Slashdot Mirror
First Swede Prosecuted For File Sharing
praps writes "The Local reports that a 27-year old man who allowed people to download a film from his PC has become the first Swede to be charged with illegal file sharing, after a tip-off from the country's notorious Anti-Piracy Bureau. It's a critical test case, as prosecutors say that anything less than a prison sentence would make future prosecutions unlikely." From the article: "The case was brought after a tip off from Antipiratbyrån (APB), a lobby organization set up by the media industry to combat illegal downloading in Sweden. Since the man was reported APB has found itself in hot water, with an Internet company accusing the organization itself of illegally downloading films and games.
Ugh, for crying out loud. I can only hope that the judges are more sane than the persecutors.
It is still a question if that's "stealing" at all but they just have to put someone in prison for it anyway.
Seems like what they're hoping for is that the whole P2P is a bad dream and if they POP it hard enough, it will all go at once. Next aim would be to put a man on an electric chair, I guess?
So... How hard do they need to abuse the next victim for you to stop downloading? Prison? Ass rape? Work camps? Sheesh.
Sense of proportion - Copyright infringement: Max 3 years, Murder - 25 to Life. I see a sense of proportion
I don't know about everyone else, but copyright violations seem like they should ONLY be civil. This criminal prosecution is just taken to far: congress was even attempting to pass a bill that would make copyright violation a criminal offense in the US! (I dont think it passed though..)
Won't putting these people in jail prevent the copyright holders of collecting damages? (Isn't that the point: that they are supposed to be reimbursed for lost money?)
If this happened in the US, the end result would be that everyone that is ever convicted of copyright violation is going to be punished twice: jailtime plus civil lawsuit...
From the article: "It is, for example, a breach of copyright laws to copy a music book, but it is not illegal to receive or use the copied book," said the party's legal affairs spokesman, Johan Linander. "It should be no more complicated than that in the digital arena," he added.
Hopefully, this sort of more sane attitude will prevail. How is this different than if he lent a copy of the DVD to a friend?
In many countries, it would be acceptable to view it, copy it, or parts, while it's in the borrowers possession.
This should be the case here. The whole world is surely watching this case! Use your heads Sweden!!!
Oh my gawd, they killed kenny's mod points!!!!
Almost every artice I read involving IP law in Europe shows that the legislative and judicial bodies in Europe display far more common sense than the their American counterparts, which appear to be motivated only by "good ol' boy" corporate greed and a misplaced sense of righteousness. It's readily apparent to me that the real innovations in contentent delivery and IP law reforms that are soreley needed will come from Europe, not the US.
This isn't the sig you're looking for... Move along.
So a human life is worth about 8 pirated movies.
Good to know.
Granted, but what about this further distinction:
* Copyright infringement, for profit (illegal reselling of a copyrighted work for which you have no rights).
* Copyright infringement without profit (illegal redistribution, for free).
Would you agree that the second is of a lesser degree. And that it is closer to "free advertisement" (as in: "look, I like this movie/music, I think it's cool, don't you share my view?").
In yet another critical test case, prosecutors say that anything less than a prison sentence would make future prosecutions of people exceeding the speed limit by 16 km/h(10mph) unlikely.
I'm still trying to figure out what people mean by 'social skills' here.
Really. Not from what I see in this story.
My question is this, isn't entrapment illegal in Sweden?
If not then I think the need a major overhaul in there laws.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Where is your sense of proportion now?
Do you want another example? Ok, I have one right here. A guy (drunk) crashes his car into a building at high speed, kills one bystander. Previously, they have taken away his license three times for drinking and driving, speeding and reckless behaviour. End result? One year in prison. Please put him in jail with that Swede, I think they have a lot in common (sarcasm overdose).
http://jcsnippets.atspace.com/ - a collection of Java & C# snippets
This is the typical attitude of most Slashdoters.
Not two days ago almost everyone agreed with Apple about the lawsuit against the guy who leaked a *beta* of Tiger. Now suddenly there are 3/4 comments questioning if this Swede was even stealing...
And in the typical Slashdot philosophy this comment will be modded down and all the rest arguing wether this was stealing will be modded Interesting/Insightful.
This is a good example why I don't even argue here about copyrights and just skip those news items (apart from this).
Why is GPLed code any different than the one distributed under a proprietary license???
They are both license and allow and prevent you certain things you can do with the software you own. I don't like the idea that I should "give my code away". That's not freedom. Under the term freedom (in software meanings) I understand that with that code I am granted to do whatever I want with it, period. But this post is not about this. Everyone can agree and disagree with a license, but until Slashdot starts acting maturely against copyrights this site will always be a joke.
Treat every license and software the same way or STFU!
btw, this text is distibuted under the 'do whatever the fuck you want with it' license.
