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UK Has First Verdict in P2P Case
An anonymous reader writes "Two British men have been found guilty of illegally sharing music via a P2P network. The BBC reports that their defense of 'Not knowing it was illegal' and that 'There was no evidence' did not hold water, and they have been ordered to pay the BPI 'between £1500 and £5000' - probably with double that again in costs.
Theis isn't the first time the BPI has launched a case of this kind - but it is the first time the accused has tried to fight instead of stumping up the cash straight away. Three other verdicts are pending."
Since when has ignorance of the law been a valid defence?
Copyright infringement is NOT STEALING!!!!
Grrr...
For those of you unwilling to RTFA, "BPI" is the British Phonographic Industry.
How is this possible? Aren't they using the file names to determine infringement? What kind of 'evidence' is that? If I purposely renamed a bunch of legal files to look like copywritten mp3 and make them available on P2P am I liable for damages too?
£1500-£5000 == $2678.25-$8927.50 USD
And they're paying damages.
Deleted
"Ignorance is not a defense" That's a classic one. Seriously though... what if you played stupid like you don't even know what p2p is and stick to denying d/l. Of course they'll come back and say we have IP logs. But can't you use the "IP spoofing" or "I have a wireless router" idea? I would argue, ok if I stole this song... where is it? Show me that the one you apparently saw on my computer exists? A good defense could win the case I bet.
http://religiousfreaks.com/It would be interesting if they release just how many copyrighted files where being shared and their monthly bandwidth usage.
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Windows Vista Help Forum
Evidence, schmevidence!
The costs for one of the filesharers is estimated at £13,500 but there have been no estimates on what amount of damages they will have to pay on top.
The BPI says it believes internet music-swapping has led to a decline in sales of singles since 1999.
As for the opinion that most music today just isn't that great (IMHO) and therefore leads to declining CD sales - was never mentioned.
People legally downloading songs, on the other hand, might have been another argument, but that wasn't mentioned either.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
not true, by your definition all forms of charity would be stealing
it's copyright infringement, it may seem like stealing to you, but the law here in blighty says thats it's copyright infringement
-Drew
I get free music all day long on the radio.
I used to make mix tapes of all my favorite music by listening to the charts on a Sunday afternoon.
The internet is just a modern version of that - nobody can show direct proof that sales are dropping because of people doing what they have always done.
liqbase
I was doing a quick scan of the comments before IRTFA, and I couldv'e sworn I saw British Pornographic Industry. Which would have made this a heck of a lot more interesting. Although some might say pop music these days is just pornography instead of an actual art.
Anyone who is caught downloading music illegally should be held to the full extent of the law. It's unfortunate that people these days think they should get things for free. Unless maybe you're some communist. And in that case you should move to Venezuela. Just remember when you download music illegally, you're basically downloading communism. Who the hell wants to support that....
I thought the moral of the story was don't upload, just leech?
If your getting something for nothing that you are supposed to pay for, then it is called stealing.
Wrong! Stealing = Taking the property of someone without permission (Destruction of others' property is taken into account, too). The overinflated prices the RIAA sets on music do NOT make that money their property. Besides their prices are on the labelled, stamped, colored, decorated, copy-protected, and maybe even autographed CD's - but not on the music itself. And even that is nothing compared to the "additional costs" that are nothing but price fixing.
So what this guy stole are actually one or two dollars, who rightfully belong to the music groups. Why then do the courts make him pay so much to the recording labels? This doesn't make sense at all.
Tell me, who's the one really stealing?
Two British men have been found guilty of illegally sharing music via a P2P network.
Perhaps they should consider to seek political asylum in France.
There you are, staring at me again.
The first defendant, from King's Lynn, said the BPI had no direct evidence of infringement, but the judges dismissed this
I'm no law scholar here, but doesn't the judge have to actually refuse any defendant's claim with some logical arguement instead of simply claiming "nah, I'm pretend I didn't hear that?"
According to the Register:
Considering the number of people downloading music from P2P clients in the UK, you're going to have to be really really unlucky to be one of the 88.
One thing to consider is how 'targetted' these cases were. Do we know if the BPI are chasing the people who are providing the files for download or just those downloading? I believe the RIAA were doing chasing the content providers in attempt to 'cut off the supply' of files available for download.
It might also be interesting to find out what client that these guys were using - more for my own personal benefit so I never use it ...
That is a dangerous misconception to have. Copyright infringement can be prosecuted criminally.
Unless, of course, we don't really care about P2P and just want free music and all of our righteous and indignant howling over curtails on p2p technology is a reaction to having buy all the trash music we claim so much to hate.
"I have never won a debate with an ignorant person." -Ali ibn Abi Talib
"Wrong! Stealing = Taking the property of someone without permission (Destruction of others' property is taken into account, too)."
