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BitTorrent User Guilty Of Piracy
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."
Were those films part of the evidence or his punishment?
All actions like these do is force development of next gen p2p like Mute Filesharing.
http://mute-net.sourceforge.net/
this sig limit is too small to put anything good h
Out of all the movies to go to jail for, this guy picks Daredevil. Ugh.
the torrent of his trial is available at http://www.chin.../ oh wait, nevermind ;)
Wow so they are taking down the person who took part in the copyright infringement and not the software used... Oh wait its still early in the day, I'm sure BitTorrent will be blamed once again for its ability to be used for evil purposes...
News Reporters Make Tasty Polar Bear Treats!
These threads are quickly becoming a rehash of all the previous file sharing threads. Queue the people saying he was breaking the law, the people talking how sharing information isn't stealing, and finally all the people claiming that information wants to be free.
How is this lawsuit different than all the others?
Piracy is the least of his problems...
I use BitTorrent to get the updates for World of Warcraft. I'm not guilty of 'piracy' for that.
Headline should read: "People who share copyrighted movies guilty of copyright infringement."
But I guess that wouldn't get as much of a reaction, what with it being obvious and all...
is competition good, or is duplication of effort bad?
In other news, a man in Delaware has been found guilty of beating another man to death with a toaster. The toaster industry declined to comment.
"Because Science" is one step from "Because old book". Try "Because of my experiment testing my falsifiable assertion".
Here, here and here.
w00t
The government prosecutor Hayson Tse Ka-sze said it would be "absurd" to argue that the tracker server and not the uploader was responsible for distribution. He defined distribution as "sharing" and said the court would have to look at the intent of the legislation
Copyright-infringing copies of three films - Daredevil, Red Planet and Miss Congeniality -- were found on the defendant's computer during a customs raid on his home on January 12. Photo images of the labels of the compact discs were also found on the computer. A digital camera consistent with the make and model used to take the photos was found at the defendant's home, government prosecutor Hayson Tse Ka-sze told the court.
Read Epic the first RPG novel.
Bittorrent gives a grey area... you are not just 'getting' the file, but also 'hosting' pieces of it (or the entire thing if its still in the sharing network when you have the complete file). It isn't as open-shut as you imply.
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
How many times must this get corrected on /. before people stop using this false analogy? If you take a kid's candy, you have the candy and he does not. On the other hand, if you share a movie over the Net, you still have the movie, and so does the other guy. This is not stealing, it's copyright infringement.
Course you also look at another movie readily available online. "It's All Gone, Pete Tong." Its a good movie but wasn't readily available for a good while so it was the fastest way to share a great film which I then purchased. Its much easier to pay for something you will actually enjoy.
Although this has go to be embarassing, busted for pirating Miss Congeniality? Ouch!This is hilarious because if the guy had simply left his apartment and walked to the nearest corner, he could have bought the DVD for next to nothing.
It's amazing to me that real piracy, where huge profits are made, is ignored while file sharing between friends is hammered.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
My initial thoughts were "Prison ? he only uploaded the thing , he didn't produce it"
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
And so on...
Such court cases only happen because the movie industry pressures courts and law enforcement, presumably with some support from U.S. trade or diplomatic channels. Now, the clever thing about such court cases is that they focus on the black/white legality of an action, and ignore the wider ramifications. Very typical of the divide and rule approach. You are either for the movie industry, or you are for thr pirates. This is what Fox TV calls a "wedge issue" and it's a clever way of keeping people divided while avoiding useful debate.
It is a false issue, and anyone discussing whether "piracy is right or wrong" is falling into the trap.
What most people actually are for is a better way of getting content. We don't like thieves. We don't like stealing. But we find paying $50-$100 to take the family to the movies unjustly expensive.
The movie, music and TV industry has to give its customers what they want, or they will - court cases or not - lose those customers.
And the simple solution, by the way, is to boycott Holywood, and boycott the record labels that sponsor the RIAA. Consumers do not have much power, but - as Rosa Parks demonstrated - even the most humble of us can refuse to give our money to those that would mistreat us.
