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Jail Time for Movie Swappers
ArmenTanzarian writes "The MPAA is at it again, reports CNET in a story from yesterday. Apparently, suing the pants off of teenagers RIAA-style isn't good enough, they want to go ahead and throw you in jail. To that end, their senators will introduce the Artists' Rights and Theft Prevention Act today; which carries with it a maximum sentence of 3 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. Here's the best part: you don't have to infringe on copyright to be found guilty!"
It'll be a juvenile detention center for those under 18.
It's nice to see Democrats and Republicans working together
Looking at the acronym for the bill, it's the ART Prevention Act. If it passes, we won't have to worry about having any quality movies to share!
And the muscular cyborg German dudes dance with sexy French Canadians
/me mutters something about "the best legal system money can buy.."
Trolling is a art,
Out of 100,000 sperm you were the fastest?
At home right now in my laptop I have a DVD in the tray. That drive is shared automatically as D$.
Come arrest me!
Idiots.
Here's the best part: you don't have to infringe on copyright to be found guilty!
From the first paragraph of the CNet article:
A forthcoming copyright bill backed by key U.S. senators would place file swappers in prison for up to three years if they have a copy of even one prerelease movie in their shared folders.
How is this not violating copyright again? Last I heard, copying movies fell into that category.
Click here and have a look at my 550+ divx colection...
Please... don't you download any, that's just for saying "I DON'T GIVE A SHIT" to those fuckers!
Anytime you see legislation like this. Feinstein has taken payoffs to the tune of $264,566 from the Tv/Movies/Music lobby. No one should be suprised by her involvement.
So, if you post a movie before it hits the theaters, you go to jail. If you release it the same day it hits the theaters, you just get fined? This whole bill is just stupid.
So what are we going to do about this? Now is the time to contact your representative, NOT the day before the bill is passed! Send a typed SNAIL MAIL letter to your representative's office calmly detailing your take on the issue, making a clear and concise argument, avoiding unnecessary detail and personal attacks.
Here is a sample letter which I base my other letters on, for reference:
At least their bandwidth costs will go up
No, I don't condone theft, but I think the draconian laws are worse than the offence they try to prevent....
Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
Artists' Rights and Theft Prevention Act
I knew RIAA were ripping the artists off, but now they want to make a Artist's Rights (and Theft) Prevention Act? Now that's having balls!
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
This is enough to make me think about a boycott, RoTK be damned. Does anybody know if there's a site like RIAA Radar, for the MPAA? It could probably be done using the same technique (I think riaaradar scrapes amazon for the label, and compares it against a list of RIAA members).
Money I owe, money-iy-ay
Copyright law is a civil law not criminal law. As least it's supposed to be.
Sure, they're doing something illegal, but now the movie companies dont need to prove that they did, its just assumed.
Also, the jail term seems to be slightly disproportionate to the crime (in 99% of cases).
"There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals."
Out of curiousity. What were to happen if somebody had dummy files on their computer whose name was similar to a movie? Has anybody ever gotten in to trouble for that?
No, the egg just didn't measure up to any of the other sperms' standards.
It reassures me to know our "leadership" is spending its time on important things like catering to the complaints of insanely rich corporations instead of trying to fix trivial problems like the state of public education or massive government waste.
This is only for movies that haven't yet been released. Your copy of Matrix won't land in the slammer, but your prerelease screener for RotK will.
"People that quote themselves in their signatures bother me" - athakur999
Belgian government.
Peyo, not Hanna Barbara.
Overall, a very substandard troll. You aren't half as smart as you're trying to look.
The best they could do was get BO DEREK?! Just goes to show you how all the real ARTIST support this bill. What, was John Stamos busy or something?
Theft has to do with property. Copyright law isn't property law. Unless they're talking about people going into stores and stealing CDs, there are no property issues involved here.
It's time to strike words like "intellectual property" and "piracy" (as applied to the non-violent action of making an unauthorized copy of a copyrighted work) out of our collective vocabularies and replace them with neutral, descriptive terms like "intellectual assets" and "unauthorized copying".
In general, I'm okay with making it illegal to share pre-release videos/music...after all, that goes after personal acts, not technology, which is an appropriate use for law.
My only concern is whether the punishment fits the crime. Is sharing one movie really grounds to lose your right to vote for the rest of your life?
------- Code to try when you're bored: qsort( 0, UINT_MAX, sizeof( int* ), IntCompare );
Copyright infringement isn't theft, since it doesn't deprive someone else of anything. It's copyright infringement and is illegal. It's also a civil offense, not a criminal offense, like say... shoplifting a CD or DVD, since that would deprive the store of a physical object and the potential revenue from it's sale. See now that's theft, which is a criminal offense, and you'd face harsh penalties of maybe a $200 fine in most states, as opposed to the civil offense of copyright infringment, where you're liable for what... 12 songs on a cd x 150,000 each, 1.8 million dollars?
Let me know if there's parts you still don't understand.
Introducing the new Occam Fusion! Now with sqrt(-1) fewer blades!
The fact that you put the words "Stealing" and "Copyrighted" in the same sentence demonstrates you have no idea what you are talking about.
Have you actually taken a moment to read the copyright laws? Or did you ask for someone to explain it to you?
Stealing or theft of property is an actual removal of property that doesn't belong to you (yes.. I simplified it for him). Copyright infringement is the distribution of material you have no legal right to distribute. And in most cases carries a heavier penalty than theft.
Did I get it right?
Has Comcast disconnected your Internet account? Same here. You can read about it at http://comcastissue.blogspot.com
It seems that senators now-a-days can be bought soooo easily. A big corporation throws some money their way and asks them to lobby behind whatever the hell their agenda is. The media is going to eat this up and "advertise" all day, and preach to the people how wrong it is to swap movies. A few people go to jail and then what? They drive their customers away even farther.
Unfortunately the poster didn't. This legislation is designed to deal with people attempting to distribute/profit from works BEFORE they are generally released to the public by the owner.
Obviously the only reason you have a TV and a DVD player is to watch pirated DVDs. The only reason you have a computer is to download pirated music and movies. The internet is only for porn and bomb making instructions you damn dirty pirates.
Be glad that it's not "supporting terrorism" to have a downloaded movie.
Just wait till some crappy band steals your nic.
"Piracy for too long has been high-reward and low-risk," Taylor said. "Legislation such as that being introduced tomorrow will go a long way toward changing that equation."
What's the high reward for giving away an $8 movie to anonymous strangers?
it does not say any actual copyright infringement must take place--only that the file be available in a shared folder, Web site or FTP (File Transfer Protocol) site. "It says we don't care if anybody got any of these copies," Jaszi said. "We're going to conclude that at least 10 people did. It relieves the copyright owner of having to prove that any violation of their rights actually happened."
Good thing these guys aren't involved in the security of the retail sector. If I owned a store, these guys might put ME in jail because I have merchandise sitting out, available for someone to steal!!
We can now assume that any gun owner has killed people because he/she has a gun and ammunition?
Don't you just love how they spin things by calling it the "Artist's Rights and Theft Prevention Act"? Wouldn't a more apropos name be the "Big Fat Hollywood Studio Thoughtcrime Prevention Act"?
Ernest MacDougal Campbell III
geek ramblings
In the time in between a movie being taken out of movie theaters and put on dvd/vhs etc... how is one supposed to legally view a movie? Xoom
What a wonderful breakthrough in law enforcement: assuming that an actual crime has been committed and acting accordingly. In a day and age when people can be automagically declared enemy combatants and permanently removed from the legal system, I guess this was the next step.
Since we're all theoretically capable of criminal actions, I think we should all pre-emptively surrender to the proper authorities.
Really - how do pre-release moveies end up on internet shares? People they trust with them leak them. Those are the people they should prosecute if they had any common sense. Why can't they use their brains? If you're going to give out 100 copies of a movie to reviewers pre-release then maybe you ought to watermark them so the reviewers have some reason to not give them out. There's plenty of options for DRM they could apply to their pre-release copies but they don't - perhaps this is proof that the RIAA will never really manage to sell DRM content to the masses ... they can't even manage to use DRM in limited quantities to known parties.
In the past, totalitarian governments were usually based on some flavor of fascism or communism. We are now witnessing the birth of a new form of totalitarianism -- corporatocracy. In this form of government, the corporations inform the "people's representatives" of what laws are to be passed, as well as what specific punishments are to be imposed for breaking those laws.
It's not that I think that copyright infringement is OK. It is just that the punishments for breaking the law seem extremely harsh, given the nature of the crime. It also seems backwards that corporations can dictate what legistlation gets passed rather than the people, whom the legistlature supposedly represents.
Proverbs 21:19
Nice try, lol, but copyright infringement IS a criminal offense, and a federal one at that. The penalties can be pretty fucking severe too.
Give this guy's bandwidth a break...otherwise I won't be able to break the law. Sheesh..
..if you read the article.
So... if you keep a copy of a movie thats not yet released in a shared folder, you can be punished by up to three years in a pound-my-ass prison and a fine of up to $250K. So all you got to do is to move it out of your shared folder, and instead of swapping it over P2P simply burn out a few copies for your friends and family. Problem solved.
Everything in the world is controlled by a small, evil group to which, unfortunately, no one you know belongs.
If they're already violating the law, how will a new law help catch them?
/syle
Effectively they're avoiding dealing with the fact that they have a serious leak problem within the suite of companies with which they deal, like duplicators, advertising agencys, studio employees, etc.
Note that the only guy that gets nailed is the one who puts it in the shared folder - nobody involved in the actual leak is affected - because it's them.
Just curious how laws such as this one affect Canadians, if at all?
I wonder whether one person making an audio recording, and another just recording video, would each qualify for prosecution. Is making a copy of a movie really worse than making a copy of a concert performance, with no video?
The jail terms only seem to apply when the copy is distributed before the actual release. I doubt even here anyone can consider pre-release warez as something legitimate.
"actress" Bo Derek.
In any case, we don't know if John Titor was a real time traveler from 2036 or not....his postings/messages make a lot of interesting reading though. He "predicted" the development of CERN's blackholes, China's space mission, and more importantly, the American Civil War, which is supposed to start in the next two years (2004-2005) or so.
The primary reason he mentioned was the ever increasing highhandedness of the US government (this was in 1999-early 2000), before Sept 11 happenings/Patriot Act etc.
Anyway, what he said was, that people got tired of the US government monitoring them all the time, passing more and more unjust laws favoring corporate America, and curbing basic freedoms of the people.
True or not, every time another such YRO story comes up on /., it makes me wonder where America is headed.
They put the Harry Potter 3 trailer online before the intended release date - can they arrest themselves now?
"Time is an abstract concept devised by carbon-based lifeforms to monitor their ongoing decay." - Thundercleese
From the article:
The Cornyn-Feinstein bill also creates another federal felony, punishable by up to five years in prison, for using "an audiovisual recording device" in a movie theater to make a copy of a film and boosts civil penalties available to MPAA member companies when suing over prerelease movies placed on the Internet.
This is truly astonishing, and to my knowledge, unprecedented. Note that all cases of prohibition of cameras, tape recorders, MD recorders, etc from concerts, variety shows, etc, have ALWAYS been civil matters; rules set and enforced by the persons or companies doing the entertaining.
This is the first instance I can think of where this type of activity has crossd over from civil to criminal jurisdiction. The only possible good that can come out of this is that a conviction will require unanimous guilty verdict from a jury, whereas civil cases are decided by judicial fiat or a majority of the jury.
I don't use p2p myself, but I'd be interested to know where the MPAA & RIAA would stand if a huge worm hit 10,000's of windows systems and installed a p2p client, and then hosted infringing movie/music titles for others to download using any of the currently available p2p apps.
If the worm had a high propogation, surely this would make life very difficult for the MPAA & RIAA.
Come to think of it, if such a worm got into a computer system through a weakness in the operarting system, could the creators of the operating system be held responsible?
If you actually read the article, it is quite clear that this is specifically meant to target those who share movies that are not yet released in theaters. However, the following line contradicts this:
"this legislation will go a long way toward targeting one of the most serious contributors to piracy right now, which is the practice of camcording motion pictures. It's the first time the U.S. Senate has had legislation that specifically addresses the threat of camcording."
How does this address the "threat" of comcording, since this is normally done post-release.
Another nitpick about this is the complaint that no copyright violation is needed...the movie just has to be in a shared folder. Well, if no one downloads the movie, how the hell can the verify what is in that shared file???
"The market alone cannot provide sufficient constraints on corporation's penchant to cause harm." -- Joel Bakan
More C&D letters?
If a film is on an FTP site, are they going to log in and see if you have movies?
Or are they just (again) going after people that have movies shared on Kazaa/p2p? Feinstein supports limiting the Total Information Act, so supposedly she's all about personal privacy. But if you're sharing movies, that goes out the window - after all, they'll have to track you down to throw you in jail, right?
I'm glad to see that my local elected official is doing so much good for the State of California. *writes letter telling her that this legislation is ridiculous and to stop pandering to the MPAA*
*awaits 3 page reply that just says "ha ha ha"*
This is a step in the right direction for sure! Hopefully in 5 years they'll be handing down the death penalty for premedidated file sharing and file sharing with children, far far worse crimes than file sharing with consentual adults!
Why not - in a few years, for having a half a second of black screen on our hard drive, you could be conviced of: Copyright Infringement (all your money), Pre-release Piracy (3 years), Intent to Pirate (5 years), Market Disruption (2.5 years), Improper Parody (3 years), Insult to Film Makers (1 year), Improper Use of a Computer (5 months), Use of a computer in a Crime (1 year, banned from Computer Use), Use of the Internet in a crime (2 years). In addition, your rights to vote are revoked, you must tithe 30% of your income as reparations perpetually, and you are forbidden from watching any MPAA-produces movies once you are released from prison without special piracy-prevention equipment.
Ryan Fenton
Only problem with that theory is the the Smurfs is a dubbed french cartoon, and last I checked, there was not a large KKK contingent in France.....
Please send all UCE to scally@devolution.com so I can f
Only shared folders (SMB?), Websites (HTTP), and FTP are covered? Looks like Kazaa is out of this bills reach. They can't even draft stupid laws correctly.
-3Suns
~~~~
The Revolution will be Slashdotted
Apparently, the theatres in my area can't make up their mind if they are pro or anti piracy. The last two movies I have seen have had, during their advertising slideshow before hand, have advertised SBC/Yahoo! DSL with the slogan "Download a movie faster than you can watch one" or something along those lines. So, does this mean the theatre is promoting piracy? Kinda ironic, especially since it was the last slide on the screen, immediately followed by the respectcopyrights ad.
--
www.nitemarecafe.com
There's always usenet...
... and the home of the rich facisti
Ok, how about OLD movies? Say, something you have a copy of that has since gone out of circulation on DVD and has no chance in hell of being re-released in theaters or shown on TV? This happens with books and music quite often, not everything is in circulation.
So do my files become jailbait again when the studio decides it's no longer profitable to press more copies and blockbuster ditches it to clear shelf space?
Introducing the new Occam Fusion! Now with sqrt(-1) fewer blades!
If I recall correctly, this is how the English populated Australia. I think we should just fill the Moon and Mars with thieving punk skater kids. Dadnabit.
I think there is a legal and moral principal that says that the punishment should fit the crime. Here if there is any crime it is the depriving of the artist of maybe a few dollars of revenue from a copy of hundreds of thousands of copies that are sold. Do you think that that is worth years of someones life. Or maybe we should make swearing a crime by act of congress and toss your sorry ass in jail for infraction of community standards. What do you think, your crime has been spread to millions of eyes rather than a single small file transfer. Which is the worse more far reaching infraction.
