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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."
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.
magnatune.com
The Internet's nature is peer to peer - 20050301_cs_profs.pdf
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) --
Mandarin/Cantonese/Hokkien speakers may, of course, correct me on this.
More than mere navel gazing.
Actually, speeding in the US isn't a crime. It's violation of the traffic code.
.downloaded from the internet.
It is illegal, but it is not a crime.
More to the point owing someone money that you don't pay them is not a crime. It is not stealing. It is a violation of the civil code. They can sue you and use the force of the courts to force payment.
This is what a simple copyright violation is. A simple copyright violation would be copying a CD or Book you took out of the library, borrowed from a friend or. .
Unfortunately, sharing items protected by copyright en masse, as making them available on the internet invariably does, moves the issue from simple violation into the distribution of knockoffs field, which is a crime. One people go to jail for. Not even having anything to do with the internet.
I agree though that jail is not normally any sort of solution for nontheft/nonviolent crimes, especially where no deliberate fraud or profit is involved ( such as selling copies of CDs as originals). It often costs far more than the crime itself cost, if nothing else.
The only really legitimate reason for incarceration is the protection of real people and real property. There are other ways to "punish" without putting a further finanical load on society and without sending people to "criminal training school" in a manner certain to breed resentment against society, as opposed to, hopefully, breeding social conciousness.
KFG
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
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?
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
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