Convention signatories have similar provisions in place, but I'm no expert in international law - I'm not even an expert in US law ;). Take a look at 17 USC 506, for starters.
Along with the "No Electronic Theft" (NET) Act. Theft, mind.
geek. lawyer.
i before e, except after c, or when sounding like 'a' as in neighbor and weigh and on weekends and holidays and all throughout May, so you'll always be wrong no matter what you say.
Why is it that things are SO stringent in Australia....12 million people on the entire rock..who gives a shit!!!!
Knowing that it's best not to tell anyone must be the hardest
A blog I run for the wealth
This reminds me of the following IRC transcript that I read on a web page. Kind of sums up this simplistic mentality:
In real terms, however, white collar and technology crime (i.e. music piracy) often has far higher social costs than these other forms of crime. However, it is perpetrated by white, wealthy people instead of poor people of color. While some poor person might do twenty years for having two doses of crack, how come the Enron executives no only get off scot free, but keep the money they stole?
No, piracy is not stealing, but it's the kind of "victimless" crime like laundering pension fund money that deserves a harsher sentence.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
Let's see now, you said...., - No wait, that's not what you meant! - Let's try it again! Either way, its kinda funny. 'Course, I still don't know if what you did't say was what you meant to not say.
Stealing in this context means "copying not authorized by the copyright holder". As easy as this.
Whether it's an infinitely available resource doesn't have anything to do with whether it's stealing. The reason copyright infringement is not stealing is that nobody "owns" copyright. "Ownership" of copyright is just a way of speaking, which we have adopted thanks to lawyers and business people misusing the term. Copyright can't be owned because it isn't property, it is a temporary right granted by the government. In essence it is like the right to turn at red light when you are in the proper lane, whereas people in other lanes don't have that right. Nobody "owns" the lane or the right to turn, and turning from the wrong lane is not theft. Copyright holders benefit from miscasting infringement as "theft," because the public sees images of junkies running through alleys with stolen TV sets.
Copyright infringement may incur real or imagined losses for the copyright holder, but recovering those losses is a matter for civil courts, not for policemen and jailers. Unfortunately the copyright holding community also has a lot more money to bribe legislators, oops, I mean finance election campaigns, and get laws written to suit them. In modern democracies the mere public, which overwhelmingly seems to think copying is morally okay, doesn't matter. If we want to fix the source of the copyright problem (and many others), we have to fix the problem of lawmakers being "owned" by the same people who own just about everything else.
We're not buying. We're fucking pirating. That IS the protest.
This Anonymous Coward notes that if we did stop buying and stopped pirating, the loss of sales would be put down to piracy anyway. Might as well screw 'em harder and rub it in their face while we're at it. Anonymous networks a go go!
Due to posts in aticles like this I have come to the conclusion that it is ok to violate any IP/copy right/patent/etc if you do not agree with it.
If it is ok to steal^H^H^H^H^Hinfringe on copy rights, then someone can take GPLed code, make changes, and resell it with out releasing the source code. Thank you for making this easy to understand, and the best part I can use what ever reasioning to justify my actions no matter how wrong they are or how absurd my reasons are.
Slashdots "insightful" responses using what ever means to justify their actions no matter how wrong they are.
Sure, I doubt that that downloading one song is going to deprive an artist of much cash. But you are only kidding yourself if you thing that your downloading of whole albums isn't.
By downloading those albums you are depriving them of the money you would have had to pay if it wasn't so easy to download them for free. While you wouldn't have bought as many as you have downloaded, it is very likely that you would have paid for some of them if it wasn't for the internet.
Don't bother using that bullshit "I wasn't going to pay for it" or the "I can't afford them" excuse, if that is the case you shouldn't have it at all. If you are going to break the law be prepaired to face the consequences of your actions.
You can't "share" what isn't yours to share: what someone else owns.
We may not all of us like it, but the individuals had no right to distribute copies of copyrighted recordings, or to facilitate illegal distribution by others.
We may think jail is excessive for the crime, but if that's how the law reads in the land where they broke it, that's the penalty they face.
And yes, not all of us agree with all aspects of all law establishing and regulating intellectual property.
But of course if you don't agree, you can lobby to change the law, you can protest the law, you can try to convince others the law is wrong and should be changed.
But that's not what happened here. These individuals simply broke the law.
In the United States at least, we have a concept of the punishment fitting the crime. It happens to even be part of the constitution (8th ammendment). Well it seems to me, and just about everyone else, that suing someone for million or billions of dollars for copying msuic is COMPLETELY out of whack compared to the crime. I mean you have a crime where no actual value is being deprived from anyone (the argument is that they loose potential revenue since nothing is actually taken) and yet the consequences are more severe than an actual, physical theft of the same magnitude.
Then there is the fact that they use an unconstitutional law (the DCMA) to go after it, subvert the workings of the judicial system, are using questionable evidence, make lots of mistakes in whom they accuse, and are an illegal monopoly to begin with.
