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New Round of P2P Lawsuits from Hollywood
An anonymous reader writes "There is a new story on ZDNet about more lawsuits against P2P file sharers. The catch is that Hollywood is using the log files off Bit Torrent sites like Suprnova and LokiTorrent."
Let's sue the customers. Because that so worked for the music industry. Instead of accepting that networked transfer of information is the new reality and going with it. There are so many ways of making money here. But no, have to defend the old way. Man, they have NO VISION. No wonder Hollywood is addicted to creating formulaic movies. Risk aversion is fatal in creative industries, ya'know.
*face desk*
that after all this time they figured out how to use log files to their advantage
GOOD!
BitTorrent is all but DESIGNED to be traceable. Maybe this will make people finally notice. That would (hopefully) do a lot to legitimize it.
-Amalcon
So, um, when is Hollywood going to go after Usenet?
*crickets chirp*
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
In what ways is it legal for them to use the logs of Suprnova and Lokitorrent?
From TFA: Hollywood lawyers are hoping that the fear of exposure will dissuade more people from trying to download movies for free online. "Internet movie thieves be warned: You have no friends in the online community when you are engaging in copyright theft,"
I love how the MPAA resorts to terrorism to get it's point across.
Terrorism - n. The unlawful use or threatened use of force or violence by a person or an organized group against people or property with the intention of intimidating or coercing societies or governments, often for ideological or political reasons.
As with previous lawsuits filed by the MPAA and the Recording Industry Association of America, this round of cases is aimed at anonymous "John Does" identified only by their Internet addresses. The defendants' true identities will be sought through a later court process.
Translation: We really have no proof of who downloaded the material but we're gonna goto court anyways
Links are all you can download from those sites.
The Sneaker Net may still be alive. Except it's now on DVDs instead of floppies. Is Blu-Ray next?
The simple solution would be to offshore all Torrent sites to Asia, in countries such as China, India, Malaysia, Thailand, Sri Lanka, etc. Such sites don't require that much bandwidth so they can even be hosted in backwards African countries such as Chad, Niger, Congo, etc.
And I was so looking forward to offset my higher fuel prices by downloading the summer's blockbusters (have there been any?)...
The article is a bit sparse on technical details. Are they talking about using log files from web servers that distribute .torrent files? Because downloading the .torrent file, itself, isn't proof that a user has gone any further than that, which means no infringement is demonstrated.
Or is there a log file, somewhere, like the tracker, that keeps track of who's connecting and what they're getting? What if you don't succeed in downloading the entire movie? Are you still infringeing, even if the data that you've got is unuseable without the parts you haven't got?
How about the logfiles, are they really there,
and how old were they ? 24h, 2d or what.
Dear former admins of supr.nova or else who got raided,
please publish your policy how you dealt with the logs, and even if they really exist,
so that your former users can start saving money for a good lawyer or spend the money for a glass of champagne.
After I revolutionize the music industry....movies are my next goal...
I have nothing clever to put here...
The group previously said in February that a Texas court had ordered that the server logs of one big site, called LokiTorrent, be turned over to Hollywood investigators. An MPAA spokeswoman said that none of Thursday's suits were related to that action, however.
OP didn't RTFA in the first place.
Finally... something nobody will get pissed off about when it's offshored!
If people only downloaded GOOD movies from the net, they'd have much more free time and wouldn't be caught so easily.
RTFReviews.
Q: Why do trackers keep logs?
A: Because they want their users to go down with them!
Actually, they do require bandwidth. I know that http://demonoid.com/Demonoid stopped public signups, due to a lack of bandwidth. Now, you have to be invited by someone with a username there.
Honesty may be the best policy, but by process of elimination, dishonesty is the second best policy.
So let's see here...
Guns kill people, we sue the gun maker
The coffee is too hot, we sue McDonalds
We eat at fast food and we sue the fast food chains for making us fat.
We record music off the radio onto a cassette tape, it is ok to listen to in the car.
We download it off the internet, we get sued.
We watch a movie off a DVD and resell the DVD a place that sells used DVD's we get our money back from buying it and the Motion picture people don't get a second dime.
We download it and we get sued
So, does that mean that the ISP's connection we used should get sued too since we used that ISP's connection to get to the internet to Download what someone else put up there?
Does that mean we should sue Microsoft for making a majority of the operating systems used to DL the files we get sued for?
Does it ever end or have we just turned into a lawsuit happy world?
You could download the torrents from a public computer (no login) at your school/library, and then actually perform the downloading at home. How can that be traced back to you?
I don't think the issue for them is the file sharing anymore - they've just figured out that it's a cash cow to go around suing people who most likely can't/won't mount a successful defense.
... sorry just had to throw that in :)
I wonder if someone could counter-sue them for defamation of character or whatever if they were mistakenly sued by the RIAA...
I bet they'd think twice if they started losing money on suing people. I think if they do goof up they should have to award the person 100 times as much as the person would have had to pay them. You'd see them get real careful about who they sued real fast.
They don't really have anything to worry about except making money anymore, the government is doing all the dirty work running around strong-arming other countries into cracking down on piracy (Don't crack down.. we won't trade with you...)
I'm getting really pissed off at these record/movie companies misrepresenting the truth.
The simple fact is - it's called copyright violation, not theft.
