Slashdot Mirror
Crackdown on BT Users in Hong Kong
griffinn writes "100 BitTorrent users in Hong Kong are about to receive legal threats from the MPIA (Hong Kong's equivalent of the MPAA), BusinessWeek reports. The users were randomly selected from more than 6000 IP addresses collected by investigators. Customs officials are also following through on their previous arrest of a 38-year-old man who allegedly uploaded three movies." From the article: "If convicted, the suspect faces up to four years in prison and a fine of 50,000 Hong Kong dollars ($6,400) for every illegal copy."
users in a trap.
If you ask me, the other 5900 BitTorrent users should come forward and say "I'M SPARTACUS!"
I say, it's about time China recieved the same lack of freedoms that we have right here in the good old US of A.
Changa hates change.
...to something like Manslaughter or Murder 3.
Pulp Audio Weekly - Geek News and Reviews
This is just to scare the sheeps. Very common tactic.
How can you expect the RIAA to distinguish between legitimate and illegitimate uses of BitTorrent when slashdot editors cannot be bothered to do the same? Hong Kong is not cracking down on BT Users, but on wilful copyright violators who happen to use BitTorrent.
You might as well run a headline "US police crack down on Drivers", leading to a report detailing the arrest of a guy who drove a getaway car in a robbery.
Sheesh.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
BitTorrent is not inherently illegal. You could use a similar argument to prohibit downloading of ANY files, since they just use a different method.
It appears that their government is throwing out the baby with the bathwater. If they tried that sort of stuff in the United States, then the government would catch so much flak from people claiming this is an invasion of privacy (which it is.)
jerks. this is on-topic. maybe not funny. but not off topic
Simply leave your apartment, go to the nearest corner, buy all the DVDs you want for about a buck each, then go home and watch them!
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
4 years in prison? I can understand thieves and murderers doing prsion time, but some dude uploading a movie on the internet? Kinda a waste of jail space, I think. That and he (or she) won't really fit in, because there are plenty of decent people who swap movies and music.
aside from that, is it just BT users in general, or ones who were found to be swapping illegal content?
http://www.6765656b.com it's the ~ for us geek's.
Sounds a lot better than getting sued for tens of thousands of dollars...
Agile Artisans
People are pirating entertainment in Southeast Asia?
Am I the only one who glanced at the headline and wondered why Hong Kong was cracking down on Blue Tooth users?
It sounds like they just grabbed IPs out of thin air. Then again, they probably could. I mean downloading movies with BT is rather simple and hard to resist when you've got fast broadband. Still, it would be interesting to know how they came up with their numbers.
Is there such a thing as legitimate download of copyrighted material? For instance, if I own a DVD, would I be within my rights to go and download a rip of that dvd? If so, doesn't it become very difficult for authorities to prove who is and is not violating copyright by downloading from services like Bit Torrent?
I find laziness to be an excellent motivator.
That's why all P2P is banned all over here. That includes private ISPs, corporations and government agencies and you know what? I think it makes perfect sense. Yeah, sure you could load a Linux distribution with a P2P application, but most people will simply use it to download the Britney Spears' latest CD thus committing a crime.
Think of the state the world would be in if drug dealers could afford to buy legislation and law enforcement like the media cartels can?
So sad, I wonder if there was another reason for arresting this man?
He should have done what everyone else does in China, just go to the local street market and buy the pirated copy.
They should also reduce the sentence due to the bad selection of movies he made (Daredevil, Red Planet, Miss Congeniality), he deserves no more than a slap on the wrist and good movie guide.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
There is something seriously wrong when your "randomly" select someone to be legally procecuded.
Do they get a group of murders and randomly select which one is going to have a trail, and let the rest of scott free?
Why using Patent Pending logo on this article? Does that mean BT is patented?
...Internet logs on to YOU!
/just when I got positive karma
-- often wrong; never in doubt
"Okay, we've chucked 6000 names in a barrel, let's pull one out. Remember, the prize is four years in prison and a huge fine! Henry Wong, you're our first winner!"
"Woohoo! I win! Wait..."
