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Illegal File Trading Draws Two P2P Raids In Europe
had3l writes "Police in Finland raided the operation of a popular Bit Torrent site and arrested 34 people, 30 of which were volunteers who helped moderate the site. This comes right after the MPAA reported that it would start suing tracker servers." An anonymous reader points to a story (currently at the top of RespectP2P.org's homepage) about the raid yesterday morning of Dutch eDonkey sites Releases4u and Shareconnector.
Hmmm, no wish to upset but if it starts in other countries no doubt the MPAA and RIAA will try it here (with the help of their favorite police depts, of course)
... by having moderators. If you've got moderators, and they're making absolutely no attempt to curtail copyright infringement, you're pretty much asking to be considered an accessory. No "common carrier" defense if you're actively deleting and moderating your sites content.
Idiots.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
When you can sign up for Netflix and get them delivered to your home for about 66 cents each!
Maybe I'm just lucky, but where I live I can get 14 movies delivered a week with Netflix's 8 movies at a time plan.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
"The Motion Picture Ass. of America (MPAA) today announced (PDF) that it is pursuing civil actions against hundreds of server operators of BitTorrent, eDonkey and DirectConnect P2P file-swapping networks, in its war on internet movie piracy."
Emphasis mine but "Ass." is theirs.
How to Download YouTube Videos
On WinMX (which isn't as good as it used to be, which is why I dare mention it on
"The Recording Industry Association of Japan has noticed that you are sharing files whose names match artists or recordings owned by our members. You are reminded that such..." and so on and so on.
I got a couple of these in one day -- haven't run WinMX recently though so I don't know if they are still happening. It would be interesting to try sharing only files with ASCII names and see if that makes a difference.
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
Yeah, we are back to the assumption that Corporate America likes to make that every single song, movie or piece of software would have been legally purchased if they had not been illegally downloaded. Obviously that is false, but it makes the "losses sufferred" sound really impressive.
This problem will continue, and we do not want to have any P2P curtailed because large companies and organizations have political clout. I do not think it will ever be stopped by lawsuits, and even though the MPAA and others may be over-reacting, there is still a perception that digital media sharing circumvents the legal selling of products. Is there a way to slow or stop the sharing of music and video that would appease the those companies and yet not bring down the P2P system?
PeerGuardian helps in the fashion that it blocks all the _HUNDREDS_ of incoming connections the finnish police and various trade organizations have been trying. Yes, on my computer.
Also, there's a rumor going about that the finnish police have actually made backdoors into a lot of peoples computers by infecting the torrents that were available on finreactor. Quite illegal, if true. That's it for the ethics of the police I guess.
Insert Comment about star systems slipping through your fingers...
The gathering storm against bittorrent users has already started to worry me. I have been using suprnova to find torrents of TV shows only, no movies. I'm essentially time shifting content that I could almost as easily have "tivo"-ed myself.
A recent example is that a friend of mine missed last week's episode of her favorite show, ER. I got a torrent the next day and burned her a DVD.
I wish that type of usage was considered "fair use" but it's not.
BREIN (Dutch for BRAIN) is the little sister of the MPAA. They kinda follow their actions and immitate them as closely as possible, I guess. They even have a commercial in the Dutch cinema's, bothering people that pay for good movies with blah blah about piracy.
:)
Next time I bring my camera with me, I will film the commercial
Slashdot: stuff for news, nerds that matter, matter for news, stuff that nerd
I've got a friend who got C&Ded for downloading a tv show while running PeerGuardian with all of the latest updates.
Unfortunately, IP blocking like PG is pretty much worthless. Yes, it's easy to find out the IP's of the corporate parents, but they need only get a consumer level DSL/Cable line or have some of their employees run their pirate hunting software at home... and they will be virtually impossible to track down.
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
A lot of people have said that the ongoing copyright crackdown represents the end of the sort of "Wild West" nature that the internet had at first.
I disagree.
This represents the wild west nature finally becoming complete.
Previously the internet was a place of lawlessness.
Now it's still a place of lawlessness, but on top of this we have little tyrannies, where those rare people with lawyers can make anything they want happen just by issuing threats and governments can take things out at will without having to worry about pesky things like jurisdiction, right or courts. Like the wild west, where on top of the chaos it was overlaid that if whatever self-appointed lawman felt like it you would get hanged or shot for no reason at all.
Perhaps this comes down to how you define the word "laws"; after all, there have been many times throughout justice where "law" meant nothing but the imposed will on a subjugated populace of a bunch of armed thugs. But I think laws imply justice. I see none of this coming to the internet, only the raw exercise of naked power.