And when they bloody wake up to the new technology, then people will start giving them money for the stuff.
I'm still waiting to pay for 50 or more songs that they WILL NOT LET ME BUY.
EMail: 0110001101100010010000000110001101110010 0110000101111010011011100110000101110010 0010111001100011011011110110
This new approach makes it a lot harder for them to win at trial. All they have is a file that lists some IP addresses.
In the previous cases they hired people who connected to p2p filesharers and observed what exactly was being shared.
Not a single one of their previous cases has gone to trial. It's not cost effective for them to go to trial even when they can win!
The formula is simple...
1. Send threatening lawyer letters to people you believe to have violated your copyright...
2. Wait for a response...
3. Look for an admission of guilt...
4. Profit!
iTunes show a little bit of the Vision the parent poster mentioned. Convienient, correct, sanely tagged downloads from fast easily searched servers for a reasonable price. In time, such a thing could be more ubiquitous that DVDs are now. Of course, they'll have to rein in this urge to make it as obnoxious, hostile to the customer, DRMed to dogs and back if the intention is a product people will actually fork over money for. Come to think of it, just enough DRM to appease the control freaks but removable by those with a little time and savvy might be a bit of Vision as well.
It will be such a shame to give up watching super compressed ripped video with 2 channel stereo sound, and be forced into paying for a full home theater expierience. Of course Hollywood would never get any cash from me for so many of the movies available anyway. There are quite a few films that do poorly at the box office, but are popular as rentals and downloads. Maybe if Hollywood looked at the download stats along with rental figures, they might find they could generate interest in moving some product sooner onto commercial cable TV. I would enjoy watching something like "With Out a Paddle" with commercial interuptions, rather than paying cash to rent or buy it. Hollywood needs to broaden their customer based rather than push customers away.
Oh Shit.
congratulations! every one of you who complains about hollywood's ingenious move to sue their own customers will find yourself at the end of a lawsuit when they sue /. for their log files!
enjoy your freedom of thought while it lasts!
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
here's circletimessquare's method for defeating riaa/ mpaa AND be an upstanding member of the p2p world:
caveat emptor: this recipe assumes you are in a jurisdiction and dealing with content that is only illegal to UPLOAD (music files, for example, in the usa)
1. use emule, great program
2. load it up with porn, gigs of it. you don't even have to look at it. the point is to have something, anything, lots of it, that other people want to download and that you won't get in trouble for sharing (heh, sorry porn makers)
3. share the porn all the time. you'll have hundreds downloading from you in no time and be greatly appreciated
4. now, you've suddenly found a strange desire to download hillary duff (!?), so go ahead, search for it (assume you're getting it from someone in sweden and not hurting whoever is making it available)
4. find the the hillary duff file with the most sources (for quick download)
5. stop all of your other downloads
6. suck down hillary duff in a minute or two (heh)
7. get it out of your shared file immediately
why does this work?
the file you are snarfing is so fleeting, and you've crowded it out with a long queue of people waiting to download jenna jameson gone wild volume 2 and other such sleaze, that you're simply never going to wind up being the source for anything on the mpaa/ riaa's radar. it's a drop in a sea of masking porn
knowledge is power, use it wisely
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Hi.
Or Sweden.
The Pirate Bay
Rather Amusing legal threats page - including responces
.
Surely some of these WAPs are located in buildings where the neighbors are leeching free broadband using granny's DHCP server and downloading all sorts of copyrighted torrents.
I wonder how many of these innocent granny types are going to be getting nice subpoenas from the MPAA. If they are senile and ignore them they might get default judgements when the case goes to court. Is the MPAA going to take away their money/home/valuables when they win by default?
Hell, my own home WAP was temporarily wide-open and unsecured for a while when I first set it up. Do I deserve to get potentially sued for being temporarily clueless?
it's a blue bright blue Saturday hey hey
Now what can they do with the logs?
Due to the nature of bittorrent - where everyone uploads a little here and a little there - are they going to name everyone (by IP address)in one massive slap suit?
Unless they can nail (and prove) who the initial seeder is, they would have to go after EVERYONE who participated in the torrent - no?
Of course, lawyers are total pond scum and can come up with something for sure - but I dont get how they can nail me for uploading segment 3415, 1298 and 8129 out of 8902 of any particular file
---- "Logoff! That cookie shit makes me nervous!" - A. Soprano
Suprnova if I understand was distributed amoung many mirrors... I'd imagine these weren't kept and merged nicely.
-M
when you see the word 'Linux', drink!
That woman lost her case, and got a fraction of what she was asking for in "damages".
Um, no. While the final terms were sealed, the latest public ruling was over $500K paid to her. It's safe to assume that the sealed settlement was at least most of that. Even if her lawyer took most (unlikely, I think 40% is fairly standard if the case was pro bono) she still made out quite nicely finanically.
(And all this ignores the fact that she at least originally only wanted medical expenses, and only refused because McDonald's didn't give. She didn't ask for suffering or punative damages until the suit.)
but dude, Apple isn't making money off downloads. They use iTunes to sell iPods. Forget about downloads... the studios would get killed.
They need some kind of DRMed bit torrent client to kill bandwidth issues - and serious download penetration into the living room for there to be money in it now.
un burrito me trampeó.