When I read about this proposed bill I couldn't help but think of things like BearShare and all of those unprotected Windows shares that get hijacked for file swapping.
Since there is no intent to distribute as a requirement for punishment, this is getting very close to an Orwellian thoughtcrime. A law like this would make using an insecure OS like Windows very dangerous indeed.
Once they've got the public used to "copy a movie = jail", it's a short step to extend this to DVD releases as well.
Ok, let me get this right. Those people downloading your movies before they are released and then going to watch your movie 1-3 times in the theater are the ones you want tossed in jail? Looks like the MPAA hasn't learned from the RIAA's mistakes. Instead they are trying to repeat them earlier.
Okay, had I bothered to keep reading rather than get blinded by rage over this thing I would have seen the bit about another clause aimed at camcorder rips.
"The market alone cannot provide sufficient constraints on corporation's penchant to cause harm." -- Joel Bakan
In general, I'm okay with making it illegal to share pre-release videos/music...after all, that goes after personal acts, not technology, which is an appropriate use for law.
... indeed, the fact that one explicitly does not have to violate copyright in order to run afoul of this law is rather telling. I suspect non-MPAA film makers and potential competitors are the primary target of this legislation, and that, as usual, copyright violators are merely a convinient pretext for passing fundamentally anticompetative legislation.
What if it is MY prerelease for MY movie that I'm trying to get into the hands of critics so that it sees the light of day despite my not being part and parcel of the MPAA?
This is as much an attack on Indie film makers trying to break into the market as it is copyright violators
Legislation attempts like this, and the intellectually bankrupt philosophies that engender it, lead me to believe that we will soon be little more than an economy of monopolies and trusts, with all of the worst traits of capitalism combined with all of the worst traits of a planned, noncompetative economy. Welcome to Our Brave New Future: more of the same on a much tighter budget, without the distractions of human rights or human respect.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Thanks for helping people associate Linux with copyright infringement. Yes they can point at examples like you and say that it is just a piracy tool for cybercommunists.
wouldn't qualify as either without the quotes and the accompanying hand gesture.
http://cornyn.senate.gov/contact/contact.cfm
Although the webform is not working. Guess thats an easy way to avoid getting feedback.
...I put a copy of a CSPAN meeting out there? Would they put me in jail for copyright or bad taste?
g
It's good to know that I'd spend more time in jail for pirating a movie than I would for beating Jack Valenti with a lead pipe. I think I'll head over to the MPAA's offices right now!
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
Wachowskis' had some little lambs, little lambs, little lambs
/.'ers who complain about the MPAA but still line up outside the theater to see the latest movies.
Wachowskis' had some little lambs whose pockets where fat with green
And every movie Wachowskis' produced, Wachowskis' produced, Wachowskis' produced,
Every movie Wachowskis' produced the lambs were sure to see
They followed them to the theater one day, theater one day, theater one day,
Followed them to the theater one day and supported the MPAA
It made the EFF volunteers, sad and cry, sad and cry
It made the EFF volunteers sad and cry to see the MPAA supported this way.
Dedicated to all the
They must still be blaming the poor box office sales of Gigli on leaked pre-release copies of the film warning people how bad it was before paying to see it.
..the States, which has one of the highest prison occupation rate, now need to put 12 year old girls in jail... come on!
Ah, I see the United States of America really is heading back to the 50's. Or is it going to be even worse? Please, please somebody tell me that this was a joke and there are not really people who think like this.
I think I speak for alot of /.'s when I say FUCK THAT!
--Keeping the flame wars alive, one post at a time
Having a copy of a video on your hard drive is (arguably) fair use. If your next door neighbor makes a copy of it, then that was and will still be copyright infringement. Under the new law, however, merely having the file up on an open FTP server or Samba share will count as copyright infringement EVEN IF IT CANNOT BE PROVED THAT YOUR NEIGHBOR MADE A COPY-- or for that matter, even if he DIDN'T make a copy. Because it's possible, you're guilty of copyright infringement
Huzzah for the senator from the MPAA....
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
At last im fed up with fucking lazy directors who think they can get away with "adaptations" and "remakes" micheal caine should sue the ass off the people who remade Italian Job and the same goes for Texas Chainsaw Masacre and all the other un-original films out there. As for downloaders they should get a life and go do something less criminal like car-jacking or mugging, hell even shop-lifting the DVD is better!
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
For those of you who haven't turned on CSPAN2 today, the Senate is in the middle of a fillibuster. Nothing's going to get done until the Democrats let the disputed judges be aproved, the or the Republicans agree to end debate without a vote. In geek terms... they're trapped in a loop.
Once this stalemate clears, there's not much time left in the legislative year. We're a couple weeks away from Thanksgiving, then a couple weeks away from the Holiday Recess and at that point it's over for anything but the most extreme of emergencies. This bill made it from a lobbiest's computer to the Senatorial hopper, but there's just not enough time for it to make it through comittee to the floor.
Sure, this bill could get attached to something else on the floor, but that could already have happened without it being filed formally. Besides, this kind of bill is going to get approved without some sort of fight... even if it escapes the Senate it'll still need to go to the House.
In short, this is a non-event. There's no way we're going to see it passed this legislative year, and this step will have to be repeated if they want to pass it next legislative year.
For those of you who didn't bother to read the article before you posted (which is 99.9999 percent of you), this proposed law would only apply to those who have prerelease items that they are not entitled to have, NOT just any damned thing, which is what most of you want to think/imply. "Prerelease" is a $10 word for "not yet available to the public".
If it is not available for release to the general public, and if you don't have permission of the copyright holder to have it, then gee...you're violating copyright.
So here is a quick tip on how to avoid getting busted under this act if it does become law:
Don't have prerelease copyrighted material on your system if you don't have permission of the copyright holder.
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
I know that for the ppl, of the ppl, by the ppl democracy is essentially dead in America (may our past men and women who have died protecting and serving the original ideals of this country rest in peace and stop spinning so fast in their eternal resting places), and now it's for the cash, of the cash, by the cash. (I knew Feinstein can not be trusted, hence I've never voted for the b...er...witch)
And what about due process, is that dead too?
I also feel bad for Patrick Henry. In this day and time, his "Give me liberty or give me death" call falls upon deaf ears and overstuffed pockets.
What do you mean? Depriving an artist of $1.25 is just as evil and heinous as carrying a few grams of pot! These people obviously need to be removed from society, because they are so dangerous and such a bad influence. It is certainly worth the $250,000 to put these losers away for three years! Who cares if it ruins their life and they can never get a job! If they don't deserve it then I don't know who does!
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
This would be a GREAT law and I welcome it.
By the time this law is passed, I am pretty sure a virus programmed to download illegal copies of unreleased movies to unsuspecting dupes will be ready.
Just think about it; spread the virus to thousands and thousands of open computers then start downloading copies to their hard drive.
Then, just sit back as everybody and their grandma start getting taken away and put in shackles. Remember, you don't have to prove guilt! You only need evidence!
A couple of hundreds of those cases and I am pretty sure MPAA will be crying uncle. Only then will you see ANY REAL effort to craft a reasonable copyright laws.
Congress was intended to write laws. But you'd be excused for not knowing that if you ever saw a Presidential or Presidential candidate speach. But congress has also limited their own powers by giving up authority to the FTC, FCC, and now even the RIAA and MPAA.
I won't even mention the judicial activists and nusiance lawsuits that attempt to accomplish through litigation what can't be accomplished through legislation...
The role of gov't is to ensure life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for the citizens. Conversely, only gov't, through an open procedure, can derive citizens of life, liberty, or purusing happiness (ie jail). It is irresponsible, and I would suggest unconstitutional, to deny those rights (via jail) for a tort-offense.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
what quality movies to share?
What's that quote about not being able to rule a free people and having to always have something to hold over them? I guess the drug laws weren't enough. For tyranny to really take hold in America, the hook has to be more universal.
If you have this kind of data on your hard drive in the first place, chances are you have stolen it. It is a crime. I'm not a fan of the MPAA, RIAA, DMCA, etc., but breaking the law in order to illicit change in what we deem a fundamentally flawed system is still breaking the law! Find something better to do with your time. How very sad someone's life must be that they can't wait for a movie to go from the big screen to DVD... or in this particular case, they can't wait for it to even hit the movie theaters in the first place!!!
...and if you seriously have a problem with the system itself and are doing your part to rebel against the MPAA by perpetuating these crimes, wake the fsck up! You are actually doing quite the reverse of your intention by attracting more attention (and money) to these overpaid Hollywood hooligans!!!
U.S. Constitution: Bill of Rights, 8th Amendment-
Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.
Copyright has been under criminal law for a long long time, but criminal copyright infringement has traditionally been about commercial copies for profit. Before it didn't make much sense either, primarily because of cost.
The computer changed that. In every home there's perfect replicator, making copies for basicly nothing. And since everyone has one, there's not really any profit either. Sure, you might make a CD or two for a friend for the cost of CD + work, but there's no money in it unless you try selling them as real copies, which would be fraud.
So, they redefined commercial as "unauthorized sharing of copyrighted works for recieving access to unauthorized copying of other works", however, the argument is mostly bull, as there is no validation that you share that. Even places with minimum share size don't verify that the works are in fact illegal to share, you'd do just as well with Linux CDs. So it is not a prerequisite for recieving access, and the entire argument falls flat on its face.
The second redefinition is "enabling unauthorized copying of copyrighted works (even for free)", which is also dubious at best. Do you "enable" it if you borrow away a book or CD too? Can you establish proof that a copy is in fact being made, and isn't simply being watched (I've seen that happen to DivX vids over 100Mbit connections)? Because in most countries, creating a temporary copy, such as in memory, which is required for viewing it, is not considered a real copy. It is in fact the downloader which decides to make a permanent copy, just as a person you play a CD for may have a mic ready and record it rather than listen to it. The fact that in this case, both the player and recorder is digital doesn't change the principles of it.
I definately think there can be a criminal aspect to copyright infringment. But they're trying to redefine the boundaries in a way it's not supposed to be. Treating filesharers as hardened criminals that belong behind bars simply isn't in line with the common man's perception of justice.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Excellent point. There's a lot of foreign material that takes years before it's released in the US, if ever.
Even if they are eventually released, if the movie is good, no doubt someone who was fanatic enough to find and download a rare export will see it if it is released in the US.
One does wonder if the sharing of files before they are released in theaters actually causes losses to the studios. I mean, if the movie is good, and you wanted to see the movie enough to download it before it comes out on the big screen, certainly you'll see it once it's officially released? And if you don't, then most probably it's because the movie sucked terribly, and so you would either a) not have seen it or b) have seen it and been fucked out of your money.
Conclusion: the only money they are losing is by screwing consumers who had no way of knowing beforehand that the movie would be bad, and can't get refund. I'm so sorry for Hollywood :(
Karma: Could be worse (could be raining)
FINALLY! It is about time that the US government got tough on these thieves! There are so many Hollywood actors and musicians that have to settle for much smaller mansions these days - I have even heard that Lars had to wait a few extra months to get his gold-plated shark-tank bar for his pool! STOP THE INSANITY!
Please, please people - how can an actor be expected to live on only $25,000,000 per film?! It is just unheard of!
-- Windows security? Sure, which ONE would you like? -me
Don't pick up the pho*(@)$*@&@!@ NO CARRIER
Don't file share movies and CDs! The penalties for shoplifting are much lighter, so just help yourself to the five finger discount the next time you're at a DVD/CD store!
This law will be a lot of fun when someone writes a virus or worm that goes around looking for open shares and uploads movies or parts of movies to them.
I'm sure theres still some Windows security flaws left that would let a worm run some code to open a share and download a movie from one of the worm's previous victims, so a victim wouldn't even need to leave shares open for this to happen.
Its just a matter of time really since it would be so nasty. Worse than deleting all your files, worse than calling 911 on your modem and getting you in trouble, could you imagine the panic when the computer virus that lands you three years in jail gets out in the mainstream news?
I'm sure there's some bored and skilled loser out there who would want the infamy of doing this.
At protecting your identity ? Autonomous filesharing.
earthstation5
Slashdot article on Kazaalite
Yahoo filesharing directory. list of p2p clients
freenetproject
Rant - I hope freenet gets faster. But probably never will because of its design. And java is difficult to run on my pII 266 32 meg comp.
New filesharing programs may be needed . Keep an eye out.
Wasn't the original justificiation for DMCA the ease with which digital copies could be transferred without loss of quality?
Yet, another part for this bill appears to be to stop people recording movies using camcorders -- clearly the original quality of such a copy is going to be low.
What this is really about is that the primary sources of illicit pre-release versions of movies are within the movie industry itself. What this act will allow is prosecution of those who receive copies while not prosecuting the original copyright violator who is most likely a movie industry insider.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
The utter absurdity of this distinction only makes me more steamed over it, not less. Why do you suppose there's a fundamental difference between these two behaviors? Apparently there's a difference, in degree, between sharing movies that haven't been released and sharing ones that have -- a difference so great that if you share your pre-release copy you should be punished like a criminal for a civil offense.
This isn't a bill about the public interest, it's a bill about corporate interests being allowed to install criminal punishments according to how threatened they feel by a behavior. The entire line of thinking is completly wrongheaded, and the punishments are patently disproportionate to the crime. That's the hallmark of a justice system that isn't working. When the punishment's seriously disproportionate to the crime, something is terribly wrong.
(Take a look at three-strikes drug penalties, and you'll have another example. Caught with a joint three times? Do hard time.)
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
Dick Durban (D) - 312/353-4952
Peter Fitzgerald (R) - 312/886-3506
And what's up with Orrin Hatch? Why is this jackass always involved with things like this? First he wants to destroy computers. Now he wants everyone who might be involved in copying songs to go to jail.
Hoist Number One and Number Six.
-- Alexander Tyler.
In other words: Oh, boo hoo. Democracy is dead because YOU'RE NOT BEING ALLOWED TO STEAL. That's so terrible.
Think their product is overpriced? Don't buy it. Want them to change their pricing schemes? Lobby them. Arrange boycotts. Do all sorts of PERFECTLY LEGAL things. End of story.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
For comparison, the sentencing range in my state for first degree manslaughter (when a person recklessly causes the death of another person) is 31 to 41 months for a person with no previous criminal record.
No electrons were harmed creating this post, though some may have been subjected to electrical and/or magnetic fields.
If I take some random file, for instance comprised only of zeros, rename it to "Return of the King.avi" and place it in my Kazaa shared folder now (before the movie is released), the MPAA will throw me in jail? Without downloading and checking that the file is what the name says it is, how can they have any evidence?
I hadn't known there were so many idiots in the world until I started using the Internet -Stanislaw Lem
Assuming that the person would have actually paid for it. That's a big assumption.
If you found yourself unemployed because employers could get what you do for free, I bet you'd be crying foul over that.
No, I'd find another job. I have no right to demand an employer pay me for something they can get for free. If what I do is now worth zero I need to find a new job or career.
we see a "Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice" Act?
Opus: the Swiss army knife of audio codec
You have no reason whatsoever to have prerelease movies on your computer without authorization, so this will pretty much 100% only affect the bad file swappers, without hurting the "good" file swappers in any way.
File sharing is not even in the same league. No profit is gain, and more specifically, there is no credible evidence of lost income from file sharing. (Sale of illegal copies means that someone is willing to pay for it, hence it represents a lost sale.)
All this makes me glad the Senate is currently locked in to trying to break the filibuster on judicial nominations. Keeps them from doing even more stupid things for a while.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
I think it's called the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution (the "cruel and unusual punishment" amendment).