MPAA did not win a single court case in 2004. Groskter was found to be legal, and there are a number of previous rulings that show that providing technology that enables people to share files does not constitute breach of copyright! The RIAA and ARIA (Australian equiv.) are seeing this now in their Kazaa case currently underway in Australia - and if a case can not be proven against Kazaa (which still has some elements of centralisation that could provide Kazaa with a way to 'filter' or 'block' copyright material) then the chances of being able to find that a simple website with links to trackers (which themselves are not a copyright infringement either - just a 'pointer') are guilty of copyright violation are almost zero.
Time for the record labels and movie studios to wake up to themselves - they are alienating a large part of their support base. All the expenses of lobbying various governments around the world, and the associated legal fees around every case is being paid for, and funded by consumers who purchase their records!
They should listen to the overpaid Robbie Williams, who said something along the lines of "I dont care, I am rich, if yo uwant my music, just download it!" (He said this in 2002 - I can't find an online source).
http://www.poliisi.fi/poliisi/krp/home.nsf/PFBD/28 FB313B1DCD10EAC2256F6A004A5FA5?opendocument
in Finnish, sorry.
++K
<[letter kay][at][number seventy seven][dot][finnish TLD]>
What's completely, utterly amazing that there hasn't been a single mention of the incident in the news of any of the tv channels, nor anything in the major papers either. For a while there was a short item on the site of Helsingin Sanomat (the largest paper in Finland) but that was taken away after an hour or so. Makes you suspect that the police might actually be controlling any reporting on the subject? Guess that's it for truly independent mass media in Finland.
The *AAs see this as a success in their "crusade" against "pirates".
Remember: Moderating on websites may impact your criminal record.
Grundgesetz * 23. Mai 1949 - 30. November 2007 - http://www.vorratsdatenspeicherung.de/
Has anyone actually fought the RIAA cases, or have they all been settled out of court? If I understand it correctly, they are suing people who are sharing files, not those downloading, and they are asking for $x per file shared. Wouldn't it be valid to ask them to prove how long you spent connected to the p2p network and then multiply this by your available bandwidth. That way you may be able to argue that you could only possibly have uploaded a certain number of songs, regardless of how many you were sharing. Sure, you may still end up paying a couple of hundred bucks, but that's far better than the few thousand I've read about.
Yeah. And Nelson Mandela was wrong to disobey the apartheid laws.
A bad law is a bad thing, and civil disobedience is one way to protest it.
I am trolling
that /. kicked around last week about "how could
you prosecute BitTorrent since no one person is
holding or moving whole copies of the copied works?"
I have to ask, since the article points out that police are also striking at eDonkey servers, when the cops are going to be knocking on my door. My son and half the kids in his dorm are swapping/swiping movies like crazy with eDonkey. All of a sudden it looks like I have to get knowledgable about my liability when he brings his computer home for the Christmas break.
SLASHDOT: news for people who can't concentrate on work or have no life at all and got tired of yelling back at the TV.
I do it every week. Yes, I know it's illegal. Yes I know I probably won't be able to in the future with the draconian laws coming down.
I have a special circumstance though. I live out in the middle of no where. I don't get broadcast TV except on one station...I do on the other hand get high-speed DSL.
Now I COULD get Comcast cable, but since I only watch 4 tv shows a week, I'm not going to be paying 50 bucks a month (yes, 50 bucks here even for just plain basic). Not to mention Comcast likes to raise their rates at the drop of a hat.
Dish services are also out because the number of trees they can't get a good signal, I've tried. SO that leaves me with downloading these TV shows.
But what the TV networks are missing out on is that THEY should offer torrents of their shows right from their web pages. If they throw in the regular commercials how is this different than just watching it over the airwaves? I would download them in a heartbeat and gladly watch their commercials if they did this. Why are so uptight about this? They should be like "hell, download all you wish and trade them with your friends...as long as the commercials are still there we're still making our money...and we could also target advertising better for people that download and that could generate even more money blah blah blah..."
Movies though, I don't download at all. Never have, never will.
"Leo Fender was in a 'state of grace' when he designed the Stratocaster." -- Paul Reed Smith
Advertisments for very well known companies are appearing on the biggest torrent sites. The money from these companies is the reason why downloading movies is easy enough to become mainstream. Without this money casual users may well be put off, as the process of finding torrents would become more obviously illegal and more difficult.
- Finreactor (the finnish siten in question) admins solicted for 'donations' - in other words, took money for access to torrent trackers. Also the tracker required registration, and kept 'ratios' for each user. Heck, the *bank account number* of the site was in plain view asking for donations directly to the bank account of the admins. In other words, the activity was very very stupid.