It seems to me that the logs from SuperNova can contain two things:
1) The IP addresses of people hosting bittorrents
and
2) The IP addresses of people being redirected to download from the above people
In both cases I fail to see how there can be any effective legal case. Unless the MPAA actually went to the sites in question and downloaded the files, they can't prove that "Matrix.avi" was actually the movie Matrix. And they certainly can't prove that the downloaders ever actually completed their downloads, regardless.
I call "bullshit". No way any guilty verdicts can ever be reached here.
UNFORTUNATELY, however, with the FUCKED UP legal system in the U.S., some people might not have the resources to actually hire a lawyer to point this out, even though doing so would guarantee an innocent verdict. So expect a few po' folk to negotiate settlements...
I have a list! A list of 57 communists in the State Department. (or was it RIAA/MPAA?)
.torrent files. That would be like guilty through association. or something like that. Showing that a list created by people doing illegal things showed someone visited a website doesn't carry much weight with me. For all we know the operators of those sights could have made a list of every IP in California or Texas and turned that over.
err...I mean a list of seemingly random numbers grouped in four sets of one to three numbers separated by periods and I have no way of proving the authenticity and/or credibility of the list or tell you anything about it and only vaguely explain how it was made and I got it. But I will say that you're on it but I won't let you look at the list to verify that you're accually on the list.
Sure, that will work. Yes, I'm sure enough people who visited those sights did so for legally questionable reasons, but they may have had forums, like slashdot, but also having
F7 doesn't work, ignore spelling and grammar
...they can even be hosted in backwards African countries such as Chad, Niger, Congo, etc.
Define that 'offshore' situation.
The physical location of the hosting server?
The mailing address of the corporation?
The legal presence of the corporation?
The owners legal place of residence?
The owners physical presence?
Unless you're talking about ALL of those...somebody is gonna get screwed.
Are YOU ready to move to the Congo?
They are suing customers because they want to pressure Congress into passing laws criminalizing file sharing beyond the extent which it is right now. They figure the people sued will complain to government. Their lobbyists will deflect the complaints by saying they'll stop if they get what they want legislatively. Otherwise, they'll whine, they will be put out of business eventually.
The politicians cave and we lose more rights. It's really rather masterful if you think about it. In a really evil way.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Perhaps I am simply ignorant but how does downloading something result in copyright infringement? Wouldn't the downloadee actually be responsable for that and not the downloader?
"...if people respected copyright more, like you guys do with the GPL so religiously, [the DMCA] wouldn't be necessary."
...that's what you get. Learn it.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Many people in this world do not believe that they are doing anything morally wrong when they download a copy right material. Why is that? I believe that people have not bought into the legitimacy of the copyrights. Copyrights may have and perhaps they still do serve a legitimate benefit to society but the benefits have been lost or forgotten. Can you imagine how difficult it would be to create a brand without copyright protection? Brands do give people consistency in product and service without having obvious copycats providing inferior product or service. I can understand why a corporation needs copyright protection that lasts for a long time. Should there be limits on that as well? Copyrights are also there to encourage and induce artist to crate products (music, shows, movies) for their own good and that of society. I think this where the problem lies. The Copyright to protect an artistic work lasts virtually for ever. Would the Beatles or Elvis have been less motivated to create if the life of the copyright was only 5 or 10 years? I think not and most of the people feel the same way. How much do we need to pay these guys before we the society have paid them enough for their efforts? I believe this question needs to asked by all lawmakers around the world in order to maintain some sense of law and order in this field. If a product that can cure cancer, require nearly a billion dollar to develop over 10 years before any return on the investment and that product only gets a 17-year protection (really 7 years since it may have taken 10 year to develop the drug) then why does a copyrighted material need virtually unlimited protection?
Show up in court with your computer that has 8 different versions of Linux (all downloaded) with up to date torrent patches. Oh you thought that amount of traffic had to be movies? The counter suit will be for 10x what you tried to get.
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
Say you found a distributor that was offering the movie/music/whatever at a price reflective of the quality. And that you further were unaware that the distibutor was not an authorized dealer.
Maybe if instead of complaining about how bad the movies we see are, we tell the theater management we want a refund. Then Hollywood could really see in real numbers what the issue is.
Someone hates these cans.
The ultimate betrayal. First Lokitorrent collects donations for a legal defense fund, then rolls over for the MPAA and contributes all the logs to them for downloaders. His idiocy costs the community even today. I must admit, its enough to scare people using current sites away if they think they are getting logged for later. Anyway, I hope all the other sites keep NO logs after this event.
If you connect to a swarm, you soon get a list of alll peers in the swarm. Why do they need to get log files from the servers when they could have sampled all the swarms at any time and gotten a complete list live? (AFAIK this is what they did with suprnova before it got closed, because ppl got letters from RIAA a few weeks before it was closed)
Only thing I can figure is they are technically inept and can't figure out the protocol so they have to rely on logs? Or there is some information or coalation/summary in the logs they are interested in?
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
People like to watch the latest movies from the comfort of their homes. What about doing like iTunes and offer them an internet showing of the movie for let's say 5 bucks a movie? You get better quality than torrents, faster downloads, no people getting up in front of the camera all the time all from the comfort of your home. The movie studio saves on distribution costs and get extra income from the geek crowd who would never dare be seen in the bright daylight but prefer to bask in the warming glow of a computer monitor. Everyone wins.
