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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."
*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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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
*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
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
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.
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) --
> 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?
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.
Mandarin/Cantonese/Hokkien speakers may, of course, correct me on this.
More than mere navel gazing.
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.
I went to the shop the other day, and I was in there for only about 5 minutes.
When I came out there was a motorcycle cop writing a parking ticket. So, I went up to him and said, "Come on man, how about giving a guy a break?"
He ignored me and continued writing the ticket. So I called him a pencil-necked Nazi.
He glared at me and started writing another ticket for worn tires!
So I called him a piece of horse shit. He finished the second ticket and put it on the windscreen with the first.
Then he started writing a third ticket! This went on for about 20 minutes... the more I abused him, the more tickets he wrote.
I didn't care. My car was parked around the corner.
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
Thanks for clearing that up.
28 days, 6 hours, 42 minutes and 12 seconds... that is when the world will end.
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?
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.
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.]"