.torrents themselves is a gray area thing. Admins definitely facilitated copyright violations, but... how illegal that is? Can they be strung up for what their users did? It's a test case for P2P in Finland. I think the fact that the admins took money for access to the site will nail their asses for *something*, but the rest is still up in the air.
- By Finnish law, the crime becomes 'tekijänoikeusrikos' instead of 'rikkomus' when money is involved. The difference is that for the lesser crime, maximum penalty is just fines - and I doubt police could even get search warrants for the lesser offense.
But in this case since money is involved, and prosecution will claim that there was a goal for financial gain, and it becomes a bigger crime (max 2 years in the can). And suddenly it's easy for the police to get all the details they need from ISPs & search warrants for the busts.
So in other words: Taking money (even if it's just 'donations' to cover tracker bandwidth) is a nice way to get your ass in jail.
The case does have few murky details - they cannot prosecute everyone (over 10000 users supposedly), and distributing the
I know that the boards of the media companies get group chubbies when ever someone suggest systems where they don't have to produce products, hence the cooperation with iTunes.
They dream of the day when no one owns physical media, but instead pays a per use fee to listen or view media.
Also, as long as I can't rent Troma movies at BlockBuster I'm gonna find them on P2P networks. Oh, and if it's not utter garbage I wind up buying them.
Bacardi + slashdot = negative karma.
"Police in Finland raided the operation of a popular Bit Torrent site and arrested 34 people, 30 of which were volunteers who helped moderate the site.
Register or someone else mistranslated original text. They are suspecting 4 admins plus 30 "powerusers", nobody has been arrested yet. Yesterday police raided admins' houses and seized their computers.
Apparently putting "donations" button to tracker-page got them badly screwed, since now they're were getting direct or indirect monetary benefit for running tracker (which had lot of illegal files).
More or less luckily TPB has already promised to lend it's tracker for Finnish warezors;D
yeah, cause no one here is involved with open source.
incase you haven't noticed code can/is considered to be 'intellectual property'. yet for some reason so many people don't love those laws and so something weird, they *give the code away for free*.. how strange..
MABASPLOOM!
Using the same logic that you just did, there's nothing inherently wrong with stealing anything. You didn't pay for it, so it has no value...
Gimme a break. I don't see how you can say in one breath that these P2P laws are "stupid" while claiming that enforcement of said laws is "good". When is it ever good to enforce stupid laws?
If anything, people using these sites are engaging in the most peaceful form of resistance I can imagine-- nobody is getting physically harmed by someone downloading a movie or an MP3. Nobody is being threatened with a weapon. Nobody is being deprived of physical property.
Ghandi would be proud.
All I know about Bush is I had a good job when Clinton was president.
One argument I see again and again with this, is that "they never possessed the original copyrighted materials, only the torrent file", but that isn't entirely true.
In order to create the .torrent file, you have to have the full original source material. Someone had the original source material (movie, dvd, software, game, etc.) and created the .torrent file from that source material. This person then must have given that .torrent file to the tracker server itself (or the person who created the .torrent is running the tracker themselves).
In fact, since the .torrent file has to directly contain the URL of the tracker itself, you can't simply "upload" the .torrent to a tracker and have it function, unless you know the exact tracker URL that server uses to host its torrent files. If you want to put a .torrent on 10 trackers, you have to create 10 separate .torrent files. You can't reuse the same .torrent file for all 10 trackers.
This means the tracker operator and the people providing torrents are collaborating in some way, or the tracker is publishing its tracker URL to facilitate people creating torrent files for it, from copyrighted source materials.
Its a little greyer than originally thought.
It provides the proper de-centralizing stimulus.
What if George Washington had been captured and executed by the British? Was the Revolution de-centralized enough to survive his loss? Is America's democracy de-centralized enough to survive the poor quality of Diebolds voting machines?
Stuff like this will benefit change, not only in America, but in China and Iran, as well. In those countries, the kids in the universities might be apprehended and clubbed to death by the Moral Police, at any given minute. But with sufficient security and de-centralization, they can still communicate with the outside world. Enough to possibly, one day, bring decent living conditions to the culture of power which uses and discards people as you would a tool.
This is a good thing. Good changes have never come easy, or with a consensus.
I'm still waiting for Palladium. I think that will be one of the best changes, for the good of all Humanity.
It was finreactor.com
Source : http://fr.news.yahoo.com/041215/1/46m9q.html
ALPA (french RIAA) - with the RIAA help, and police today closed a bittorrent hosting site (http://torrent.youceff.com) holding many copyrighted movies.
That site was hosted in France and a court order was sent to catch peoples using the service at the same time - it seems they logged 160000 unique IPs.
Under local lows, the site admin can get up to 3 years of jail + an up to 300000 fine.