My blog
Better to sue him than to sue legit Bittorrent users.
All ten of you.
If you can't see the value in jet powered ants you should turn in your nerd card. - Dunbal (464142)
The law (in the U.S.) recognizes two types of intent. There is "Specific Intent" - meaning that you intended the effects that occurred. An example of a specific intent crime is Murder. To be guilty of Murder you had to intend to kill. Most crimes in the U.S. are NOT specific intent crimes. The other kind of intent is "General Intent". General intent means that you intended to do what you did - even if you did not intent the consequences that occurred. An example of a general intent crime is Negligent Man slaughter - You intended to drop the brick out the window - You didn't intend to kill. So - If you intend to click on the download button - that intent is sufficient to support a conviction for uploading. Because intent can never be proven - in courts it is supported by circumstantial evidence. I am a lawyer and I work tangentially in the criminal law arena
Pretty off-topic, but whatever...
Hollywood Blockbusters
A "Blockbuster" is a movie that grosses $100 Million or more.
Red Planet brought in $33 Million worldwide, nowhere near a blockbuster as it is defined.
But then I guess anything that comes out of hollywood (or even before it comes out) is considered a blockbuster these days, regardless of how bad it is. Hooray for marketing.
The only difference between a seeder and the other users is that the seeder has the completed copy. In both cases you're uploading something you don't have distribution rights for, so I'm curious how you're making the distinction.
If you can't see the value in jet powered ants you should turn in your nerd card. - Dunbal (464142)
In China...
/.ers may be pro piracy, insulted by the word pirace, anti-piracy, or whatever; but at least moral consideration was made at some point.
Pirated copies of all kinds of things are sold at shops out in the open for all to see. They don't even try to hide it.
At one place I thought was like a flee market, they were selling GBA cartridges for about $5 US (before haggling). The cartridges looked legit at first. I just assumed they were used, then I saw a 6 games in one cartridge. Not a game like the Atari collection or something like that but like 6 Super Mario games in one including a recently released title.
Another place I went to was in a strip mall like shop. It looked like a retail buy/sell/trade place you might find in the US. Maybe like a mini version of an EB games store. The clerk behaved just like someone working at EB might act. Not pushy, but really zealous about gaming. I didn't even know it was a store for pirated stuff, until the issue of price came up. A few games were priced higher than the others only because it required a different type of DVD. Between that and the prices, I finally realized what they were selling.
The point of all this? I wonder if most Chinese have even given piracy moral consideration.
For a long time, I've been very careful about piracy and stuff. I got my own convinctions about it, and I try hard to hold true to them. I've explained this to my wife, who is from China, over and over again. Yet she continually puts me in compromising situations, and has to be reminded why I wont go along with it. Outside of my influence, I don't think she has any considerations toward piracy whatsoever.
Just because it's fast doesn't make it illegal! Every time a dumb headline like this is posted the tech crowd shoots itself in the foot - It's like saying "Porsche driver guilty of manslaughter", these two things may have something to do with each other, but expressing it this way makes it appear as if they are causally related - which they are not.
It's not that this specific transfer protocol enables copyright infringement right out of the box or anything....
Code is Speech. No to Censorship.
'I don't have to waste bandwidth downloading it'
Bandwidth is very cheap and getting cheaper and faster. It won't be long before it is faster to download a film than it is to walk to the video store and back. In some places it already is that fast. Besides, most people have unlimited bandwidth deals where if you *aren't* using it, you are wasting more money than if you use it to it's full potential. Most programs can download in the background so that they do not disturb your browsing etc.
'the time to burn it to DVD'
You can do this in the background. If you use a modern OS like Ubuntu with built in support for burning to DVD, burning to disc is such a trivial exercise that it's hard to understand how Windows makes it so hard to do this simple task quickly. Even if you don't want to burn it, you can watch the film directly from your hard disk and then delete it when you are done.