On the other hand since we've decided that the 1st (speech - DMCA) and 4th (illegal search and seizure - the Patriot Act and lots of Supreme Court decisions) Amendments aren't really that important* anyway, this concept may remain just that - a principle to which lip service is given but which is ignored in practice.
* There may be other amendments that have been conveniently ignored in recent years - these are just the ones I'm pretty sure of.
HMmmm interesting, take a look of this quote right off the CNET article itself... "it does not say any actual copyright infringement must take place--only that the file be available in a shared folder, Web site or FTP (File Transfer Protocol) site. "It says we don't care if anybody got any of these copies," Jaszi said. "We're going to conclude that at least 10 people did. It relieves the copyright owner of having to prove that any violation of their rights actually happened." They (the RIAA and other low lifes) are going to ASSUME 10 people found the file and downloaded it, hmmm there is justice for ya, NO PROOF, lets just ASSUME they are guilty of passing it about to others, interesting concept, remind anyone of the ideals behind the movie "minority report" no actual crime nor proof of said crime, just 3 retards in a pool making crap up, hey the RIAA is really just 3 retards in a pool now LOL
what you talking about?
thanks to the bono act nothing will ever expire into the public domain again...
"had not been so distributed at the time" not "is not being so distributed at the time"
Once it has been distributed, it's null and void. I'm more curious as to whether the distribution to theaters counts as "distribution" for commercial gain in this context. Because then the screener happens after that, and the only federal penalties would be before the premiere.
But if that does not count as distribution, doesn't that mean that any showing, where you do not actually sell a copy, doesn't count? So that theater showings, TV showings, DVD rentals all do not count? If so, the federal penalties stretch extremely wide.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Don't wait forever to release the DVD version of a movie, then. There's almost always a grace period where a movie isn't in theaters OR on DVD/VHS...totally unavailable. So, if it's IMPOSSIBLE to see the movie legally, what do you expect? It doesn't make any sense - what is there to be gained by making the movie unavailable for legal rent/purchase? I'd speculate that this is one of the big reasons for downloading movies before they hit DVD. I personally don't mind paying to go to the theater or to rent a movie, as long as you'll actually LET ME.
Keep your eyes to the sky.
Not to troll, but to be quite honest, it seems like movies have been sub-par for so long now (LOTR and a few others notwithstanding), I can't imagine folks rushing to pirate them. I'm sorry, but Hollywood has taken such a turn for the worse, I doubt I'd have much interest in watching the crap they churn out, free or otherwise. I can't recall the last time I went to the theater for anything (apart from Two Towers last December and probably Amelie the year before that).
On the other hand, this could be a great thing for authors. Hopefully this will remind people to check out a good book rather in lieu of a mediocre movie. The experience is orders of magnitude better and much longer lasting. Kinda like Doublemint. Without the hot twins though, which is a drawback.
It goes from God, to Jerry, to me.
No, only in very specific instances is copyright infringement an offense, above some thresholds. Most important of them is making profits off the sale of illegal copies.
Obviously you haven't heard of the No Electronic Theft Act. Profit is no longer a requirement.
Are you telling me that people who make movies like The Hulk or even Battlefield Earth are artists?
Good god, you might as well call _me_ and artist then.
in girum imus nocte et consumimur igni
... to the 50's; yes. But it's the 1850's, not the 1950's.
Solution 1 - encrypt the file. Then it's a DMCA violation for them to unencrypt it.
Solution 2 - name a garbage file w. the same name as an unreleased movie and share it, then counter-sue when they have you arrested.
Solution 3 - Move the file to a non-US site
Solution 4 - Send a (short) clip as an email atachment to each senator and congressman, with a note saying that they are now, without having done anything except check their mail, violated the proposed legislation and are liable to 3 yers in jail.
There really is no solution for the **AAs except to build more value into what they're offering. Doing world-simultaneous openings of stinkers like Matrix Revolutions in the hope of ripping of consumers doesn't cut it any more than re-releasing the same song in yet another different format/compilaton/variant.
You're utterly missing the point. Is having one illegal movie on your hard drive worthy of three years in prison?
It's about proportionality. In most states, first degree murder is a life offense. We consider murder a serious crime. On the other hand, driving over the speed limit will generally get you only a ticket.
In Michigan, carrying a concealed weapon without a license is a two year crime. Do you really think that having one movie on your hard drive is greater harm to society than someone illegally concealing a handgun?!
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
Online sharing, at worst, only represents the latter case if (and only if) the downloader would have paid for a copy had they not been able to get a free download, and that case is apparently quite rare. It also doesn't take into account the actual increase in sales due to sharing (try before you buy), increased exposure to artists, and access to music that you could not otherwise buy or find in stores.
how's that for legal?
Supreme Court decision
Here's the best part: you don't have to infringe on copyright to be found guilty!
Umm. Violating this law is committing copyright infringement.
Since when has democracy in America not been "for the cash, of the cash, by the cash"? Since the inception of the current state, it was this way. Even our founding fathers, while espousing human freedoms where simulaneously hoarding large groups of rights-less people known as 'negro slaves'. The purpose of those slaves were to help their owners make money. It's always been about the cash. Note that I'm not trying to discredit the founders, just pointing out that the U.S. has never been that imaginary ideal free society. Just being pessimistic.
Negro President
Slave Power
George Washington and Slavery
etc...
Two comments.
First, technically you may be right. There may not have been a copyright violation. However, that my itself does not necessarily mean the law is morally wrong or unjust. Even if there wasn't a copyright violation, there may well have been either an attempted copyright violation or a conspiracy to violate copyright that had not yet reached fruition. There are many criminal laws against attempted acts (e.g., attempted robbery, burlary, murder) and conspiracies to commit certain acts (e.g., conpiracy to commit robbery, burglary, murder). A criminal does not have to be succesful in order to be prosecuted.
Secondly, it is dangerous to judge proposed legislation based on a news report. Such reports are notoriously inaccurate. I would be shocked if the proposed statute created a strict liability crime that did not require mens rea . In other words, I'd be shocked if the proposed statute created a crime that did not have as an element of the offense (i.e., require for criminal liability) that the alleged perpetrator placed the file in his shared folder with the intent to have it copied by someone not authorized by copyright law to do so.
Only Women Bleed (Sex, Sharia remix)
This is the first instance I can think of where this type of activity has crossd over from civil to criminal jurisdiction. The only possible good that can come out of this is that a conviction will require unanimous guilty verdict from a jury, whereas civil cases are decided by judicial fiat or a majority of the jury.
Juries are to judge based on the law, it's not their job to change said law (short of the Supreme court). If the law states that it is clearly, unequiviocally illegal, they will have little choice but to rule him guilty no matter how stupid, excessive and cruel they may find the law to be.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Definitely agree.
slander and libel have laws that govern a similar -civil- infraction regarding -possible- but -unproveable- economic losses due to a non-physically damaging action.
and we don't put people in federal prison for that.
// "Can't clowns and pirates just -try- to get along?"
I noticed that too......
Luckily, I come from a long line of true democracy-loving voters who don't fall for the "shiny" stuff.
and yes....we are a dying breed.
it's hard to lobby with lil' or no cash in comparsion to the pro-lobbyists.
So that theater showings, TV showings, DVD rentals all do not count?
Public performances (such as theatrical and TV release) do not count as "publication" under copyright law as Americans know it, but the studio sells VHS and DVD copies of films to rental stores.
Will I retire or break 10K?
But the only way to stop all of this stuff, the DMCA, ridiculous patents, et al is to get involved in the political process and vote each and every one of these special interest-pandering congressmen out of office.
I'm involved in the Dean campaign, and it has cleared up a great deal of the mystification surrounding government and how it works. It's not really that hard. In fact, it's so straightforward and easy that you smack your forehead at how difficult you thought it once was.
When there is deep, latent consensus on an issue like this, movements to counter it pretty much organize themselves, given a catalyst. Think of it as seeding clouds to make it rain. Or ice-9, if you prefer.
We can point out the injustice of current copyright law, declare over and over again that fair use protects file sharing, scheme up new file sharing software that escapes monitoring, and on and on ad infinitum, but that's really only treating the symptoms of the disease. The cause of the disease is the government in Washington D.C. and its members who only listen to the wishes of monied special interests. Root that out, and all our lives will be much, much easier in tech.
I know that most techies loathe politics because they associate it with student government and the popular kids in it who spat on us in our formative years, but they have clearly made it their business to come after us and make our lives difficult. So we had better go after them, or we will get what we deserve: nothing.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
I find it interesting that the act is called the "Artists' Rights and Theft Prevention Act." Artists can come in many forms. Does this apply to painting, sculpture, music, writing, programming even? An artist can be defined in many ways. Perhaps a better title would be "Movie Industry's Rights and Theft Prevention Act." Anyway, what about pre-release music? Shouldn't that be afforded equal protection? In a more general sense, if we are talking about artists shouldn't there be stiff crimes for photocopying prints or right-click-downloading art from web sites? If artists need to be protected against intangible theft, the movie industry is hardly unique. With the main thrust actually being pre-release movies though it looks rather absurd. As has been mentioned already, PROSECUTE THOSE WHO LEAK THE FILMS!! These are trusted people in the industry yet it's the fans that get nailed. Granted the fans shouldn't be distributing it, but once it's out it's just silly to pretend it's not. If movie sharing is wrong then apply uniform penalties, If pre-release is worse, then get the right person!
excerpt from the bill and appearing in the CNET story: ... [these penalties apply when the film] "was intended for commercial distribution but had not been so distributed at the time." This is an attack on people within the movie industry who receive pre-release versions of movies to critique, but in recent years have been making copies available online before the opening weekend. Unless a movie studio has a fifteen year old on their VIP list to receive pre-release movies, I don't think teenagers have anything to worry about, nor does anyone else. The truth is, this is probably good for the public, as it will enable the MPAA to review their decision earlier this year that outlawed all pre-release distributions for Oscar nominations which has really hurt the independant film co's from getting equitable Oscar consideration.
-- I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous
"I've said it before and I'll say it: democracy just doesn't work." - Kent Brockman
"And a voice was screaming: 'Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?'" - HST
in a nation with already overcrowded jails, they are going to start locking up people who have essentially commited the equivalent of j-walking...
So the U.S. will have to pick up the tab so that the MPAA can sleep with money filled pillows? I think not.
The Cornyn-Feinstein bill also creates another federal felony, punishable by up to five years in prison, for using "an audiovisual recording device" in a movie theater to make a copy of a film
What if person X has an audio recorder, and person Y has a visual recorder - since this is not an audiovisual device in one, does that make that situation exempt? Or am I missing something?
Hi, i'm sherif john bunnel, and tonight, we're gonna show you, [SMASH] what happens, [WACK] when criminals, [BANG] break the law! Comming up: How a violent homocidal pedophile is finally caught and given a speeding ticket.
What happens when drunken teenagers get behind the wheel.
And the car theif that just couldnt say no to a 3 month relaxed probation deal.
But first:
Orange County Florida, and police are about to raid a known file sharer, but suddenly little Jonny Doe tries to outsmart law enforcement officers by dropping his files in the recycle bin.
Law enforcers act quickly to secure the machine "DROP THE MOUSE DROP THE MOUSE" the outlaw fails to comply. Shots are fired and the teenager is down.
"I had entered the room and i saw him in the corner with a mouse in his hand, we are trained to just shoot if we see a mouse because we cant afford to take risks, if there was a hostage in the room we couldnt take the risk that they may view copyrighted material."
Thats one kid that will learn, that when you play with computers, with no regard for the law, you can expect the cold end, of an officers gun!
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
Since having them is considered a felony, can I sue the MPAA for providing the means to commit a crime? I would love to have a minor downloading a movie, and then blame Hollywood for creating it in the first place.
I really hate Dan Patrick.
It's good to see that all those with Evil Overlord genes in their blood have bright futures in the legal profession. :)
Yes, here's a quote from the article I found particularly funny:
"Piracy for too long has been high-reward and low-risk," Taylor said. "Legislation such as that being introduced tomorrow will go a long way toward changing that equation."
I want to know what strange universe this guy lives in where getting to see The Hulk for free is considered "high-reward." I would think that would be punishment in and of itself.
common sense: noun
What those who are ignorant of the subject matter think; usually wrong.
What if it is MY prerelease for MY movie that I'm trying to get into the hands of critics so that it sees the light of day despite my not being part and parcel of the MPAA?
Easy. I'm assuming that, like other laws relating to copyright in unpublished works, the bill under discussion limits the crime's definition to actions performed "without the authority of the owner of copyright in the work." If it's "your" movie, then you are either the copyright owner or under contract with the copyright owner.
Will I retire or break 10K?
if someone you know has a blank Administrator password-- so long as printer/file sharing is turned on, which it almost always is. People do that when they assume their firewalled machine is safe because Bill G. told them it all they needed was to do was use a firewall and to patch their system... cept they enabled netbios/SMB traffic on their laptop so they could access other lan shares and print stuff... oops.
\\<machinename>\C$
Boom! Thanks for the files. What's more, under these rules, it seems you're the one who is guilty!
Now, if they had specifically said something to the effect of "illegally copying copyrighted material to a publically accessible forum whose function was the redistribution of files" that might be a little more specific, don't you think?
Common sense would serve movie studios far more than strong-arm-tactics, I think.
Do not spread "09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0" over the internet, thank you.
Nice theory, but the Supreme Court threw that theory out in Eldred V Ashcroft. Because Congress and the Senate must by definition know what they're doing when passing copyright laws, it is impossible for such laws to be unconstitutional, even if they infringe on the First Amendment or overstep the Constitutional bounds of copyright law. Or so their logic went. Remember - these are the same people that believe that "Forever minus a day" is a "limited" copyright term.
I was of course mostly referring to the McCarthy craziness, but now that you bring it up my understanding is that the great family value vision of the 50's has mostly been exposed as a fabrication of advertising and propaganga. Your statement about the value of life is well taken though, it does seem that it gets lower and lower everyday and in every way.
Of course we have more people in jail than Stalin had... he killed all of his enemies, remember?
It is a wonder that any of these record/cd companies make any money at all. I am a 37 yr old, and I haven't heard a decent piece of current "popular" musing in over a decade. All they produce is crap from a buch of low talent crimminals and whores. The more they tighen their grip on distribution, "the more systems will slip through their fingers." All the while pissing off all their potential customers.
Keep your eye out for the uber-anonymous p2p file trading system. It will put all those slimy losers out of business.
I don't see how they can even prove the loss of profits due to piracy. Copyright laws do have their purpose, but for the most part theu protect big business. The comparison to shoplifting is a bogus one, you get nothing phyisical out of downloading.
-Seriv
Considering that the actual artists make *very little* from their *own work*, I hope that the first people charged under this act are the RIAA, who have stolen *millions* from recording artists for years "legally".
DNA is a Turing machine. You, however, being dynamic and emergent, are not.
We have more people in jail now than the USSR under Stalin.
/. is blatant ignorance modded as Insightful.
Please. May we assume you have a source for that "insightful" fact? Instead of simply spouting off what you overheard at the last frat party, how about some actual numbers.
US Prison population, Dec 31 2002 - 2,033,331
Most of the increase in recent years has been due to violent offenses.
Stalin's era - Approx 4 million prisoners in the camps for political repression.
I'm not disagreeing that 2 million is a lot of people. But are they all there for "file swapping, pot smoking and wearing trenchcoats"? If you believe that, I have a bridge to sell you.
Only on
The Senate site has been slashdotted? I find that hard to believe but the site is definitely down. Anyone have info on this?
My boy, my boy!
Yes, and copyright infringement is not one of them. Also, those laws require overt intentional acts to break the law. The example you are responding to, of accidently having it shared, would not apply even if there was a such thing as "attempted copyright infringement".
