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First BitTorrent Arrest in Hong Kong
prostoalex writes "Associated Press says a 38-year-old was arrested in Hong Kong for uploading Daredevil, Red Planet and Miss Congeniality via a BitTorrent client. Hong Kong laws provide for a maximum of 4 years in prison and $6,400 fine for every copy distributed without copyright owner's permission."
Rather, they prosecute bad taste in Hong Kong.
Hmm... There's more to this story that they're not telling... and, yes, if it was me, I would not want to be identified.
Anyone seen my jagged little pill?
so it begins.....
itadakimasu
It's a YRO article that actually deals with rights online!
Omnes stulti sunt.
Cane him!
ok.. so it's automatically a life sentence for distributing 10 pieces of gifs you didn't own.
pretty harsh. but then again you could get shot for something as mild as that...
(note: it's such a thing that the gov. can use to put away anyone they want for life.. but it's not like chinese gov would need to create excuses for that)
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
He was a bittorrent freeloader so he's only responsible for uploading 0.013 copies. That's... what? 83 bucks? I think he'll be fine.
Luckily he only uploaded old and unpopular movies, so the impact/loss to movie industry isn't huge.
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
FACT: At some point in any file distribution protocol on the Internet a 'client' has been directed to a 'server' (peers, whatever) for a piece of information. The 'client' asks for this info and the 'server' provides it.
If the info being transfered is copyrighted then it is not legal for the 'client' to ask for and accept this info nor it is it legal for the 'server' to respond to these requests. If both the 'client' and 'server' are coroporating then this transfer will happen just fine.
If however either the 'client' or the 'server' are undercover 'good guys' then they can easilly rat out the other party; who, in the Internet, can eventually be tracked down and served with a lawsuit.
If you are running software that either requests (a 'client') or distributes (a 'server') information subject to copyrights then the copyright holder or an agent acting on their behalf can bust you, provided that the magic peer-to-peer search leads them to you (or your search leads you to them).
The only legal questions are whether this constitutes entrapment. If it does the pirates win and copyright law is broken. If it doesn't then the RIAA/MPAA/whoever wins and copyright law is safe.
All the fancy peer-to-peer protocol magic in the world can't change these basic facts. You don't anonymously receive and send packets on the Internet, you have a designated IP address and that can be followed to you.
On the other hand a different argument based on 'first principles' makes 'Digital copyright management' schemes such as CSS, HDCP, and Windows media also can't work.
The end result is that reality is set up to make copyright infringement impossible to stop and also impossible to hide (unless you absolutely trust who you are sharing information with, an unreasonable assumption).
This is just like the rest of life, breaking the law (murder, terrorism, etc) is VERY easy but getting away with it is VERY hard thus we make the punishment too great to worth the risk. Of course terrorism fails to respond to this formula and thus results in an up-hill battle that no one likes (lack of freedoms, privacy and security), one that eventually is destined to fail terribly.
I came home and my roomate was running Azureus on my computer. If I'm running it, I usually just run it until I've got a take/share ratio of 1.0, then shut it down. He had left it on all night!
So what if I get arrested for some bogus music/movies/whatever he's sharing, when I had no knowlege of it even going on? What's the call?
I'd nearly finished that download too! Why don't the authorities pick on the torrents with a lot of seeds to give people a chance?...
Code, Hardware, stuff like that.
With Bit-Torrent you upload piece-meal, so if he say only uploaded 1/4 of a movie's worth would he get 1 year? Or did he just upload the tracker? But, that really wouldn't be a copyrighted work, because the file isn't contained in the tracker, right?
But I thought that in Hong Kong, BitTorrent was only for old people! ::Ducks::
Copyright infringement, and three counts of extremely bad taste and wasted bandwidth.
It's good to use your head, but not as a battering ram.
Since when does Hong Kong care about copyright/patent enforcement? The last time I was there I could have gotten a (counterfeit) North Face coat, Rolex watch, and Prada bag, and for about $100US. What gives? 3 movies? I mean, seriously...
When they say for every copy distributed do they really mean that they will base the sentence's severity on how many copies were distributed?
Not only does that seem a little extreme, but it's almost as if you're fate is determined by the popularity of your upload.
4 years for every COPY distributed? Or 4 years for every copy DISTRIBUTED? (IE is he potentially going to jail 12 years for putting up 3 movies or 4 * 1000 thousand downloads?)
This is a good day for piracy and IP rights in general.
This is a bad day for BitTorrent in general.
I don't think anyone can validly claim that BitTorrent needs to be banned, or that Miss Congeniality needs to go to the public domain.
It's "Your Rights Online" not "Your Online Rights"
12 years, you'll get less than that for killing someone in the uk.
And from their actions, do they even HAVE copyright laws in China?
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
One wonders if this is going to become a pattern in places like Hong Kong, Bangkok and other area's of the world where piracy is strong - or simply a courtesy arrest to please the complaining MPAA.
I saw police shut down a kiosk in Moscow once for selling pirated movies (a legit store across the street had complained) but within a day the kiosk re-opened, it simply moved further down the road.
Since we lack details, and no charges have been filed yet, I guess we will have to wait and see. Even if he is convicted, I doubt he would get the maximum penalty of 4 yrs in jail (more then likely IMO that he will get the fine - 6,400 for every illegal copy (how would you track that on bittorrent?)
There is always a frontier where there is an open and willing mind
OK, let me be the first to say that I don't usually agree with these kind of arrests but that was way out of line. Did he think somebody was actually going to watch that turd?
The only thing worse is explaining to friends and family what caused you to get arrested.
OK, enough cheap humor. This thread's gonaa go downhill fast anyway...I'll just stop now.
I wonder if he was only hosting the torrent files or if he was also the tracker for those torrents. Don't you like vague articles!? Omni
"Hong Kong authorities have made their first arrest for allegedly " and then later, "The suspect was not immediately charged and investigations are continuing,"
In Hong Kong, you can be arrested without being charged with anything?!?
Yo Grark
Canadian Bred with American Buttering
well well; there they settle with 6000 per moevy? how many "original" DVDs could you buy with that?
some are very expensive here, like 40 when it's one of those collector boxes or something. That would be like only the license of 150 DVDs, but how many times will the stolen moevys be copied?
