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."
I apologise for my horrible spelling, it's 2 AM
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
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)