Your second point is a little more useful. Yes, someone should read the proposed law before commenting on situtations it might not actually apply to.
I can't stand it anymore.
I just can't fucking stand it.
I'm glad I don't have any kids. I can't imagine what life is going to be like for people 100 years from now. Plugged in, billed monthly, stupid and enslaved.
This space available.
on the one hand, the article talks about how this new law would apply when the film "was intended for commercial distribution but had not been so distributed at the time."
how*EVER*, the article later quotes MPAA spokesman Rich Taylor saying "this legislation will go a long way toward targeting one of the most serious contributors to piracy right now, which is the practice of camcording motion pictures."
excuse me while I blow coffee through my nose, but:
1) isn't there a big difference between the two?
2) can someone tell me what is the TRUE aim of this law?
3) if the MPAA is so worried about dvd screener leaks, why don't they just embed the names of the screener recipients on the footage, something like "this screener is for Mr. Suchandsuch's private viewing only". if it leaks, then they can go directly to Mr Suchandsuch and sue him.
I thought that the 2nd Amendment has been specifically affirmed by the Supreme Court (in 1934?) to refer to the individual's right to bear arms rather than simply the right to bear arms as an element of a state-sponsored armed force. If not, it is likely to be so soon (the SC is set to review a related case soon). Unfortunately, no such luck with the 4th.
No, don't want to see any McCarthism again....but, ethic standards of basic human worth, feelings and a generally better moral public personna instilled into youths by a two parent family.....couldn't hurt things.
While every generation has their problems, the ones from the 50's and previous...didn't have the violence and lack of respect for authority we have today.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Oh Google cache, why hast thou forsaken me? :P
Introducing the new Occam Fusion! Now with sqrt(-1) fewer blades!
Holy crap, another completely useless term created for no good reason.
You deprive someone of something without paying for it. You're stealing the money you owe them.
No. You have deprived them of nothing, they still have it. You have infringed copyright, and it is arguable that you owe them money, but you certainly did not steal money from them. The law is very clear, why can't YOU understand it? If copyright infringement was the same as stealing, there would be no reason to have the term "copyright infringement" and an entire section of laws pertaining to it.
This is so insanely simple. Not that it matters. I don't know why Slashbots feel the need to point out that it's not "theft" constantly. It doesn't make it any less illegal or immoral.
You are right, it is simple, but you don't get it. You are also right that it doesn't make it less illegal. (no reason to talk about morals here, they are subjective) It makes it a different *KIND* of illegal. That is a huge difference. Civil vs Criminal illegal, to be exact. By calling it theft, you are changing it from a civil offense to a criminal offense. There *IS* a difference between them. The law makes a distinction between them, why can't you?
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Someone hasn't thought this through.
Don't use firearms analogies, they only work with half of your audience. The other half doesn't see any legitimate use for a saturday night special.
paintball
so why not start to get closer to that ideal?
77% of illegal pre-release movies available on P2P networks are put there by movie-industry insiders
-- I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous
If you take a videocamera into a movie theater, you get three years or whatever in prison?
If you loot Enron, how much do you get?
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Seriously, practically every week we hear about movies setting box office records.
/RANT ON /RANT OFF
:)
Yet, someone with a Hulk workprint on their PC is instantly guilty?
I seriously doubt the movie industry is in financial straits. Despite DVD, pay per view, specialty channels, etc. People still love to see movies on the big screen and will not jump en masse to peer to peer to get their fill.
Even with broadband, it;s a pain in the ass to download movie files.
Go to the theater and watch a movie the way it is meant to be. And from the box office number$; it seems that that is what the majority of consumers are doing!
Anyone who is going to download and watch a crappy camjob of LOTR ROTK is a moron. That is a big screen movie! However, they shouldn't be crucified for it either. The punishment here does not fit the crime IMHO.
If there is a crime being committed it is by the movie studios for:
1.) Jacking up ticket costs to the point where it is now worth waiting for the DVD release. I can pay up to $13.50CDN per person depending on the theater and show time. So, instead of taking my girlfriend to every freakin' movie. We now pick and choose. If it's big screen worthy (Matirx, LOTR) we'll hit the theater. If it's not. (i.e. any romantic comedies) we rent it on DVD for $5.
2.) Recycling the same plots over and over and over again. There is a movie formula in America that is followed to the T by practically every studio depending on the genre. There are not too many truly original films anymore.
3.)Blaming the leaked movie files on the end users (consumers) and not the people within the movie industry making this material available prematurely. What's to stop the MPAA from manufacturing this crisis for their own gain? It's not that far fetched.
US Senators should be spending their time and resources questioning the validity of " The War on Terror" not passing sweetheart copyright laws that hammer the average consumer to the benefit of a multibillion dollar industry.
Cheers.
I agree that copyright infringement isn't theft, and I think pre-DMCA law bears this out. Recent laws, such as the DMCA and the No Electronic Theft Act, along with the proposed law in discussion here, seem to be pushing the idea that copyright infringement is the equivalent of theft (or worse, in the case of some of the penalties). That this doesn't represent reality (i.e. copyright infringement doesn't do harm in the way that physical theft does) is being ignored. That these draconian laws are being pushed by "content providers" is no surprise - they don't want to lose contol of their "content."
We need more laws like this! Then, all those broadband connections won't be getting used, and some company might pay me to get off this silly dial-up.
We need more laws like this! The U.S. prisons are almost EMPTY as is! Some are so unpopulated that they have to share cots with just TWO inmates sleeping on different shifts. This can EASILY be brought to 3 inmates, each getting 8 hours of sleep, for a 50% increase in housing space efficiency.
Ok, I don't download music/movies that would incarcerate me. However, if I was going to be tossed into a PYITA Prison, for something so innane, I'd make sure to go out and do something that was more relavant to the time I was sentenced to serve.
Bubba: Wut'joo in 'ere fer, skinny-boy?
Me: My FTP had a copy of "Terminator 4: The Gubernatorial Machines" But I made sure to kill a few random people first!
Bubba: Wut's da Effteepee? Ner' mind. Take yer pants off.
From the article:
"Once the film is commercially distributed, the felony penalties appear to no longer apply." Where Comercially Distributed is defined here: "...prerelease movies, meaning films that have not appeared on DVD or in theaters. Footage of "Star Wars: Episode II," "Tomb Raider" and "The Hulk," has reportedly surfaced on peer-to-peer networks before their commercial distribution."
But they're using this bill to stop camcording?
"MPAA spokesman Rich Taylor said "this legislation will go a long way toward targeting one of the most serious contributors to piracy right now, which is the practice of camcording motion pictures."
If this bill has no effect on people sharing movies which have already been released to theaters, how in the hell is it supposed to discourage people from sitting in a theater with a camcorder?
The problem, I've always thought, is that the American gov't has gone from being populated by citizens to being populated by career politicans.
Oh, and the concept of the 'two party system' needs to go.
Could I personally come up with a better system? No. For all it's faults, the US republic has done 'better' in many ways than any system before it. Doesn't mean it can't stand some improving, though.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
"Piracy for too long has been high-reward and low-risk" and then: "Footage of "Star Wars: Episode II," "Tomb Raider" and "The Hulk," has reportedly surfaced on peer-to-peer networks before their commercial distribution" Those three movies are "high-reward"? Riiiight.
Since most of the pre-release rips come from studio employees, what does this actually do to stem the tide of violating material? How many employees do you think they would prossecute? When will they start cleaning up their own staff and stop picking on their customers and fans? I can understand that screeners may come from third parties, but pre-releases? Come on!
US Democracy:The best person for the job (among These pre-selected choices...)
How much does this really affect their bottom line? It seems to me that the people who get so excited about a movie that they feel the need to view a prerelease version are likely to be the same one's who are first in line when the movie opens.
They should worry more about people like me who have become so bored with hollywood's drivel that I haven't been to the theatre for years. I might rent it later but I haven't run across anything for quite some time that would drag my butt to the cinema to see.
I suppose there is no difference
Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
I mean, the way this works you can just prosecute someone for the potential of them assisting in a crime. If someone goes and says "I'm gonna kill you!" to me, I could get them charged with murder since there's knives in their kitchen so they could potentially kill me, and they were saying they were gonna. I can probably get his friends who drove him to my house charged as accessories for enabling the crime too. Doesn't matter I'm still alive, we'll just assume he committed a crime because he has the means to commit it.
I for one welcome our new thought-policing overlords and their department of pre-crime.
Introducing the new Occam Fusion! Now with sqrt(-1) fewer blades!
This law is just plain evil. There's no way it's going to pass as drafted. If it did, it would quickly be found unconstitutional. Unfortunately, there's a chance congress will manage to patch up the holes first.
OK, so they're going to be basing this law on their copyright clause powers. No surprise there.
$15 million dollars for the copyright police to enforce this. Not so much, in terms of real budget, but still a waste of taxpayer money in my humble opinion.
WOW. They've just made it a criminal offense to put someone else's Slashdot post on your Geocities page, without permission (and barring a fair use defense). That's going to have to be changed. They've completely eliminated the requirement that you be distributing something of actual value in order to be charged with criminal copyright infringement.
The definition of "enabling software" is written far too ambiguously to survive a Constitutional attack. Sure, this covers programs like Kazaa. It covers certain viruses. It also covers some spyware. But it also covers web browsers (think cookies and internet searches). It's unclear what qualifies as software, but presumably it would also cover Windows and Linux. FTP programs would have to be rewritten to pop up a security dialog before use (or you'd have to turn off automatic download through wget). Even if the ambiguities were closed up, this law goes way beyond copyright enforcement. And there's no language in it pertaining to interstate commerce, so even that argument wouldn't bear out.
Oh boy. This one's been out there a long time. Looks like they're trying to get it passed once again, as a rider to this bill. I don't like it, personally, but most people I've talked to don't have a problem with it.
Slightly incorrect. Orrin Hatch's son, Brent Orrin Hatch, is a lawyer retained by the SCO. Funny that Senator Orrin Hatch is trying to pass laws to make his son rich.
Hoist Number One and Number Six.
I mean, it sorta kinda records. Playback is increasingly fuzzy with time (with the odd exception of tag lines from SNL near office water coolers, or Monty Python quotes in environments lacking in females)
"sorry, sir, but after we search your backpack, please step into the operations theater for a quick lobotomy. Yes, sir, this is required. No brains allowed in the movie theater. Ha ha, sir, yes, no brains in the the industry either."
Returned Peace Corps IT Volunteer
A unanimous jury conviction is one of the checks and balances in the criminal justice system. Say they pass a law making posession of a copy of the constitution by a non-federal authority punishable by 20 years in federal prison. A jury can find someone not guilty of a law if they find that law to be uncounscienable, and their job is done. So yes, a jury can simply ignore the letter of the law and vote their own conscience. woohoo checks and balances.
Another check and balance, however, allows a judge to set aside any jury verdict. Note that most judges will go through their entire careers without ever doing so, but if a judge feels that the jury has blatantly refused to do their "job" and has completely ignored the statues involved, then the judge can set aside the verdict they render and come up with his/her own. So even if you do convince the jury that you're not guilty of murder, by say, showing them a videotape of yourself giving a speech at an OSS convention at the same tmie the cops said you pulled the trigger, the judge may decide that the jury didn't pay enough attention to rules of evidence, etc, and render you a guilty verdict anyway.
And with Bush trying to pack the courts with fasci^^^^^^conservatives, I think we can expect to see more of this in the years to come.
Each time a file is shared, the artists and technicians involved lose all their income, and most of those affected by this crime (being the sensitive people they are) go insane and their rage make them start murdering and raping all children around. Infringing copyright is the gateway crime that causes all other crimes you mentioned.
It's an amusing story, but clearly an invention. Specific in unprovable detail and vague with the meat. Here's a quote from Mr Titor about a computer he is reportedly seeking:
"The 5100 has the ability to easily translate between the old IBM code, APL, BASIC and (with a few tweaks in 1975) UNIX".
It reads well, but means nothing.
Civil wars are always possible, of course, but they tend to happen when there is a social revolution - and a consequent shift of power - that the political structures do not adapt to. This is not the situation in the US.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
Illegal Enforcement. As someone said above, copywrite infringement is a civil infringement, not a crime.
"And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the World"
1 John 4:14
I think I can agree with everything you say here, in fact it is pretty much how I grew up in the 70's and early 80's, including the fights. I had a few fights and hung around with some "bad elements" but I don't think there was ever a mention of a gun, and the only knives were only for show. I don't think I can agree that a 2 parent family is necessary to produce a decent human being (although that is how I grew up). It definitly seems to be a case of kids growing up with less and less values in general, but I see at least as many assholes growing up with 2 parents as I do with 1 :-)
I for one welcome our new evil MPAA Overlords and the order they bring to our chaotic lives...
-Goran
Carpe Scrotum - The only way to deal with your competition.
Oh, and 'lobby' can also mean word of mouth campaigns, legal action (price fixing? Why is the Austin Powers soundtrack CD more expensive than the Austin Powers DVD?) and so on.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
One answer is to innundate the MPAA/Big Brother with phony shared files (in a way that won't cost us bandwidth).
Rather than creating random files with movie names and putting them on FTP, you modify your sharing system (FTP, P2P, etc.) to present 0 size files in a certain (movie) directory as being the correct file size. Then you deny downloading of them, ostensibly due to "too many connections", so it cannot be determined that the file is NOT real.
Then the MPAA is left to believe that the files are real, and thus you would be a target.
.sigs are for post^Hers.
I am most upset about the general trend towards increased prison sentences.
Is taking a camera into a movie theater something that is on par with accidently killing someone?
Is taking a camera into a movie thater enough of an offense that it is worth spending $150,000+ to incarcerate someone for 5 years, not to mention the costs to actually convict them?
This is the kind of criminal act that would be very unevenly applied. And the penalties seem very extreme compared to the seriousness of the offense.
Remember that these penalties often stack. If you film a movie, put it on the internet, and burn a copy for your friends they will probably get you on at least three offenses right there. That's the kind of thing that leads to outrageous prison term (that and stupid drug laws!)
Anything anti-capitalistic is potentially terroristic in the eyes of the Bush Administration.
Better watch out since you will be a terrorist if you don't support the concepts of our politicians! After all there only there to protect our corporations.. why would they do anything for civil rights since it wouldn't make them any money???
Not until now, assuming you're correct.
I agree. That was my second point. As I stated above:
Your observations did help me recall a third comment I wanted to make. The law may also provide for a rebuttable presumption that a person who placed copyrighted material in a publicly shared folder did so with the intent to to have it copied by someone not authorized by copyright law to do so. I'm not sure such a presumption would be unreasonable. That would provide for situations where there truly was an innocent mistake, but place the burden of proving the innocent mistake on the defendant.
Only Women Bleed (Sex, Sharia remix)
The threat of a three-year prison term kicks in when anyone makes an illicit copy of a movie "available on a computer network accessible to members of the public," when the film "was intended for commercial distribution but had not been so distributed at the time." Once the film is commercially distributed, the felony penalties appear to no longer apply.
Because a movie on your FTP server before its release date is stolen property (criminal), but a movie on your FTP server after release date is just a copyright infraction (civil).
It makes good sense to me that trafficking in stolen goods should land you in jail.
In the past, totalitarian governments were usually based on some flavor of fascism or communism. We are now witnessing the birth of a new form of totalitarianism -- corporatocracy.
That's an important point about what we're on the brink of here, but dude. Fascism *is* corporatocracy. Just ask Mussolini(or if that doesn't cut it, a book or website about him). Or Berlusconi, the current media mogul prime minister, head of the EU, with strong ties to the neo-fascist party. One of the key goals of the fascist agenda(although one which was never fully realized) was the merging of government of economy into the Corporate State. As I recall, anyway.