Given all that, it is perfectly reasonable that people are pissed about it.
I feel no sympathy or outrage when someone gets pulled over and given a ticket for speeding. They know they are breaking the law, and the punishment is reasonable. I would be HUGELY outraged if the police setup an M60 and shot anyone they felt looked like they were going too fast on sight. The punishment must fit the crime, and there must be sufficient evidence and a good process to even bring the accusation.
As much as I hate a lot of what goes on in the US these days, I'm glad for these sort of events to remind me that it could be much worse. Jail for copyright infringement. Damn, can you get booked for a deat taillight also? Is selling pot a capital offence? That's insane.
And Texas has low crime rates, imagine that.
:P
thanks :)
Far more convicts were sent to North America than Australia. Of course, we'll forget about that for now, but it does go some way to explain Bush & co. ;-)
It was only after the American Revolutionary war that we started shipping them to the land down under.
Good point.
What about in terms of convicts vs. other groups e.g. refugees? Large numbers of early American immigrants arrived not in chains, but in flight from their oppressors? I assume that this was less the case with Australia, given the distance from Europe. Anyone have the numbers?
-kgj
-kgj
Australia? That's in Iowa, isn't it?
Ceterum censeo subscriptionem esse delendam.
That would be a paper by the Australian Copyright Council, a body formed of people who are interested in strong copyright protection. They are not an official body, and you can assume that that paper is a biased interpretation.
The official body in Australia that handles intellectual property issues is IP Australia, although realistically, copyright is a matter for the courts to decide.
AFAIK, time-shifting and format-shifting have NEVER BEEN TESTED in Australian courts. The legislation is just not that specific, and there's a lot of common law to be considered, which can over-ride legislation in Australia.
I strongly suspect that if anyone was brought to court in Australia for ripping their CDs to MP3s, or for taping things from the telly, that the court would find it to be fair use, as long as it is clearly being done for personal use.
Politas
The one thing that a law degree has taught me is to never trust anyone who tries to tell you what the law is unless they have a law degree (and even thats not always teh case) -- chances are they are lying or full of shit.
And you sir, are full of shit.
Theft can mean whatever the hell the legislature wants it to mean (unless its repugnant to the constitution). The law is DYNAMIC and is CREATED by Government and Courts. This is like the bedrock of jurisprudence.
Depending on your jurisdiction, theft is the act of taking someone elses property without their permission. Copyright is a form of property rights (albeit postively created). Music has copyright in it. Downloading music is a breach of the exclusive property rights vested in intellectual property via the Government.
What is so difficult to understand about this concept?
I'm so fucking tired of jackasses arguing that piracy isn't theft when they have no legal, jurisprudential or philosophical basis for their argument. There are some good arguments about why intellectual property shouldn't be recognised as property but those arguments don't deny that it currently IS recognised as property (and is as real as any other kind of contemporary transistory property like stocks, or money, or wahtever).
stop releasing total junk software/music, and perhaps somebody out there will buy it eh?
Can anyone recommend a good therapist for me.. er.. my schizophrenic network card?
Well this is stealing.. So you can rest assured that somewhere down the line you will pay for this sin.. That's what is bugging me.. I have to ask myself, is this loving god?
Of course I know a bunch of you are going, faaa.. God.. You fundamentalist christians, you and your gods.. I say fine it says in our on religion we accept persecution, its just more riches for us in heaven.. In other words, see if I care about your lack of faith.. Also to teh muslims interested in the jihad, there is nothing in the bible that counteracts your beliefs.. Fundamentally if you kill us, we both go to heaven, if you think in a multi-cultural mindset, but which perception is correct? Its the human perception though that says its wrong to kill another.. And that is aligned with the Christian which is non-confrontational.. However the muslim rhetoric was formed largely around the crusades which are poorly aligned with Christ's teachings.. Of course how many muslims read the Koran, how many of the Christians read the bible.. How many Catholics actually read the bible.. The Pope thinks he is a intercessor for god and man, Jesus is the only intercessor, the bible states this.. And gay bishop in the Episcopal church, what did Jesus say about politics and political relationships?? The first will be last and the last will be first.. Who washed the diciples feet? Jesus, jesus served the deciples, taking the lowest form of service.. Because God is the ultimate servant.. So unless your preacher, bishop, priest, serves you like someone greater, they are no more saved than the pharisees..
So you might contemplate, hey even having such a political and organized relationship in a church like that is wrong altogether.. Its not so bad to have churches split up, it just makes people more strong, do not have faith in the church but in god.. Church is just the natural evolution of treating others with kindness and worshipping god..
Anyhow.. The real issue is.. What have we lost from pirating.. I feel I lose god's grace,
I lose something not measurable by instrumentation... Its how it affects me spirtually, and how it affects my feelings..
Is this right?? What am I missing here?