If you consider the content "Property" then, yes it is stealing. The only difference between "stealing" digital content VS. physical content is the reproduction costs and ease of access. In both cases you enter an agreement (for sales), for $x I will give you ownership of this copy of this content (whether it's an MP3 download, a DVD, or a car). You don't get reproduction or redistrobution rights. You get fair use (IE: you can drive the car, sell the car, and crash the car, but you can't create a new production plant that builds that car. Just like you can listen to an MPG, you can sell an MPG, but you can make many copies of the MPG and distribute them)
The person DOWNLOADING the music is stealing. The person HOSTING the music, is violating copywrite laws.
Personally, I'd say swat the downloaders with the actual legal download cost per song they get busted with (proven to be illegally downloaded). And sue the people hosting the music for patent infringement with big penalties. Make it clear that you are going after the people distributing the music, not ma and pa who's teenager downloaded a handful of music.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
Who wants to move to France? That would be a real punishment for their crime!
"I get free music all day long on the radio."
Only in the UK you don't get it free. There is newly classified 'tax' that we all have to pay in order to receive radio and TV signals. We can go to gaol (do not pass Go) if we refuse to pay.
It's not free Sir.
This post contains benzene, nitrosamines, formaldehyde and hydrogen cyanide.
What if you own an album that is unplayable(scratched) or hard to convert(vinyl), then download it because you are unwilling to be extorted by paying several times for your content. It is easy to leech and not give back(although shunned upon). I also don't see how they can prove if you were sharing it. You may be listed as a peer, but have your upload turned off. Also, stuff like peerguardian will likely block most snoops ip's so you wouldnt be giving them any of it. The point being, if you already own the content, and if you arent contributing to piracy, would they be able to still convict you?
Blah blah blah
Value is a funny thing. Something is worth whatever people are willing to pay for it. If people will pay $20 for a CD, then it's worth $20, even if you disagree. You don't get to decide how much things are worth.
That being said, it's still stealing. Since you see nothing wrong with copyright infringement (as this comment proves), I'm sure you wouldn't mind if I, uh, "borrowed" your computer for a while. Just post your IP, username, password, and favorite remote connection utility (telnet, ssh, VNC, Remote Desktop, whatever).
I just want to "borrow" your computer for a bit, play around with it, download some questionable material, troll the Wikipedia, nothing serious. I'm sure you see no problem with that, because you have no problem with copyright infringement, so that wouldn't be stealing after all.
Whenever someone starts mincing words ("copyright infringement" vs "stealing") it's in a (feeble) attempt to justify their sins. File sharing is morally wrong: you know that. Stealing CDs is morally wrong: you know that. Yet your entire post was a poor attempt to construct an argument where it wasn't wrong. Just like how Clinton redefined sex, you're redefining morals to try and free yourself from the wrongs you've commited. It doesn't work.
Make that "copyrighted". Sorry. Every crappy message board in the world has an "edit" function, except the one run by the uber-geek technomeisters. Go figure...
"Copyright infringement is NOT STEALING!!!!
Grrr..."
Quit stealing my idea!!!!. Oh wait...
Vote for Pedro
When questioned privately about the incident earlier this week, one RIAA representative said, "Damn! I was sure there was piracy going on out there."
So I'm guessing that you're talking out of your backside.
I agree with some earlier comments regarding a bad defence. There are many reasons that the judge in this case got away with deciding them in this manner:
1. Bad lawyers for the defendants. (There was obviously a lack of professionalism)
2. Most lawyers in both the U.S. and Europe have little, if no understanding of the copyright system. For example in the U.S. alone the copyright laws have been amended so many times that only a handful of lawyers even understand what the law "says", let alone is interpreted as.
3. Pressure! (These lower court decisions obviously have huge pressure inflicted by the lobbying groups involved, it would take a good lawyer to get taken seriously)
4. The arguments involved in defending yourself for these sort of cases tends to be much more complicated then typical civil action. In these cases the defendant must prove "lack of evidence" under a much wider argument generally along privacy, fair use, copyright details, what is infringment etc...
5. The judges in these cases generally don't have a lot of precedents to refer to.
6. The world is undecided currently on what to do with the Internet in a legal sense of rights and fair use.
Hope this clarifies some issues a bit.
Blank files / random-bytes-generated files are not eligible for copyright protection in the US or in Brasil (those are the jurisdictions whose copyrights law I am somewhat familiar)
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
Whenever someone starts mincing words ("copyright infringement" vs "stealing") it's in a (feeble) attempt to justify their sins. File sharing is morally wrong: you know that.
No, I believe it is morally right, and I think you're only supporting the status quo with your statement.
And sue the people hosting the music for patent infringement with big penalties. Make it clear that you are going after the people distributing the music, not ma and pa who's teenager downloaded a handful of music.