One way to foul this all up- have multiple NAT routers between you and the file server in question.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
The punishment for distributing Miss Congeniality, legally or illegally, should be death.
There are 2 kinds of people in this world. Those that can keep their train of thought,
Don't call it a "BitTorrent Arrest" -- some of my best friends use BitTorrent for perfectly legitimate reasons... It's really an arrest for piracy.
who's moderating the meta-moderators?
You've been brainwashed by the media and their use of small outfits.
If however either the 'client' or the 'server' are undercover 'good guys' then they can easilly rat out the other party; who, in the Internet, can eventually be tracked down and served with a lawsuit.
wouldn't that be a clearcut case of entrapment??
hmm, on the other hand, in the movies the police always sell drugs to some bigass drug bosses while undercover. if that ain't entrapment, than surely baiting someone on the net with illegal content can't be either...
jethr0
Next time, ask someone in North Korea to host sensitive data!
Fancy number theory makes a lot of things possible that would seem intuitively impossible. Check out Freenet. You are making assumptions that aren't always true. For example, let's say you download two seeming random blocks of binary data and XOR them together, and you get the latest hollywood blockbuster. Who is violating copyright in this case?
I used to bulls-eye womp-rats in my pants
... better placed in the Peer2Peer category. Which ought, of course, to be created first.
...$6,400 fine for every copy distributed without copyright owner's permission.
Luckily, there were no downloads of these fine films.
"The only legal questions are whether this constitutes entrapment. If it does the pirates win and copyright law is broken. If it doesn't then the RIAA/MPAA/whoever wins and copyright law is safe. "
DISCLAIMER: What follows is based on U.S. law. If you are not in the U.S., your laws can and will vary.
Well, legally, it probably wouldn't be entrapment. Entrapment is actually an incredibly narrow issue -- basically, you have to enticed into doing something you would not normally do. So, if you are looking to buy pot, and but from an undercover cop, that's not entrapment, because you were going to buy the pot any -- the cop didn't entice you into doing something you wouldn't otherwise do.
If you were searching for illegal materials online, and a server gave them to you then ratted you out, again, that wouldn't be entrapment, because you were looking for the illegal stuff.
I guess if you were honestly an "innocent infringer" then maybe this would hold up, but "innocent infringer" can be pretty tough to prove, and is not even allowed as a defense if the copyright is registered, as all movies are.
So, what would entrapment be? If an undercover cop gave you a birthday present, which you didn't like so you regifted, and then the cop arrested you for trafficking in stolen goods, becausew the gift he gave you was originally stolen, well, that's the kind of thing that is entrapment under the legal standards. Virtually none of the things that people usually think of as entrapment -- dope buys from undercover cops, cops posing as hookers, speed traps, etc. -- are legally entrapment.
"That's not even wrong..." -- Wolfgang Pauli
They don't provide crucial information in this article, which is really more like a paragraphed spittle of information, really.
1. Was this guy the original seed?
2. Was he even a seed? Or was he just downloading them?
I think this is very important, especially given that as a BitTorrent user, one can only be so selective about one's involvement in the distribution of the file(s). If this guy was just downloading the files (not sure why anyone would, but hey), and was arrested for uploading them, that would be a Very Bad Thing.
Green's Law of Debate: Anything is possible if you don't know what you're talking about.
If you're distributing Daredevil you deserve to be arrested, piracy or not.
wardrivers will find a good wifi point and take a older PC that is almost ready to be disposed of and load it with movies, mp3 and lots of other media, and set it up in some discrete location where electricity is available and connect it running some p2p app and walk away leaving it to run untill it either dies or is found and stolen or confiscated...
Sorry about the multiple typos -- should have used the 'preview' button...
"...basically, you have BE to enticed..."
"...and BUY from an undercover cop..."
"...to buy the pot ANYWAY..."
proofread next time...
"That's not even wrong..." -- Wolfgang Pauli
How are they going to prove he "distributed" the movie if he is only serving chunks out piecemeal to various clients?
I mean, can they track other users, to see how many full downloads were obtained only from this guy?
Serving a small slice of the movie is not distributing the movie because THAT SLICE is useless without all the pieces. If he was serving the movie, all they can prove is they *they* were able to download one copy of it (per machine/instance they were able to download). Right?
Miss Congeniality? Was he arrested for poor/distasteful use of bandwidth?
The truth is that the Hong Kong street vendors selling pirated copies of movies, software, etc are taking a beating from the people choosing to use P2P methods of obtaining their media. A group of street vendors has taken it upon themselves to turn in every BT user they can identify in the hopes that people will quit using P2P and go back to the street vendors. The cops are rather upset about it to as they get kickbacks from the street vendors which have gotten smaller as well.
Mord
Just like the good ole US of A - where you can get locked up *indefinitely* without being charged. Makes the Chinese look like a bunch of friggin liberals.
The problem has two sides. One, violating another's copyright. Two, movie companies charging a lot for their movies.
The only legal questions are whether this constitutes entrapment.
Here is a definition of entrapment:
ENTRAPMENT - A person is 'entrapped' when he is induced or persuaded by law enforcement officers or their agents to commit a crime that he had no previous intent to commit; and the law as a matter of policy forbids conviction in such a case.
However, there is no entrapment where a person is ready and willing to break the law and the Government agents merely provide what appears to be a favorable opportunity for the person to commit the crime. For example, it is not entrapment for a Government agent to pretend to be someone else and to offer, either directly or through an informer or other decoy, to engage in an unlawful transaction with the person. So, a person would not be a victim of entrapment if the person was ready, willing and able to commit the crime charged in the indictment whenever opportunity was afforded, and that Government officers or their agents did no more than offer an opportunity.
Did someone call him up and say "hey dude share some crappy movies? No. Did the cops install bittorrent on his pc and set it up? No. This dude broke the law in his country and is being punished. Whether or not you agree with it is a different story.
Oderint dum metuant
not charged immediately....