There should be a "-1:Groupthink"
Suprnova closed down on it's own. The MPAA/RIAA were never involved. No law in it's hosted nation at the time allowed any of these organizations to lay hands on the logs. The admins responsible destroyed the site and began working on exeem.
Any questions or comments?
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
Thats a double-edged sword. If you keep no records (or few) you protect your users from things like this, if you keep no records your torrents get swamped by leechers and you lose your users (the ones you want anyway).
Bittorrent never was intended to shield users like this.
Quack, quack.
It may be a good idea to switch to trusted file-sharing. Remember the days of old (pre-napster) when one had to search out a good ftp site or hotnet server, contact the admin by email, etc. Did you ever worry that the admin was some RIAA/MPAA agent setting a trap? Did you worry that an RIAA/MPAA agent was sniffing packets between you and that ftp server? Did you even know that the RIAA/MPAA existed for a purpose other than putting warning labels on your entertainment?
Too many of us have bought into the "my way, right away" mentality, in which if we can't find what we want in less than five minutes, someone's done us wrong. To many, this is a way of life, and they have stopped caring (to the point at which they routinely risk the longterm health of themselves and their society) who provides them a service or product just as long as it is provided right away. Now, i appreciate the immediacy of (some) file-sharing utilites as well as the broad range of content available on their networks, but is the risk really worth it? Why would anyone in their right mind risk a heavy fine for downloading dukes of hazard or the latest jason mraz album? Anyone who uses any of the top five file-sharing protocols takes that risk each time they download something that someone in california happens to care about.
If you really want the "phat loot," make sure you know who's providing it to you, or at least make sure they can never find out who you are. I've found that the best way to get anything free is to personally know someone who has direct access/control over it. Next chance you get, go visit the helpdesk or IT department or whoever's responsible for installing software onto the machines where you work/go to school. If you don't have a job or go to school (get a job, hippy!) then go visit the local community college during the next open house (and then visit the IT dept). Those people are (or will shortly be) your friends. Chat it up with them, talk about your favorite video game/author/movie/pet - you will have something in common with them (it's inevitable, Mr. Anderson). Any place with a respectable IT department has either site licenses or several extra licenses for just about anything you could ever need/want. Guess what... if you need a software package - and your newfound friend has a few extra on hand - he will share with you (unless he's a total tightwad).
As for movies and music... be honest with yourself. The tripe that has come out within the past few years (White Chicks? You got Served?? Catwoman???) is far below you, and you don't need to watch the whole movie (or listen to the whole cd) to figure that out. Invariably, any movie or music worth experiencing is also worth at least a rental if not an outright purchase - otherwise, don't waste your time. Indie movie makers and musicians probably don't care (and might even like it) if you download their stuff, so go wild on that one.
Trust is good. Patience is good. We could all use a little more.
Well - of course it is.
Theft is a criminal act, copyright infringement is a civil act.
I'll also ask them why they wouldn't take my money before when I wanted to buy their stuff.
Then I'll sell all my CDs, DVDs etc to pay them.
EMail: 0110001101100010010000000110001101110010 0110000101111010011011100110000101110010 0010111001100011011011110110
Is this a co-incidence .... google is relevant to this content.
:)
Of course it is - how else do you find the cracks and serialz
EMail: 0110001101100010010000000110001101110010 0110000101111010011011100110000101110010 0010111001100011011011110110
The group previously said in February that a Texas court had ordered that the server logs of one big site, called LokiTorrent, be turned over to Hollywood investigators. An MPAA spokeswoman said that none of Thursday's suits were related to that action, however.
Near-class? What's that? A class lawsuit is 2 or more people.
"Hello 911? I just tried to toast some bread, and the toaster grew an arm and stabbed me in the face!"
Sheesh. I mean, come on, there's no way this is serious. He attributes all sorts of outlandish ideas to the previous poster, none of which were in any way said or implied. He only stopped just short of "You think that all movie executives should be beheaded?"
He's just trying to get a response.
Keith
When will they start allowing UDP traffic so we can get bittorrents anonymously?
zosxavius photography
These lawsuits are going fucking unchallenged.
All it takes is some victories.
If someone copies something I did, it in no way diminishes what I have done. I could more easily argue that keeping knowledge from people is morally wrong than putting people in jail for sharing knowledge is wrong.
He's a big Star Wars fan (as in actually owns figures, not just a movie fan). He's seen the latest one 5 times that I know of. At a minimum of $8 per ticket, he's given the franchise $40 + drinks/popcorn/milkduds. This is on top of the 3 or 4 collectable box sets of the originals he owns (mucho dinero). He also got one of the downloaded copies of Episode 3. He hates the quality of it, but it's a piece of Star Wars history to him.
I on the other hand saw the movie once, really liked it, but won't fork over any more money to see it again. I'll wait for someone to loan me their DVD to watch.
Now, who should the studios more likely sue, him or me? What's ironic though is that if I'm correct, I'll be the one 100% legal. He'll be the one committing a crime, even if Hollywood benefitted much more from him. It's people like my friend that they are in business at all.