Although Hong Kong is now technically under the control of China, it is not a part of China. If you've seen the term SAR, it's an acronym for Special Administrative Republic. (One country, two systems) In all reality Hong Kong basically just an independent state. So China != Hong Kong.
Considering the fine for spitting is something like 15,000 Hong Kong dollars (I forget, it's been a while since I was there) 50,000 is really nothing.
Its obvious that stealing music is wrong. Just as software pirating is wrong, stealing TV is wrong, stealing movies is wrong, etc etc etc.
But the question I always ask myself when I hear about the RIAA and the MPAA suing individuals is, "What good can come from this?"
And the answer is obviously, "Nothing good can come from this."
Suing customers isn't going to help. Most people who steal media do so for the fun of it. Many are just collectors who would most likely not purchase the media if they couldn't steal it.
Are the lawsuits preventing the piracy? I don't think so. I think they are just driving the piracy deeper underground.
Are the lawsuits pissing off people? Just read slashdot, of course they are.
I think corporate America's whole tack on DRM is completely out of whack. Instead of attacking perspective customers, they should be trying to win their money by providing product that is more compelling than the free copy by being less expensive and easier to get than the illegal stuff.
Instead of being control freaks, trying to control all the people in America to prevent loss of money, they should focus on improving content and find ways lower the cost of digital media distrobution to the point that stealing isn't as fun anymore. Everyone has a different "fun" threshold and for many, releasing tunes for 33 cents or 50 cents a piece would remove the fun of trying to get a decent download.
And that's my main point. Its fun to get something for practically nothing and to collect a massive music collection on the cheap. And that's why people do it, for the fun of it. If Joe P2Per has 2 million mp3s on his music server, how often does he get to hear each and every one of them? Not very often. He sticks to the songs he really likes, and I'll bet he's got those on CD, because he wants to support the bands he likes because he wants them to succeed.
I think RIAA and MPAA need to step back and re-analyze the situation. I think they're going down the wrong path and they need to stop.
Raydude
- greps article for the string "600"
- finds nothing
It's incredible how a normal person can break the law with a software.. and be caught.
A lot of people doesn't think that sharing files using a p2p program is illegal.
They just treat software, music and movies as normal data, not copyrighted "data".
ajf
OMFG, you actually drink the kool aid!
I regularly go to the houses of friends and relatives to help them with their computer problems.
Typically, during the course of unfouling the mess I find, there are several gigabytes of movies, music, software, and other files in directories made by various malware programs. I uninstall the software and delete the files.
Just because a movie was uploaded from a particular computer, it doesn't mean the user knew about it. It takes a person of greater expertise than is common among end users to discover the problem (even though the average user notices lower performance, that's not the same as knowing that the machine is hosting a "Spiderman 2" torrent).
If you don't know that you are doing something, you shouldn't be held accountable for it. There are various levels of "knowing" something in a legal sense: knowing of the problem, knowing the problem *could* occur, knowing with certitude, etc.
The standard (in the U.S., anyway) is that the user must know that a program is on his computer that will transfer files illegally. He doesn't have to put the software there knowingly, put the unlicensed material there, nor actively initiate the illegal transfer itself. If and only if he knows the facility for the illegal transfer exists and he fails to stop it is he liable when the transfer happens.
It's like this: suppose you have a dog that never bites anyone and has never left his yard. If someone else comes along to give your dog PCP, you aren't liable when your dog goes nuts. If you know that the dog has gotten the PCP, you are liable whether you are present when the dog goes nuts or not.
O'course, that's just the theory; you still may be stuck proving your innocence, either with a drugged-up dog or a mal-P2P-infected PC.
sigs, as if you care.
but in some people's eyes, all p2p is priacy... when i worked at a (then) major isp (think #5) our free web hosting brands both cracked down on ANYONE using rar to archive files... they thought it was only used for piracy.
i found this out when i uploaded my collection of starcraft maps to my starcraft page (rar gave me 25% better compression than zip) and i was promptly closed down.
I suppose BitTorrent can be used for legitimate purposes. For example, I've heard of people serving homemade videofiles and to hundreds of people without using much bandwidth of their own using BitTorrent. On the other hand, the vast majority of traffic generated by BitTorrent users is trafficking of copyright-protected content, i.e. IP Theft.