The police (at least in Britain) tend to arrest, question, charge (they only get to hold people for 12 hours without an extension from a magistrate and there is a limit on the total time) before the person has to be released, bailed or charged. (IANAL etc)
FGD 135
Wow. Someone 'mod' this guy 'down' for 'overusing quotes' and 'eating his own dandruff'.
:P
That, and the body text is just moronic and not very well thought out
"If the info being transfered is copyrighted then it is not legal for the 'client' to ask for and accept this info nor it is it legal for the 'server' to respond to these requests."
Even that statement is not anywhere nearly true enough to be reasonable. There is possibly as much material that is copyrighted, but permitted to be distributed, as not.
This means the problem is even bigger than it appears. On the other hand, nobody honestly believed it was permitted to distribute the items in the story, in Hong Kong. There are two ingredients, though: 1. The owner of the distribution rights to Miss Congeniality chooses to 2. restrict those rights.
Merely being copyrighted alone does not make it illegal to transfer a file! If that were the case, how would you get GCC or Mozilla? More to the point, how do you make the same law that protects GCC in the way the FSF wants it protected, also protect Miss Congeniality in the way Warner Bros wants it protected?
Simply saying "this material is copyrighted, and therefore is a no-no" actually serves to *abridge* the rights of some people creating content! If I write music, and I want it distributed, does that mean I have to give up my copyright? NO! But a blanket argument like yours, which is a common misconception, does serve to reduce my own rights, and increases the power of the large media corporations by doing so.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
the authorities didn't arrest him for just the act of uploading movies. it was because he uploaded those movies. he was dragging down the rep of all the pirates in China.
imagine what they think of the people that actually made those films...
"Tread softly because you tread on my dreams"
Ironic the link is posted on 'iWon' news. Well, he's certainly going to get a prize...
Your example is just an example of an inefficient bit representation of the data, not some sneaky 'perfect encryption' as you suggest (of course it COULD be but it isn't).
I wonder which this guy feels dumber about, getting arrested for using bittorrent, or getting arrested for distributing crap.
:P
And, I take it that figure is in USD, correct? 'cause I could probably find that much in HKD in my COUCH.
Friend: "The NIC is misconfigured..." Me: "No prob, I'll just telnet in and fix it." *Silence*
Um, yeah, that is how the law works everywhere. You are arrested on suspicion and then charged within a fixed time period or released if the police can't make a case. Or sent to camp X-ray where your lawyer can't reach you.
Bittorrents don't upload copyrighted files - people do.
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
Can anyone explain to me why it's my right to violate copyright law while on the internet?
Surely public key encryption could be built into the p2p clients so that at least there could only be proof that a client shared a single file. Any third party monitoring the network would only see digital static moving between nodes...
Code, Hardware, stuff like that.
I literally just finished watching Daredevil before reading this story.
I got it off DC++ though.
> Hong Kong laws provide for a maximum of 4 years in prison and $6,400 fine for every copy distributed without copyright owner's permission.
$6,400 Hong Kong dollars which are, like, 2 American.
Must-not-watch TV!
Yes you are right, please mentally substitute all those words I used for words representing the thoughts you know I meant to mean. Thanks :)
You can argue that they are only numbers, but a movie is only a swirling pattern of colors coupled with pressure waves. And when you watch it, it's just photons hitting the back of your eyeball and something shaking in your ear. All of these things are just different ways of representing and transmitting the same idea.
I heard a rumor that their police sometimes advertise that they're going to crack down on pirated DVDs on a particular day, just so that all the DVD stores know to close their doors (and reopen them once the police have finished their "search").
Punishment for this doesn't fit the crime...
Well, I don't know whether rule of the law means making a different law every 3 years as they're doing in the US or Europe ? No one has the slightest idea how to interpret these "laws" anyway.
This is not a signature.
Arrested? Thats nothing.
Yesterday, here in Malaysia a pirated VCD seller was shot in the chest with an automatic handgun by enforcement officers. Not only that, this took place in front of an coffeeshop and the slug that exited the VCD seller hit a guy having a meal.
The VCD seller was unarmed.
The MPAA ought to be proud of us.
Sometimes I wish I was a plumber, then I'd know how to deal with other people's shit.
Is it really a crime? The real crime is even allowing the data those movies represent into the wilds of the internet.
This makes me so mad I can barely see. How will this guy live with himself after wasting bandwidth and heartbeats sharing such shitty movies? I hope they double the fine and sentence.
What, did the police just tell the public where he was, and then everyone helped to arrest him together?
For a country that generally ignores foreign patents and IP, this is an unusual move. Markets in major Chinese cities tend to have many vendors hawking ripped/copied/cammed DVD/VCD movies of various quality, audio CD's, and cheap imitations that bear a startling likeness to the real thing (such as the "swiss" watch I'm wearing at this moment).
Generally police would ignore such activities, so what makes law enforcement so much attention to this particular case?
"The 38-year-old man, who was not identified, is suspected of uploading the films "Daredevil,""Red Planet" and "Miss Congeniality" onto a Web site from which others could obtain them, Law said."
:P
Huh? by this are they saying that he didn't actually use bit torrent on his pc to transfer these but uploaded them to a topsite FROM his torrent downloads?
From the article i read nowhere that he actually served his files with torrent, only the inferance that he "used" the software.
Maybe a better title would be, "Microsoft user involved in Hong Kong movie smuggleing"
...
that I haven't seen addressed. What are the ramifications of downloading an episode of a TV series that has already been broadcast. I've paid my cable bill and would therefore, I think, have the right to view the program. If my VCR timer fritzes and I want to pick up a copy of an episode of Lost or 24, what are the legalities? Would it matter whether the commercials were included (which I would edit out regardless of whether I recorded it or someone else did)?
Bullshit. You have 24 hours (maybe less, can't remember to be exact) before they have to let you go if they don't charge you with a crime.
Bored? Why not join a decent mess
Seems like a fair punishment.
Those were horrible movies and unleashed pain and suffering to those who downloaded them.
Did someone call him up and say "hey dude share some crappy movies? No. Did the cops install bittorrent on his pc and set it up? No. This dude broke the law in his country and is being punished. Whether or not you agree with it is a different story.
entrap v.
