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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.
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.
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?
We don't have, nor should we expect, the right to pirate movies.
But I love Pirate movies! The Curse of the Black Pearl was awesome!
"I planned within my means and got a fixed rate mortgage, so where's MY bailout?" -cafepress
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
Hey, anyone want to go see a pirate movie?