No, the moral crime is removing control of the IP from its creator. Or do you feel that violation of the GPL shouldn't have any penelty since you are not depriving the creator of a program from anything?
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
The Thomas link:0 8:h.r.0 2752:
t doc.cgi ?dbname=108_cong_bills&docid=f:h2752ih.txt.pdf
:-)'
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d1
The GPO pdf of the bill:
http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/ge
-Dubber
Your complaints about being offended offend me.
<RANT>
The U.S. has something crazy like 5%+ of the national population in jail currently. This is more than any other country in the world -- close to the sum of all the prisoners in all other countries in the world.
Right now the most common type of offense individuals in jail is a drug-related offense. I'd argue that addicts need treatment more than incarceration to change their lives... and before anyone argues that treatment costs the state too much consider that it costs $77,000 per year to keep someone in jail.
Now as if we didn't already have enough jail overcrowing and enough people behind bars who are nonviolent people and victims of overharsh legislation we'll start throwing people in jail for copying bits from one place to another. God, this is an outrage. Let me tell you something else: if a rich white kid with no past offenses is busted swapping music or movies at Princeton he'll get a slap on the wrist. But if a poor hispanic high-school drop out "loser" gets busted and the DA is looking for a reason to take him off the street anyway, the "loser" will get fucked.
The USA is moving from a democratic republic to a oligarchy where all the power rests in the hands of the rich and well connected. Slowly the rights of the individual are being eroded in the name of fighting terrorism. Slowly the rights of the big corporation are being increased. The rich get more tax cuts and no inheritance tax while the poor lose their jobs. The only reason that Congress is interested in creating IP law like this is because the RIAA and MPAA are rich and well connected.
People are so apathetic and the change is so gradual that I'm convinced no one will realize what's going on or care until it's too late.
</RANT>
So they are making it a criminal offense to host copyrighted, unreleased movies, on a publicly accessible network.
How is this a YRO issue in *any* way? What possible right, is being taken away? It's not even a fair use issue, given that it seems to be limited to pre-release movies. So there's NO way anyone has bought a DVD that they are just making a "backup" of for their own use.
"Politicians are interested in people. Not that this is always a virtue. Fleas are interested in dogs." P.J. O'Rourke
But I simply don't get what the problem is here. If one "shares" material in a manner which violates to copyright conditions, or receives something shared that way, it's a copyright violation.
And if you don't like the copyright conditions, than you are perfectly free not to obtain a copy. If you don't like the price, don't buy it, but don't steal it either. I don't like buying things from greedy, exploitative, monopolistic entities any more than others do. So, I only rarely consume their products.
As for "sharing" being a violation even if there is no evidence that someone took it, that seems fair enough. If people blatently commit a crime and run around shouting, "you can't catch me; you can't catch me," then of course there will be changes in the types and standards of evidence used for prosecution.
I think that it is realistic to say that the current level of threat of prosecution and penalties has not prevent widespread copyright violtion. So it is not evil or insane to look at raising penalties and enforcement. (Even if it is a very stupid tactic). Each instance of copyright violation is a very small crime. But if it is widespread it can be very destructive. I guess it is like spam in that respect.
Just because the [RM]IAA are evil, doesn't mean that we should feel justified in violating the copyright. As I've said before, it's not civil disobience if you try to evade prosecution.
Sorry for the rant. And I certainly don't intend this to be a troll (and I hope it won't have the effect of one). Anyone who feels a real need to rake me over the coals for this, should feel free to email me. (A small amount of digging will find my address).
Prime numbers are exactly what Alan Greenspan says they are -S. Minsky
Think about it, I bet the CGI guys have plenty of copies of prerelease stuff sitting in a shared network folder somewhere, or on an internal FTP site.
So will the feds come bust them too, or will they selectivly apply this law?
I mean come on, how are you going to deter (heterosexual) teen offenders other than sending them to an official, government run ass-reaming center? (Thats what prisons are, after all)
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
The Medici's of Italy have prior art.
I agree.
Some times I wish I could vote for some one outside the big two...but then.....u know...the ol' throwing ur vote away thing. Right now, elections are like a massive distributed chess game.
One of the reforms might be to make it so non-native born citizens can run for prez, since after all, America IS the land of immigrants.
Amendment VIII
--------------
Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.
I wonder if copying a movie is a crime deserving the offender being repeatedly being ass-raped? I bet some people would rather have their pinkie cut or something. So why not just cut a finger form everyone who thinks about pirating a movie? Pretty soon the offenders won't be able to type and this will very likely resolve the problem.
Seriously, if the [empowered] people were not so much into unproportinally cruel punishments, this amendment would not exist.
It's a conspiracy I tell ya!
It's MLB! (from the simpsons, btw)
One would think a lawyer would be able to make his/her argument without using the word "lameasses"...
Obvious exits are NORTH, SOUTH, and DENNIS.
Hey, has anyone else, during those obnoxious movie trailers that state, "Movies. They're worth it." scream:
Yeah! Worth DOWNLOADING!!!
Just checking...
"Basically China - and most of the world - will remain second-rate since they can only produce what the USA allows, and at the rate it dictates."
Compliance with US policy makes them money hand over fist. If that status changes substantially, so will their incentive to continue compliance.
What force on Earth do you really believe could be leveraged against China?
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
"That is a huge difference. Civil vs Criminal illegal, to be exact. By calling it theft, you are changing it from a civil offense to a criminal offense. There *IS* a difference between them. The law makes a distinction between them, why can't you?"
It's an extremely common perception among /. readers that copyright infringement is exclusively a civil offense. Nonetheless, in US law, there is such a thing as criminal copyright infringement. Here are the details.
It can also be an eye-opener to Google on "criminal copyright infringement." You'll be rewarded with plenty of links to cases in the USA where parties were found guilty of criminal copyright infringement and have been sentenced to jail time.
At any rate, maybe I can explain the original poster's point better. If I create something (a book, or some software, or a song) for which there is a total market of X people, and if this gets out on the P2P networks which facilitates X - N (where 0
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.
"This is a government of the people, by the people and for the people no longer. It is a government of corporations, by corporations, and for corporations." -U.S. President Rutherford B. Hayes, 1884
.sig...
Unfortunately, it's too long for a
"Time is an abstract concept devised by carbon-based lifeforms to monitor their ongoing decay." - Thundercleese
Placing a copyrighted file in a shared folder with the intent to distribute it to someone who was not authorized to receive it would meet the "overt act" requirement for a conspiracy conviction.
However, criminal conspiracy law is probably not the best model here. All that is required is to apply the basic theory of "attempted crimes" criminal law.
Only Women Bleed (Sex, Sharia remix)
...but anyone using Windows NT, 2000, or XP will be immediately guilty just by having an unreleased movie *anywhere* on their hard drive.
Oh, you didn't realize that *ALL* drives are automatically shared and accessable by mapping to \\IP ADDRESS\[DRIVE]$ Oh sure, you need an administrator level account and password, but everyone uses ID:administrator PW:password anyway.
Ignorance is no defense (from ignorance!)
Yeah, it's actually stealing - but realistically, when you get caught for shoplifting the penalty will likely be less than getting caught sharing under this.
'hmm, probation/community service vs. three years in a federal pound me in the ass prison - I think I'll just shoplift'.
Strange, a hidden incentive for the unscrupulous to do something that's probably far more likely to cost businesses money than the sharing does, given that the 'sharing costs us money!' view doesn't take into consideration purchases after previewing, and that not every copy shared represents a lost sale.
Who eats the loss on a shoplifted DVD? It's the business selling the DVD, or the distributor, right? Not the company producing it. So the MPAA wouldn't care.
Code or be coded.
Eh, I should have used Preview.
As I was saying:
At any rate, maybe I can explain the original poster's point better. If I create something (a book, or some software, or a song) for which there is a total market of X people, and if this gets out on the P2P networks which facilitates N (where N is a subset of X) people to download it for free instead of paying me, I have lost a sale. My market size has shrunk. This is not a "victimless crime." Your statement that copyright infringement "deprives the copyright holder of nothing" is only accurate if 100% of those who download rather than buy would not have bought in the first place. Otherwise, the copyright holder has been deprived of a sale.
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.
How is it possible that laws can effectively be bought with enough money? How is it possible that laws concerning copyright carry criminal charges instead of civil one's? How is it possible that laws concerning copyright carry sentences that are more draconian than some of those concerning such violent crimes such as rape, physical attacks etc?
Does this mean that the *AA will eventually try to get a mandatory death sentence into law for breaches of copyright? Will 12-year file sharers be treated as adults and be thus sent to the gas chamber? I know that it sounds ridiculous but who would have thought that one could go to jail for 3 years for sharing an illegal movie while the leaders of Enron and Worldcom can get away with ruiing thousands of people's lives.
And you think the rest of the world looks to the USA as a shining example of democracy and freedom?
There really is no solution for the **AAs except to build more value into what they're offering. Doing world-simultaneous openings of stinkers like Matrix Revolutions in the hope of ripping of consumers doesn't cut it any more than re-releasing the same song in yet another different format/compilaton/variant.
The studio's beg to differ...
The gift of death metal does not smile on the good looking.
It's nothing but crumpled porno and Ayn Rand.
I saw the trailer before matrix revolutions. It was funny because the audience broke into laughter after the commercial concluded.
Unfortunately, you apparently have not read the article. There are two new classes of felony defined by the proposed legislation. The first felony kicks in if you make a digital copy of a movie (that isn't commercially available yet) available in digital form on a computer network. That carries a maximum 3 year prison sentence. In order for the law to apply, you must (a) share the file on any computer network, and (b) the movie in question can't already be available on DVD or VHS for purchase. Once a movie becomes available for purchase in stores, the law appears to no longer apply, and the article seems to confirm this supposition. Furthermore, mere possession of a file isn't sufficient; the file has to be shared, so that you're actively contributing to infringement. However, the law doesn't specify that you have to actually be infringing the movie studio's copyright, nor does it specify that anyone had to actually download the file from you.
Of course, bills can and do get changed before they are passed into law. So this loophole might be closed up soon.
The other class of felony, which nobody seems to be talking about, carries up to a 5 year prison term, and comes into play if you bring a camcorder (or other "audiovisual recording device") into a movie theater. So if a theater owner or usher catches you with a camcorder in a movie theater, and you're recording the movie you're watching, you would be in violation of this law. This is a form of piracy that has been around for a long time, but with the advent of digital camcorders and software that makes it easy to make DVDs or DiVX files out of digital video, it's a lot easier to distribute movies pirated this way.
I have mixed feelings about this second provision. First, a 5 year prison sentence seems a bit harsh for someone who's taping a movie. In fact, it seems very excessive. Not everyone who tapes a movie intends to distribute the copy widely (or at all). On the other hand, making video copies of movies before they're available for purchase or rental, indeed while they're still in the theater, robs the studios and the makers of the film of potential revenues. Of course, there's no loss of real money, so it's hard to call it theft in the strict sense, but someone who might be inclined to go see a movie several times on the big screen might instead see it once on the big screen (or not at all), and then watch a bootleg thereafter.
(By way of contrast, it's highly unlikely that someone who pirates a song or an album would actually pay for that song or that album if the illegal copy weren't an option. Music is much more commoditized, and social attitudes toward pirating music are much more permissive than toward pirating movies. Besides which, most people seem to agree that music is overpriced. Therefore, it's much easier to dismiss RIAA claims of "lost revenue" because the reality is that you can't lose what you never had to begin with. At least with movies, there are still plenty of ordinarily honest people who would be tempted to watch a bootleg movie instead of pay for a ticket to the theater. And the bootleg is almost always inferior to the big screen experience.)
I guess now is a good time to switch into film major
Simply use the money you would otherwise spend on things like DVDs and watching movies and start a group that lobbies politicians. The problem with this is people want their movies too much
The sending of this message pretty much inconveniences everyone involved.
You're a lawyer? Amazing! I'm a judge. Yep, a bona-fide judge. Guess I'll just overrule you on that point. As a bona-fide judge, I can honestly say that stealing does only apply to the actual taking of physical property. Since I'm a judge I should know. That, and I own a mansion and a yacht (much like a medical doctor I know).
I thought the quote rather funny too. So the person who has this movie sitting in a shared folder so anyone can download it for free constitutes "high-reward"?
Sure, the "real" pirates who make thousands of duplicates of a DVD and sell it cheap are reaping a high-reward, but not the P2P drone.
At least if we were reverting to the behavior of the 50's we would have some recourse... Just think, when we got sick of hearing what some nitwit like Bo Derek thought, all we would have to do is float a rumor that she's a communist. The creepy Un-American Activities Committee would shut her up for us. Stealing is wrong, blah blah blah... But seriously, I could go to PRISON for having a copy of some shitty movie? That's when it's time to get all Waco/Natural Born Killers on them... When it's gotten so bad that we will jail people to keep Hollywood dirtbags from losing a few bucks here and there, it's time for some real insanity. No longer content to passivly enjoy the chaos, I would feel obligated to accelerate it somehow until the machine breaks. I strongly urge anyone located near celebrities or politicians to throw bags of flaming dogshit at any of these whiny parasites they come across. Just my two cents. Hell, two cents is about all I'm left with after being taxed nearly to death so our "leaders" can spend more time debating things like "How do we punish the kids who didn't pay to see a prerelease version of Kangaroo Jack?". Between welfare and this nonsense, remind me again what it is I'm getting for my hard earned tax dollar... Ugh.
Someday a real rain is gonna come...
Then why all the hubub over file sharing? Why not just make it impossible to sneak a camcorder into a movie? Then all of the illegal files will disapear.
Right?
----Corruption----
Widget Industry: We will donate a ton of money to your campaign if you promise to pass legislation to help our industry.
Politician: In that case, I will enact the legislation if elected.
----NOT Corruption----
Politician: If elected, I will enact legislation which will help the widget industry, because I believe it is the right thing to do.
Widget Industry: In that case, we'll donate shitloads of money to your campaign, so that you are more likely to get elected.
So it's a fine line, and not very different, functionally. One thing is for sure, though. If 2 people are running for the same office, and a company donates money to BOTH of them, that is a sign that, at least, the company thinks they are corrupt. Otherwise, the company would only donate money to the politician that would be most favorable to them regardless of whether they donate money or not.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
Browse at -1, because trolls are often the most creative part of
IANAL, so basicly the diffrence between civil law and criminal law is:
Civil law gets you sued.
Criminal law gets you thrown in jail.
?
Browse at -1, because trolls are often the most creative part of
It's intellectual theft.
Intellectual theft == "you stole my patent idea!"
Don't ping my cheese with your bandwidth!
reaspond => respond
D'Oh!
...and feet...and knock all the teeth out. These guys are true criminals. Maybe we can pool our money and hire a couple Russian Mafia hitmen.
Blar.
Nice dumbed down oversimplification.
"Theft" and "Stealing" are both words that have been co-opted by those industries who make their living off a soon-to-be defunct business model in the hopes of fending off the technological innovations that have stemmed their revenue streams.
Before you type something stupid why don't you study this:
1] There is a difference between a contractual obligation to pay, and a property theft.
2] There are precise definitions of "contracts".
3] We consumers never signed one.
Theft occurs when someone loses something. Period. Allowing the publishing industries to alter this definition is like letting G.Bush redefine the words "imminent threat".
What part of consent, freedom, right-to-privacy, physical loss, contractual agrreement, and constitutional rights don't you understand.
Laissez fare bitch.
