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Sweden's File Sharing Debate Becomes Mass Brawl
praps writes "When Sweden's Data board gave the film and games industry organisation Antipiratbyrån an exemption from data protection laws last week it seemed that file sharers were on the ropes. Then the music industry joined in with some punches of its own, saying it too will hunt those who share songs online. Suddenly, file sharers have the support of their ISPs, who are refusing to cooperate with the big industries - and it's game on." From the article: "Only the file sharer's ISP can link the IP address to the person. If the ISP receives a request for such information from the police, they cannot refuse it, but a few calls from TT revealed that requests from APB would be ignored." We've previously reported on Swedish anti-downloading laws before.
Every lawsuit against people not judged to be criminals by their friends and family is just another mark against the recording and film industries. You know what they say about business: anger one customer and they tell 10 friends.
These lawsuits go beyond anger, they financially hurt customers. For every $10,000 they receive in settlements, they could be losing multiples of in lost future business.
My luddite parents discovered P2P because of some news article about these suits in the U.S. They were blind to Napster since its inception.
I wasn't surprised to see Limewire on my dad's PC a few months ago. This is a guy who never touched a mouse until 2003.
You can stop a river with a boulder when it is still a 6" trickle. Yet the boulder does not one bit when the river is a torrent.
In the long run, ISPs who share privilege information will go out of business. I hereby amend my previous position: "Information that hurts no innocents wants to be freely accessible."
So the European equivalent of the MPAA/RIAA will have succeeded in shutting down file sharing of copyrighted material in Sweden only to see it pop up elsewhere in the world. This game will continue because, like all forms of covert smuggling operations, the excise tax charged by these organizations are viewed by the consumer as onerous and overpriced. If the music and film industry were to reduce their taxes, just as England did in the mid-18th Century, they will find that compliance increases and smuggling declines to nominal levels.
You can say the same thing about prohibition. Once you create a black market for a product through legislation or exorbitant pricing, it is impossible to put smuggling down permanently.
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
That seems like exactly the right thing to do to me, actually. Not that I think that copyright infringement is something that necessarily should be allowed, mind you, but if somebody's done something wrong, then it's the job of the police to investigate - not private companies'. And the fact that Antipiratbyrån seems to have planted evidence in the past (search for it, I'm too lazy to look up the story; Slashdot covered it) just shows again why this is important.
What's more, it's not immediately clear to me why it would even be legal for an ISP to give out data about customers to a private company that asks for it, without (I presume) the customer's knowledge or consent. Not that I know a thing about Swedish law, of course, but that sounds like exactly the kind of thing that could result in class action lawsuits and the like, so if I was an ISP, I'd definitely err on the safe side here and only hand over customer data to the police, not private companies, and only when ordered to do so by a court of law.
quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.
That's a stupid statement.
... If the owner of said item wants it to be.
.50 to a another schmuck, and then .50 to the musician.
Music, information, entertainment should be free!
Musicians don't make music to just give it away (some do) but they also need to eat. I have no problems handing over some cash for a CD I like.
What I don't like doing is handing over 25.99 for a cd, and having 23.99 go to a label,
That's what I don't like.
But running around saying it all should be free is ridiculous. Remember, making that cd you listen to, or that mp3 you just downloaded, took time, took money and is someones lively hood.
It's like stating all car repairs should be free!
oogly boogly!
How about these concepts as a starting point; These are simply ideas that in my opinion are not too controversial.
We want to ensure its's possible to make a profit from creative works.
People will copy data.
Sharing between friends is not going to bring down the music/movie/software industry.
Online file sharing should probably be discouraged, or at least not strongly encouraged.
Awarding disproportionately huge damages against file sharers is not a just solution.
A distinction should be made between small scale copying for free, and large scale copying for financial gain.
When we have the government siding strongly with the media cartels, and disproportionate penalties for file sharers, as well as the invasion of privacy by a private organisation means that people loserespect for the law. This is generally speaking a bad thing. m'kay.
Most people agree that copyright is largely a good thing. Most people also have no qualms about using pirated software. I'm sure we can find a compromise.
I work for a webhosting firm and almost monthly we get calls from old dudes with fishing websites asking why they used 500 Gigs of transfer and got an insane bill last month. Invariably it's because their ftp password was "cat" or some nonsense and somebody dumped a copy of dreamweaver, or a ton of MP3s, etc. on their account and linked it to a pirate site. But the first time I saw this happen, it made me think: piracy in general can have more economic impact that you realize at first.
For example, when the above happens, we usually do a one-time refund of the bandwidth charge, which is often considerable, and I'm sure we're not the exception. That means we eat the bandwidth bill for that person. Now, consider that all webhosts are likely to do the same and I wonder what the economic impact is across the board?
Interesting how there are facets you don't even realize exist.
Sony ha
Whoever has the most money to buy legislation protecting themselves. My bet is the music/film industry will purchase the right to sue.
PB, based in Sweden, has some fun to read legal threats from Microsoft, Dreamworks, EA, White Stripes, etc. along with PB's responses.
[alk]
The music industry would like you to pay every time you listen to your CD.
Having you buy another one if you break it is still waaaay off this objective, but rest assured that they will do everything in their power to get there.
Same with the movie industry of course.
So, enjoy your free re-listening while it lasts.
In my opinion, Scientology is a cult you should avoid.
The Swedish Data Inspection Board gave the APB a green-light to collect IP adresses.
It's not quite a big deal, since the anti-pirate folks already can do that legally in a number of countries (such as the US) which don't have strict data-protection laws.
And the ISPs are not only doing the right thing but probably the only legal thing, since it'd quite likely violate the very same data-protection laws if they gave information about their customers to a private third party without permission from either the government or their customers.