Finreactor.com.
101 idiotic ways make a point:
#73 : compare the struggle against the MPAA in your attempts to download motion pictures from the Internet with the emancipation of a race of people from racist oppression.
Don't get me wrond, I do understand your point (i.e. that the original post was a massive overgeneralisation) but you don't do yourself any favours comparing what are basically selfish goals with the one of the great heroes of the 20th century.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
And of course its just TOO nice that the civil disobedience also provides music, movies, games, ect. without ever paying for them.
Its really tough to be a dissident in digital times...
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
In 100 years, when people read about these events in history books rather than newspapers, it's going to seem totally insane... our police forces chasing after and persecuting people for what essentially amounts to the distribution of ideas. If only the rest of the world could see it from a historical perspective. When we look back on the witch hunts of a few hundred years ago, we wonder how the masses ever got themselves set on such a self-destructive course, and why they allowed it to continue for so long. But when you're caught up in the drama of it all, it's sometimes hard to imagine life in any other way. So how long will we allow these witch hunts over intellectual property to continue?
What are YOU doing to protect P2P?
Let's face it, there are a lot of people out there who are using P2P to illegally acquire and distribute copywrited materials.
P2P is being threatened, not only by corporate executives and ignorant congresscritters, but by people who abuse the technology. P2P will be outlawed outright unless the legitimate users of P2P networks start policing their own.
How? Well that's a good question. A willingness to admit that there is a problem would be a good place to start.
There's a Mercedes gap too. I want one and can't afford one, but it's not government's job to do anything about it.
Yes, it?s easy to find out the IP?s of the corporate parents, but they need only get a consumer level DSL/Cable line or have some of their employees run their pirate hunting software at home... and they will be virtually impossible to track down.
They will also be much less effective. Someone's DSL or cable connection isn't going to be nearl as effective as the corporate T3 when it comes to searching out file swappers.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Except no one is stealing anything.
They are MANUFACTURING.
Pirates merely exploit the same characteristic of "intellectual property" that Media Moguls do: production costs are trivial.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
I always thought something was worth whatever you actually paid for it.
Close, but not quite correct. It is worth as much as you would be _willing_ to pay for it. So the actual loss is much lower, but certainly not zero.
Assume 1 million songs get illegally downloaded that would usually cost $1, but the downloaders would be willing to pay at most $0.5. Then the loss is $500k, not zero or $1M.
The Movie Mafia is addicted to high profits.
They pitch it as "Own it today" like you would a book but don't want you to copy it.
So that means they are Licensing it but they will not recognize that you have already
paid for your license when the media fails or gets lost.
Either way they will loose:
-If they loose control: They will get less $ for their movies.
-If they get absolute control: People will start making their own movies and will get NO $.
Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration
If you are going to do the crime, be ready to do the time. It's well known that the charge of the crime is going to be based off the retail rate for the product. They are being charged with avoiding paying that known retail value. I don't see what's wrong with listing that.
DOWNLOADING STUFF FROM THE INTERNET IS NOT CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE. Civil disobedience involves suffering the consequences of your action, to bring the public's attention to those consequences. Hiding in your parents' basement loading up DVD-Rs with ripped movies accomplishes nothing towards the goal of changing copyright law; if anything it strengthens the **AA's claim that copyright infringement is too easy and widespread and must be legally and programmatically curtailed.
As the grandparent suggested, you have almost certainly never been involved in the creation of anything that can be pirated. But I bet you're utterly outraged at GPL violations, too. Those damn copyright infringers and license breakers... oh wait.
Oh, spare me. If this is civil disobedience, we should be glad they got busted. That's the whole point. It isn't civil disobedience if you're trying to avoid getting caught.
Basically the reason people steal music is that the industry has failed to provide the service to us adaquately. Its not the users fault, they aren't evil. Greed is the only reason why we have suits and arrests right now, the RIAA refuses to address the problem and instead is fighting a war they can't win(sound familiar see: War on drugs). Furthermore everything seems to indicate that music and film piracy has little effect on overall sales and honestly I don't see metallica starving, maybe if they bought less coke they wouldn't need the tiny bit of extra cash... You can come back and say what about the indie artists all you want, if anything this increases exposure and sales...
Judging by any number of past gaffes - like C&D notices going out for Professor Usher's lecture, OpenOffice tarballs, etc. - it's obvious that nobody at the C&D farms is actually downloading the material to see if it really infringes. They're just doing searches, correlating filenames to IP addresses, and pumping out warnings. DSL or cable is more than sufficient for this.
If RIAA/MPAA aren't doing some of their scanning over consumer broadband lines, they're even more daft than I thought.