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
Isn't it normal practice to copy films and distribute them to the people who vote in the Academy Awards and similar Hollywood fluffer events? Normally the movies under consideration for these awards haven't had formal DVD releases, so the copies are one-off DVDs specifically for reviewers.
Got to remind the MPAA watchdogs to check the computers of these reviewers and their kids - it wouldn't surprise at all to find out that some of these voters have teenage kids, and that these kids would like to score points with their mates by putting their one-off copies of the films online every now and then.
File sharing is stealing money out of these poor people's pockets! Why, if there was no file sharing, Matrix: Revolutions would've made a lot more than it's paltry TWO HUNDRED MILLION DOLLARS (so far).
We want to go through so much trouble to jail people swapping movies and music (for which they don't usually enrich themselves). but we have execs walking freely who have stolen millions (to enrich themselves and friends) from the poor. don't get me wrong, the swappers are probably taking money from someone, rich folks. oh, the MPAA will have u believe it is the guy who works on the set and don't have a steady job. i so love our society.
Why aren't there laws against this sort of politicial corruption?
http://jesus.everdense.com/
Because if I dress in thick leather bikers gear and wear a motorcycle helmet, I'm impervious to most non-firearm violence you could dish out, short of a sword. Add in my size (6'4") and the other two friends with me, we could perform home invasions with pretty much no risk. It's hard to stab through even a leather bomber jacket, let alone a biker's jacket with ballistic crash padding inserts. A bike helmet would let me shrug off a baseball bat the head.
And you'd be naked or in PJs, and just waking up, as we crashed through your door. You wouldn't stand a chance.
But, there's no good way to provide even 80% protection from bullets from a reasonably sized handgun. Bullet-proof vests are very expensive and they only cover the torso.
If I thought you might have a gun I wouldn't feel so invunlerable. I mean, I might shoot you first, but if you (who knew the house and the squeeky stairs) shot me first, you'd probably kill me. Now, what if I don't know if you have a gun, but know that you could if you wanted.
Guns are equalizers. One senior citizen with a gun could kill or wound an attacking thug and drive the others off. With only strength-multipliers (baseball bats and such) how would they fare? Guns might be scary, but they do have a purpose.
The fact that someone asks you to pay them for something doesn't mean they have a moral right to.
If I tell you a story, it is perfectly moral for you to retell it.
I'm not so sure it's moral to earn money without working by threatening other people with lawsuits or jailtime. Let me elaborate...
Making music is working; writing songs, singing songs, playing instruments; it's all very valueable work that should be rewarded. What is not moral is having someone else copy your song, and getting money for each copy solely because you have 'rights' to it. That is not working, that is not contributing anything to society.
If an artist wants to morally earn money, they should get paid for the work they do. Do concerts, use the street performer protocol, maybe get a sponsor, hell, sell overpriced official CD's on the knowledge that people will support what they enjoy.
Copyright is immoral, and does not encourage artists to create art.
If I tell you a story, it is moral for you to retell it. It is not moral for me to demand a fee to allow you to do so.
Abolish Copyright. Restore Freedom.
(I might be biased because I am one.)
Irregardless of what the current bill concerns, this is my feeling:
The only people that should be locked up are violent criminals -- criminals that physically harm other people. Everyone else should pay restitution.
Think about it.
Ironically, the word ironically is often used incorrectly.
Berlusconi may be the head of Italy, but he is not the head of Europe.
Although your other statements may be right, your missing knowledge makes you less credible for anyone who really knows.
Well if it weren't true that IP usually is under the control of a corporation like a publishing house or a recording studio or a movie production studio, or as in patents in corporate hands, then the idea that the IP is in the hands of the creator is mute. Movie production's IP which is the collective work of all the creative people who create the movie. Most of those people don't get benefit from the IP rights.
/. article)
So we are talking about Big Business and their teams of lawyers that benefit from this type of legislation. You can't be thinking that this is legislation for the IP creator.
A good case in point is the IP rights fight that SCO is waging against Linux and the world. They are not the IP creators. IP has been commoditized and is sold on the open market. Look also at SBC's using ATT internet patents to try and extract royalties from web sites that have static navigation area's of pages (previous
The ideal is one thing, the ideal and original intent is often used by business to argue to maitain their own profits. Here we are talking about Jail time. We may have to line up the morality of the punishment next to the crime. What do you think is a reasonable thing. Aren't we reasonable people?
Here is a precedence that should not be set for unreasonable punishment for a small thing. I just saw an article that the Matrix just had the biggest opening gross $202 Million Cnn article. Do we need legislation to protect these people's profit? How much is enough.
I seem to remember The Kids were getting huge sentences for relatively minor drug possession offences (IIRC one guy got years for a few joints). In the end the Parents got jack of it, and the harsh sentences stopped.
Does someone know more about this? I can't exactly remember how it went.
I think the reason for decreaed CD sales is from the creation of NOW thats what i call music and other similar CD's. Why pay for 12 CD's when you can get the 1 or 2 songs you like on each CD for the price of one.
Why hasn't the Digital Police gone after the ISP's who have the information ready and available in the alt.binaries newsgroups? If I download a movie from an alt.binaries newsgroup am I guilty for having it on my hard drive? Is the ISP guilty for having it on the hard drive of their server? If it is ok for the ISP, why is it a crime for me?
I think it is just a matter of time before the digital police step on too many toes get their legislative support pulled from them.
Newt-dog
My Doctor prescribed daily nasal saline irrigation, hehe
Gee Whiz!
Why dont they simply enact the Patriot Act on these people. Declare them terrorists.
Instead of looking to the source of the problem (why people trade these files) they do all they can to piss people off with lawsuits.
Sueing your customers does not work. When will these corporations learn that. Arent there other laws in place that they could use instead.
It seems going all out like this is just to make examples of these people. Seems like over prosecution to make a point to me. They should be charged with stealing and thats all. Going to this extreme is overkill and not fair, since the value of the product stolen is not worth $150,000 each.
From what I understand the screeners movie companies use are showing up on the internet because their employees are posting them. Isn't this an internal problem?
"You're on my side and the dark side, like Lando Calrissian?" --Gimpy, Undergrads
Just for the record, it is about 100 million sperm everytime you ... you get the point.
Sig: I stole this sig.
Seriously? Do we need a slashdot lobby?
http://threetechguys.info Come, discuss Technology. Got a technology question? Come ask!
That's another constant, like 90% of music being crap, or "high" CD prices, which many mistake for a temporal variable responsible for the recent huge dropoff in CD sales. Compilation records, tapes and CDs have been around for a while (ask your parents to recall the old "K-Tel" TV spots). While the "Now..." series is obviously a success (what are there now, 28 of them?) it would have to sell a enormously insane number in order to be responsible for the huge downturn in the industry.
There's a popular statistic that people like to quote around here when pushing for copyright law reform (but which is forgotten when slashdotters gather to ignore the 500-lb. elephant in the room and come up with ways to blame everything but piracy for the sales crash): more people have used a file-sharing app than voted in the last presidential election. I think that has had a much larger effect on crumbling CD sales than the "Now..." series.
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.
506. Criminal offenses5
.. perhaps we could assume less than that since usually you don't have the credits!). That make 199 dvd per 6 month (assuming you distribute them all evenly) or 399 DVDs per year. There is no such thing as 399 movies worth being copied a year, so no way anyone downloading movies for his own good will ever be sued in the criminal departement!
(a) Criminal Infringement. -- Any person who infringes a copyright willfully either --
(1) for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain, or
(2) by the reproduction or distribution, including by electronic means, during any 180-day period, of 1 or more copies or phonorecords of 1 or more copyrighted works, which have a total retail value of more than $1,000,
From your text, it seems that we must copy less than 1k$ worth of movie if we don't want to be treated on the criminal case. What is a DVD worth ? I usually buy them at blockbuster and I pay around 7$ can (average). I buy them used since I don't mind if the case is not perfect, or anything like that, as long as the content is OK. So, I'm willing to pay 7$ can -> 5$ us for the content of the movie, and that's the retail price.
Now, we got 1000$ - 1$ to distribute on 5$ of DVD content (you only got the content
It's completely unnecessary - the laws are strong enough as they are. This law, like the DMCA, at best serves only to lower the burden of proof, and make it more economical to sue. My guess is that there is something more sinister hidden in the wording.
Litigious bastards
When software pirates are taken to court on criminal charges they're often charged using the retail value of the software. For a DVD this would be about $20. The fact that you buy exclusively used DVDs at $7.00 a pop, or if you personally value the content at $5.00 probably wouldn't be relevant if you were nailed.
Also, as has been covered in this thread and elsewhere, the damage claims typically don't stop at the value of one copy of the software, song or DVD in question. If the RIAA, the MPAA, or -- God help you -- the feds think they can show reasonable evidence that more than one person downloaded what you're sharing, it will add up fast. One DVD with a retail value of $20, downloaded by 50 people, will get you over that $1,000.00 limit.
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.
Not only is this Just Plain Wrong on so many obvious grounds, (you can get less than that for stealing a car, goddammit!) I reckon it is also economically unviable. Have they considered the cost to the taxpayer of keeping people in jail for 3 years for sharing a $10 album? There is an argument that the $250,000 fine could cover this but given that so many of the culprits will turn out to be unable to pay anywhere near that (due to being teenagers, college students or RIAA executives^W^W^W) it won't work. I appreciate that industry organisations are supposed to lobby on behalf of their industry but the media organisations seem to be taking this too far. They are already derided by the general population and it won't be that long before the politicians turn against them too, especially in an election year. Hopefully the RIAA will hassle a few more preteens and make the politicians notice that they are, in fact, the spawn of Satan.
"'I pass the test,' she said. 'I will diminish, and go into the West, and remain Galadriel.'"
- JRR Tolkien.
Makes me never want to see, rent, buy or even touch another movie ever. "I'd like tickets for two to see Terminator XII and I'd like you to sign this contract to say that you won't sue me or my friend for quoting scenes from the movie on the way out of the cinema."
That won't work for me I'm not a US citizen. Oh well I guess we can follow the U.S.'s fine example *cough* Iraq *cough* (with sincerist apologies to anyone who actually speaks French):
:-)
Aux armes citoyens
Formez vos bataillons
Marchons, marchons.
Pour preserver democratie
Aux "U-S-A".
To arms citizens
Form your bataillons
March on, March.
To preserve democracy
In the USA.
Yay, the Canadians to the rescue!
(Yes, I'm an Anglaphone, but there shouldn't be too many glaring errors.)
I didn't mention the Dean campaign as the solution to this problem, because honestly they haven't come out with one yet. I merely mentioned it because through involvement with them I've learned that the way to change our government is actually much more possible than I ever thought, given all the FUD upon FUD out there in the public mind about it. The mantra is "the rich have all the money and we can never compete with that, so let's not even try." Actually, the people with the most votes get elected. Having money to field TV ads to create perceptions in the electorate certainly helps, but as I've discovered in the Dean campaign, most people understand that 90% of what the media says is bullshit. They'll consider what an actual human talking to them a lot more seriously than any TV news report. And that is something that only a true grassroots movement can do.
I encourage you and all slashdotters to get involved in a campaign now and get first-hand experience in how it all works. That's the knowledge that will make us truly dangerous to the *AA's and special interests that are killing this country. I chose Dean's campaign because his use of the internet is terrific, and gives me hope that when he does come out with positions on tech, he will "get it." (If you consider the software that the campaign uses, it's all OSS/Linux. How can the guy win the Whitehouse using Linux and then turn around and bend over for MS? I just don't see it happening.) I also chose Dean for a grassroots experience because it's the best game in town and therefore the best classroom for learning these skills. But if you don't like Dean, check out one of the other candidates if you like.
I'm investigating how to start a tech policy membership organization to lobby against these horrible DMCA-like laws and other issues, and once the primaries and petition drives are through I'm going to throw myself into it pretty hard. If you're interested in helping out, drop me a line on my slashdot page.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
Although the poster took great pains to point out "It would not require that any copyright infringement actually take place.", he completely left out the actual description of the bill, which is "A forthcoming copyright bill backed by key U.S. senators would place file swappers in prison for up to three years if they have a copy of even one prerelease movie in their shared folders.". If you want to bash a bill on the front page of /., you should at least give the readers who don't RTFA a chance to understand what you're disagreeing with.
Vote for Pedro
This bill also has the effect of criminalizing anime fansubs and places like AnimeSuki. Must be quite embarassing for Disney that so much great animation is pouring from Japan and kicking their fuddy-duddy asses eight ways from Sunday. They can only license so much of it.
Notice how in Japan - with its more sane cultural attitude to copyright - there is an enormous, spontaneous fan culture producing things like the doujinshi phenomenon whereas in America, land of The Mouse(TM), there is NOTHING like that. There can never BE anything like that here because of these attitudes. Hence, Japan gets an energized, creative pop culture and mountains of incredible, inspired anime and we're stuck with "Treasure (Fucking) Planet" and crazed threats of cops kicking down our doors and long prison sentences for stupid "offenses".
Anyone notice how much money The Matrix has made in the last five days? Good thing no one made a shakycam copy of that and stuck it on Kazaa, or else no one would have gone to the theatre at all!
This is the war of money on art, because Hollywood has contempt for everything that isn't either money or power. It doesn't know what the fuck art is, other than a potential marketing angle. This should be called the ART Prevention act, art being a basic human experience of insight, joy and shared understanding. They may as well call the next one the RISE OF THE HOLLYWOOD MACHINES Act.
*spit*
of what you feel. I said the same thing many, many times: the corporations have the money, the process is so corrupt that we can't possibly change it, etc. I even advocated a general strike in I.T. to protest the DMCA and RIAA, etc. (here on slashdot, in fact)
But three months ago I heard about how Dean's campaign was using the internet, and it occurred to me that this at long last might be someone who gets it. I went to a leafletting event, nearly chickened out a block and a half from the location, but decided I was sick and tired of being angry and frustrated and went anyway. Now I'm the outreach coordinator for Brooklyn For Dean and have helped build our roster from 30 people in July to 650 now.
Now I've learned how to organize people, work with elected officials (we talk to our congressmen in Brooklyn now on a regular basis), how the petitioning process works, how to get endorsements, how to speak in front of large groups of people, and a lot of other things I was terrified of doing before. The result is I feel freer and more in charge of my destiny than ever before, and all of our volunteers have expressed similar sentiments.
These are all skills that actually make the difference on the ground, and I can guarantee you that face-to-face with voters is far, far more effective in influencing the electorate than any corporate-funded TV spin campaign will ever be. Why? Because most people know that the media is all bullshit. They are far more inclined to believe their neighbor than any news anchor.
These are all skills and experience that will carry over for us to fighting for sane tech policies in this country. I encourage you to get involved in a campaign and see for yourself, really. If you have tech skills, anybody would love to have you (thanks to Dean's internet success). Doing nothing in the face of all that's going wrong is the path to madness.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
I was thinking about this and bit for bit your music/movies is not going to be exactly the same so wouldn't it technically not be their "Original" work and therefore not infringing the copyright?
I could be wrong, but I think under most cases you can be prosecuted under the DMCA, which does allow for criminal charges. http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/1204.html
Um, so he isn't EU council president? Since July? Please inform me and rid me of my ridiculous misunderstanding. Or was that one of those "He doesn't have any real power because the EU president doesn't execute any real authority" comments? It's hard to tell.
...I can boycott the MPAA as well...plus movies suck balls these days...I refuse to see the hulk...too bad...guess I wont be seeing the latest matrix anytime soon... ...plus, the stuff you see at the Angelica is better anyway...anyone see the Station Master? Good stuff.
-- A cat is no trade for integrity!
