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P2P Operators Plead Guilty
Bootsy Collins writes "In the first such criminal convictions in the U.S., two peer-to-peer hub operators have
pled guilty
to conspiracy to commit felony copyright infringement. The two men were subjects of raids last August after Department of Justice investigators downloaded content valued at US$25,000 retail from their servers, the Movie Room and Acheron's Alley. They face sentences of up to five years in prison, and up to US$250,000 in fines, in addition to the possibility of being forced to pay restitution to copyright holders.
They did commit copyright infringement. How is that conspiracy?
If you don't like the law, work to change it. Don't think that you can get away with breaking it because you don't believe in it.
If there is so much demand for being able to download movies/tv episodes, then why the hell don't the distribution companies take advantage of it and let poeple downlaod things legally at a fair price?
Maybe I missed it in TFA, but how was this p2p? The statment "The two sites offered a wide variety of computer software, computer games, music, and movies in digital format, including some software titles that legitimately sell for thousands of dollars, the DOJ says." seems to indicate non p2p pirating activity. Calling it a p2p hub seems to be FUD unless there was an explanation of the technology used.
How is this any different from say, selling a car? Could you go to jail because someone took the car and ran someone over with it, on purpose?
It doesn't make any sense at all.
Next then I know, I'll be arrested for "Conspiracy to download porn"
Seriously though, I can understand that turning a blind eye to something is not good, but if you're running a hub, then surely you're just negligent, not malicious?
My UID is prime. Is yours?
...thank God the FBI is doing its job.
We must be alert to the danger that public policy could become captive to a scientific-technological elite. - Eisenhower
"100GB of material, the equivalent of 250,000 songs," Wouldn't 100GB be about 25,000 songs. The iPod 20GB advertises 5,000 songs can be stored on it. So wouldn't 100GB be 25,000. Just a little technical inaccuracy I found.
Its not illegal to download, its illegal to distribute -- share, make available, upload, however you want to think of it. How many "downloaders" have they gone after? How many uploaders/sharers?
.torrent and get all the IPs ready to share. If they tweak their client to cap at 0 up, they never break the law by uploading and get a nice purty list of all the IPs of users who are currently and actively breaking the law. Yes their downloads will be slow, but speed is not their goal. Its that fresh new list of lawbreakers that gets 'em out of bed each morning. Like getting a newsletter of stocks that are going to double that day each and every morning.
That's also why its now open season on BitTorrent users. All they have to do is open a
And I am so sick of hearing "its not stealing". When you buy CDs you're buying the right to listen to a copy of the music in digital form. When you download, you're getting the copy of the music in digital form without paying for the right to listen to it. So please, from now on, be sure to use BitTorrent for all your future downloads. It should "thin out the herd" much more quickly. I'm just waiting to hear from Comcast for having so many torrents open only to be able to explain to them that they're all legal. I guess I won't hear from them until they get a notice about me.
Intelligent Life on Earth
I've got a problem with copyright law that says I can't use my legally purchased material on the device of my choosing. If they want to jail people who feel that it's okay to download everything without the copyright holder ever seeing a penny, that's cool with me.
Oh get over yourself. An act of civil disobedience invloves openly and blatantly breaking the law, so that the inevitable arrest is very public, in order to garner public sympathy for their cause.
A couple of guys hiding behind the (assumed) anonymity of the Internet, breaking the law for their own personal gain doesn't quite pass the civil disobedience litmus test.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
I agree with you and the Supreme Court. Copyright infringement itself is not stealing.
However, the laws also allow for retribution, which generally means you turn over any profits to the copyright holder, and then you can end up paying some hefty fines, depending on how much damage you cause.
And we all used to think getting an F in English class for plagiarizing (a form of copyright infringement) on a term paper was harsh...
OCO is Loco
Its not illegal to download, its illegal to distribute
They're both illegal; downloading is a form of reproduction, and reproduction is infringement per 17 USC 501, 106(1). Distribution is another kind of infringement per 106(3). This is not news: check out the Napster case (holding that uploaders and downloaders were each direct infringers), or the disturbing but well written Intellectual Reserve v. Utah Lighthouse Ministry case in D. Utah.
How many "downloaders" have they gone after? How many uploaders/sharers?
That's a tactical decision; taking out uploaders puts pressure on downloaders who now have fewer opportunities to download. This is why they went after the networks before the users. It's just a matter of going after the head of the snake.
And I am so sick of hearing "its not stealing".
Maybe so, but it's not stealing. It's illegal, it's just not stealing. Is that so weird? Arson isn't stealing but it deprives the victim of something. Tresspassing isn't stealing, but it's not legal (and much more closely analagous to copyright infringement).
When you buy CDs you're buying the right to listen to a copy of the music in digital form.