I think a better analogy is the opium trade in Imperial China. Sure, opium has some legitimate medical uses, but the government found that the the effect was largely negative and that it was used for illegitimate purposes in nearly all cases.
Maybe the right way to deal with BitTorrent and similar technologies is some sort of regulation structure, similar to the FDA and other food and drug regulating bodies in other countries.
-- Molly Lipton, Born Again Technologist.
I didn't know BT still did service in Hong Kong, I'd have thought it was provided by the Chinese...
Oh, you mean BitTorrent.
Fuck.
By summer it was all gone...now shesmovedon. --
Maybe the people distributing those distros should choose another, less controversial media.
Face it. "There is SOME legal traffic there" is never, ever going to cut it. P2P is going down because most of the traffic is illegal.
It seems everyday some crap like this comes up, 4 years in a chinese prison, HOT DAMN. Then there is the bill that Dubya signed into law.. up to 3 years on that one..
IP laws, DMCA, RIAA, MPAA, levies and taxes on recordable media, jail time, huge fines???
Man we are on the slope right now.. and it seems to be near frictionless I just want to know where did this BS start and who to shoot in the face, if I go to jail who cares, I'll be bunkin with a guy who uploaded Spiderman 2.
"I am a kernel in the linux army"
So, last week, we get an article about Hong Kong and gig sized pipes to residents, now they are going after the file sharers.
I have no comment.
They're called "dongers". That's what my Chief Of the Boat told me.
If aspiration is a virtue, achievement cannot be a vice.
Sigh...I know it was a troll, but I still thought it was something worth pointing out. Stupid trolls.
These scare tactics seem to be working on some level, but its pretty clear that (copyright) file-sharing will evolve back (de-evolve?) to close-nit networks on IM/IRC but with lesions learnt from P2P - the next generation of file sharing apps will be orientated so that you share with friends and friends of friends, kinda like basic file-transfers on say AIM but more sophisticated, and kinda like Kazaa but less random these networks will be far harder for the RIAA etc to infiltrate but will probably result in less traffic overall.
How do they actually measure how many films someone has 'uploaded' with bittorrent? since you usually upload only small chunks to many people you might have helped 1000 people get a file but in fact only uploaded a few MB, you may have uploaded 100% of the file to 100 people or 1% of the file to 100 people. Obviously the MPIA want to use the higher statistic to get more money, but how do they do it?
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
Is their gov't doing this because the torrenters are infringing upon the hundreds of those hard-working $1-a-dvd companies? I mean, those companies go out of their way to make their DVDs Region Free, show off their creative subtitling skills (for Anime (Jpn->Cat->Eng)), and put them in nice little sleeves instead of those overly inefficient cases we're used to. Because we sure need those companies. ;)
0- Eamonman Proud member of DNRC
Not to be a patent pedant, but what the hell has this to do with patent topic?
Coming from a fairly poor economic background and having to save with my parents for my first dx2/66 MHz computer (~$2500.00) I never would have achieved what I have had it not been for Warez, etc. I was able to try different software, graphics apps, web design, programming languages, games, system utils and apps, etc. I was able to teach myself such a broad base of skills that later propelled me into a degree and to work in the IT field. Plus learning the technology, terms, etc. just to be able to find and download things was invaluable to learning about compression algorithms, file formats and more.
MP3 and DVD's don't have the ability to teach as much but there is still value in it. Downloading massive amounts of content and selling it is WRONG, and no one can argue that however the poor kid who has no other way to break into computing (which is a huge amount of geeks I know) should not be sitting in jail with a $60,000+ fine because he wanted to learn Photoshop, or Dreamweaver. This is all getting a bit out of hand.
http://teasphere.wordpress.com - A little spot of tea
And then take away their torrent access...
Is this what they call "Chinese Torture"?
Personally, if that was the upper limit of the punishment, I'd go for the caning over three years in prison. Hell, I'd set up weekly appointments for canings just so I can keep torrenting. (yes, I just verbed that word. Grammar Nazis ho!)
