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.

Comments

Conspiracy?

[lachlan76]

They did commit copyright infringement. How is that conspiracy?

Re:Conspiracy?

[It doesn't come easy]

It would have to be because of a plan for them to cooperate together, I would guess.

Re:Conspiracy?

[JohnnyKlunk]

A conspiracy is a plot to carry out some harmful or illegal act or a secret agreement between two or more people to perform an unlawful act . You don't have to actually perform the act to be convicted. In many cases just planning to do something is against the law. Especially these days where having a map of a government building and a few pounds of fertaliser in the shed means you're conspiring to commit acts of terrorism. For which you'll definately do some hard time.

Re:Conspiracy?

[hackstraw]

They did commit copyright infringement. How is that conspiracy?

Its a plea. Want to understand the law, get a law degree or be a lawmaker. Although, neither really can understand the often contradictory aspects of the law, but those people are the only ones with the authority to do so.

Also, from the FA, its worth mentioning:

Both men pleaded guilty to acting for commercial advantage or private financial gain

This is piracy or bootleging or whatever you want to call it. This is not typical p2p activity because there was commercial gain from it.

Re:Conspiracy?

[lachlan76]

Your country actually allows you to send people to jail for planning to commit a non-jailable offense in the future???

Re:Conspiracy?

[the_mad_poster]

No, the parent is either ignorant or a troll. Willfull copyright infringement is punishable with jail time, the length of which varies with the severity of the act.

Article Slashdotted ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone have a torrent ? ;)

Just goes to show you...

[pdxaaron]

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.

Re:Just goes to show you...

[eggoeater]

Tell that to Rosa Parks.

Re:Just goes to show you...

[brainburger]

There is a limit to how far you should obey laws which are wrong (I think this is beyond dispute, without invoking whatever is Slashdot's equivalent of Godwin's law).

At what point is disobedience justified? - I am tempted to argue that the suppression of the now-possible global multimedia library which p2p users are trying to provide is a step too far.
Copyright has not always existed, and it may now have outlived its value to humanity as a whole.

Re:Just goes to show you...

[Seumas]

Unfortunately, most people don't have the money to fund lobbiests in Washington or fatten the pockets of legislators to sway toward consumer rights.

If you don't like the law, tough-titties. Don't think that you can get away with changing it unless you have more money than those who support it.

Re:Just goes to show you...

[davmoo]

As someone else has already said in a reply to you, basic human rights and the "right" to rip off corporations are two very different things. To compare the two is so rediculous I can't even come up with a better word than "rediculous".

But I would also like to point out something else.

If you check historical records, you will find that Martin Luther King and many others involved in civil rights protests spent many days in jail for their actions. They did what they had to do to effect change...but they also understood those actions came with a price. And many of them, not just MLK, and both black and white, paid a far greater price.

Are you willing to go to jail or take a bullet just so you can download Britney?

Demand, where where is the (legeal) supply?

[jg_elliott]

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?

Re:Demand, where where is the (legeal) supply?

[gowen]

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?

Quick economics lesson : Demand is a function of price. There is a lot of demand, because the illegal copies are FREE.

Re:Demand, where where is the (legeal) supply?

[Maestro4k]

• Quick economics lesson : Demand is a function of price. There is a lot of demand, because the illegal copies are FREE.

That's not necessarily true. If it was then iTunes store wouldn't sell a single track, but they do. People wouldn't come into stores looking for singles of songs they like, but they do.

The demand is there for digital music downloads in the format people want, free of DRM crap and at a reasonable price. I suspect you could sell tons and tons of music at around 50 cents a track in Mp3 format. Hell the RIAA companies could still sell tons of CD singles but they've killed off that market trying to force people to buy full albums.

Besides, books are available for free, you can check them out of the library and read them and not pay a cent. You do have to return them in time, but that's a small issue in exchange for free books. Why would anyone buy a book when they can read it for free? People do it every day though.