To lure into performing a previously or otherwise uncontemplated illegal act.
You raise an interesting point. Bittorrent does not give the end user the option to share or not to share. The software it self shares whatever you happen to be getting by it's design. If this is true you can not say the dude wanted to "share some crappy movies"... only download crappy movies.
Add to that the fact that access to many Bittorrent services are sold by 3rd parties. For example suprnova.com charged for access to torrents stored on suprnova.org. From the end user's perspective they paid for a service. One could say they were tricked into violating copyrights because material was offered for a fee.
Both cases could be argued as a form of entrapment.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
Civilians in the USA CANNOT be held without pressing charges.
Prisoners of war can be held until the war is over.
Last I heard Al Queda has not Surrendered. So what we are doing is perfectly legal.
(If at first you don't succeed, do it different next time!)
Too bad the article is so anemic on details. BitTorrent is a relatively decentralized network. Even if you are running the trackers and watching what everyone is doing, there's any number of people connected in various states of downloading. Why did they decide on this guy, and how did they catch him? Anyone?
-R
...a maximum of 4 years in prison and $6,400 fine for every copy distributed without copyright owner's permission.
Cop: Let's make a deal, you plead guilty of first degree murder and you get free on parole after 20 years... or else we charge you for these 100 illegally distributed movies and you get 400 years.
Opus: the Swiss army knife of audio codec
"The truth is that the Hong Kong street vendors selling pirated copies of movies, software, etc are taking a beating from the people choosing to use P2P methods of obtaining their media."
In other words crooks are being hurt by other crooks. Irony at it's finest.*
*There's one thing to keep in mind about thieves and their means of correction vs content providers means of correction. The former have no rules standing in their way. The latter at least do (however inadequate you all may feel them to be).
Why was this guy bothering with bittorrent, when he could have easily bought these movies for HK$10 (~US$1.50) or less a piece?
And since when do the HK police actually *arrest* you for dealing with pirated goods? Even avoiding the known areas that deal exclusively with pirated stuff, I was still seeing CDRs for sale in stores along side otherwise legitimate merchandise. About the worst I'd hear about would be they'd announce when they were going to sweep for pirated goods, and all the stores would mysteriously be closed that day. A week later, it was business as usual.
The impression I got from folks there is that the pirate industry is so large, ubiquitous and well organized that many legitimate companies don't even bother trying to import their goods anymore. The pirates are too fast and too cheap to compete against. As a result, just about *everyone* buys pirated goods and doesn't give it a second thought.
We don't have, nor should we expect, the right to pirate movies.
That's your perspective, and it makes sense for an American (I assume). But from where I sit (Canada), we do have the right (confirmed by courts and paid for by media levies) to make copies of other peoples music for private use. Canadian Copyright Act as it applies to music No right to do so with movies or other copyrighted materials. But still, this is close enough for me to keep watching how other people's rights online are changing or being enforced.
BitTorrent is dying.
A solution? Imagine if you will...
Let's say there are 10 seeds for a file. And that delivery of the file is divided equally. If I deliver and ONLY deliver the same 10% of the file, the file is corrupt and unusable. For illustrative purposes, let's say I always deliver the last 10% of the file...and that's it.
The only time I will deliver more is if another seeder drops off. The software has enough intelligence, however, to never deliver a complete file...unless I press the "let's get it started" button at which point I am at maximum risk.
So you never see "10 distributed copies" online. You only see "this file is available in it's entirety" and maybe a "stability" rating (low if only a 1 full copy exists, high if multiple full copies exist).
You only see my IP and that I'm sharing. Not that I have the entire file...after all...that's not important.
Perhaps my config is my "risk"...I'll distribute 100% of the file, or I'll be an even distributor so long as I never exceed 10%. If my paranoia level is below the network level, I don't even get to download it. (ie, everyone is sharing at 20% but I want to only share at 10%)
And doesn't this "safety in numbers" approach actually better serve the community?
Impulse post ends....now.
I remember back in the 1990s, before China took over Hong Kong, that China executed 27 Windows OS pirates by hanging. If China is that draconian in Hong Kong, where people actually have an effect when they complain about the government, what is going on in the rest of the country, out of reach of cushy EurAmerican journalists?
--
make install -not war
Mentioning it only smacks of propoganda.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
ENTRAPMENT - A person is 'entrapped' when he is induced or persuaded...to commit a crime that he had no previous intent to commit... However, there is no entrapment where a person is ready and willing to break the law and the Government agents merely provide what appears to be a favorable opportunity... Entrapment
Yes, but each time you do that you half (or worse) the bandwidth.
This is already a big problem on bittorrrent and similar file sharing methods - the majority of residential connections have an upload an quarter or even an eighth of their download - usually 30KB/sec or 45KB/sec.
Let's say you have a NAT router per person, and you've just dropped the speed to 15 or 22.5KB/sec.
This sadly isn't good enough though. The RIAA/MPAA can just set up one router and that's it - they have you.
You really need two so you can say that you were just routing on someone elses behalf. You are now at 7.5KB/sec or 11.25KB/sec which is approaching dialup speeds.
Basically NAT routers are not the answer. Encryption is, but it means you have to trust everyone you share with, which is not very efficent in the world of 'share with 15,000 people'.
IntechHosting - Free domain, 2GB, PHP, £4.95/$8.95
Unless you're arrested under the wonderfully American, Liberal and Not Bad In Any Way PATRIOT act. Then you can be detained indefinately without charge.
How many people can read hex if only you and dead people can read hex?
so you think if you find a loophold in the current law and you will get freeride forever? don't be so naive: law is made by the government and of course can be changed by the government. The question is how long you can have that freeride and who will be the first lamb. more like you are speeding on the freeway with group of other cars. see who is badluck enough to be caught.
Yeah in other news people who violate laws get punished. Film at 11.
Though no, I'm sure a super sekret team led by the FB-AY was first on the scene, guns blazing to arrest this poor innocent person.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
"Criminal use of Internet" for those "Your Rights Online" articles for which it does not really apply.