The "Anti-Pirate Bureau" isn't a government agency after all. And while the USA seems to have happily handed over law-enforcement to the copyright holders, Europe has not. So far.
In polls in swedens biggest newspaper, with 80000 respondants, on this question: "Is it morally right to download movies and music illegaly?"
> 85% answered yes.
The pirates and antipirates has debated in newspaper, television and the "piratbyrån" (pro piracy organization) has even published a book which has recieved good critics. The sum of all this is that the pirates is seen as normal humans that download stuff on internet and the antipirates are greedy corporate a**es. Its not hard do figure out which side will win the hearts of the population.
This has even gone so far as the minister of justice has stated in media that "with the new anti-piracy laws the police should not go hunt for teenagers downloading music, but for big scale for-profit copying"
Since we have a democracy the only outcome I can see in the long run is that not-for-profit private piracy will become legal, even two parties in our parliament has expressed support for piracy.
Also, the results of a lawsuit will be released next week which will determine wether it will even be possible for police to request information on IPs from ISPs when they suspect piracy. One pirate has ben sued because he shared a movie on the internet, if he gets anything below prison swedish privacy laws will make it impossible for the police to request identy of IPs in the future. (which says that for the identity to be reviled for the police it is required that the crime commited has prison as one possible punishment).
(* with piracy I mean copying of music/movies over the internet without any money going to the owner of the work).
In Europe a lot of countries have stricter privacy laws then elswhere. If anybody except law askes for information with my provider and they give it, I have won my case, because the evidence was not recieved in a lawfull way.
I could even sue my provider.
Now if they just forward the mail, I can just ignore it and wait for a lawsuit, wich brings me back to step one above.
In Belgium, if you just fileshare and not sell, there is a pretty big chance that they will put your case at the bottom of the pile. The law in Belgium already once told them they would not go after each and every file-sharer. They will spend their time with people who try to make money with it.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Worst. Rocky. Refernce. Ever.
Computers allow humans to make mistakes at the fastest speeds known, with the possible exception of tequila and handguns
This idea that ISPs are being noble here is silly. They're doing what they do for the money as much as anyone.
Fact is, many people that pay for an Internet connection do so in part so they can swap music. Getting free
music is part of the value of that connection for them.
Now put yourself in the place of the ISP. You have customers paying you so they can have access to this free music.
Why would you want to stop this? You don't have to pay for the music yourself, but you get a financial benefit from it.
So I don't see anything heroic about these ISPs. Helping to make sure their customers can get free music helps
their bottom line.
The fight for freedom has many fronts. This front's name is freedom of speech (for music writers, that is - if a record label won't publish some singers' song because it doesn't benefit them or because of government crap, how effective his message will be? In this case, "Art wants to be free" (free as in freedom, not as in beer).
First: I'd gladly buy a CD if it's cheap enough and it's worth it. I don't want to spend my money in a giant marketing apparatus promoting tours. People who go to the tours ARE ALREADY paying. If I'm not going, why should my money go to them? I don't want to spend twice on a product. On the other hand, if a musician puts up his website and has a "donate" button for some tour, i'd gladly click if I consider the artist good enough.
Second, if you had to choose between spending $100 on the poor, and giving them to record companies, which one would you choose? You kill no one by downloading a file. And I'd rather download a song from the internet than financing kidnapper bands or druglords who sell pirated goods on the street.
Third, you can't force a teenager to give away his money to the poor. But in the same way, you can't force him to feed the RIAA monster companies who are already obsolete anyway. Why invest money in something that has no reason to exist?
Fourth, The only reason people have to pay for music is because the RIAA has twisted the law in their favor, lobbing them with the money the customers have paid. If I'm spending money on a music as a government tax (in the form of lobbying), I have the right to decide what should be done with my money, don't I? I'd rather download a song and donate a dollar to the group, than paying $20 to the RIAA, who will only give about 50 cents (or less) to the group in question.
Finally, The RIAA has stolen a lot of money from customers. Is it wrong to want to take that money back?
These are some of the reasons file sharers believe it's not only "not wrong", but a just cause, to share files. One thing can be wrong and legal, or viceversa. The laws supporting evil monopolies like the RIAA can, and must go away.
(You can quote, copy and link to this as the "File Sharer's manifesto". This is free speech and belongs to the public domain - permission to correct spelling / grammar is granted)
Most of our tax revenue comes from personal income taxes. I have no problem with this but the myth that Corps pay most taxes needs to be put to rest.
Are they really making such a fuss over these bands?
Old people fall. Young people spring. Rich people summer and winter.
Yes well but...consider the "IP" problem in a larger light. You are the leader of a poor country whose inhabitants are mostly infected with a disease requiring a very expensive drug that can be cheaply produced in your country, but "IP" laws prevent you from saving their lives. Do you let your people die for a legal fiction?
The Anti-piracy Bureau are also forced to inform everyone they register the IP address of in their databases, otherwise they aren't allowed to store the IP address according to Swedish computer privacy laws.
So... The APB then have problems with following this practice since the ISP's won't give them personal data (necessary to contact the user they log) without a police order, and it all turns into a kind of circular legal problem that benefits the file sharer, and makes the APB databases illegal if they'd keep registering IP's and bypassing the police. (in Sweden, an IP address is definitely considered private information you can't just register however you like; much like a social security number)
Personally, I believe this is more proof that our privacy safety nets are working as intended than that they're broken. If the APB find an IP address and want to register this one, they should really need to contact the police, and if they decide it's worth tracking up, let them proceed, and if not, force them to delete the IP address from their databases. That way, it's in the end the police that enforce our laws and not a private organization.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!