Demand's not a function of price, price is a function of demand. If supply is low and demand is high, price rises. If supply is high and demand is low, price drops. That's the point the RIAA & MPAA are missing. With digital music/movies supply is infinite, so normal economics rules indicate that price should drop. Instead they want to charge as much as, or more, than it costs to buy a better quality physical copy. No wonder they're doing so poorly, they haven't got a clue how to handle the digital market, not technically or economically.

P2P?

[Transdimentia]

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.

Re:P2P?

[brainburger]

Yes, they were Direct Connect hubs. This means the accused may not have actually hosted the infringing material, similar to Napster.

In the other news...

[Anonymous Coward]

...new BitTorrent sites are appearing at the same time others are closing. One of these sites is mininova, which is the follow-up of the well-known SuprNova.
A full list of torrent sites can be found here.

is that legal?

[interactive_civilian]

from TFA:

During an investigation, government agents downloaded 35 copyright works worth $4820.66 from Chicoine's site and more than 70 copyright works worth $20,648.63 from Trowbridge's site, the DOJ says.

IAdefinitelyNAL, but for some reason I was under the impression that evidence gathered through illegal means (in this case copyright infringement) could not be used...

Can anyone clarify US law on that matter?

Re:is that legal?

[cpt kangarooski]

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.

Why is this a Felony???

[advocate_one]

Surely Copyright infringement is only a civil matter.

I feel so safe now...

[stankulp]

...thank God the FBI is doing its job.

For those of you shocked about the plea...

[njfuzzy]

Presumably they pled guilty as part of a plea-bargain. There's very little reason to plead guilty to anything unless it gets you better treatment that you think you would get by fighting the charges.

...value...

[Vo0k]

It's interesting how the value of the media is calculated.
Is a high-compression DIVX of a shaky video of screen in cinema valued the same as retail 4-DVD "special edition" release?
Is a rip of a 4-CD game squeezing it into 300MB calculated as the same game, with a T-shirt and a manual in the box?
Is software that was released 10 years ago valued at the prices of its release or at current "bargain bin" prices?
Is a mono MP3 made through hand-hacked cable from a poor quality cable counted the same as a new audio CD album?

I don't think the real value is taken into consideration. They just match title-price and neglect quality altogether. My friend was caught. The value they calculated on his software was something like $30.000. The real value of the crap if he wanted to sell that, was around $500.

Newspeak

[Anonymous Coward]

One of the points of Orwell's 1984 was that you could subtly influence peoples opinions by changing the language they used to talk about such things.

"Those who steal copyrighted material will be caught, even when they use the tools of technology to commit their crimes," U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft says in a statement. "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."

The trouble with that statement is that copyright infringement is not theft. The dictionary tells us that you have to remove something in order to steal it. The laws in the USA defining theft don't mention copyright infringement. The laws in the USA defining copyright infringement don't mention theft. The Supreme Court definitively ruled that copyright infringement was not theft in Dowling vs US, 1985 . They are fundamentally different actions. There is simply no basis whatsoever for misappropriating the word "theft" to talk about copyright infringement.

The question is, why is Ashcroft trying to tell us that copyright infringement is theft? The only other people who do that are the RIAA, the MPAA, and Slashdot trolls.

Er, felony?

[CAIMLAS]

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.

Gallery of CSS Descramblers

[Bj�rn Stenberg]

The wikipedia entry is correct. Just because you don't know about it doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

One of the more famous examples is Dr. David S. Touretzky's "Gallery of CSS Descramblers", which contains more than 20 different examples of code that is (assumed to be) illegal under the DMCA.

The page also prominently displays Dr. Touretzky's name, email address and a photograph of him. It was explicitly created to draw attention to the absurdity of the DMCA law, through civil disobedience:

If code that can be directly compiled and executed may be suppressed under the DMCA, as Judge Kaplan asserts in his preliminary ruling, but a textual description of the same algorithm may not be suppressed, then where exactly should the line be drawn? This web site was created to explore this issue, and point out the absurdity of Judge Kaplan's position that source code can be legally differentiated from other forms of written expression.

Max 5 Years?!

[dmarx]

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?