That's not at all true. When you buy a CD, you buy the CD as a piece of personal property. You can do anything at all with it. The law may independently limit your freedom with it (e.g. you own your car but can't go 100mph in a school zone) but you still own it.
This is easily illustrated: if you buy a CD, and the work at some point enters the public domain, the scope of what you can lawfully do with it enlarges significantly, probably contrary to the desire of the former copyright holder. If you merely bought a right to listen, that wouldn't enlarge later.
Are you willing to listen to reason, or need I start pulling quotes from the courts that support my point.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
"The theft of intellectual property victimizes...the American people, who shoulder the burden of increased costs for goods and services."
So shall we assume that drug patents, which definitely cause the American people to shoulder the burden of increased costs, are the next target of the Justice Department? Or how about the cost to the American public of being deprived of free access to 50-year-old ideas and expressions?
Our intelligent designer has never created an animal that we couldn't improve by strapping a bomb to it.
Dear god. Felony copyright violation charges? *blink* That has to be a misprint.
Maybe I don't understand what the word "felony" means or applies to. My understanding is that a felony charge is given for causing life-threatening or altering harm to another person.
What kind of things get classified as felonies? Is grand theft auto a felony? How about breaking and entering? I don't think inciting a riot is, or in many cases even something like attacking another person (non-lethally). Drunk driving isn't a felonous charge unless you -really- fuck up.
This isn't a violent crime, has not even the slimmest chance of harming someone's livelyhood, and about as harmless as some guy on the street in Mexico selling "Timex" watches on the street for $15. Maybe less so.
It just seems incredibly draconian and fascist to have laws that protect corporations to the utmost while punishing the violators with a life-destroying sentence. Copyright law is a fucking civil issue. The parties involved should have the option to take them to a civil court, and nothing more. Now, if these people hacked into systems to store or acquire their warez, sure, prosecute them federally. But this is just rediculous.
I can see it now. School cops will start looking for CDs and removeable hard disks when they search through students' lockers now, and burned CDs will first be an automatic 2-week expulsion, followed up by a $20,000 fine the second time and 6 months imprisonment at the county jail. Then, it's pound-me-in-the-ass prison.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
It is the depriving of a sale that matters
So he's a student. He downloads a copy of $5000 AutoCAD instead of... what? Buying $5000 AutoCAD?
And if he passes the exam from AutoCAD because he had one at home, and could train it outside of the classroom hours, he may start a company and purchase 30 licenses (he has to, can't run a company on a pirated product). If he fails the exam, because he wanted to obey the law and didn't get the pirate copy, he will never look at AutoCAD again and just get a job of a janitor.
What deal is better to the software authors?
Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
These guys could get 5 years?!
My Corrections professors told the class about somebody who got 1-2 years for date rape. Under what system of morality is copyright infringement worse than drugging somebody and raping them?
"Do I dare disturb the universe?"
Market value is the only true value. Why isn't someone screaming this in the courts?
When you buy a CD or piece of software, you get the support... the nice packaging... the printed manuals... the fancy CD... the liner notes... The legal serial number.
When you download media, you only get the media itself, and usually a much crappier version of it (if it's video) or a mildly crappier version of it (if it's sound) or a version you are forced to read on a screen (if it's a PDF of a book).
Not to mention that there is no proof that every download is a lost purchase... I'm telling you, most of these people are merely into collecting and hardly have time to "consume" the media or software.
Mod parent up!
You are wrong. I have something more powerful than all the money a company can throw at lobbiests: an informed vote. Money works in politics because people can be bought with pretty adds on TV. If you become an informed voter to whom ads do not matter you scare all polititions because you have the power to vote them out, and they cannot influence you easily.
In most elections the difference between the winner and looser is only a few thousand votes. IF you work at it next time around you can change that many people's vote without spending a penny!
Become an informed voter and get your friends to become informed. (Or if they won't become informed, tell them to stay home rather than vote for the guy who looks better on TV!)
from tfa, Ashcroft: "The theft of intellectual property victimizes not only its owners and their employees, but also the American people, who shoulder the burden of increased costs for goods and services."
What about the big entertainment companies' "victimizing" the American people by charging $30 for something that costs $1 to produce? What about the cost of entry for talented individuals into the world of professional entertainment being so enormous that it banks on people being brainwashed into longing for human-manufactured super-star gods (rather than actual talent or substance of real everyday people)?
I think these are more direct causes of the "cost burden" that mainstream entertainment causes the American people to "shoulder." The people who aren't aware yet of entertainment alternatives such as independent film or local music are not simply getting stuff for free because they can. They are getting the stuff because it isn't, and has never been, available for a fair price. But they are so hooked on mainstream entertainment, like it's crack, that they can't resist.