Give them a dollar, and they'll suck you dry. I'm almost scared to use anything but cash at the theater for fear of what other craziness they may come up with next if they had my name on a reciept.
I8-D
The Upside to all this is that no matter what Downloading a file will give you a prison sentance longer then if you just went out and ended someones life. so we all have a decision to make Download the latest movie? or Go out and kill someone you serve less time for killing someone then if you download/share copyrighted material and as we all know, That is the TRUE american way.
Give them a dollar, and they'll suck you dry. I'm almost scared to use anything but cash at the theater for fear of what other craziness they may come up with next if they had my name on a reciept.
Bzzzzzzt!!!! I call bullshit. You had me until you wrote the above quoted bit.
Come on, man. You're afraid to use a credit card? That might, you know, indicate a legitimate purchase? Do you even have a credit card? Does your "friend" even exist, or is he merely part of that public face you'd like to be known by here on Slashdot? What's the last movie you saw (ahem) AT the theater?
Give me a bag, I have some used dinner you might need to take a look at...
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
Or the dumwit who robbed a CCTV surveillance store Hilarious, but in this case, as the store owner pointed out, "The incident was "the biggest boost to business imaginable"."
And the people shall be oppressed, every one by another, and every one by his neighbour Isaiah 3:5
I wonder if this has any association with the article that was just released..seems like a coincidencee..there are no such things as coincidences!
~~"Of course, that's just my opinion. I could be wrong." ~~Dennis Miller
I just read this article ... man you have one scary ass country ... read on:
From http://www.404audio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1481 4
Last night, I was booked to play an event about an hour outside of Salt Lake City, Utah. The hype behind this show was huge, they presold 700 tickets and they expected up to 3,000 people total. The promoters did an amazing job with the show.. they even made slipmats with the flyers on them to promote in local shops.
So, we got to the show around 11:15 or so and it was really cool. It was all outdoors, in a valley surrounded by huge mountains. They had an amazing light show flashing on to a mountain behind the site, the sound was booming, the crowd was about 1500 people thick and everything just seemed too good to be true really. Well...
At about 11:30 or so, I was standing behind the stage talking with someone when I noticed a helicopter pulling over one of the mountain tops. I jokingly said "Oh look, here comes big brother" to the person I was with. I wasn't far off.
The helicopter dipped lower and lower and started shining its lights on the crowd. I was kind of in awe and just sat and watched this thing circle us for a minute. As I looked back towards the crowd I saw a guy dressed in camoflauge walking by, toting an assault rifle. At this point, everyone was fully aware of what was going on . A few "troops" rushed the stage and cut the sound off and started yelling that everyone "get the fuck out of here or go to jail". This is where it got really sticky.
No one resisted. That's for sure. They had police dogs raiding the crowd of people and I saw a dog signal out a guy who obviously had some drugs on him. The soldiers attacked the guy (4 of them on 1), and kicked him a few times in the ribs and had their knees in his back and sides. As they were cuffing him, there was about 1000 kids trying to leave in the backdrop, peacefully. Next thing I know, A can of fucking TEAR GAS is launched into the crowd. People are running and screaming at this point. Girls are crying, guys are cussing... bad scene.
Now, this is all I saw with my own eyes, but I heard plenty of other accounts of the night. Now this isnt gossip I heard from some candy raver, these are instances cited straight out of the promoters mouth..
- One of the promoters friends (a very small female) was attacked by one of the police dogs. As she struggled to get away from it, the police tackled her. 3 grown men proceeded to KICK HER IN THE STOMACH.
- The police confiscated 3 video tapes in total. People were trying to document what was happening out there. The police saw one guy filming and ran after him, tackled him and his camera fell, and luckily.. his friend grabbed it and ran and got away. priceless footage. That's not all though. Out of 1,500 people, there's sure to be more footage.
- The police were rounding up the staff of the party and the main promoter went up to them with the permit for the show and said "here, I have the permit." The police then said, "no you don't" and ripped the permit out of his hand. Then, they put an assault rifle to his forehead and said "get the fuck out of here right now."
Now.. let's get the facts straight here.
This event was 100% legal. They had every permit the city told them they needed. They had a 2 MILLION DOLLAR insurance policy for the event. They had liscenced security guards at the gates confiscating any alcohol or drugs found upon entry (yes, they searched every car on the way in). Oh, I suppose I should mention that they arrested all the security guards for possession.
Oh another interesting fact.. the police did not have a warrant. The owner of the land already has a lawsuit against the city for something similar. A few months ago, she rented her land for a party and the police raided that as well. And catch this, the police forced her to LEAVE HER OWN PERSONAL PROPERTY. That's
Well they had to make it accessible. If they really talked like it was the 1860s people would be going "huh?"
I think its a great piece of writing personally. The monologues that Swearigen does with the indian head are fantastic.
zosxavius photography
BitTorrent clients periodically ping the tracker (announce url) with statistics that include the number of bytes uploaded and downloaded to/from other peers. Standard web server logs would record this data, as it appears in the querystring. So it would be possible to determine from the logs whether a specific IP had downloaded the complete torrent, how much data they had shared, and an estimate of how long they had continued to seed the file.
Absolutely stupid that the admins of these sites kept the logs. Suprnova was possibly the largest torrent site on the web, somebody really dropped the ball.