A few hundred thousand more arrests wouldn't even be one percent of the poplulation of the place and it's just one city. Despite being huge, it's not even among the top three of the largest in China. Old media interests can get as ugly as they want. The simple fact is that copyright laws are unenforceable on the Net if for no other reason than because of the demographics.
As of 1990 just the largest hundred cites in China have a larger population than the entire US. Just the top ten had over fifty million people and that was fifteen years ago. It would literally bankrupt the country to apply the law to the numbers of people who are currently violating these laws. Prison labor isn't cheap compared to what they already have when you factor in the cost of the guards and the room and board. The scare tactics can only continue for so long because it is, in fact, a bluff. This is obvious according to the numbers.
Who doesn't like Big Tits?
for reals.
yo.
heh.
Hell, I'd set up weekly appointments for canings just so I can keep torrenting.
Go ahead and admit it. You're not really interested in the torrents, are you?
So China != Hong Kong.
Are you sure? When we say China != Taiwan, they throw a fit.
Spreading this crap is more deserving of a littering charge than piracy.
They won't stop until no one can download anything except from registered (probably subscription based) sources. EVERY currently "free/anonymous" channel will be busted and busted and harrassed and threatened and it's users prosecuted under outrageously restricitve legislation until there's only sanctioned channels left. The future is dark.
Good DOES come out of it. What sense is there having a law if it's not going to be enforced? I highly doubt those convicted are going to download illegal files with bittorrent again. Friends and family would get the message as well. It's certainly happening here at RIT, one of the subpoenaed schools. Even though only 25 were given subpoena letters, many many more have stopped downloading.
They already downloaded everything.
5 7234&tid=230&tid=218
http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/04/23/20
The article stated that he uploaded 3 movies to a web site. What does this have to do with bit torrent?
when bittorrent die, other "bittorrent" appears!
lets look at that another way.
If I've got a car and I dont know much about how it works, and so I dont maintain it and over time it becomes unroadworthy. If I go and drive my car on the roads, and because I didnt maintain it and make sure it was roadworthy, I get in an accident. That's my fault isn't it?
Going back to the computers. If the user doesnt protect themself and secure their computer. Say it's compromised and shares illegal files with other people. That's their fault.
Here's another one. Say I've got a gun and I don't know how to act responsibly with it. I go wandering round with the gun, and it goes off and shoots someone. Again, that would be my fault.
What I'm getting at here is that it's THEIR responsiblity to look after THEIR computer and make sure it isn't offering up illegal files on the internet.
Now that might sound harsh. I mean, they're just users right? Well no. No-one is forcing them to have a computer. They can just not use one. Not learning about their computer sufficiently to keep it from landing them in trouble with the authorities IS their problem and its THEIR fault that happened. After all, you need a license to drive a car.
BTs appalling sevice and lack of decent internet would go hand in hand with the Chineese governments oppression and censorship!
China isn't quite so communist anymore (well, of course, they were never really "communist" just non-capitalist and authoritarian, but that's pretty much been what passes for communism in the actual world). They've been moving bits and pieces towards a free-ish market (ie. free but still can be subject to every whim of the government if they felt like it) for quite some time now, and of course Hong Kong, where this occurred, only returned to Chinese hands recently in history (1997), so we have the legacy of British corporate freedoms to blame for this kind of incident for the most part . . . but what they hell, easier to blame China.
Actually, come to think of it, China gets the best of both worlds. Since the government is all-powerful but lets corporations operate, people get to be oppressed by the Dictatorship Of The We're-Proletariat-We-Swear, AND by the Corporate Pig Dog Capitalists! So when people ask for freedoms they can be persecuted as bourgeois swine, and when they steal movies they can be likewise persecuted for being dirty communists. Brilliant!
I remember sigs. Oh, a simpler time!
I thought the lure of BT was that people couldn't track what you were downloading, in the respect that what I download is a .torrent file, not a .mpg/mp3/whatever. So how can they say these people have the files when all they downloaded was a torrent?
-Valiss
While I don't support this particular case...
In many cases randomized samples are taken for prosecution simple because it is too difficult/expensive/etc to prosecute en-masse. When a cop pulls up behind you with his lights blaring, is it his fault that he doesn't pull over the other 2-3 vehicles near you that were also speeding? Maybe he'll have a partner or a car down the road which can catch another, but he simply can't manage to snag you all.