"BSD: Free as in speech. Linux: Free as in beer. Windows 10: Free as in herpes." --Man On Pink Corner in #52607549.
Those who want the law reformed need to posit credible alternatives, alternatives that ensure that movies (and music and books etc) can still be made, before arguing that there's something inherently unjust in having to pay to have access copyrighted material.
Right now, the only person I've seen who's made any effort to do this is Richard M. Stallman: his proposals only seem to apply successfully to computer software (I can't see a GPL'd movie being fundable, can you?); they do not require copyright reform; and he's demonised on Slashdot all the time as some kind of raving lunatic for his efforts.
Civil disobedience doesn't simply involve breaking laws that get in your way. They involve breaking the unjust parts of laws that are clearly unjust to begin with. Given copyright law, as it stands, gave people the movies they so deliberately set out to download without paying for, and given the lack of proposed alternatives that are relevent to that medium, and the hatred spewed by the same idiots who like P2P against those who make the efforts to formulate alternatives, I find it hard to accept there's any civil disobedience here. It's a simple case of freeloading.
And, you know what, if everyone downloading a movie today who hasn't made some effort to directly fund it - bought the DVD, watched it at the theater, etc - spent a day in jail tomorrow for doing just that, I'd see it as just desserts.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
But my reply was more directed toward the parent posters scorn about blaming the actions of other countries' MPAA on the US body, even when that is obviously the case. The MPAA is certainly pulling the strings on this one.
Murphy was an optimist.
... but you don't do yourself any favours comparing what are basically selfish goals ...
I wouldn't call supporting the free flow of information purely selfish. Our society has the technology to almost freely distribute any kind of information. Big corporations try to prevent this progress, because they are scared that they lose their grip on people. Information is what advances our society, it's the essence of all progress. Making a sharing of information a criminal act is a very slippery slope towards totalitarism and intellectually poor society.
Small European
It is not anyone's right to break the law, no matter how silly the law is.
No. If a law is Immoral, it is everyone's Moral Responsibility to break that law.
And I bet you would just love intellectual property laws if you had any intellectual property.
Wow. This just goes to show that you have no concept of how anyone can have Morals.
I support the Center for Consumer Freedom
... this is how likely it is that they will be able to shut down the largest bittorrent tracker in the world (and the answer to the question you are thinking about is no, that site is not a tracker) :)
Wrong. The day copyright is abolished is the day I don't have to release any source for anything I make from GPLed sources. While you will be able to copy the binary if I release it (and assuming you can break whatever DRM I use) I will not be required to give out the source.
That's not the case today. Because of copyright law I am required to give out the source
I would argue that current US copyright laws are immoral. Mass Media and Pop culture are pretty much the only culture we have anymore.
My great grandchildren will not be able to watch the movies or listen to the music I like today because it will _still_ be under copyright in 70 years. How could you possibly think having some random corporate entity charge royalties for "Happy Birthday" can be right moral compromise?
Granted people aren't being physically harmed, but random people are being threatened with lawsuits and financially harmed for something which really benefits the public good; having creative works exposed to as many people as possible.
To take laws written to protect the authors from the powerful publishers and turn them as a weapon for publishers to legally threaten their own customers, how is _that_ moral?
Whether it could have or would have been legally purchased isn't the issue for them. The issue is they own the copyright on the shows and they have contractual agreements concerning how the movies should be distributed. Distribution of movies or software which aren't in the public domain is illegal in most countries. If it's not in your country, it likely will be very soon.
The rise of the corporation in this world and their subjugation of governments around the world is an issue worth debating; however, as it currently stands they hold all the leverage legally speaking.