Hopefully there will always be an easier way to download stuff that will attract the masses and make them way more noticable.
The thing that killed file sharing online was that anyone could do it, was way to easy to use.
First computer for christmas no prob download napster type a song name in and you are music pirate.
Total time from newbie to pirate average of 4 days.
Lots of people have had a comp for years and dont have a clue what usenet is.
However now its getting way to easy to use , with things like nzb files, par files easy to use clients.
I long for the old days when usenet was the uncharted wilds and people would be driven away cause you actually had to work at getting anything.
Im sure i would pay up in a second if they threatened to take my to court for pirating "Overweight lesbian midget transvestites gone wild 3"
No offense to anyone reding this that may have starred in previous mentioned movie i applaud you. You are doing a service to the overweight lesbian midget transvestites community.
To the overweight lesbian midget transvestite that keeps trying to instant message me please stop i didnt really see you movie i was just joking.
"and serious download penetration into the living room for there to be money in it now."
It's called "on demand" enough cable and satellite providers offer it. What needs to be determined is the value of this to the consumer and the content producers and providers. Most of it is $5 for 24hrs of use, I and I'm sure enough other paying consumers think that price is a little high, considering for 3 of those you can buy a new DVD.
It all comes down to pricing and availability/ convenience. How much is it worth to be able to quickly obtain a movie once? The providers may say $4.99, but the consumer may say, "I'm only going to watch it once, I'll give you 99c for it." There you have a consumer willing to pay, but considers the posted prices unreasonable.
What happens when someone records it when it's on tv, non-pay-per-view, and the legal time-shifted copy they have becomes corrupted, can they legally download another? What happens if the copy you made gets corrupted, can you download a recording someone else made because yours doesn't work anymore or what if it's not of the highest quality and want to use someone else's version? Or I have it on VHS and can't afford a tv card but want to watch it on my pc? Yes, lots of questions and the industry's answer is sue now, ask questions, maybe in court.
I'm going to stick to my tv/pvr card for tv and movies, if it's on tv I can make a legal recording for myself and used CDs for my listening pleasure.
offtopic-
Anyone know of a place selling used CDs of the Indiana Jones soundtracks, not the cheap "trilogy" collection or imported eds? They're not even on ebay
F7 doesn't work, ignore spelling and grammar
Then please make Software/Games/Music/Movies etc cheaper and much more available. Like a big internet shop, wich has cheaper commodities than in the regular shop,and which also sends goods internationally to everyone in the world, and the so called ultimate internet shop would be runned by MPAA/RIAA/BSA, and everyone will be happy and nobody won't cry and plaint, that MPAA has sent a arraignment to sb...
Ubuntu user.
The catch is that Hollywood is using the log files off Bit Torrent sites like Suprnova and LokiTorrent.
.. hmm
FTA: The group previously said in February that a Texas court had ordered that the server logs of one big site, called LokiTorrent, be turned over to Hollywood investigators. An MPAA spokeswoman said that none of Thursday's suits were related to that action, however.
PS: totally unrelated, but the word i had to type to confirm i'm not a script was 'slaver'
This reminds me of an old girlfriend of mine. Sometime after we parted she got into dealing amphetamines for extra cash. Not being the sharpest tool in the box, she was caught at it after a while. She was so popular with everybody when the police found her diary with dates details and names of all her friends.
Don't put off until tomorrow what you can leave until the day after.
but I dont get how they can nail me for uploading segment 3415, 1298 and 8129 out of 8902 of any particular file
An alcoholic with a law degree from Devry could demonstrate a conspiracy case there.
Downloading a torrent doesnt prove you actually downloaded/shared an entire copyrighted file..
It might show intent, but it would never *prove* you carried it out.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
How about facing the fact that not only is a good portion of Hollywood's current business model outdated and destined not to survive the Internet, but that also the films being squeezed out are real dogs that few find worth paying for.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
Please stop doing that. This is slashdot.
And, as you know, copyright will either be abondoned entirely due to total civil disobidience or it will only be extended even further.
The part about "benfiting society" was forgotten the very instant copyright holders realized there were more money to be made by bribing politicians. This is definitely not going to change anytime soon.
What I'd like to see, is the copyright cartels or congress, whoever, having the balls to officially legislate the public domain away for good. If the public domain was actually removed from existance, I'd like to see people justify copyright as a whole.
Not Buzzword 2.0 compliant. Please speak english.
Well, it follows from simple economics that the price/demand curve is such that there's a lot more people willing to get a pirated copy at $0 than there are rabid fans who must have the illegitimate copies as well.
And face it, nothing in this world works like that. If I've been a good customer of the bus company for years, I still expect to get a fine when caught without a ticket. You don't earn "brownie points" you can use to break the rules later.
As far as the ad value goes, the truth is that seeing a pirated copy gives away too much. Trailers, reviews, recommendations are good, seeing the whole thing is bad. I think the most I've ever seen one movie is three times. Once at the cinema, once when I bought the DVD, and once much later. Each spaced well apart. If I saw the movie around release, there's no way I'd go to see it all over again. That'd be a straight loss for MPAA.