No, I was wrong. He IS the president of the EU.
Sorry for that.
"WTO Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights"
Treaties, of course. But a nation as powerful a force as *China* only follows treaties to the extent that benefits China. If China decides to go hostile, what does the rest of the world think it's going to do about it?
All the military and political force in the world isn't going to force China to do anything China does not choose to do. Treaties are toilet paper without either cooperation or force. Right now, there is substantial cooperation. What conceivable force is there, in the absence of that cooperation?
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
really
Queens of the Stone Age - they rule
Yea well, guess what... We here, over in .lb, get pirated DVDs for 3$ a piece. My personal collection includes over 300 DVDs. And by pirated, I mean pirated copies from REAL DVDs, and not lousy pre-release screeners or handycam crap. How about those bastards try to stop me?
Codito Ergo Sum
This is corporate fascist crap.
FASCISM -
a.
system of government marked by entralization of authority under a dictator, stringent socioeconomic controls, suppression of the opposition through terror and censorship, and typically a policy of belligerent nationalism and racism.
b.
a political theory advocating an authoritarian hierarchical government (as opposed to democracy or liberalism)
Taking a video recoding device into a theater will be a crime. What next, will they classify my memory of the film as an illegal copy! That is horseshit. It doesn't even qualify as bullshit. They will take my camcorder from my cold dead hands.
The availability of the copy presumes guilt and harm to the owner of the copyright. You are no longer innocent until proven guilty. The crime is presumed by the evidence, not the other way around. It seems unreasonable to convict someone of a crime when it cannot be established a crime occured, only that there is evidence of what is presumably a crime. I would say this is unconstitutional by depriving people of due process and also making civil crimes a criminal offense with a lower threshhold of guilt. I would also say it is cruel and unusual to imprison someone over a stupid movie.
OK, so I agree with those of you who say the act is draconian in its punishments. I also understand the arguments about whether this is theft vs. copyright infringement, civil vs. criminal, etc. The moral arguments...blah blah blah.
:)
My view is this: Irrespective of the concerns regarding the erosion of our rights which this act embodies, why is anybody still actually trying to defend the people making copies of these materials? Further, why does anyone care to do it? Doesn't anyone have anything better to do than to go to these lengths to steal, borrow, innocently download (whichever eupheism you prefer) this garbage? Has anyone heard of paying the going price for a luxury, and just not buying it if one (a) cannot afford it; or (b) does not believe the item to be worth the asking price? We are not talking about food, medicine, or housing. We're talking about movies and music, much of which is of poor quality anyhow. If someone is so angry over how much the copyright holders have chosen to charge for their wares, he or she should NOT BUY THEM. But we have no business stealing/borrowing/downloading/whatever items we want just because we want them. If that is OK, why don't we just get rid of all laws, and we'll just all do as we please?
I don't dispute that some of the laws relating to intellectual property have gotten out of hand; nor do I dispute that the RIAA, MPAA, etc., are in some cases being unreasonable; nor that some of the laws, like the one being discussed, do not go to far; but, I mean, come on...there are a lot more things worth worrying about than this, I should think!
Just my opinion, of course.
I think it's more that we have to send a strong message which says 'This is wrong! if you do this you will be punished severely!'.
Not exactly rocket science - If you perpetrate the crime knowing that jail time is the consequence don't expect good representation in a court of law.
Hey relax fella, you need a rest, guy.
However I wonder if they really were deprived of a sale. I mean, most people who download warez would probably not buy the movie/book/cd that they downloaded anyway. However those people that would buy it, they might buy it only after downloading it to make sure its worth it.
I download alot of warez, but I also buy DVDs and CDs and Movies, not even near as many as I download but the fact is that I would not buy the others anyway.
You can get something (entertainment) for nothing (duplicating a digital thing is free)...
How can you know that people who download stuff would buy it?
Lets see...
I'll use imaginary figures so dont kill me over them...
10 years ago:
1000 records or videos you could buy
A few pirates here and there copying stuff from each other. One tape here, one tape there.
Today:
1000000000000 records, movies, videos, games that you can buy.
Almost everyone pirates something, but it doesnt seem to stop Matrix Revolutions from making 15 billion dollars on its opening day? (was it billion or million?)
That must mean that due to the increase of shit to buy, the copying has also increased. There is more to buy, but there is also more people copying.
I think in the end it evens out, and so far there has been no concrete proof that the movie or music industry has been hurt by pirating.
I mean can you actually imagine sifting through all the games, movies and music cd's out today to find something you like? Its like wading through a smelly sewer looking for a gold nugget that you heard "might" be there... And you also have to pay to be in it!
Also most media is way too expensive, I mean 20 bucks for a 2 hour movie? Give me a break!
If the industry lowers prices and increases quality, more people would buy. However those that pirated shit before, will continue to do so because they'll never pay for it anyway!
Copyright infringement isn't theft, since it doesn't deprive someone else of anything.
Yes, it does deprive them of control. In a world where there is no copyright infringement, the copyright holder has total control on who can watch/ear/learn the copyrighted material. When someone "illegally" (notice the quotation marks) use an intellectual "property" the copyright holder lose this control. So yes, it is "stealing"... Now the question is : is it ok to steal one's own freedom?
There comes a point where you can't just force something to happen any longer, you have to just give in to overwhelming forces. That's what is happening to the music and movie industry. They need to adapt or die, it's really quite simple. If it forces people to stop making music or making movies, then that's the way the cookie crumbles. I, however, highly doubt that creativity will be obliterated when the pricing/distribution scheme for movies and music changes. In fact, I forsee less crap, because any music/movies that would be made solely for profits' sake, would not be made.
Slashdot is proof that Sturgeon's Law applies to mankind.
"It says we don't care if anybody got any of these copies," Jaszi said. "We're going to conclude that at least 10 people did. It relieves the copyright owner of having to prove that any violation of their rights actually happened."
This bill simply will not pass. Laws simply are not made to be enforced when a crime has not been committed.
What this bill _probably_ will do is pave the way for another bill that trades off on the "having to prove a violation" part, that gives MPAA/RIAA the ability to threaten jailtime. It's a common negotiating tactic to throw out a red herring so that you can trade it for something you really want.
Ruby on Rails Screencast
"Piracy for too long has been high-reward and low-risk," Taylor said.
High-reward? But...does anyone in these United States actually pays for pirated movies? Then how is it high-reward?
i'd hit it so hard, if you pulled me out you'd be the king of britain [bash.org]
Now I can finally get laid!
*The best in existence, and created by a deity: Eyes, Ears and my Brain.
I think this story has some merit, at least, insomuch as it's not to be dismissed out of hand - that would be as bad as believing it out of hand. It's either factual or an amazing, masterful piece of fiction, because it has a real eerie feel to it that only one of the two situtations provoke.
.. I wouldn't have believed it possible then. Now, I don't know.
Remember that story took place in 2000
..don't panic
Considering that we claim to be a democracy, why should something that so many people do be illegal?
"We have got to make Stan understand the importance of voting, because he'll definitely vote for our guy." - South Park
No way! There are actually consequences to breaking the law? I mean, yeah, sure I knew that trading movies online was illegal and all, but I just thought it was kinda like speeding. Something that everyone does but only a few people ever get caught for with a slap on the wrist for punishment. Man... this is pretty bad since I still want to download movies for free instead of paying for them. I mean, they suck and totally aren't worth paying for at all, but I'll gladly spend my time breaking the law to see them.
This could be bad news, I'd better whine about it a lot and hope it goes away. Just not breaking the law because I'm not willing to suffer the consequences of my actions is too much to ask.
No its not. It requires energy and thus raises your electric bill by a fraction of a cent.
"We have got to make Stan understand the importance of voting, because he'll definitely vote for our guy." - South Park
Well you do pay your own energy bill dont you? ;)
I have no sig. (I actually wrote that just now)
hehehe... Thank God I'm not a lawyer.
The only thing they have worth anything is the dollar. Besides that.. they are worthless IMO
Has Comcast disconnected your Internet account? Same here. You can read about it at http://comcastissue.blogspot.com
Sad...
This is an argument like I expect from SCO's lawyers. Next thing he'll say that SCO is infringing on his IP and he owns Halleys Comet.
How about demonstrating your vast knowledge rather than submitting opinion? I for one would be VERY interested in why Webster is wrong and you are right.
Has Comcast disconnected your Internet account? Same here. You can read about it at http://comcastissue.blogspot.com
They're extra-bitchy about losing theatrical release ticket sales? A new box-office record was set last month! $680,000,000! WHAT THE FUCK IS THEIR PROBLEM?! WHEN WILL IT EVER BE ENOUGH?! Is there no end to the avarice of people? How many fucking cars and mansions do they need?
O~ Him that studies revenge keeps his own wounds green. -- Francis Bacon
Just like the DMCA isn't abused, or rather is.
Now, having any pre-release the assumption is that you're guilty of distributing it. So, say you're a critic the movie studios don't like, say, Aint it Cool News. Say you just announced that you've seen Star Wars 3, and its utter crap.
Guess what? You've not violated copyright law, but can they now make you go to jail --- you're presumptively guilty just for having access to the pre-release.
The movie studios can hand out pre-release DVD's left and right, but if you do anything to piss them off, for instance, a negative review, they can see if you got a 'legit' copy, and refuse to send you any more. Or, if you were given the DVD by another reviewer, well, they can fuck you over even better then.
This is a strong law, and it makes many acts that were once legal now illegal. Whatever the claims on how this 'just reinforces past law' or 'fills in a critical crack in past legistlation' or 'won't be abused', I take with the same grain of salt as everyone else should in this post-DMCA world.
As for "sharing" being a violation even if there is no evidence that someone took it, that seems fair enough. If people blatently commit a crime and run around shouting, "you can't catch me; you can't catch me," then of course there will be changes in the types and standards of evidence used for prosecution.
Yep, we should just give up that whole "beyond any reasonable doubt" part and go with a lesser standard... "most likely happened", "might have happened" or "we assume it happened" sounds fair, doesn't it? It would undoubtably catch more criminals, but for the price of innocent men jailed as well. Crooks have been running around shouting "you can't catch me" since forever, as far back as Al Capone and then some.
What if you were able to prove (well, good luck, but hypothetically) that it was *not* spread to 10 people? Congratulations, you've turned the court system up-side down, guilty until proven innocent. The courts should not assume anything not backed by evidence. If there is no evidence, it didn't happen. It's the common rule in all civilized justice systems. Of course, between stuff like this and Guantanamo Bay, I start to wonder if the US only has that standard when it is convienient...
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
...that we don't need another law. We need competent law enforcement, judges and litigators. Does it make sense for the government (that's your and my tax dollars) to carry out the **AA litigation and pay for 36 months of upkeep for the offenders.
I certainly don't ask for a new law to handle my problems. The role of government to do these things.
Remember your Schoolhouse Rock: "We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."
And from the Declaration (in reference to King George):
"He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance."
This is why we don't need this law.
Faith is the very antithesis of reason, injudiciousness a critical component of spiritual devotion. Jon Krakauer
but there is no legitimate reason to "share" it.
The proof is you "sharing" it which is illegal and why you'll be thrown in jail.
If they find you illegally aquired it to begin with, that's just more frosting on top of your file.
In case you missed it, it doesn't matter if you bought the DVD and have it on your shelf. It is ILLEGAL to redistribute it unless you don't retain a copy for yourself.
If Kazaa et al allowed only a single user to download a copy of your files and deleted your copy when they were done, then it'd somewhat resemble being legal. Kazaa et al then wouldn't be responsible for you retaining a copy. It'd also make it more difficult for the RIAA to prosecute. They'd have to download the same file from your computer twice to prove you retained a copy.
People who are given screeners sign little pieces of paper which says they won't allow others to see it.
Perhaps you've heard of such pieces of paper. They're called NDA's.
The levels of illegalness are quite plentiful in your little example of "guilty until proven innocent."
If you're sharing a file that's not legal to share you're committing a crime. When you're doing it publically it's pretty hard to claim you're innocent when the whole world can see you're not.
Ben
Work Safe Porn
I'm glad I live in Canada... this sort of decision has very little effect on me. That thought aside, why is it that corporate america feels the need to punish people for enjoying their products, regardless of how they get it? Mabye big stars will have to start getting less than 40 million dollars for a big budget movie!
It's worse than that. They have taken an action that is essentially harmless and made it against the law. It would be nice if laws were made to prevent social harm rather than create "rights" for "IP" owners that will land you in jail for exercising what should be considered your fair use right. Suppose I want to be able to get at the movies I bought wherever I go? Putting them on s ssh server can still get me put in jail. That's Bull Shit (TM).
It's just another piece of the **AA putting the screws on any potential competition. Remeber how the RIAA's been claiming all mp3s as their mp3s and abusing people who would dare to share their own content? It's harrasment, pure and simple. Now they can get you tossed into jail. Before you know it, you will need a license to run a computer capable of sharing anything. Fuck them all, the god damn unAmerican assholes.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I own movies and I want to be able to see them anywhere I go, but that's going to get me put in jail. I stick them on a box with a good network connection and make them available via ssh. Then I go to jail because "my" movies were posted on a publically accesable network. Does anyone think a judge is going to be able or inclined to tell the difference? No, I'm going to have to cart my DVDs around by hand.
So the cluelessness of MPAA bought senators is demonstrated. Outlawing whole classes of technology and behavior because some people MIGHT abuse them is bad, mmm-kay?
The effect on "piracy" of all these stupid DRM laws is zero. The DVD factories favored by the MPAA for publishing will continue to engage in real piracy. They will continue to print up early releases and overruns and all that regardless of US law and anyone who wants bootledged DVDs will be able to get them for a buck.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
just some more bullshit that will help strip away everyone's civil rights and eventually make everyone a criminal..
OHH... it's illegal
so fucking what ?!?!
so is selling drugs, drinking and driving, killing people, outrunning cops, yadda yadda yadda...
just because it's "illegal" sure as hell doesn't mean that people aren't going to do it..
and it's not like this fucking worthless government has any authority to stop it..Considering that alot of these movies come from overseas anyway --
Hmm.. i guess it's time to get hammered, jump in the car, go smoke up 20lbs of crack and get that colo in armenia going for a new file server
iF yOu WAnT to C YOUr iP agaIn gAThEr tWO MilLIon dOLLArS IN Non - cONsEcuTivE TweNtY's AnD AWaiT FuRThER iNstrUctIoN
why are they targeting the little guys? (that is, online sharing) even if it is prescreeners, i can go to chinatown or times square and buy a movie on DVD, that's good quality, even has appropriate artwork on the cover/case, for five bucks, in front of a fucking cop, and not have any problems whatsoever -- hell, i wouldn't have to worry about download times, even.
filter: +3. Hey, look! all the trolls went away!
1. Does that mean that if you are running an ftp server on your system, you can't have the files ANYWHERE on your system, no matter what the permissions of the files are? Or does it only apply to anonymous ftp accounts? What if you have a user named "anonymous" on your system who has a very insecure password?
2. Does every folder on an insecure OS count as "shared"?
Sorry, didn't mean to get huffy there. It freaks me out when I'm sure I remember reading something somewhere and I could be mistaken. It's happened many times before.
So someone might start in a juvenile detention center, but end up in a more interesting environment where they can learn the essential skills they'll need on their return to society. That is, how to be a criminal that actually harms people instead of one that just reduces the profits of a corporation.
The US is a republic, not a democracy. Mob rule can be good, or it can be bad; our governmental structure protects us from the bad while occasionally hindering the good.
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.
or is it time to start voting with a bullet??? ;-)
I hold it, that a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing. -- Thomas Jefferson
No, that's alright. Really. My posting was based on an assumption, your's on actual knowledge.