'my drive space'
Because drive space is a scarce commodity? All you need is a gigabyte or two free for the twenty minutes it takes to burn.
It's not that I condone copyright infringement, but you will have a hard time convincing other people that they should go out in the rain/snow, etc. to buy a film rather than download it from the comfort of their own home.
Wouldn't it be simpler if the music industry just decided that downloading films via the internet was a viable business strategy?
I'll probably be modded down for this...
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?
The movies were crap and it might help illustrate at least one reason why people pirate. I mean really, who is going to pay for those movies?
I'm always a little perplexed by this line of reasoning. If it's not good enough to enjoy... why bother obtaining and watching it? If it's good enough to enjoy, and you're glad that the person who made the film (and his/her hundreds of co-workers and investors) spent the money and went to the trouble of producing it, why deliberately rip off the people making the stuff you do like?
So... if it's quality material worth watching, then it's worth paying the people who produce it (and encouraging them to make more). If it's not worth watching it, why tarnish the name/concept of P2P technologies by squandering it on pirating something copyrighted that, in the same breath, people say is not worth the trouble? I can never understand the people who think they're somehow "punishing" the studios into making better movies by ripping off the (at best) mediocre stuff while piously saying that they'll pay for the quality stuff (assuming, ahem, that they actually do). You indicate that you buy movies you like, but your first sentence (which you say is illustrative) just gives moral comfort to the twits.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
That's hilarious.
:)
The one city in the world where you can buy pirated DVD's on the street from the pirates themselves and they're cracking down on Bittorrent. I guess the p2p was infringing on their local economy...
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.
Look. I am guilty of speeding... hell I even let my insurance lapse a few times. I've shoplifted before (when I was a kid) and YES I admit to having downloaded music and movies from across the internet using a variety of means. (I also buy music and movies when I think they are worthy... haven't bought music in a VERY long time but you might find that I own DVD versions of some TV shows and movies that are also on my hard drive.) I make only weak attempts to justify my actions in that I know what I do "isn't right" but at the same time, I don't feel so wrong about it either. Whenever three conditions meet, I am inclined to buy! Those conditions are Availability==TRUE, Affordability==TRUE and Appreciation==TRUE. I think it's generally true of just about anyone out there.
I don't think it's good that the current market is essentially a "buyer assumes the risk" market. After all, will sellers accept a return of a CD or DVD based on the "I didn't like it" argument? I think they should but they don't. This practice, when done maturely, essentially helps to balance this problem in the market. Is it "wrong"? Yeah... it's wrong by a variety of standards, but it's also a market demand otherwise so many people wouldn't be doing it.
I don't think we should feel any worse than we feel for our neighbor when he gets a speeding ticket. (And I don't think he should get much more punishment than a speeding ticket either.) Just like anyone else, he knew the risks and he took the chance... gambled and lost.
I guess what I'm saying here is that we don't need to call an end to "copyright" and all that. But we do need to bring sanity into play when all of this is going on. I think we can all pretty much agree that it's insane now. If the motive is profit, throw the book at them. If it's the kind of (ab)use that we see on a regular basis, give them a [reasonable] fine and move on. I think it would be fair enough.
You're missing the point. Bad movies or not, the people who produce and distribute them are asking you to pay for them. It's not like that's going to come as a surprise to anyone. I see stuff on TV all the time that I would not (well, beyond the cable rate I'm paying) pay for, ever. But that's not the same as, essentially, sneaking into a theater to see the same, not getting caught/lectured by anyone, and saying, "Well, no one told me I had to pay, at least, not to my face..."
I'm not saying no one told them to pay, only that it is seen as a victimless crime. You're comparing it to a movie theater, but you forget that taking a theater seat that could potentially be occupied by a paying customer (or that seat would make a customer happier, a 'good' seat), using the theater's restrooms, etc., constitutes the use of the producer's resources that they would not have otherwise used.
Pirater's believe this to be as close to a victimless crime as possible because no one uses any resources (except those volunteering the hosting) that they would not have otherwise used, and the producer never would have seen that revenue in the first place.