Just a thought.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
i mean common, people arrested for sharing their files?!
about 50 years ago you'd be shot for not sharing.
if Mao were still alive he'd smack those judges' heads with his little red book
Chinese communism has allways riddeled me
perpetually dwelling in the -1 pits
I wasn't aware there was a declaration of war agains Al Queda. Can there be prisoners of war without a war? How does one even declare a war against a group with no boundaries or fixed locations?
I ain't evil, I'm just good looking.
Associated Press says a 38-year-old was arrested in Hong Kong for uploading Daredevil, Red Planet and Miss Congeniality via a BitTorrent client.
He should have been arrested for his taste in movies.
As much as it sucks, it's "alright" for the *AA to put up a file, wait for someone to download it, then sue them. It's not ethical or just, but they can do it. This is a sting. It's the same as an undercover officer posing as a hooker, then arresting someone who propositions her. In that case, she is there as a law is being wilfully broken by someone.
Unless the officer goes up to someone and says "Do you want to have sex with me for money?". THEN it is entrapment. In that case, the officer is coercing or encouraging someone to break a law, which they may not have done in the first place.
If the *AA were to entrap people, they would have to send you an email saying "I have Daredevil to download, click here to do it.", or something similar. Then they are inviting you to break the "law", and are entraping you.
One could argue that making a file available to download from a P2P is "inviting the law to be broken", but it wouldn't stand up in court. Their lawyers would just argue that the IP-infringer knew what they were doing, because they wilfully typed the name of a copyrighted movie into a search engine, and that search engine exists to allow someone who /wants/ to download something find it.
There's lots of ways to fight one of these lawsuits. Entrapment isn't one of them.
PS: Just to make things clear... screw the *AAs. I am in no way advocating what they are doing is right-- I'm just providing advice on how to kick their butts. =)
UTF-8: There and Back Again
If Americans are that ignorant, what makes you think poorer (unarguably), less moral (child labor?), less ethical (read the article) countries are going to care if one or two people die from a stray bullet?
Anyone who uploads those files deserves jail time, i mean come on
Except many people held in Cuba are not members of "Al Queda"...
Oh that and what the USA did in Iraq was a war crime....
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
I seen it in a documentary on BBC2....
I am posting this AC because I received a letter from the MPAA recently. This may be off topic somewhat. I have often wondered when the MPAA, RIAA, and (insert name here) will start their own torrent sites. They could run the site for a few months and find the big seeders. This is why I am no longer downloading files via bittorrent except for Linux ISOs. Instead I do the following: 1. Rent 2. Copy 3. Burn 4. Return
Please prove that all prisoners currently held in Guantanamo Bay are members of Al Queda.
Also, presumably since the US of A also has a "War on Drugs", suspected drug dealers and pot smokers can be held without charge indefinitely until all illegal drugs are gone too???
- PS. This is what part of the alphabet would look like if Q and R where eliminated.
quit whining when someone busts you when you don't.
Yes, but each time you do that you half (or worse) the bandwith.
Why would that be? Do you have an extremely slow NAT router? After all, it's only replacing 32 bits per packet- based on MAC address tables. That should take a matter of clock cycles, not half the bandwidth.
This is already a big problem on bittorrrent and similar file sharing methods - the majority of residential connections have an upload an quarter or even an eighth of their download - usually 30KB/sec or 45KB/sec.
This has NOTHING to do with NAT- you can have a single machine on that same connection and it will have a slow upload. The reason for the slow upload is what the person is willing to pay for a connection- some broadband types like cable and ADSL have throttled down upload speeds (mine at home, for instance, is 128kbaud up, 758kbaud down).
Let's say you have a NAT router per person, and you've just dropped the speed to 15 or 22.5KB/sec.
Not so- in reality you have EXACTLY the same throughput through a NAT router if the router has a fast microprocessor- because it takes far less time to replace those 32 bits properly in the packet than it does to transmit the packet.
This sadly isn't good enough though. The RIAA/MPAA can just set up one router and that's it - they have you.
What does what they do on their side do to what I do on my side? All I need is a WIFI NAT router, with a cantenna, using a connection that isn't mine. There's no way they can trace me, because I've got the NAT DHCP of the company I'm stealing the bandwidth from, and the NAT DHCP of my router, between my machine and the backbone.
You really need two so you can say that you were just routing on someone elses behalf. You are now at 7.5KB/sec or 11.25KB/sec which is approaching dialup speeds.
If your assertation was true, that might be so- but it isn't. I routinely get less than 5ms loss on ping time between my NATed LAN and the net- and NO measurable loss of bandwith at all.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
From raiding preschools?
No, we got them from battle with al Queda.
In my eyes that is proof enough.
You can insist that they were Taliban soldiers, but the Taliban fought for al Queda, so they are one in the same.
(If at first you don't succeed, do it different next time!)
The authorities don't really care... this is just an exercise so they can say they "do care"... right.
A quick walk along many of the backstreets reveals Polo shirts, LV bags, and more copy VCD/DVDs than Blockbuster has.
They even have police that are designated to patrol these areas to reduce crime... so you can't possibly tell me that they "don't know" or "can't see" this... in fact that actively acknowledge it. If they REALLY wanted to shut it all down, they could do it in 1 day. Simple fact is that this stuff is all USA copyright, and China couldn't really care less about USA stuff... in fact they'd probably just tell the USA to shove it if it weren't for international relations and all that. You really think communist/socialist China cares al about the RIAA? Ha.
**FREE** Track and view your phone's via CellID and/or WIFI and/or GPS
I find it disturbing this comment was modded funny because it's true.
Fashion clothing is sold directly from china, and other parts of asia on ebay, and it's almost always fake.
What gives with this 4years, $6400, per copy? Seriosly avg movie costs $20, and is worth only $7. Seems like 2 hours prison time per copy would be more appropriate.
"And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the World"
1 John 4:14
How does one even declare a war against a group with no boundaries or fixed locations?
We don't need to, they declared war on us through their actions.
(If at first you don't succeed, do it different next time!)
This is only a rights issue if you believe people have the right to steal.
If the people selling those films wanted other people to have the right to make copies, they would have explicitly sold those rights. They are the source and origin of those rights. The only rights anyone else had in those films are the rights transfered to them from the film's creators.