OK, so that's speeding tickets. Perhaps murderers are treated more strongly? How about plea bargains then, a hardcore criminal might get off so that police can nab one of more other hardcore criminals... quite often this happen with organized crime.
There's nothing wrong with random selection, it's part of the deterrance value in the criminal process. Better than if a cop hauls you in because he didn't like your tie or something stupid such as that.
Neat.
Instead of lotteries being a tax on the numerically challenged funnelled through the state to gambling operations, they're now becoming a direct tax for the benefit of copyright holders.
You, too can become a winner!
I forget what 8 was for.
They design laws to punish offenders who are making money hand over fist though illegal copying and selling of copyrighted goods, and they end up applying to those whove only done it, possibly without realising it after installing bit-torrent and clicking on a link.
A very big difference
Despite what the MPAA has fed you about copyright infringement being theft. It is not.
If you steal a physical DVD from someone, you now posess the DVD and the rightful owner does not. Hence theft
If you copy a DVD, you now posess a copy of the DVD which the rightful owner still posesses. Hence copyright infringement
The MPAA / RIAA / MPIA etc etc should not be allowed to play with the word of law to fit their own needs.
Ripping an new rectum in the fabric of spacetime.
"Death," they responded.
"And what is the penalty for rebellion?"
"Death," They replied.
The commander looked at his troops for a moment then shrugged, "Congratulations gentlemen, welcome to the rebellion."
As punishments become more and more out of line with the crime, and as the laws become more ubiquitous, eventually the population will feel obligated to protect itself from a government that has gone insane. I'm not saying that the criminalization of a civil matter will be the last straw, but each straw tossed on will start to pile up unless some sanity is restored to the system.
"The bass, the rock, the mic, the treble. I like my coffee black, just like my metal" - Mindless Self Indulgence
Is there something wrong with not releasing pre-released material, or any material that you do not own the (C) to? More and more people talk as if it's not only their right, but some kind of unavoidable social responsibility or something.
:(
It's not like people are going to start dying in masses if they can't get a bootleg copy of the latest spittany bheers album or Hom Tanks movie now are they?
You want to know where the BS started? It started with you, and every other file sharer out there that decided that bootlegging material on a scale 1000x greater than ever before was a brilliant idea. It also started with Napster and their commercial pirating software program which was proudly advertised as such. In song even!
It's like a gang of white collar bank robbers that steal money from banking networks "because they can" went to every pub and bragged about their exploits and enjoined more people to rob banks using their new whiz bang Bankster program. And then they are surprised when they get caught? Or when people that use the program end up in jail? Oh brother!
The penalties may be a bit severe I'll grant, but frankly, they are pretty easy to avoid.
Stop "sharing" material that you did not create and therefore have zero right to. Just stop. Right now and forever.
How could it be any simpler?
How is it possible that anyone even has the gall to be indignant about it?
What the hell happened to people?
Contrary to popular belief, coding is not all free blow-jobs and beer. Those things cost MONEY!
If you believe in privacy, and believe you have "nothing to hide" at the same time, you're a goddammed idiot
"IP Theft"? Dear me, we seem to have quasi-legal sounding RIAA/BAS/RIAA invented terminology mxed up with true legal terms here. Tell me, if this crime you call "IP Theft" existed, then why is it that the file-sharers are not being prosecuted/sued for that, instead of copyright infringement?
If you believe in privacy, and believe you have "nothing to hide" at the same time, you're a goddammed idiot
Considering that in the U.S., the RIAA wants you to pay $150,000 per song.
For all of the oppression done by the communist party, the RIAA still has them beat.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
Legally there is, logically therei s a difference, philosophically it has succesfully been argued, morally, it is subective. This is ignorance of the law at most. Copyright infringement and theft have been legally different for as far back as it has been written down. Logically it is different as well. Taking a CD out of a store (paying is gaining permissions to take it out) without payment/permission is theft. The CD has been relocated out of the shop without permission, and without payment depriving the person of the potential money off of that one CD indefinately. Copying a song on the other hand does not delete the file off the HD of the user you downloaded the file, and there is a high uncertainty of whether or not potential payment has been *lost*. Most imporantly noted is, there is no loss of something one already posesses.
