Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

BitTorrent User Guilty Of Piracy

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the only-a-matter-of-time dept.

DIY News writes "A Hong Kong man has been convicted of movie internet piracy in what is believed to be the first case involving BitTorrent file-sharing software. The man was found guilty of copyright infringement for distributing three Hollywood blockbusters using BitTorrent."

2 of 470 comments (clear)

  1. Re:This isn't the deterrent. Price is! by CoderBob · · Score: 3, Interesting

    What I want to know, and the article doesn't say, is whether he was a "distributer" or whether he was just an unlucky sharer that was downloading a movie and got nabbed. If he was seeding the torrent, whatever -- he deserved it, I'd think that it would be "scarier" if he was just a user downloading/uploading by using the seeded torrent.

    Note: I'm going to be using "you" to mean "people in general", not "you in particular".

    Now, I'm not familiar with Chinese copyright law as it stands, but I have a feeling he's guilty either way. If you want to glamorize this and call it "civil disobedience", then be ready to go down for your actions. If not, just admit that as the law stands now, regardless of whether that is morally right or wrong, the action is illegal, and that he is being punished for what he did.

    I'm more likely to laugh at every person- downloading, uploading, sharing, seeding, whatever- that gets caught and whines about "their rights" than I am to feel sorry for any of them.

    No, I do not buy movies or CDs often- a few here and there, and most likely at a band's show for a CD- but I also don't bother downloading a bunch of stuff and then whining that I got caught. You seem to be in a similar boat to me. If you enjoy it, you buy it when it gets cheaper. Save yourself the money and the hassle of downloading.

    And if all of it sucks so much, why do people want it in the first place?

  2. Same as in the USA by Frankie70 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    During the time of Charles Dickens, there were no copyright laws for books in the USA. They didn't need
    them because very few books were written in the USA. All their books were written by English authors
    like Dickens - so not having copyright laws mean that US printers could print British books without
    paying any royalty & sell them for pennies.

    Charles Dickens saw this on his visit to the USA & tried to fight against this.

    However, USA started having copyright laws on books only after there were enough American authors
    whose rights needed to be protected. By that time the book industry was jumpstarted by having a
    good business of seeling cheap pirated books & they could build on it.

    Every country starts respecting copyrights/patents only when they have more things to
    protect than to steal.