OK, someone in here has to play Devil's advocate and take the side of the RIAA/MPAA/etc (at least for a little bit!) Regardless of whether or not we like it, think it's fair, or intend on abiding by it, the rules say it's illegal. Same goes for speed limits. I think there are places where the speed limit that is posted is absolutely ridiculous, and (most times) I knowingly choose to ignore it and go the speed I think to be appropriate. Most times, I don't get caught, but when I do, I have no grounds to argue or complain about it. There is a law, I broke it, I need to be an adult about it and accept my punishment. That fine will determine my willingness to speed again. (It hasn't stopped me thus far! heh heh) Same goes for file sharing. If you get caught, you can bitch and complain about unfair, or technicalities but fact of the matter is there is a copyright law and if you are sharing copyrighted files you are breaking this law. As for the banter about copying rented or Netflix movies versus downloading, they are both still violation of copyright law, regardless of which is cheaper, easier, quicker, etc. Everyone just needs to admit to themselves that what they are doing is illegal and quit trying to justify it or explain it away. Now, this all being said, I agree that the laws are crazy. I also will say that they can sue people, arrest people, confiscate as many servers as they want, and the fact of the matter is, file sharing will never go away as long as we have an internet. Yesterday it was Napster. Today it's BitTorrent. Tomorrow it's ??? As long as FTP is a valid protocol, we will always be able to "share" files. And as long as I am participating in any of it, I am taking the risk of being caught...same as speeding. The post I agree with most is that rather than try to fight the beast, the powers that be should instead embrace the digital era and offer cheaper downloads, or some such. I think iTunes did a wonderful thing, and I think the MPAA should take note and follow suit. Will it stop file sharing and copyright infringement? No, but at least it's a way for them to get back some of their "losses". I would be more inclined to purchase a movie download for $5-$10 LEGALLY than to run the risk of getting caught trying to get it for free. The industries have brought this on themselves for overpricing the media we purchase (which is why they are huge money making conglomerates). If they intend on stemming the flow of copyright violation from the gaping wound of P2P file sharing, they need to make an effort to slow the flow, rather than apply a tournaquet and in doing so, have to sever the limb of interest in their material. If they can get away with successfully prosecuting the torrent site, then they also need to bring litigation against the torrent site's ISP (for allowing copyrighted material to be sent across their service), the user's ISP (for allowing the user access to the torrent site), the user (for possessing copyrighted material...this same logic applies to getting busted with a stolen VCR, even if you didn't know it was stolen), the maker of the user's network card (provides the PC access to the network, in much the same way the torrent site provides access to the shared files), the cable modem/DSL router makers (same as for the network card makers), the Bell's (for providing the backbone for the data to pass across), and the list goes on and on! There are lots of pieces involved in the transferring these files. To think that taking out the torrent hosting sites will even put a dent in stopping this from happening is naive on their part. I sincerely hope that nothing comes of the raids in Finland. I don't see how it could, but throw the right amount of power and money at anything, and you will be amazed at the results. However, at the end of the day, we are all still criminals. Shame on us.
There are 10 kinds of people in this world: Those who know binary, and those who don't.
First of all, I love Netflix myself - but no matter how much you mess with the queue you are not going to get a movie before it is released. Sometiems I like to fetch movies on DVD before they are released (even after I've watched them in theaters!) to replay a few scenes. As you say it can takea while, so I usually only do with with movies I plan to buy anyway - if I'm interested enough to download it, I'm intersted enough to buy it. They just don't make movies avaailiable as soon as they should (i.e. before pirates get them out). I wonder if the movie industry has ever considiered that it might actually boost sales to sell a DVD at the same time as the movie is in a theater - you would know pretty quickly if it was worth seeing in a theater or not, and sales might be better than otherwise. Plus of course you can always release the "directors edition" later to re-sell DVD's...
But the other good reason to use trackers is for TV shows. Here you really have no recourse, since some shows are seemingly never going to come to DVD... plus you can get HDTV versions of shows you might not be able to get using HDTV locally, or if you just can't watch it at the time it's on watch it later (how am I supposed to record HDTV today without some pretty expensive equipment?)
Especially in the case where I have already watched a show with commercials and they are not selling episodes, I have no qualms at all about downloading TV shows.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
"rikos" == crime
"rikkomus" == misdemeanour
The police must think they have grounds for proving this is a crime, a misdemeanour wouldn't be sufficient to warrant seizing equipment.
It isn't actually illegal (yet) for a natural person to copy material for personal use in Finland, but making it available is. This affects the users.
Secondly, the administrators were aware of and facilitating illegal activity. If you know about illegal activity and don't report it, you're alredy over the line.
The money aspect is probably the biggest issue here.
I've read suggestions that some users' machines were trojaned by a security company employed by the entertainment industry to help gather evidence. If this is true it could add an interesting spin. If this was illegal it won't nullify the evidence (as in the US) but could be very bad publicity for the entertainment industry at the very least.
I'm sorry if I haven't offended anyone
I don't buy the "civil disobedience" argument for a second, but I don't understand your principle that someone has to contribute to the funding of a something to enjoy it. Obviously, people are free to figure out some legitimate way to profit from what they do or not, but it's not my responsibility to see that they do. If I notice that Sears is selling tires for less then they're worth, am I obligated to buy something else while I'm at the store to make sure Sears stays in business? This point has been made over and over, and I'll say it again. Technology giveth and technology taketh away; the media companies are abusing the law to maintain their (outrageous) profits in the face of the fact that they no longer have a monopoly on the means of reprodcuction and distribution of content.
As far as I know Copyright Infringement is a civil offense and not a criminal one.
Thus it is a "infringement" and not a "crime".
[except in the US perhaps?]