Music is different, that I can listen to many times. Though I want it in MP3 format (I got a CD/MP3 player, and I drive quite often a 5hr drive back to my home town), nothing else is acceptable. To make a twist on Apple's motto, if I can't rip & mix, they can burn.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
"sharers. The catch is that Hollywood is using the log files off Bit Torrent sites like Suprnova and LokiTorrent."
No They are not.
FROM THE ARTICLE:
"The group previously said in February that a Texas court had ordered that the server logs of one big site, called LokiTorrent, be turned over to Hollywood investigators. An MPAA spokeswoman said that none of Thursday's suits were related to that action, however."
When even the submitters don't read the article, and the editors don't check it AT ALL, then we know this is no longer "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters", but is now "Sensationalist Lies, Innaccurate Rubbish".
b3 4phr41d 0f my 4bov3-4v3r4g3 c0mpu73r kn0wI3dg3!
MadDwarf
I have a friend who crosses the road... and he'll probably be run over.
286 lawsuits out of... how many filesharers again?
"Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something" - Plato
If the MPAA, as the representatives of the copyright holders, are using Bittorrent, they are giving permission to copy the movies that they claim are being illegally copied. It would seem an untenable position to claim copyright infringement for a work that you offered up for free copying in one and the same breath.
(IANAL. This is not legal advice.)
...none of those internet pirates got a contract out on Loki's head, if they could afford $30k in bs lawyers fees they could certainly get him "whacked" so to speak.
I am NaN
Blu-ray? Nah. USB hard drives (or ipods), laptops or good old LAN parties... though optical discs are good for posting (I guess you'd call that stampnet?).
I quit!
It's a hypothetical statement to make a point, though it is also a statement about a payment option I may opt for in the future if the MPAA continues on their current path. Or, did you not read "almost". Nor did you make the connection, probably obvious to everyone else, about how movie/library records can be used in criminal investigations, and a CC receipt would give your name, whereas cash wouldn't.
Ever since they made it a federal crime to video tape in theaters, how long before the MPAA starts pushing for a database of movie goers to connect to the IP numbers (and subpoena'd names) they see in P2P programs. They won't sue anymore. If you are caught sharing the same movie you went to go see, well, then, you had to have been the video taper, and thus, you'll go to federal prison. But, why stop there, if you support P2P and don't download movies, I'm sure they can get the Piracy Czar on your ass anyways.
I don't have a credit card, I have a debit card, which can act as a credit card. Last movie I saw at the theater was Batman Begins. The last DVD I saw was A Walk to Remember (not by choice). The next movie I plan on seeing on DVD is Constantine. My sign is Gemini, and I like long walks on the beach. You asking me out, or you trolling me?
Public face on Slashdot? This is my public face everywhere on the Internet. I am the Ikioi. This is the same me that is on my personal site I8-D. This is also me, and this, and this, and this. Your slashdot face is the top result on a search for your name, and you have no real info in your profile.
Let me guess, because you have a low UID and I have a high UID you thought that'd I'd make a good newb target to troll on. Sorry to disappoint you, but my online presence, and recent mod history, is better than your's pal. Try trolling the 900,000's.
I8-D
No administrator has provided a reasonable answer to this simple question: Why did those site administrators log all downloads and why were the logs kept for months?
One site admin said that all downloads were logged to stop hacking. I don't know what WWW server they used but it must have been unbelievably crappy one if simply downloading served files could have caused a security break. Or why else would he have logged all the downloads and kept them for six months?
Since the site administrators knew that most, if not nearly all material available via their services were not legal to redistribute they must have thought that any log files could be used against their users. Were the logs still made to save their own butts in case they were caught i.e. to rat in order to save their own skin?
To this date, forums that focus on exchanging P2P links downright admit logging all IP addresses and storing even deleted posts (even if this is not specifically mentioned, by default in most databases and even e-mail programs "deleting" a post or other data simply marks it as hidden, the DB needs to be compacted to truly remove "deleted" data).
Since linking to copyright material is considered as copyright infringement with the same (and absolutely insane) penalties at least in the USA and Australia, are there any active projects taken to ensure that for example anonymous posting of ed2k links will be possible?
With the press concentrating more and more on sports, money, scandals affecting at most a couple of people, trifling matters and generally focusing on making more and more money I feel that there must be a secure, anonymous way to share information, even information that the men and women with money don't want to be published.
Capitalization is the difference between "Helping your uncle jack off a horse" and "Helping your uncle Jack off a horse"
Movies, I just wait for the DVD on netflix, or in the case of an import not on netflix, borrow it from a friend who collects that stuff like mad. (I have a few)
Music? Well, if all goes well, I'll have a gift certificate for iTunes, but other than that I listen mainly to the CDs I already have or podcasts playing "Podsafe" music.
Ages ago, when I was at Financial Campus, the Network admin had an MP3 server that was constantly downloading music. I ended up hearing some new music that way and buying the CDs.
I don't really have the time, energy or resources to mess with things like lawsuits, so unless a band makes their music legally available in a way that is convenient for me, I'll never end up buying one of their CDs.
The last CDs I bought were of performers I either heard on Podcasts, were distributing their music legally, heard through iRate or saw at a house concert.
I don't listen to the radio, because most of it is crap, and I'm not going to bother with satellite radio. I already have broadband, an audible.com subscription and netflix. If you can't be bothered to make your media available through those channels, you'd better be selling a book, or you won't get any of my discretionary spending.
