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."
*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.
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.
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.
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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
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.
BTW, my legal mumbo jumbo was written for me by someone in the law field considering the shit I had/have to deal with.
Which is just as well, considering the apparent confusion that has led you to cite US copyright law in relation to an Australian criminal proceeding.
Thanks for clearing that up.
28 days, 6 hours, 42 minutes and 12 seconds... that is when the world will end.
... but the ideas behind free software are incomprehensible to non-programmers ...
How wrong can one be. What makes you think so? In my profession (medicine), knowledge is completely unlicensed. If you are interested in a particular piece of knowledge, like how to operate a hernia - I am happy to share this with you. No royalties, no licensing fees. You may have to pay for my time if you need me to teach you, buts that's all. After that, you can do whatever you like with your knowledge - share it, multiply it, APPLY it!
It is even tradition in my profession to provide services for free to those who can't afford them - in most countries legislation even compells us to do so (in most civilized countries, a doctor cannot walk away unpunished from a patient in danger of life or limb regardless whether the patient is able to pay anything for the services rendered).
"IP" however is an artefact created by people who either see their purpose in life in amassing as much money as possible regardless of the damage they do to society or by people who would not have any purpose at all if they wouldn't create such artefacts.
Doctors all over the world are fighting drug patents and similar "IP" that actually kill more people every single day than the whole gulf war did.
We certainly have no sympathy for putting people into jail for replicating an indefinite ressource. How can you steal what can be replicated indefinitely?
Are you suggesting then that it is illegal to, for example, record a CD that you have purchased onto a Minidisc for personal use? Or to rip it to MP3 for personal use?
According to this paper published by the Australian copyright office, that's correct: "There is no exception in the Copyright Act that allows copyright material to be reproduced for private purposes without permission from the copyright owner."
Will I retire or break 10K?