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Kazaa Ruled Legal in The Netherlands
DreamerFi writes "Developers of Kazaa cannot be held liable for the way people use their software, the Dutch Supreme Court has ruled. The dutch version of the RIAA, BUMA Stemra is now expected to start lawsuits against individuals, following the american lead, according to dutch news channels."
Well d-uh.
Any successful attempt at making code illegal will just turn it into samizdat and speed the adoption of encrypted & anonymous P2P apps (ala FreeNet). It's too bad the recording industry doesn't put as much effort into signing new and original bands as they do fighting to protect their antiquated business model.
Yes, I buy CDs but nothing you'd see on a Top 40 chart, will that make me a criminal one day?
Trolling is a art,
The dutch version of the RIAA, BUMA Stemra is now expected to start lawsuits against individuals, following the american lead
It's about time some judge realizes that P2P is perfectly legal. If there is illegal activity going on (piracy), then it is up to the authorities/owners to find out who the perps are, and do what they feel is necessary.
Hopefully, if these RIAA-led anti-piracy campaigns are successful, it will be more ammo against the DMCA. After all, why would that unconstitutional law be necessary if they have a more effective means of enforcing their copyrights?
Because it's not the US - it's liberal Europe, with a different mindset. We've outgrown our empire building, and can relax with legal drugs, euthanasia, same-sex marriage, far fewer problems with racism, pornography etc. A far cry from the uptight US.
Let's say I use Quickbooks to bookkeep an illegal betting service at my school. Is someone going to sue Quicken Software (or whoever the mfg is) for my use of their software. NO! If anythingthey should allow programmers and designers to learn from the program and develop new ideas on future software. The fact the KaZaa had to be established on the Island of Vanuatu, where corporate laws are far different form US or other westernized economies is ridiculous! Let business flourish! As Adam Sith would say: "laissez faire!"
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So kudos to the court, who are dead right. Kazaa should not be a special case and made illegal, just like video recorders, DVD burners, CD burners, cassette recorders, MP3 player/recorders, codecs, etc etc. The music industry reply is that the files could easily be filtered to stop copyrighted material from being shared. I beg to know how they propose to find out from an MP3 file whether it is copyrighted; the "copyright" bit in the files is removeable so that's not a solution is it?
Conversion Rate Optimisation French / English consultant
They blatently prodice a place/means for people to illegally share copyrighted material. this is its major purpose, and the kazaa developers know that.
If you know about a crime, and you don't do anything about it (or at least try to) you are breaking the law in many places. The fact that Kazaa has not ever tried to limit the music swapping is proof that they should be found guilty of at least neglegence.
Just because you provide a warhouse where people can trade goods, if the goods are mostly stolen property, and you know that, you are in deep shit.
I'm posting AC because this will likely get modded down, but this is the way it is people.
That's already happened.
blame gun manufacturers
New York Sues Gun Makers
blame car manufacturers
Car manufacturers, dealers and mechanics are sued for consequences of breakdowns
blame alcohol manufacturers
Bourbon Drinker Sues For Son's Birth Defects
I wish back in high school that I could have known that, when I was buying records, I was providing the bands I liked with almost no financial support. More than 95% of my purchase price was going straight to one of the most corrupt industries on the planet.
I'm not at all surprised to hear that the Netherlands' version of the RIAA is now going after individual users. The industry has clearly decided that the threat of litigation is about the only thing that's going to keep people buying CD's.
Except for one tiny thing. In the process of trying to scare people, they've made people like me their lifelong enemies. Now, where music is concerned, I have only two ambitions: one is to give the artists I like as much support as possible. And the other is to not give another penny of my money to RIAA labels. Quite simply, the RIAA has a completely different vision of the future than that of music lovers. They want to keep themselves as the middlemen in perpetuity, despite the fact that technology has the potential for making major labels irrelevant.
That's one reason why, as much as I love the iTunes radio store, I would never purchase an album from there that was produced by an RIAA affiliated label.
What people disgusted by RIAA actions need to do is to work hard to educate the public about why the industry does not deserve our support. Music lovers ought to be doing everything possible to starve out the RIAA affiliated labels, and to channel as much of their entertainment dollar directly to artists. And we should especially support artists who are wise enough to help us in this task -- artists who sign with magnatune, or who have a website set up so that they keep the bulk of every purchasing dollar.
I'm generally "Interesting," "Insightful," and even "Funny" here. What the hell happens to me at parties?
Decriminalising is exactly what they did not do! Holland is famous for our "gedoogbeleid", which means "the policy of turning a blind eye". most of the stuff we are famous for is still illegal; these law are simply not enforced. While I think taking small-time dealing and usage of soft drugs out of the arena of criminals is a good thing, I do not think that not enforcing the laws is the way to do it. Either something is illegal or it isn't. Make the laws accordingly.
Why? Because many of these issues are fundamental questions that should be answered by parliament. As things stand now, these issues are handled on a local level ie. by municipal governments, since they simply can choose to enforce (or not enforce) these laws. The "gedoogbeleid" gives them that power.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
If you don't like Windows or Mac OS, for whatever reason, does that make it OK to use a pirated version? Shouldn't you use Linux instead? If people stuck to legal software, Linux would probably be much more widely used right now.
I don't like this idea that because the RIAA provides poor value for money, it entitles people to violate the copyright law. If you don't like the licensing terms, don't use the product. We complain if GPL code gets ripped off. If that copyright should be respected, why should others be ignored?
>>However, thanks to this, we now have Nixon as an example of how antisemitism in the US is as bad as it has been in Europe (where French citizens quite happily turned in Jewish neighbors to their new Nazi overlords)
Do you honestly believe that, had the US been occupied by Hitler, those 40 millions Americans who lapped up anti-semitic propagande in the 1930s would not have done the same? Or that leading American industrialists who expressed Nazi sympathies and anti-semitic opinions in private would not have collaborated? It was luck and the Atlantic ocean that saved American Jews, not the inherent superiority of the US citizenry.
>> Show me one single Jewish person who has been killed (or even assaulted) as a result of Farrakhan's adolf-immitations.
Farrakhan is a symptom of widespread antisemitism in the US. Did you know that according to an Anti-Defamation League poll in 2002, 17% of Americans hold "unquestionably anti-semitic views" (up from 12% in 1998). That rises to 35% among african-americans. The NY Post reported last week that number of anti-semitic attacks in New York City TRIPLED in the last year. True, nobody has died -- yet. But remember back in 1999 there was a gun attack on a Jewish kindergarten. We're not talking about mere graffiti.
>>Funny you should mention the word "deny", as you are engaging in a variation of holocaust denial.
That is one of most insulting things ever hurled at me on slashdot. To deny the holocaust would be to deny the murder of my grandfather's entire family. Nothing I have written has denied the existence of anti-semitism in Europe. I'm just trying to point out that it's not a European disease. It affects the US just as much, and it's about time Americans realised it.
The author of this post asserts his moral rights.