Have I made my collection of pleasure into a
kind of religion, am I idolizing my Kazaa..
Do I then exist to collect music and not to experience life..
You wouldn't believe the potential to convert prisoners to christ.. Get this, you have people who think they are evil, spending time in a confined secluded existence, you tell them that
they can't save themselves with works but by jesus sacrifice.. Basically its not something you do, but something he does.. So in effect, you give them hope, they realize that they have something to live for that spans persecution, makes some jailers uncomfortable, they can indentify with Paul, who had been in jail much, and it gives them a mission that can exist
as much in jail as outside of jail.. Because of their seclusion and focus on god they can build up more riches for thesmelves in heaven and at the same time receive grace and special treatement from Jesus.. When they get out, depending on how much faith and belief they have, they will be more successful and a better person..
Of course that's a theory.. However I can attest to proof of its working, every sunday I attend services with prisoners at the local jail, and this ministry is changing lives in profound ways.. I am seeing a change int he conduct of the prisoners, I would say they are receiving more wealth in heaven than I am, they have more time to focus while I'm distracted by all mu multiples of gods, money, cd's, news, etc.. Distractions? Vices!! Idols..
Now you may look at prison life as a ultimate hell, but nothing is worse than hell.. Where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth for eternity.. If it makes it easier for you to contemplate that nothing will happen.. Maybe that makes your existence now easier, but after death, what if what I'm telling you does happen.. That you are judged and determined to go to
Just say no to license servers!!
Dont believe everything you hear and read in the papers or see on TV. They try to make it worse than it really is. My mixtapes were put on that website by my two friends and somehow its become "3 men who operated the website" and somehow Im the "PimpDaddy" of it all. The music industry are hypocrites and instead of just merely discussing about it in a forum, we should be taking action.
A suggestion, that might clarify the issue considerably. Next time you buy a cd because you liked mp3's that you got for free--email the artist, legislators and news services.
Just among people I know personally, I know quite a few who have gone to great lengths to find cd's by non-mainstream artists after dl'ing mp3's.
So let 'em know. Start a movement. File-sharing is the greatest underground radio network in history.
The *only* artists I buy are ones I find on file-share hubs. I don't *like* mainstream music.
I suspect artists would release their music voluntarily if they knew.
You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say will be misquoted, then used against you.
From dictionary.com
theft
\Theft\, n. [OE. thefte, AS. [thorn]i['e]f[eth]e, [thorn][=y]f[eth]e, [thorn]e['o]f[eth]e. See Thief.] 1. (Law) The act of stealing; specifically, the felonious taking and removing of personal property, with an intent to deprive the rightful owner of the same; larceny.
Note: To constitute theft there must be a taking without the owner's consent, and it must be unlawful or felonious; every part of the property stolen must be removed, however slightly, from its former position; and it must be, at least momentarily, in the complete possession of the thief. See Larceny, and the Note under Robbery.
Some key lines here: "every part of the property stolen must be removed, however slightly, from its former position; and it must be, at least momentarily, in the complete possession of the thief."
"removing of personal property, with an intent to deprive the rightful owner of the same"
notice "of the same", meaning in this case, if you are depriving the owner of a song they still posess it, so that's obviously not true, if you are depriving them of money then the pirates would have said money, not an mp3 file, so again, obviously incorrect.
Stop with the f*%king FUD terms like Theft. Yes copyright infringement in many (not all!) cases can be detrimental to an artists pocketbook and lifestyle, but in some cases I think this is like taking a penny from a millionaire.
To judge the entire idea of file sharing, and specifically mp3 file sharing as a whole is immensely ignorant. Look at the artists who DO support it and think it is a great way to get exposure. The RIAA is a big bloated beast that is past it's time. It's a postmodernist world, if they can't adapt they die, evolution. Sucking political cock for new laws and favors is just trying to get divine intervention to save them from their own stupidity. By using words like theft to describe it indescriminatly makes you look like just as much of a jackass as them.
Copyright infringement, yes. Theft, no.
Don't be a FUD spreading modernist, evolve.
Hope you see the light,
mzo
I don't have a sig, can I borrow yours?
I'll get interested in your opinions on file sharing as soon as you do some. Let me know where to find the bits.
Dear jerk,
(a) I do have a law degree
(b) I don't come from America
(c) I suggest you get a property law textbook and look up some definitions before you come here and blow your golden spunk all over us ignorant masses
I was referring to the common law concept of theft. As I'm sure you know from your law degree with honours in jerkology, even the mighty American legal system flows from the British common law in parts.
I'm so fucking tired of jackasses who think they can make a conclusive judgement about another person's intellect, reasons for holding an opinion, personality and motives based on a couple of lines of text in a remark on a website.
Read Pynchon.
I'm so fucking tired of jackasses who think they can make a conclusive judgement about another person's intellect, reasons for holding an opinion, personality and motives based on a couple of lines of text in a remark on a website.
Quid Pro Quo.