Slashdot Mirror
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.
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!
Copyright law is a civil law not criminal law. As least it's supposed to be.
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
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
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?
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
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.
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.
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
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!
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
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!
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.
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
His DivX collection is slashdotted...Anyone have a mirror?
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.
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
It's perfectly appropriate. It is an "Act" aimed at "Preventing" things. What are the things that it is trying to prevent? Two things -- "Artist's Rights" and "Theft".
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.
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.
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.
... 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.
how's that for legal?
Supreme Court decision
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.)