Opinion noted
If you stole your copy, then why the hell do you still have it, if by definition it must be missing? Not only have you been proven to be a logic/argument stooge to the RIAA/MPAA/BSA, but your arguments reek badly of logical blasphemy.
If you believe in privacy, and believe you have "nothing to hide" at the same time, you're a goddammed idiot
I say, it's about time China recieved the same lack of freedoms that we have right here in the good old US of A.
I know this is just being funny, but one of the few outlets of freedom that exist in China is the culture that strongly encourages the freedom to copy things. When the pressures of the information age hit the USA, political forces pretty much guarantee that the RIAA and MPAA can never push it to the point of murder, torture, or even genocide. I wouldn't count on that in China and I think it is very dangerous for the USA to attack this part of Asian culture. I could very easially see systematic executions to "set an example".
people would like to do it in masses -> it should not be illegal, because people as a mass don't view it so.
sure it would crash a bit of the current system - but not even that much as you'd first believe. and it certainly wouldn't smash any industry that _really_ matters.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Install WiFi and open access to everybody.
If the BBC can detect that you have an unlicensed TV turned on, then why can't governments detect open 802.11b access points?
Does the MPIA bribe the police, too?
MOUNT TAPE U1439 ON B3, NO RING
I looked at this, and first thought "british telecom"! oh well.
OS/2 - because choice is a terrible thing to waste.
free but still can be subject to every whim of the government if they felt like it
And that differs from the US-model in what way...?
US Government: Microsoft, stop that.
Microsoft: Make us!
long legal battle ensues
????
Microsoft: Profit!!!
I remember sigs. Oh, a simpler time!
If you believe in privacy, and believe you have "nothing to hide" at the same time, you're a goddammed idiot
As a citizen here I found myself responsible for clarifying some of the misunderstandings slashdotters have on Hong Kong:
- HK's judiciary system is definitely, entirely, totally different from that in China. It is inherited from the British colony before 1997, much more "civilized", transparent (= costly), and, in some sense, fair. This is what "one country, two systems" is for.
- I can say nearly 99% of bittorrent activities here were for copyrighted materials. My confession: I occasionally do that myself, although more often to get a copy of ubuntu. Yes, we have many (compared with western countries) pirate shops here, but 1) there are really not that many, and they are concentrated in some areas; 2) almost all of them are ran by the gangs; we all recognize that buying pirates from them is equivalent to funding them to do illegal activities. So bittorrent is quite popular recently here, kind of like helping each others.
- This is definitely not the first time prosecuting someone for violating the copyright law. I remember some guys here sharing mp3 via ftp and got caught. This time it goes into headline in HK newspaper and even in slashdot simply because the technology used here: bittorrent, which was believed (at least by many) to be difficult to get caught.
- After the caught of that guy, the number of seeders, who were scared, dropped by at least 90%. The "random" warning letters help too (no, I haven't received any, poor luck~). However, we all know that we can still find many of them in websites in China...
- Littering in HK is actually fined HK$1500. This is severe because of SARS outbreak.
We do this for fun.
The system began to continually reinforce an artificial protection on immaterial concepts and ideas under the influence of small groups of people with large amounts of money gained through said immaterial concepts and ideas, whether gained by fair means or foul. And the people began to wonder why, when an idea was old, unused, or unavailable, why it wasn't available anymore, just because someone protected it because they thought it MIGHT be worth something again some day.
...the Hong Kong bandwidth was all being used to the max (and on the brink of crashing the Internet). So that's the real reason of the suing!
Pat
Your rights to access is granted by the owner.
If you are not granted redistribution rights then you have none.
Again, this is so simple its laughable that there is any confusion about it!
Contrary to popular belief, coding is not all free blow-jobs and beer. Those things cost MONEY!
does NOT sound like to me:
One you talk about distibution, the other whether or not you created it or not, which is NOT always compatable.
If you believe in privacy, and believe you have "nothing to hide" at the same time, you're a goddammed idiot