Anyone with some legal insight into Finnish Copyright Law care to shed some light on this?
I would expect the Finnish people to be released and their systems returned shortly, as well as the case dropped. Might give the owner a fine, however.
// instant - "I for one welcome our new Decaff Coffee-Flavoured-Coffee Overlords"
"I wish that type of usage was considered "fair use" but it's not."
Of course not. However I see a business opportunity. Superid's "Did you miss something?" download service. For a small fee, you can download what you missed. Superid gets an income, especially since the IT industry is tanking. The other parties get there cut. And the consumer gets to pay for the convience of watching what they want.
Well, not to fuel the flames, but to give my 2 cents about your list of American inventions:
- personal computer: yes, likely
- computer: depends on your definition of computer..probably not
- light bulb: certainly not
- sewing machines: didn't know shit about their invention, but it seems that they weren't an American invention
Not-A-Flame-More-A-PSA:One thing that Non-USAsians don't like about some Americans is a sometimes met "Pavel Chekovish"-attitude "everything cool must be an American invention".
I remember that high school exchange student from Italy that was asked "do you have pizza in Italy?"..
America likes to make that every single song, movie or piece of software would have been legally purchased if they had not been illegally downloaded
/ al/s-ar tnet.htmp hp
I've taken another route that the **AA and BSA can do absolutely nothing about. I simply look for Creative Commons, open source and free software. I'm getting started in Lighting. I am following the open DMX project and it's associated free software. I started looking to free software after getting hooked on Mozilla Firefox and Open Office.
It's true that not everyting is free, but supporting free helps it grow where piracy helps nobody but the pirate. On the Open USB to DMX project, they are offering the completed manufactured device for less than I can build it myself. They provide schematics and the software code for free. I'm ordering several because the device has lots of 3rd party support both commercial and free. Even advanced computer lighting consoles with a large inventory of moving head lights is supported.
The movement is catching on. There were several (still are) propirtory methods to send DMX (lighting control signals) over Ethernet. Most were quite expensive. A wireless link to send DMX over Ethernet wirelessly by one manufacture is about $7000.
Artistic Licence opened up their DMX over Ethernet protocol to the public domain. It's called ArtNet. Now to do the same type wireless control, all you need is a couple off the shelf D-Link wireless access points. Artistic Licence even provides a how to in there FAQ's. Needless to say, Artnet is now becomming the defacto DMX over Ethernet solution.
The open USBDMX dongle is becomming the defacto winner in the USB to DMX hardware department with the most 3rd party support. Enttec was first to market and now have backlog of orders, even though they provide the schematic and software for free.
Info in open USB to DMX is here;
http://www.enttec.com/dmxusb.php
There is nothing Martin or other manufactures can do about it. It's not piracy. The best thing they can do is get on board. Light Factory is selling their software and even sell the Enttec interface. Enttec makes the dongle and is a distributor for LightFactory. They have a great Christmas special on right now. Enttec does not try to lock you into anybody's software. I can use Freestyler, DMX Control, Mandolator, Simple 16, or other software instead. LightFactory does not lock you into the Enttec interface. You have a choice among many DMX adaptors. You can even output ArtNet directly from you PC using your existing Ethernet card if you wish and use one of many ArtNet to DMX boxes out there at the other end of your LAN. Even doing a Wireless link is no longer expensive.
info on Artnet is here;
http://www.enlightenment.co.uk/frames/prod
Light Factory information;
http://www.enttec.com/lightfactory.
The days of buying an adaptor and being locked into that manufactures software or the other way around with hardware is over. Some manufactures with a buggy whip business model will soon feel the pressure of market forces.
In summary.. Don't do the piracy thing. Go open. Support artists that provide legal free open downloads. Don't pirate the rest of their album.
It's legal and good for everyone except the buggy whip manufactures.
The truth shall set you free!
Yes, of course it is the US that is to blame. The movies are created there, why would Finnish people even care about lost profits in the US unless there was somekind of external pressure?
There is a lot of flaming going on here about the ethics of downloading these movies, etc, and not a lot of discussion about the implications of stated events. You might think that I'm one of those tin foil hat guys, but lets be serious.
The problem as the RIAA/MPAA sees it, with regards to file sharing, is not that you are depriving them of profits or that you have broken copyright law. They take issue with the fact that long-term use of file sharing to distribute their media will curtail their plans for purely subscription based services.
The RIAA, MPAA, cable companies, and other media companies are looking towards subscription based services where you are locked into a particular service. Right now, we have to pay a subscription fee to watch cable television. Its a steady, consistent form of income for the companies providing the service. The RIAA and MPAA would LOVE to migrate to subscription based services. Netflix and others are the beginning of this. Eventually, instead of getting DVDs in the mail, you will simply be able to punch it up on your TV for a monthly fee without the ability to copy it. Without an actual physical medium to distribute the content, copying becomes more difficult.