Hosting the music? Like on a website? I'm sorry, the 1990s called and want their arguments back. In case you missed out on P2P technology, let me explain it to you. 1 teenager with a handful of music on p2p x millions of teenagers = a huge library of almost all popular music with no central server. If s/he doesn't delete them as s/he grows tired of them and keep them in the shared folder (the default in all P2P programs I've seen), one teenager could supply thousands of people with tons of music without doing anything else than downloading a handful of music now and then.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
No. The major difference is that when someone steals physical content, the original owner no longer has that content. If I walk into a CD shop and nick a CD, then the shop no longer has that CD. This is a clear, direct loss.
If you download the album off of someone else's computer, no-one has directly lost anything. You could argue that the band/label have lost their opportunity to sell you it, but
a) you may never have planned to buy it in the first place (in which case, who's lost what?)
b) you may like it so much that you actually go out and buy it (in which case, everyone's gained.
So there is a possibility of actual loss in this situation, but it's no more than that.
As an example, back in the Amiga days, I will admit that 'a friend' (gotta be careful what I admit to) got copies of virtually every Amiga game that ever came out. If 'the friend' found himself playing the game for more than a day, he then (every single time) went out and bought it, including several that he hadn't even considered buying before playing. What actual damage was done there? Contrast that with a hypothetical situation where someone nicked a copy of every single game from Game and then went back and paid for the ones he liked.
I'm not claiming that there is never any loss as a result of piracy, but it is nowhere near as clean cut as some people claim (and in at least some cases there is gain instead) and claiming that it's pretty much exactly the same as physical theft is just ridiculous.
Actually that's called "unjust enrichment"... Like "stealing" cable TV.
"one teenager could supply thousands of people with tons of music without doing anything else than downloading a handful of music now and then."
Yes, and that would be hosting. Don't want to host? Turn off hosting, most P2P clients (all that I have seen) have that option be it No-host, don't share, leech mode, what ever. If you are distributing the content, then yes, you are violating copywrite laws, and IMNSHO the RIAA has every right to nail you to a cross.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
Luckily for 'your friend' there are many legal options to do this. Both Amazon.com and iTunes offer preview copies of songs, and with services like Yahoo music you can get 'lease' song you want legally and if you want to keep it for ever, you can buy it at will.
You are looking at this from a 'possible loss' point of view. Let's turn the tables and look at it as a 'definate gain' possibility.
Let's say that you like song ABC. You like it very much, enough to the point that you are willing to give up $12 for the band's latest CD. You the consumer see a gain in $10 worth of music and the label sees a gain of $10 cash. Now, if you are given the option to get that same CD for free and you take it, you have now seen a gain of $10 in music, but the creater of the music has not seen any gains.
At this point, you have definately gained money, and the label has definately NOT gained money. But there is more to the story. You see, that label had to pay to have the albumn produced and mastered, it had to pay the performers and buy the rights. That one $10 CD might have cost $5 million to record, produce, and market (notice I'm not including production, distrobution, or sales). True, the label will make a but load of copies to recoup that lose and make a profit. But since that is the case each copy of the content can be given an exact value. If we print and ship 1 million CDs we can say that each copy costs the label $5.
So now we have a consumer who has gained $10 in music and the label who has not been reimbersed the $5 it cost them. So the customer gains and the label loses (albeit half of what the consumer gains).
Is it unfair then to goto the consumer who downloaded the must and require them to pay the $5?
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
It should be noted that this was a civil prosecution, not a criminal one: The term "illegal" refers only to criminal cases and not civil cases such as this. Also, the judge seems to have ruled against the defendents for simply making the files AVAILABLE for download - whether they actully uploaded them to anyone else or not.
This press release on the BPI site explains how 2005 was the best year for sales in history, beating 2004, which in turn beat 2003, which beat 2002, which beat... and so on.
From the press release: This high comes after six years of year-on-year growth in artist album sales from 87.7m [units] in 1999 to 126.2m in 2005, an increase of 44% in just six years.
It's sad to see this once powerful industry decimated by p2p piracy.
"Oh, wait..."
Morals are not universal. Morals are simply a human judgement of their own actions.
What you believe to be morally right or wrong is not right or wrong universally just because you say it is. Morally wrong to you, sure, but you can't make that judgement for someone else. If you could there would be a lot less crazy religions. All you can do are state your opinions, and an opinion and $3.50 will get you a coffee at starbucks.
Legally right or wrong is another story alltogether. Which is a debate I chose not to have.
That is where the position matters, the person downloading the content isn't guilty of copyright infringment, they should be guilty of petty theft or recieving stolen property at the worst.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
The Congress shall have Power...
To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;
-United States Constitution: Article I Section 8
...because "hacker" sounds way sexier than "code drone."
Well, stealing has always been illegal, but we *are* talking about infringement of copyrights here... I think that if you mod me down for saying this point, you also need to mod down the parent post and the post above for making statements that are made in every news story about this topic - it's only fair.
