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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
"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/Evidence, schmevidence!
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
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 ...
Venezuela is a federal republic, which is pretty darn different than communism. However, if you want to download Britney Spears, you'd probably be called a 'pinko' for another reason.
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
When questioned privately about the incident earlier this week, one RIAA representative said, "Damn! I was sure there was piracy going on out there."
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.
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.