Such opinions are usually trashed by the Luddite set around here. Of course, they can't present a convincing argyment that their rights to copy a copyrighted work come from someone other than the work's creator.
It's also not a technology issue. Cheers to the Hong Kong authorities for going after the people using the tool, not the tool itself.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
I know piracy is illegal, but isn't that penalty a bit steep?
How much would he be fined if he stole and distributed a box of 100 DVDs of similar content.
It also said that he uploaded it to a web site. If he was using BT it is obviously technically wrong.
If I was going to punish the person, I would let the punishment fit the crime. The punishment would be similar to the punishment of theft of physical DVD/VHS movies. I understand there are differences, but it would just be used as a guideline.
My last rant is why haven't they tried to cleanup the people who sell the downloads for 10 bucks a pop in the Big Apple (and other cities). I go to Canal street and have to go one block back before people are chanting "CDs DVDs CDs DVDs" and peddling their pirated copies.
Isn't selling the content without paying royalties or being licensed worse?
v4sw6PU$hw6ln6pr4F$ck 4/6$ma3+6u7LNS$w2m4l7U$i2e4+7en6a2X h
> Prisoners of war can be held until the war is over.
They're not prisoners of war. They're "illegal combatants". Which includes folks like drivers, who were never in combat.
Isn't it awful convenient to have a war of truly global scope? Where the battlefield is everywhere, the combatants are anyone, and the length is for all time? Who exactly are the combatants if every enemy is an illegal combatant?
Even if they're Bad People we're holding, we've utterly eradicated all global goodwill, degraded our past alliances, and probably diminished prospects of future cooperation in our happy little forever-war. Think pragmatically for a moment.
I am no longer wasting my time with slashdot
for Miss Congeniality alone. The other two can be written off as misdemeanors with good behavior.
What an excellent place to be. Go to jail for sharing files, and get rich by forcing 13 year school girls to work as bargirls to pay off family debts (don't tell me otherwise; I have been there....).
The neoliberals want to make America like Hong Kong. How thoughtful of them!
eat shiat and bark at the moon
The article didn't say uploading what. Is it illegal in HK now to upload trackers? I mean there is a difference between uploading copy of movie(s) in question and uploading bittorrent tracker(s).
I wonder what HK laws says about this?
Why did the officer shoot his/her gun to start with? And why the wild shot? Aren't officiers suppose to err on the side of caution, and if there are any civilians around that could even POSSIBLY be harmed, they aren't allowed to shoot??
**FREE** Track and view your phone's via CellID and/or WIFI and/or GPS
I'm not arguing that they are only numbers, but what if one of the parties wasn't aware of this correlation? Are they still guilty? How do you prove which party is guilty? What if person A puts up a block of random numbers for mathematical research purposes, and person B takes it and secretly XORs it with The Copyrighted Blockbuster (TCB) and then puts the result up on his website, purportedly for the same purpose. Obviously XORing them together yields TCB, so someone is lying, but that doesn't mean they are both guilty, but it is not trivial to find out who it is. This is not a foolproof solution, but it is simple enough for anyone to understand how it works. I am sure there are more effective solutions too. My point is that both people can't automatically be liable, because they both needn't have been involved in the infringement.
I used to bulls-eye womp-rats in my pants
I had expected arrests to start after reading this, but that was only some days ago. Evans must be pleased.
"Oppression and harassment is a small price to pay to live in the land of the free." -- Montgomery Burns.
One of the major weakness is the tracker get a whole list of downloader's IP addresses, which lets the authorities go through the list one by one. And the earliest one with 100% of the file is assumed to be the original uploaders(the original seed).
:-)
So now I'd rather choose to use edonkey for *public domain* files downloads in sacrifice of speed.
Both 'halves' needn't be responsible, or even know about it for that matter. If I put up a block data that XORs with your website to make a copyrighted ebook, obviously, I am guilty, and not you. But obviously there are cases that aren't so clear.
I used to bulls-eye womp-rats in my pants
Can anyone explain to me why it's my right to violate copyright law while on the internet?
Obviously it's not your right to break laws, but it is your right, in certain countries, to make personal copies of copyrighted material, including music, without the consent of the copyright holder.
In Canada, for example, it is the right of every Canadian, under an explicit section of the Canadian Copyright Act, to make copies of other people's music for private use. It should also be noted that Canadians pay for that right, in part, with taxes on recordable media. This right applies only to audio recordings, mind you, not video.
Anyways, my point is to not assume that rights are the same around the world. Some places have it loose and some places are locked down tightly.
In theory the law in Hong Kong and China are different. Both has copyright law. How tight they are enforced are a different issue.
There's a problem with that: RTC v. Netcom. (see Netcom, 907 F. Supp. 1361 (ND Cal 1995))
2 5 )
If someone can create a filesharing system where traffic is routed from one node to another, and when a node routes it hides the identities of the parties it communicates with, then filesharing becomes safe again.
Just as in RTC v. Netcom, where the Religious Technology Center (a.k.a. Scientology) attempted to sue Netcom (and was denied), automated acts of routing on a filesharing network will probably be found NOT to be contributory copyright infringement.
In other words, if your network is arranged like this:
Client <----> Server
then either side can turn in the other side, as the parent post described. However, if your network is arranged like this:
Client <--> Node 1 <--> Node 2 <--> Server
then unless someone controls all of the systems in a particular communication path, they can't learn the identity of all of the nodes they don't control.
(See an earlier article, at http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/08/10/20492
One of the problems with this kind of routing system is fair division of labor. For this kind of P2P system to work (where your client must route data that it didn't actually request) the system must be designed well enough to distribute a burden of anonymous-routing to your client which corresponds with the amount of anonymous-routing load you're placing on the rest of the network. But how can people measure how much data you're sending and receiving, if they can't know who you are?
I don't have a solution for that problem, but it's not unsolvable.
So the question then becomes, will the general public begin to prefer a filesharing system that must transfer 400 MB of data over the network for every 100 MB of information it saves to disk, if that system is nearly impossible to audit or prosecute?