Anyway, I totally missed this one in the news.
Fortunately, the president of the EU council really has no real executive authority.
Actually, most bills that are seriously intended to pass are sponsored by members of both parties, even if one of them is stepping outside of party lines. If it is proposed only by members of one party, you are much more likely to run into a party-line vote.
I was saying that for the people who download them but doesn't distribute it. And still, it's the retail value of the //content// you got if it's sold at 5$ (7$ was the CAN amount). Perhaps the medium is worth more but you didn't got that -- only the data.
But I agree if you are redistributing it, it may cost you much more!
Anyone got an idea of what is the law in Canada? I still hope we don't have something like the DMCA (yet&never)!
However, there is one way out of the mess. Leave. Bugger off.
Where ? most tech people are immigrating into america.
If America's tech industry suddenly died overnight, then maybe they'd pay attention.
Don't think american hightech can't be replaced by 10^5 bright indians
Working for necessity's mother.
... two senators issued a law which threatens movie swappers with jail, mainly because their industry sponsors claim to suffer from losses due to movie swapping. It is only a rumour, though, that two other senators issued another law against the private possession of weapons because private waepons cause much more damage to the U.S. national economy, and that Charlton Heston agreed to this move.
Oh my. What kind of country is that? Is that really the USA that I admired as a kid? It seems that there is only one power in this country, which is lobbyists.
open (SIG, "</dev/zero"); $sig = <SIG>; close SIG;
**AA TARPIT. Seriously. I use tarpits to slow down email harvesting bots that refuse to comply with the normal "rules" of my site ... why can't we use **AA tarpits to slow down these guys and make them burn their time and energy on a worthless cause? Granted, FINDING which connections are coming from **AA is the whole trick here. :(
Five years in prison for recording The Hulk in a theater?
How about five years for actually watching that drivel?
If a train station is a place where a train stops, what's a workstation?
I usually flip off the screen for the duration, but that's just me.
....yeah. As if he gets a cent from the movie after it's finished.
The stupidest one I've seen was just the other day. They had a stuntman talking about how much piracy hurts him.
Going to jail is fair enough if you were stupid enough to share movies on a public network. As an analogy, do you think someone that leaves a loaded gun lying on a public street should go unpunished, even if the gun isn't used to commit a crime? I think not. The potential is still there for a crime to be commited, or some kid to pick it up and accidently harm themselves or others.
I am really getting tired of this silly argument that there has to be a physical item involved for there to be theft. Property is property, whether it is physical or intellectual. If, for example, a photographer makes his living selling a photo, and you scan it and sell the copies yourself as digiatl files you have stolen his work. You did not buy the equipment, take the picture, process the prints nor have the creativity to do it yourself, but you are depriving him of the income his work would have produced. That is theft. Even if you just give them away, you still stole his work.
By the way, theft of intellectual property *can* be a criminal offense - you can very definately end up in jail for doing it.
If you stole the code for a new video game that a company had spent millions to develop and then packaged it and sold it yourself you think that wouldn't be theft? Get real.
This isn't just my opinion, this is the law in every civilized country. I don't support the DMCA or the RIAA - their positions are too extreme and infringe on my fair-use rights. But just as extreme are the people like you who justify their theft of [insert copyrighted material here] by claiming there was no physical objects involved and therefore no crime. Frankly you remind be of the people who claim they don't have to pay taxes because the IRS misspelled "exemption" on page thirty-four of the tax code. That, too, is a silly rationalized argument that flies in the face of reality.
Of course when the shoe is on the other foot and people are complaining about spammers they are up in arms about the "theft" of bandwidth. There is no physical object involved there - so which is it? Is it when its someone else's property being stolen it *isn't* theft but when its your property it *is* theft?
Here in the UK they have a huge screen from FACT (the Federation Against Copyright Theft) with a "Do not tape this, as that would be bad" (paraphrased) message.
Not only do I habitually give this screen the finger (yes, I know, it's immature), but if anything it makes me WANT to sit in the place with a camcorder.
Tiggs
Tiggs
"120 chars should be enough for everyone..."
In any case, I'm not certain it's the downloaders who are committing acts of copyright infringement. The uploaders certainly are, however, and if we suppose that one posts a movie to Usenet or a P2P system, the chances are that well over "399" (or rather 50-100 using new retail prices as a guide of around $10-20, the only DVDs I can generally find for less are those budget films, usually horror ones, that I suspect sell for that much because they're out of copyright) copies are made by the system the infringer initiates.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
I would just like to point out that the steel duties arose mainly out of illegal dumping of steel products into the US market by foreign countries whose steel industries are on government welfare. The US went to the WTO to get the situation remedied and were backhanded. The US steel industry demanded the import duties, and they got them.
Now the WTO has backhanded us again. I find it quite humorous that after having shoved globalization and the WTO down our throats for several decades, it has now bitten us in the ass.
And a note on US farm subsidies. They are fucked up beyond any comprehension of any sane individual. While they should be geared to support the individual family farmer, some 80% goes to agri-based mega corporations (ADM,Conagra, etc.)
One other note, Conagra is fucking evil and has designs on controlling the entire food supply.
Well, actually, I had forgotten about that change. Thanks. Mind you, it still requires a significant threshold (>$1000 retail value distributed over 180 days). My point was that are certain thresholds required to make it criminal, copyright infringement isn't automatically criminal as implied by the parent post I was responding to. For most infringement by file sharers, it would only be civil law.
RIAA and MPAA are so very misleading...(to the point that it's getting both tiring and stupid)
EVERYONE - carpenters, painters, stunspeople, actors, studios and so on - that works on a movie set producing a movie are paid in full when the when their work is done and the contract is fullfilled. When they said that a movie costs xxx million dollars to produce, the price tag includes the wages. If there is anyone losing money due to file swapping, it's the company that produces the movies and sells the rights to use the movie for memorabilia.
I think I can predict what they're going to do now...like RIAA, MPAA will eventually go after the independent movies produced by students, ametuers and hobbyists who's sole channel of distribution is P2P, and deprive the world of good quality movies while filling our and our children's eyes with crap that only benefits them...
-------------------
"Whoever has the gold, makes the rule - that's us, the consumers"
But then there are different styles of parenting. Some teach and punish. I think it is generally accepted that spare the rod and spoil the child has been out of cultural favor for about a century. It used to be acceptable behavior to whack students with canes or rulers giving physical punishment for anything that the teacher deemed an infraction.
It is one thing to say someone should not do something. It is a completely different matter to make it a matter of law, and a completely diffenent thing to make it civil or criminal law. The appropriateness of the punishment is another decision to be made if it is determained that it should even have a law against it.
Having the punishment fit the crime is a tenet of our constitution. Are you willing to send someone to one of our jails for 3 years because they had a file of a movie on their hard drive!! A movie that costs $8 to see in the theater or $20 to buy in CD just a few days or weeks later.
They say that that practice is costing the industry billions of dollars and yet they are consistantly breaking world records for the millions of dollars for first week revenues ($202 mil for the latest Matrix movie). So this is not a hardship.
We don't convict someone unless there is reasonable doubt. This legislation changes that and where the burden of proof is. That is a fundemental erosion of our civil liberties and constitutional protections.
This legislation is flawed and even worse mean and protective of someones profits over the life and liberty of the citizens. Copyright and patent law are civil law not criminal law for a reason. This makes a copyright infringment a criminal offense.
We used to throw people in jail for not paying a debt. Remember debtors prison. People in prison could not earn money to pay the debt, so either it was blackmail of their family or friends to come up with the money or they rotted in prison. It was a deterent sure but the prisons were overflowing with debtors. Being it debt is such a henous crime for sure, maybe we should re-establish that practice, so if you miss a payment, right to the slammer for hard time. Here the law was designed to protect people who loaned money and was part of there business model. They were able to marshal the legal system to threaten and help collect their debts. Many of us left Europe to get away from that nonsense. We set up our own system of self government to protect us from the large money interests. It seems we are slipping back down that slippery slope.
Write your Congressmen and Senators and tell them what you think.
The real problem here is that corporations are above the law.
They have all of the rights of an individual and none of the criminal consequences.
There are civil rulings against corporations ($ fines) but never anything consistent with jail time or the death penalty.
A proper system would be able to disband a corporation for a number of years (w/ frozen assets), and even permanently disbanding a corporation with assets going to the government (corporate death penalty). No matter what you think of the human death penalty, corporations are creations of the government, and as such should be subject to death by the government.
The problem is, when you shut down a corporation you (temporarily) put many people out of work, and the larger they are the more people there are, and they vote. It may be necessary to form a government placement service to help these people, as most of them did no wrong. Demands for their services will still exist, we just need to get them to the right place.
So, in the end corporations can get away with absolutely anything, and the only thing they ever stand to lose is money.
The sad part is we all know corporations would fight this tooth and nail, but if they weren't engaged in criminal activity, there would be no reason to fight.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
I was seriously thinking about it. These new laws are violated by almost everyone up from the start. What would happen if some people devoted to changing the law (like, say, Slashdotters) would constantly keep looking for movie clips or songs on computers of kids from politicians' families and then immediately contacted law enforcement? What if few senator's and congressman's grandnephews were called thieves and sentenced to jail? Simple: Those stupid laws would be backed up in no time. That's certainly something to think about.
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
Bullshit. CD sales drop do appear to match the economy, the correlation isn't right to blame sharing, their own numbers suggest the drop in CD sales is better attributed to CD prices, reduced production (and here), organized crime, and a bunch of other reasons. All of these analyses suggest CD sales losses are not due to filesharing.
So, I'm not sure where you're coming from with your "apparently quite rare" statment. The evidence shows otherwise.
Well, despite you anecdotal evidence, better evidence suggest that downloaders do indeed increase sales. So in short, you're just wrong.
This is also a straw man for a couple of reasons: first, CD sales are hurting, so any "benefit" to the industry or artists is being swallowed up
Wrong. You are assuming loss of CD sales is due to filesharing. As the above linked evidence shows, that's not true. In fact, following this one (and there are others), CD sales might be even worse without the gain from the "try before you buy" effect of filesharing.
Additionally, almost any illegal act, civil or criminal, has a "well, it COULD have a beneficial side effect" argument.
Except that this illegal act is illegal for the reason that it is assumed to harm sales, which the evidence above doesn't support. If it's not harmful, there's no need for it to be illegal. (I'm not advocating making it legal, but a different model is at least necessary.) Whatever other acts you are referring to are illegal for the harm the do cause. (If they don't, then perhaps they shouldn't be illegal either.) Also, the point is that the industry seems to be missing the concept (and evidence), that filesharing can be (or perhaps is) >helpful to them.
You are making yet another assumption, that I am illegally downloading songs. In fact, I have never illegally downloaded a single song. I have nothing personal to rationalize. I am simply someone cursed with a love for logic and reason, not blind reactionism.
http://www.users.on.net/grypen/politics/
This is for Australia, but I plan on having a forum open to the world so everyone may contribute ideas on policy.
If you are Australian, think about becoming a member, and if you are anyone else, bookmark it and check back probably early next year when we should be up and running properly.
Illegal becomes legal if YOU change it.
Visceral Psyche Films
Mind you, it still requires a significant threshold (>$1000 retail value distributed over 180 days).
You showed yourself in the example you gave how easy it is for the RIAA to show $1000 retail value. Just about anyone who has opened up Kazaa for sharing is going to apply.
But anyway, the whole point of this law was to eliminate those requirements for internet sharing programs.
READ the article, people! The threat of a three-year prison term kicks in when anyone makes an illicit copy of a movie "available on a computer network accessible to members of the public," when the film "was intended for commercial distribution but had not been so distributed at the time." Once the film is commercially distributed, the felony penalties appear to no longer apply. In other words, this is for providing jail time when someone distributes a pre-release bootleg of the movie. It's not as serious as it looks. I also found a loophole: Peter Jaszi, a professor at American University who teaches copyright law, said he is "deeply troubled" by the wording of the draft legislation, because it does not say any actual copyright infringement must take place--only that the file be available in a shared folder, Web site or FTP (File Transfer Protocol) site. "It says we don't care if anybody got any of these copies," Jaszi said. "We're going to conclude that at least 10 people did. It relieves the copyright owner of having to prove that any violation of their rights actually happened." It doesn't mention TDCC (do a specific something and you're automatically sent a specific file) triggers on IRC fserves, or for that matter, XDCC bots (instead of folders, they have a list of files that they share and you tell the bot the number of the file you want). Hell, you could have the file explicitly shared with some P2P clients even if the file isn't in a shared folder (I think pyslsk has this functionality, but I'd have to look to be sure). I will laugh in the face of this bill and share my Matrix 4 bootleg on a TDCC trigger on my deligtful self-written fserve script. However, I'm still very strongly against this being passed. Why do conservative senators want to inflate the populations of already-overcrowded prisons in the name of helping businesses line their pockets with purified platinum? Seems like worsening two issues with one bill to me. Maybe that's what conservative people are for...
I like that trailer. Does anyone have a download of it?
Thanks for your detailed reply. You certainly have more balls than the twit who marked my post as "troll."
Justin Moore's report doesn't really prove your point -- see his summary at the end, and notice the low number of other entertainment industries represented in his survey. I think that's another case of the Slashdot writeup overhyping and misinterpreting the source article.
Additionally, I find surveys that show that music pirates buy more CDs to be useless. If one is a file sharing enthusiast, there's the motivation to say that one buys more CDs, even if it's an anonymous survey, because it's hugely self-serving. One is liable to say whatever one thinks will help one's cause. Of course, it would be nice for everybody if it were true, as with the astronomical explosion in music piracy that's occurred over the past year, CD sales would be enjoying an unprecedented change in the good direction.
But several other links you provided were compelling, particularly the Business Week article. Thanks.
For what it's worth, I have nothing personal to rationalize either. Like you, I dislike blind reactionism, as you put it. A little knowledge goes a long way, and despite your uncalled-for "you're just wrong" statement, you are a shining star among typical Slashdotters.
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.
Not to mention the fact that no one has the need for something like an assault rifle unless they're a soldier in hostile territory.
.223 (I'm not a hunter), but darn it if it isn't fun to shoot (although expensive.) Same deal with my computer - I might not need a dual Athlon 2800+ with DVD, 210GB drive, but it sure makes my life a lot easier (although it eats up a lot of power, and makes a space heater superfluous in the winter.)
Lots of people buy things because they WANT them, not necessarily because they NEED them. Most people don't NEED the latest computer/car/tv/stereo/kitchen stove, but they buy them because they want them, think they might want them in the future, because it's a great deal etc. I might not NEED a semi-auto rifle in
If you started restricting purchases to what people NEEDED, very few things would get sold in this country.
Obligatory Homer Simpson quote:
Not Buzzword 2.0 compliant. Please speak english.
Your argument against the survey would apply to any survey that has self-serving interests, yet they are used regularly. Sure, they shouldn't be weighted as heavily as more objective analysis, but is there any realistic analysis method that could possibly convince you that file-sharers do buy CDs that they wouldn't have had they not used file-sharing. Surveying the consumers is the only viable method. Big Brother isn't so integrated yet that we can track who's downloading what AND know what CDs they've bought AND know what's in their brain for why they bought it. So if it's a real phenomenon, how could we ever tell other than these surveys?
As for the "you're just wrong" comment, you've taken it out of context. It was following evidence of the fact that you were wrong, not a solitary statement. So it was appropriate.
I appreciate the cudos, but I'm hoping you can at least see there are credible reasons for the beliving that the RIAA's claim of P2P ruining CD sales is a load of crap and shortsighted on their part.