Slashdot Mirror
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."
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
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.
Actually, they have not succeeded in anything except that they are now allowed to store and process personal information about file sharers. Recently the data board classified IP-adresses as personal information, which meant they needed permission to store and process it without the users consent. They now have this permission. However, since it is now clear that they are subject to this law (called PUL, which means something like Law of Personal Information), they are also required to tell the registered person about the registration. In order to do this they need to know who has a particular IP, and only the ISP can help with this, but they refuse to cooperate. It is all very confusing and amusing to follow.
This is not a sig.