Probably worthless because the court system is designed to help rich people, the kind of people commiting crimes for money, not normal people.
Linux is not Windows
Each of which probably represents about 2,000 man-years of work.
Yes, there's where the sense in it is. Some part of your income is more important to preseve than a life.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
And the point would still be valid. A life is worth more than every movie ever made; any punishment for copyright violation that includes jail time is out of proportion.
By the same token anyone who risks jail time to download Big, is a bit crazy.
Actually, I think he mostly speaks in Swedish, since he's from Sweden. That's a large Country in the north of Europe (an area called Scandinavia), boasting one of the world's best education systems, an extremely well developed technological infrastructure (far better than the US, for example) and very strict ecological standards. The people there have got a language that is different from English (although remotely connected, both being germanic languages). English -- since you might wonder -- that's the language you've just used. Or, well, tried to. Swedish sounds quite different when compared to English. It is much more melodic. "Bork" is not a very common word in Swedish, as far as I know.
Surprisingly enough, the swedish people, despite having this beautiful old language, try very hard to learn and speak English, because it happens to be a very popular language all over the world. It might be that a few of them have a rather strong accent, but you should hear how ridicolous native english speakers sound when they try to speak _any_ other language.
Sorry for ranting. I know you where joking. But jokes about other people's lack of english skills mostly come from persons who have never mastered a foreign language (we don't even talk about their own...), that pisses me off.
And, by the way: I'm not swedish. But all (8) the swedish people I know are extremely proficient in English.
he isn't flaunting that US/EU laws have no effect; he is simply mentioning that bittorrents are not illegal. if bittorrents were illegal, then so would a http reference from slashdot. keep in mind a bittorrent only tells you how to get the files by providing information as to where the file is being tracked. its not the copyrighted file in question that he is hosting.
hence, its perfectly legal.
Fun fact 3: no one thinks the Swedish Chef speaks Swedish.
move the servers to Russia or some other place where they still have freedom
Man how times have changed...
And in this case, the crime was carried out by themselves anyway, so...
Sharing movies only hurts bigass companies
Sharing movies only hurts the people trying to make money from selling (access to) movies. In most cases yes, that's a "bigass company", but some movies are made by small groups of individuals.
In either case, even "bigass companies" are just large groups of individuals; do you have a size limit above which it's ok to infringe on copyrights? 10 people? 100?
It's official. Most of you are morons.
anti-American beer commercial to get Canadian's all patriotic about their country.
And before you pass me off as yet another jealous American, I too am Canadian, but one who is sick and tired of our national identity being instilled by a manipulative corporate agenda.
Go ahead, mark me off-topic.
I would go one step further than saying the second is the lesser crime. I would say the second is no crime at all. IF we as a people want to have a free excange of idea's, then we can not tax those ideas. It is like if a library set up a new office of "copywrite protection", so that whenever you wanted to quote a book in a research paper you had to pay a royalty. It is the same stupidity we see with patents being granted for everything from ALL your gene sequences (so no other company can make genetic medicine except the one who owns the patent), to patents like MS wanting to own the internet IP protocol. This hurts society. It encorages greed at public expense. Do we want the day to come, when after a heart attack we are rushed to the hospital and the doctor stands ready to save your life and asks you "did you pay your copywrite fee to Procter and Gamble before we administer the medication". It is no different people, it is one person who says "I own this idea, AND NOBODY ELSE CAN USE IT".
I say, whoever owns the copywrited material is the only peroson with the right to sell it. But if I want to give away copies for free, that is my buisness. It is necessary for a free democoracy. We the PEOPLE need to reconsider these stupid copywrite laws, and realize the ones on the books were written by legislators paid by lobbyists who were paid by the music industry and pharmasutical companies.
So, what will the future be like in 10 years? Will we be an open society, or will we continue to close? Did VCR ownership destroy the profits entertainment companies had in the 80's and 90's? How fast did microsoft grow in the 80's and 90's when all a person had to do to copy a disk was use the "copy" command? These companies grew faster than they will in the future. All they can accomplish by closing society is to kill interest in their product, to turn something which was fun into something frustrating.
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
This is the classic Robin Hood defense, and under American law, essentially worthless in court.
You mean it is worthless in American courts now. It was not so 20 years ago. That was when non-commercial copyright infringement became a crime. Since copyright is intended to encourage artists to create useful works by granting them a limited monopoly, there was no reason to prohibit non-commercial distribution and it was not a crime. Since then copyright has turned into a "how much money can we get from them" series of laws written by lobbyists. There is no longer a limit, it applies to all distribution, technologic restrictions are enforced via a very indirect series of laws, and works are lost to the public as they vanish into the archives of big publishing houses and companies that no longer even exist. New copyright laws are about sucking every last penny from popular older works and removing all access to the others so there is less competition. If Disney had its way all the classic literature from the past would be copyrighted and locked in a box in the basement so that it did not distract us from their latest crappy musical cartoon. Hopefully the rest of the world's governments will not be so easily bribed into destroying our literary, musical, and theatrical heritage.