Which reminds me, I need to get around to ordering that Platypus Rex CD.
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
I know a guy who lived to be over a hundred years old, and until the day he died he smoked cigarettes, drank a 1/5 of liqueur, and drove over 100mph every time he got the chance.
He died at the age of 103 from an nerve infection that was caused by being hit on his big toe with a horseshoe that hung over his doorway for good luck.
I don't believe in horseshoes anymore.
In fact, he was acquited.
Proud neuron in the Slashdot hivemind since 2002.
Hollywood's goal is NOT: to get you to like the movie, nor to entertain you.
Their goal is to get you to pay to see the movie, even if you hate it. Once you've paid for the ticket, they are no longer interested in you or what you think.
Now adopt this thinking, widely throughout the organization, and for a long time, even to the point where it affects the creative people, and what do you suppose will eventually happen? Combine with high ticket prices and high confession prices. Combine with emerging alternatives for entertainment. Now what will happen?
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
Sadly it hasn't: turning over their log files was apparently part of the settlement for them and Loki not being hit with a seven-figure lawsuit for 'contributory infringement', and the studios' lawyers have just now got around to parsing them.
They probably figure this is how to get back all that money they lost on the War of the Worlds remake and The Island, by suing a bunch of customers. Brilliant...
To MPAA RIAA: "This is not the P2P client you are looking for" *wave of hand*
Don't ya hate it when the correct spelling of your favorite screen name is taken?
Their strategy, unfortunately, relies on finding people who look like they've downloaded tons of material, threaten them with a six-figure lawsuit that would take a five-figure legal bill to defend, and in the end squeeze them for a few thousand. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Not bad ROI for a few threatening letters, eh?
If a bunch of these folks combined forces and resources, they probably *could* get the cases thrown out for shaky evidence, but the studios are relying on that not happening.
Seems odd: I can timeshift a TV show on my VCR without issues, if I stole the $50 DVD season-pack from the local Big Box Store it'd be a low-grade misdemeanor, but downloading it makes me liable for a five-figure fine? Isn't there some rule about proportionality in the legal system?
Does anyone else remember when LokiTorrent first got 'sued'? They (he, actually) took donations to fight in the name of p2p in court. Somewhere in the order of $30k. I can't find it now, but someone did a little research and found that he had never actually been served... he also never went to court. Now, I know that stealing $30k is illegal. Much less of a gray area surrounds the 'illegal' download of media.
> And that my friend is why I always wear steel toed boots.
FragHARD or don't frag at all
but he's talking about LEGAL downloads
;-P
i'm talking about downloading black eyed peas and not getting caught
and i'm sorry, i have no idea who you are, everyone tells me to take my meds
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Your friend should get the DVD quality version of ep3 thats available all over. Its from an actual dvd source from pre-production.
Another interesting angle is that most first-run films being distributed illegally are cam jobs shot from within the theater. It stands to reason that the actual file that said person distributes would be significantly altered from the original version (i.e. audience noise, the occasional head or shoulder entering the frame, etc.), and could then be deemed a derivative work. That said, the recorder would certainly be in violation of the copyrighted material that they filmed, but given that the recorder offered the material for free, they would be the only one responsible for the illegal distribution. Now certainly none of this would hold up in court, but I do think it is an interesting concept. If someone takes a camcorder to a movie theater and "shoots a documentary" of their theater experience, that is then unlawful distribution of a film. Hmm. If I were to download, say, a .torrent file stating that it was The Fantastic Four, I have no idea whether the torrent itself is even the real movie, or if it is someone's claymation rendition of the film, or their "moviegoing" documentary, or what? The bottom line is that the film industry is shooting themselves in the foot by charging exorbitantly high prices to go to the theater, not to mention the theater owners' charging $12 for popcorn and 5 bucks for a soda. They are encouraging rebellion. If you pay a couple of actors $6 million dollars each to be in your movie, then pay a fortune for special effects, marketing, etc., you are creating a product with an unreasonable expected ROI. They then tell the theater owners that they have to run the movie for two weeks in order to even get the reels, and they wonder why people are pissed. If you make a good movie and charge a reasonable price to see it, you'll make a lot of money. If you make a movie that may or may not be good, then expect to charge people a fortune to find out, you should expect people to find another way to see it. I'm certainly not advocating copyright infringement, but the movie studios and MPAA shouldn't be labeling people as criminals, and then playing the innocent victim.
You misunderstand. I'm not talking about advertisements on free content, I'm talking about advertisements as free content. People don't expect to pay for the ads they receive, yet they can still derive entertainment value from them.
Now one could reasonably say that web-based ads aren't entertaining. There's not much you can do with an animated GIF and Flash ads are used to make them harder to ignore == more annoying.
But I am also part of that TiVo crowd and I will still watch an ad if it looks like it will be interesting. I'll replay good ads to friends, and sometimes even really bad ones ("You ever think you might have hworms?"). And I capture some to my computer and burn them to disks.
I expect my advertisements for free, which is why I don't visit adcritic.com since they went to a pay subscription model, pricing themselves for the advertising executive market (because they have to pay for their bandwidth so must charge to recoup their expenses--it was too popular to remain free).
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?