If you believe in privacy, and believe you have "nothing to hide" at the same time, you're a goddammed idiot
Value is a funny thing. Something is worth whatever people are willing to pay for it. If people will pay $20 for a CD, then it's worth $20, even if you disagree. You don't get to decide how much things are worth.
Very true, just remember that other people are prepared to pay $0 for an mp3 which therefore means that the music is worth $0 without the packaging
"Welcome to our world. We are the wasted youth. And we are the future too." Yes, I know these are stupid lyrics.
I hear this, yet I see less of that and more pointless accusations. Please prove this, or forever hold your bullshit. ^_^
No, I don't "know" that. I know you consider all file-sharing wrong even if there is legal file-sharing does and can occur. I know that file-sharing legal goods is morally sound, I also know that you made a false generalization. File-sharing is only bad if the intentions are not following the laws, that does not make the technology only bad especially since there is legal content that is shared.
Straw man flaimbait. First of all you make a comparison that compares two different bits (stealing a computer and copying data) and make them equal, then you continue by making the false assumption that his denouncing calling illegal file-sharing anything but that as saying it is O.K.
I am through with this post. If anything, you should be modded down not for your belief that it is stealing, but for the fact that you try to prove your point through accusations and unbacked assumptions and bad analogies.
If you believe in privacy, and believe you have "nothing to hide" at the same time, you're a goddammed idiot
[snip price fixing and other legal irrelevancies]
I am not a lawyer, but copying law seems very simple to me on a fundamental level, both legally and morally.
1) A copyright holder of any given work has the exclusive right to license and distribute that work.
2) Anyone else can acquire that work only with the permission of the copyright holder.
3) In the case of music, the copyright holders require a certain amount of money in exchange for granting you permission to acquire that work for personal use.
4) If you acquire the work, but don't pay the copyright holder, you are denying the copyright holder his legal due while profiting at his expense (you have his work, but he doesn't have your money). You have taken something from the copyright holder without recompense. This is stealing.
On a moral level, copyright holders are entitled to dictate what they will accept as compensation to give you the fruits of their work. You are entitled to refuse, but then are not entitled to the copyright holder's work.
I fail to see the confusion. It is very simple.
Note that I am purposely not getting into the complications of exceptions via deal making, nor am I getting to arguments about copyright duration or the irrelevancies of how musicians are treated by the music cartel since they are both red herrings.
The people who own the product can set any price they want. I make videogames, and I set their price. you can moan about the price (and some people do), but the answer is "dont fcking buy it then". If you dont like the price of a product, tough shit, music aint clothing or shelter, you dont need it to live. If you feel so passionate about free music, nobody will stop you releasing music YOU created for free, its when you tell toher people who create products what price THEY should charge for them that they get upset, and who can blame them. How would you like it if I demanded that YOU work for free?
DRM-free indie games for the PC and Mac: Positech Games
One of the reasons "my friend" has not done this kind of thing since the early '90s, but even with Amazon/iTunes, a 30 second sample of the track isn't the same as putting the entire album on and seeing if you think it's worth buying.
So now we have a consumer who has gained $10 in music and the label who has not been reimbersed the $5 it cost them. So the customer gains and the label loses (albeit half of what the consumer gains).
I think you're missing the point about someone not intending on buying it anyway.
Let's take your album example. The album costs $5M to record, and the amount of CDs sold (or copies made) has absolutely no effect on that figure. It is a fixed cost.
Once the album is made, I have three options relating to it
1) Buy the album - I get the album. The record company gets their $10.
2) Don't aquire the album at all - I don't get the album. The record company get $0.
3) I get the album illegally - I get the album. The record company gets $0.
As mentioned, none of this has made the slightest difference to the $5M cost to produce.
The question is, what would I have done if I couldn't have done #3? If it was #1, then by pirating the album, I've deprived the company of $10 that they would have got. If it was #2, I've not deprived them of anything.
A more obvious example - I know plenty of people who do still pirate software, and in most (admittedly not all) cases, the people would not have bought the software if they could not have got hold of it for free. For instance, I know a fair few people using pirate versions of Office who, if they could not have got hold of the pirate version, would have used Open Office instead (let's ignore the 'Open Office is better anyway' discussion). In this situation, who is being deprived of what by these people pirating Office?
In which case you are saying that taxation is stealing. You may have a point, there, mind you.
The men were found *liable*. In other words, the BPI sued them, and the court then has to decide "who's more likely to be right ?". Even 51% is enough. But its between the BPI and them. A crime on the other hand, is between all of us and whoddunit. That's why its "US v x", or over here, "R v x". In that case, the court has to be sure (beyond a reasonable doubt) that they did it. Let's be clear about this: regardless of the rights and wrongs of copyright infringement (and lets not start that one), these men were not charged with a crime.