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3 New Defendants Named In MP3s4free.net Case
As reported in The Australian, three new respondents have been named in the mp3s4free.net link site case, including an employee of the ISP which is said to have hosted the site. The music industry says that ISP employees will be targeted in the future, but given an amnesty if they "inform the music industry."
Now it's illegal to _LINK_ to websites that have content that _MAY_ infringe on someone's copyrights?
And what law makes that illegal? The DMCA?
"Do you now, or have you ever been a contributer to online music sharing? We'll let you go if you simply provide us with a list of music sharers."
...This is just another hopelessly idiotic example of the music industry using their coercion tactics to force people into complying with their own rules, not the rules necessarily of the state, the government, nay, the music industry's rules.
I don't even see how this was illegal:
The website, www.mp3s4free.net, was alleged to contain MP3 audio files which infringe upon the copyrights of the record labels, but is in fact a collection of links to other websites on the Internet, and other MP3 files distributed by permission of the Copyright holders.
All this site was doing was referring to other websites, which may have been illegalt themselves, but a links page that refers to them is not illegal!
Hell, there are sites out there that tell you how to build bombs, sites with "art" that is really just child pornography, sites claiming to be legitimate businesses which scam people out of their money for all kinds of items, and they are going after a page of links?
Let me repeat, a links page is not illegal. This is yet another example of the music industry throwing out ridiculous propoganda to spread the word on their "illegal music crackdown". Stupid.
I RTFA and it appeared to be that an ISP and specific employees are being sued because one customer put up links to some files that might breach copyright. Can't say I agree with the music industry on this one.
It's reasonably clear that it's not illegal, to quote the COPYRIGHT AMENDMENT (DIGITAL AGENDA) ACT 2000 - SCHEDULE 1--Amendment
of the Copyright Act 1968:
"A person (including a carrier or carriage service provider) who provides facilities for making, or facilitating the making of, a communication is not taken to have authorised any infringement of copyright in a work merely because another person uses the facilities so provided to do something the right to do which is included in the copyright"
Merriam webster's dictionary of extorting:
To obtain from another by coercion or intimidation
So, the industry is saying "give us information or get sued." Sounds like intimidation and coercion to me.
How many roads must a man walk down? 42.
There are two potentially disasterous legal precedents that coud be set by this case:
They are both found in this quote from the second article:
It's going be be impossible to prove that he made copies of the music, because he didn't. They're relying on nailing him on distribution charges. So the key element in this case is the definition that the court adopts for "distribution". In my opinion, distribution is the act of actually transmitting the file.
However, if the creation of a link is acknowledged as being considered distribution (and thus copyright infringement), the results for search engines like Google could be disasterous.
The other major point is that they're trying to hold ISP's responsible for the actions of people they host. This, also, could have far-reaching ramifications for the internet community.
"If you see someone get mugged, are you legally bound to report it to the police?"
No. There are very few crimes which a citizen is compelled to report, and the only one I know for certain is child abuse. This is true even if a police officer asks. You can't lie directly, but you aren't under any obligation to speak. 18 USC 1001.
Now, if someone knows you witnessed a crime, then you can be compelled to testify. This is where a good understanding of the 5th Amendment and witness rights and responsibilities in your jurisdiction is important.
If you find yourself in the position of a witness giving testimony, you want to understand the concept of misprision. Generally, that is only an issue if you are an accomplice or otherwise materially involved in the crime.
It's possible that actively and intentionally concealing knowledge of a felony can make you an accomplice to the felony, but 5th amendment protections are pretty strong. When it comes down to it, it's actually going to be a direct yes-or-know question where the person asking the question already has a pretty good idea of the answer:
"Did you see Joe strike John on the face with his open hand, at 12:30 am on October 17th, 2003? Please answer yes or no."
"I must have missed that, I'm sorry. I must have been looking the other way." (Assuming you haven't said anything to the contrary to anyone else on the matter, ever.)
You had also better hope there is no evidence that you did witness the crime and have accepted compensation in return for not reporting it.
If you actually do find yourself in any situation like that, (ANY time a Federal law enforcement agent is asking you questions about ANYTHING), remember these magic words:
"I would like to talk to my attorney prior to any discussions with you."
Repeat this for any and every question you are asked, until you are either arrested or the questions stop.
It doesn't matter that I Am Not A Lawyer. This is Good Advice.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
topreacher@signature.slashdot.org 1% rm -rf sig
Certainly, if every copied MP3 or other media is a 1:1 correlation with a lost album sale, and every "shared" MP3 is responsible for hundreds of lost sales, then one city BUS must then be responsible for the loss of the sale of 40-60 automobiles?
And further, for every car not sold, there is also a loss in license plate fees, gasoline sold. toll road fees and parking fees.
Seems like that would be a perfect test case as the names of cars are copyrighted, as are certain design details, and of course, the purchaser must hold a "license" to operate it on the road.
Oh, wait, some bus riders own cars and some car owners ride the bus!
Maybe there is some truth to the idea that the acquisition of shared downloads has an impact on media sales, but it is obviously not of the magnitude the bastards claim.
We are required by law to be able to log sufficient information to associate IPs with customers if informed to do so by authorities. We may well be required (waiting for legal counsel answer) to keep these logs for several years. Not doing so may lead to criminal charges. By the way, incompetence and lack of resources aren't a defense any more than your cheap-ass landlord can get away with "but those smoke detectors are so pricey".
Not logging customer data is ultimately more expensive to us anyway. When AOL emails us up and says "67.32.1.1 is spamming, drop them or we drop you", a hundred bucks for a RADIUS log drive suddenly looks cheap compared to two fscking weeks of losing customers while I call their incompetent support line to get out of their blacklist.
The whole usenet thing is problematic, although the issue isn't piracy, it's kiddy porn. Usenet admins have been arguing about whether a common carrier defense would work for as long as I can remember. Fortunately, thus far no Usenet providers (or ISPs for that matter) have been charged that I know of, the authorities seem much more interested in the people who post this filth than in us. They change newsgroups regularly, and tracking readers isn't as trivial as grepping RADIUS logs, we'd basically have to monitor every newsgroup.
But if advised to do so we'll drop our news server faster than you can blink, and our customers can go to giganews et al where they have deep pockets. I'm not going to prison just so you can read alt.binaries.kinko-the-clown or whatever they're using these days. But beyond that, I don't personally give a rodent's posterior whether you're sharing the entire first season of Gilligan's Island on gnutella and sucking a month's worth of alt.binaries.mp3s.circle-jerks, as long as you don't saturate the DLSAM and we don't get a subpoena.
Don't like it? Use an anonymizer, find an open wireless access point, run freenet, and/or pull a full newsfeed (oh and have you priced OC3s lately? cuz that's what you'll need for a full feed).
BTW, you're largely right about the economics of smaller ISPs, although many of them seem to forget that customer service is ultimately the most important part of the business.