The real problem lies with the fact that a company (MPAA) can make a threat, and half way around the world a police force raids some place and arrests 30 people for an offence that is actually a civil matter, not a criminal one. The fact that the police and government forces are butting into civil matters is extremely frightening. It is one more nail in the coffin for civil rights and for freedom.
Call me crazy, but to me, this is the same thing as being arrested for slander. Sure, the person that I have slandered has every right to take me to court and work to receive compensation for my lies. But what right does the government have to come in and arrest you for it? There is a big difference between a civil offence and a criminal offence. It is a line that must be well defined in order to preserve individual liberties.
It is no more possible to stop file sharing activities than it is to end drug trade, prostitution, or running moonshine.
Alochol was legalized in the US because enforcing the laws made the mob and crooked officials rich, and because the laws effects on people were not to cause them to stop drinking, but to change when, where, and how they drank.
Keeping these other things illegal is wasteful. Enforcing these laws doesn't help the 'victims' or the 'criminals', and in some cases makes things worse.
More specifically:
Artists do not get more money from RIAA/MPAA prosecution of traders (the lawers might). Crack babies aren't helped or prevented by The Drug War. Neighborhoods do not clean up from the police putting a bunch of hookers and johns in jail.
But to answer your question, there is nothing that 'legitimate' file traders need to do. It can't be stopped. It's just a matter of time before the current social system crumbles before the mighty wheels of the next version.
Last I checked, Blizzard was using Bittorrent to distribute patches for their MMORPG, World of Warcraft. That sounds like a legal use to me.
- the salaries/benefits of the people who work for the record companies.
- the cost of machinery and materials to produce and package CDs.
- cost of warehousing and shipping
- the costs of unsold inventory
And I'm sure there are many other items I've omitted.Self awareness - try it!
"They knew they were downloading something with a known retail value, and that it was illegal."
yeah well smoking weed is illegal in some places too. so what? would you rather do whats legally right, or morally right. thats the issue. do we want a society where we have to pay for the privilege of viewing art, or should artists be happy that they are able to create and do it for love of the creation. You think all art will stop if people dont get paid? manufactured art is never better than people who do it for the love. what happened to you man - it used to be about THE MUSIC.
what kind of society do you want to live in. a society where new technology progresses mankind to a state of equality; or a society where a few people with gold plated shark tanks rule us all in a corporate feudal system.
I'll just use my special getting high powers one more time...
They have a right to charge for their work if they want to. Just because they made it, that doesn't give you a right to it.
As a citizen of the Republic of Finland, I have to say that I would feel a lot safer if the police would concentrate on catching real criminals (murderers, rapists, thiefs, muggers) and public nuisances (drunk drivers) who harm real people instead of going after a bunch of nerds whose only crime is that they may have lowered the potential profits of some media corporations by an undefinied amount.
The police is hopelessly underfunded and understaffed as it is. They should be thankfull that someone is sitting in the front of their computer playing a warezed game, as opposed to driving over little children while drunk.
Yes, I'm annoyed; it's my tax money that's being wasted here.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
"The Motion Picture Ass. of America (MPAA)"
Perhaps this is the new way to refer to them, and we should all jump on board.
DISCLAIMER:
I don't believe what I write, and neither should you.
Indeed. If you think music should be free, create some free music. Ditto movies, etc.
Yeah, real interesting.
TFA states that those arrested face 2 years in prison if convicted. I, for one, would assume that implies that FInland does have criminal penalties for copyright infringement. According to a quick google search, Italy and the UK (which are not the US), at least, also have criminal penalties for copyright infringement. I'd assume many other countries do as well.
Note that some violations, like in the US, are not criminal. Large violations generally are.
Please don't post "facts" if you have no idea what you're talking about.
Don't blame me; I'm never given mod points.
What are YOU doing to protect FTP?
Let's face it, there are a lot of people out there who are using FTP to illegally acquire and distribute copywrited [sic] materials.
FTP is being threatened, not only by corporate executives and ignorant congresscritters, but by people who abuse the technology. FTP could be outlawed outright unless the legitimate users of the FTP protocol start policing their own. Couldn't it?
(In case it's not obvious, the above is sarcasm. Neither FTP nor P2P is in any danger of being outlawed. Which kinda blows a big hole in TrollBridge's thesis.)
To suggest that copying of a piece of work without paying for it somehow gives you the moral high ground is laughable.
To suggest that it doesn't is fascist. Among several major moral philosophies, only fascism is compatible with copyright.