Mr. Viscusi argues that using a flat value discriminates against young people. A study he conducted puts a $7 million value on a human life. But applying that figure to both the 12-year old saved by an auto-safety rule and the 70-year old whose life has been slightly prolonged by clean-air rules "creates a severe inequity," he says.
1 human == $7 million (that's a lot more than the UK government says a human costs).
Now, the MPAA would say a DvD costs about $20, and a downloaded movie directly relates to a lost sale.
Do the math and it works out that a human life is worth about 5000 downloads of all seven movies.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
If you had been paying attention, you would have realized that I was mocking the parent poster's argument, by showing that an equivalent argument leads to a ridiculous conclusion (that car thieves ought not to be put in jail). Instead, you took my statement at face value, and the point went completely over your head.
Interesting. Most children are not greedy like adults are greedy. Most children work for acknowledgment, for praise. Somewhere this love of doing changes into working to satisfy greed. I wonder if this is something because of capitalism where money can buy you anything, including politicians and public opinion.
A software company for instance, can put a lot of manhours on producing a product. They then want to earn back what they've put into it (you have to feed even the programmers sometimes, you know). The easiest way to do that is sell it on a CD.
This is how it always was, and the companies made good money. I don't understand why things have changed so much, that now they are not making money. It was easier to copy software 10-20 years ago, yet today, even as it gets harder to make copies, are they are making less money?
Wouldn't people stop going to theaters if you could download the movie? Not if you have reasonable prices and give a good experience. What experience? Well I don't know, it doesn't exist yet, cause nobody cared to come up with one since what we have now is "good enough". Myself, I'd even be happy with the current one, if only they'd lower the prices. As it is, I almost never go to movies.
I think the theater and movie buisness is horrible, and a result of the industries own policies. Here is a perfect example where greed can kill something good. I used to LOVE going to the theater. Where else can you get a screen that is 15 feet wide, and a killer sound system?? I would go, and buy some candy. It was an awesome experiance. I would leave very happy. Today, it is very different. You pay $10 for a ticket, it seems the price of tickets is much more than it should be. Then you have to wait through 30 minutes of commericals. I remember when I was younger, I did not mind the 2 trailers they would play. I liked them. But when they started playing 4, then 5, then 6, then adding commercials, and these trailers became a distration, something that kept me from the movie, I started hating them. And I don't buy candy at the theater anymore. I am not about to spend $4 on a box of candy that is $1 at the grocery store. Someone should do a study, how many more boxes of candy or popcorn would a theater sell if they cut the price in half. Would they make more total money because of the increased sales? I think they would. And how much more money would a theater make if it cut those advertisments, would it save enough time to add one more showtime?
But I have a feeling that it will not last. If everybody on this planet were lazy stupid bums, the big companies would win and we would get lousy products for a high price and people would still eat it, since nobody cared
I am not as optimistic. Did you read what Dean told the democratic party? That they need to stop explaining their positions, but find catch phrases, otherwise the republicans will win the sound bites that play on the news.
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
A life is worth more than every movie ever made; any punishment for copyright violation that includes jail time is out of proportion.
As a consequence no film whose making runs a non-zero risk of killing someone should ever be produced, right? Also, punishing ordinary theft with prison time is always out of proportion?
Your thinking is based on the popular error, that a human life should be valued higher than any finite amount of money.
Government continually has to make trade-offs between saving lives and improving efficiency. Surely you would not approve of speed limits so low that nobody can be killed in a car crash? But how can one find the point of balance when the weight on one side equals infinity? If you postulate that the value of a life isa infinite, you cannot have a consistent theory of economics and hence, rational decision-making becomes impossible.
So, how does one value a life? Of course, we cannot simply ask a man, how much money he wants for his life, as that would again give us infinity. Instead we must ask what the compensation for a (small) risk to one's life should be and extrapolate from that. For example, if Joe is prepared to run a one percent risk of losing his life in exchange for a gain of ten thousand dollars, then we should value Joe's life as (at most) one million dollars.
Of course, one arrives at different values for each life with this method. Since law, culture and religion require that each life should be treated as equally valuable, it seems appropriate to simply take the average, or perhaps the median.
If you have followed me to this point, you understand that it is both necessary and possible to determine a conversion factor between lives and dollars (and I would say that one million is about right). So treating someone who steals a million dollars like a murderer is not wrong.
A different way of arriving at the same conclusion is to reflect that a loss of one million dollars is enough to destroy the livelihood of maybe 5-10 families. Surely this creates an amount of anguish comparable to a murder.