--Michael Spencer
Yet again I'll say it, why are they prosecuting the people "uploading" when they should be prosecuting the people DOWNloading. Do I need to lock up my DVD's and CD's because someone could potentially come by and grab one and copy it? Am I liable?
Well for one, they arn't trained enough. See the enforcement officers aren't cops, they are civillians from the Ministry of Trade enforcement unit.
Sometimes I wish I was a plumber, then I'd know how to deal with other people's shit.
ok so im not the most legally understanding person in the world but Distribution...
he isnt distributing....bit torent doesnt distribute...wording means alot and distribution is not the right word....
if this is about piracy how do they prove he has a complete copy...partials are useless arnt they?
distribution would be whoever hosts the torrent....downloading that isnt distribution its acqusition..
WTF - Speak in acronyms already, i can't figure out what you mean otherwise boss
And exactly when did the USA declare war on Al Queda?
Never. It is not a war, despite the fact that the US administration chooses to use that word to dscribe the situation.
A dream is good. A plan is better.
Ok, the article says that a fine for up to $6,400 for each copy ditributed. But let's say there were only 98%, 83%, and 4% of each movie actually transferred. Does that still constitute a full copy of each movie?
Would you please stop waving that "right" around as something beneficial to Canadians? It's a total sham. Where are you going to get other people's music if they're going after distributors and uploaders? You mean you have to pay to make backups of your already paid music CDs? That's a good one! You probably meant you have to pay to backup your non musical data? No, you probably meant the freelance music artists who have to pay to backup their own music? Or, you meant your right to choose to support your favourite artist has eroded a bit because the greedy schmucks at socan decide for you?
It's not worth it to copy their music, unless you're one of socan's admin.
Linkified
...Meanwhile, piracy contiunes unabated in the popular Mongkok Computer Center. Somebody obviously didn't bribe the right offical, because this is a joke, quite honestly. Or maybe from the movie industry standpoint, somebody did bride the right offical.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
What give them the right to take the law into their own hands? I don't know Malaysian laws that is.
The upcoming generation of file sharing tools make anonymous sharing pretty simple.
MUTE for instance uses virtual adresses so only your direct neighbours know your real IP. But because every packet you receive from the network is encrypted by the sender node, your direct neighbours can't determine weather you are downloadig legal stuff or not.
If the someone taps one of your neighbour nodes, no harm done, because the network sends the packets to you through several paths, and thus he would have to tap every neighbour node you have, to get all packets and then be able to decrypt your data (strong encryption).
Naturally your neighbours are not geographic neighbours, so if someone wants to prove that you leeched some copyrighted movies, he might end up in tapping several nodes in different counties.
I admit, MUTE is not 100% anonymous but for me 99,99% is just fine. Here is a more detailed description on how MUTE works.
America has been raping the Japanese and pillaging their culture since the end of WWII??? Uso!
My other first post is car post.
You're totally right. As I am a Swede, I am not totally familiar with copyright laws in the US, but at least here it has intentionally been split in two parts: intellectual and economical copyright.
The intellectual part basically is "don't say you created something you didn't" and very much applies on anything under GPL. I suppose for example Linux wouldn't like someone else saying "That finnish guy stole my labclass project", even though he has made it freely available.
The economical part says that only the creator (or someone he has given permission to) may make copies of IP. GPL basically is a way to give anyone in the world this permission...
In Hong Kong, there is no law against buying pirate products. The law only states that selling/distributing pirate products is illegal. But the authorities are trying to http://www.info.gov.hk/cib/ehtml/pdf/consultation/ 2004copyright_e.pdf/change that, though.
If person A has no idea that person B has used their number as a key to get TCB, I would have to say that person A would not be guilty. If person B puts up the encrypted version but doesn't tell anyone what it is or how to decrypt it, person B hasn't distributed TCB. In order for anyone to get TCB, they would have to know the secret, and the person that gives away the secret would be the one guilty of distributing TCB.
Proving guilt in court would be much more difficult, but covering your tracks doesn't make an act any more legal.
In Hong Kong it is 48 hours.
Jose Padilla. US citizen. Born in Brooklyn. Detained in the US. No charge. No trial. Indefinite.
What fascinates me most is not that a govenment flouts their own constitution so blatantly - What's much more interesting is the state of denial so many of that country's citizens are in.
The real stuff is often also made in China. I've been told that some of the "fake" stuff is from the same factory and "real" in every sense except for the licensing. That is, a factory with a contract to produce some "real" stuff will sometimes over-order supplies, over-produce and sell the unlicensed overproduction directly. Of course, I would doubt that there would be the same pickiness about manufacturing defects.
Swiss Franc.
Use ISO 8601 dates [YYYY-MM-DD]
Aside from the possiblity of those DVD's being sold outside of China (which I have never observed in my travels through Asia), the DVDs do not bring money into China.
Perhaps it could be argued that these DVDs, like the downloads, stop money from leaving China by causing people to buy fewer licensed DVDs (I wouldn't necessarily agree), but the difference that you identified does not suggest that there should be a difference in these effects between DVDs and downloads.
Online piracy doesn't, since no money changes hands.
Money changing hands and increasing the gross domestic product is not the same thing as bringing money in. The Chinese are good enough economists to understand this, and it is crucial to the mercantilist policies of Japan and the "Asian tigers" except for Hong Kong (and Hong Kong, where these arrests occurred, while more laissez-faire than mercantilist, is now part of China and also has plenty of competent economists too).
So from a Chinese perspective, this guy really was hurting the economy for much the same reasons as the *AA claims, just with the added irony of those reasons being themselves illegal in a much more conventional sense.
As far as I can tell, you're just making this up. If you actually read a Chinese economist saying this, then post the link.
"...a 38-year-old was arrested in Hong Kong for uploading Citizen Kane, Rashomon and Andrei Rublev via a BitTorrent client."
I would guess he meant routing your packages through other users of the P2P network which means they must download and re-upload your download-traffic.
Linux is not Windows
Entrapment yes.
Then there is the technicality of a reproduced work. If the RIAA or whatever was serving a mangled ripoff - an unauthorised format - then they are law breakers too. If the server was passing off 'good stuff' then it is unlikely to have ALL the studios and distributors permission(s) plural. Either way, you cannot come to court with dirty hands. As for economic damage, Chinese telcos, and their share prices will languish, if users are assaulted so.
You disguise who is the client, and who is the server. Arguably, this means that you must act as a proxy for data. By its very nature, that means the network would be vastly slower. Imagine:
Direct:
A - B
A - C
B - C
Proxy:
A - C - B
A - B - C
B - A - C
Already you have double the connections, and halve the effective bandwidth. Freenet for instance, operates with TTLs up to 25. This means your bandwidth is reduced to 1/25th, making a 1Mbit connection act more like a 40kbit modem. In addition, let's say each node is 95% reliable. The chance it'll make it through is 0.90^25 = 7%. That makes your 40kbit line a 3kbit line.
There will be anonymous networks that do this better. But I imagine that even an effective anonymous network will reduce the bandwidth by an order of magnitude, if not three such as Freenet. (Just my unofficial numbers, 704k/s DSL line = ~2k Freenet traffic).
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
So the question then becomes, will the general public begin to prefer a filesharing system that must transfer 400 MB of data over the network for every 100 MB of information it saves to disk, if that system is nearly impossible to audit or prosecute?
That's basically what usenet does, and the 400 MB of data for 100 MB of information is basically what UU-Encoding does. Except I think it's 3:1 rather than 4:1. So I'd say that by and large, the vast majority of the general public probably doesn't prefer a system like this, but a still significant number of them do.
Keith D.
So you're saying copyright expiration is theft?
Given the choice, I would prefer to live in a country without copyrights and patents or with much faster copyrights and patents. I would gladly trade that reduction in incentive for not having people arrested for sharing harmless information.
You don't anonymously receive and send packets on the Internet, you have a designated IP address and that can be followed to you.
That's where designs like Freenet (also Freenet) come in. You can trade ease and bandwidth-efficiency for a smidgeon of anonymity -- not in the sense of "they can't tell I'm running Freenet", but in the lesser plausible deniability sense: "I didn't ask for that file; I was just relaying another node's requests."
In theory, a Freenet node is supposed to cache all of the requests that pass through it, but in practice, it doesn't work very well just yet.... Well, maybe if we're lucky, our children will have free speech before they die.
A buccaneer
Thank you. I'll be here all night.
It's the battle of the minds, and everyone's unarmed.
Simple. Use amule or emule to share your pirate movies instead...
They also kill people, and use eye patches that they really don't need, just for intimidating reasons.
Copyright infringement is not, in any way, related to piracy. That is just a marketing stunt, no more valid that the last Coca-Cola slogan.
A line should be drawn between marketing and reality: people who download mp3s and movies are freeloaders, copyright infringers, in many cases not even that. Calling someone a pirate is just a way to say they are bad, but that implies killing, raping and sailing. Don't keep doing that, please.
Even then, there wouldn't be a 50% bandwidth cut for every single re-upload; there would only be a throttling down to the slowest bandwidth in the total chain. The only way you'd drop to the bandwidth he was talking about would be to have a dialup user in the chain.
If the rumors about Qualcom's Sears Service Transport protocol are true (a mesh of NATed WiFi linking truck to truck back to broadband at the service depot, up and down our nation's freeways (you can see this if you're wardriving- *-SST-* SSIDs are everywhere!)) then it's entirely possible to get 11MBit service out of such a system- assuming of course that the connection the the physical net can handle that speed.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
what if he never fully distributed a copy? say the last chunk of the file (however big, depends on the chunk size in the .torrent) didn't get sent out by him ... I would think the burden to prove that he send out *full* copies would be on the prosecution, and almost impossible to prove. unelss they simply went on the amount of data he sent out, then it could not be pretty
I think that they way you lumped DeCSS in with Kazaa (clearly different things in my mind) and then explain how Kazaa was designed for piracy is a perfect example of what might happen to BitTorrent. We have one example of a person arrested for violating copyright using BitTorrent and some people are going to equate it with Kazaa and all the Spyware and shady Vanuatu Incorporation that goes along with the Sharman networks.
It is sad that people are using BitTorrent for unlawful things because it is likely to make it more difficult for others to do lawful things with it.
Don't moderate flamebait as Troll. Know the difference or you will be Meta-moderated.
I was stating the rule, not the practice. Yes, I am fully aware that the only thing that will save this country is a full-out revolution.
Bored? Why not join a decent mess
You are right, hard-copy CD "piracy" in China does in a very real, direct way benefit the domestic economy there, while the free exchange of information via networks maybe does not.
However, there are still some very clear indirect benefits: For example, the availability of cheap entertainment helps their economy sell more of the equipment and network services to go with it. And the entertainment being available there prevents Chinese citizens' money from going to evil foreign enemies like America. [It also gives them ways to practise English without hiring foreigners, and multilingualism is another benefit to the economy.]
So IP "Piracy" does still make sense in China, including Hong Kong. The main reason they put on show trials from time to time is to appease the gods of the global economy, so that they can keep their market access. But there is also the hope that eventually China will be a big producer of IP [Hong Kong already is, movie-wise] and then they will be the ones demanding obscene payments from third-world countries.
They are, after all, patriotic capitalists.
No.
On the scale of the network you lose 50% each time. Why?
Let's do it the 'direct way' - as Bittorrent does now. Each user to each user.
Let's say we have 2 users @ 30kbyte/sec upload. Both of them upload to the network @ 60kbyte/sec.
Now let's say the first user connects to the second user to upload to another user (one proxy). The first user uploads at 30k/sec, but the second user also has to upload data _that is most likely useless to him_ at 30k/sec.
You've effectively starved the network out of 50% of it's bandwidth - it's not a good way to go.
IntechHosting - Free domain, 2GB, PHP, £4.95/$8.95
I was stating the rule, not the practice.
Actually, the reason they do that is because it *is* the rule - the PATRIOT act is the rule.
Nope- you missed the point. The NAT Proxy isn't to get multiple users to connect. The purpose of the NAT proxy is to protect the user's identity. So no, the first user doesn't have to connect to a second USER, instead he connects to the local NAT router.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.