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130 Filesharer Homes Raided in Germany
Flo writes "Today, 130 homes have been raided in Germany under the allegation of filesharing. Law enforcement agencies had been monitoring an eDonkey-Server for two months. 3500 identified users are being investigated. Searches took place when users shared more than 500 files. Partners of the music industry helped identifying copyrighted material, but monitoring of the servers was solely done by law enforcement."
Last week I was sitting around, screwing around on fark.com, when there was a knock at the door. My mom awnsered it, and it was an individual claiming to be from the RIAA, along with two county sheriff's deputies. My mom (stupidly) let them in, and the deputies came into my room and proceeded to throw me to the ground while the RIAA guy started looking around on my computer. I demanded to see a warrant and informed them that they did not have permission to search my belongings, but they said that they didn't need one due to some new state law (I live in Missouri). Anyway, they eventually found my stash of MP3s and my mom got scared and said "you're moving with your auntie and your uncle to Bel-Air" I whistled for a cab and when it came near the licensplate said fresh and had a dice in the mirror. If anything I could say that this cab was rare, but I thought now forget it, yo home to Bel-Air! I pulled up to a house about seven or eight, and I yelled to the cabby yo, home smell you later. Looked at my kingdom I was finally there, to settle my throne as the prince of Bel-Air.
Let me be exceedingly clear on this point.
The RIAA and the Sony Entertainment Corporation are NOT LAW-enforcement agencies. They are entities designed to make money. In making said money, they have the means to buy government influence.
This is called corruption, even while the coporation continues to screw the consumer.
The ethical debate we - as citizens, consumers, potentially file-sharers, and ultimately the ones with the votes - have to deal with is: which is more, or in this case less ethical? Corruption at a federal or even International level, or Copyright Infringement?
That is a choice I leave to you.
Informatus Technologicus
http://www.slyck.com/news.php?story=1196
Raiding the home of a citizen is in no way, shape, or form 'civil', regardless of their level of infringement.
Informatus Technologicus
> I'm as liberal as the next guy, but people who steal things understand the risks involved, or if they don't, they deserve what they get simply out of ignorance.
;)
People who use the law to defend industries for which there is no longer any need are enemies of the people.
The recording industry should just die. File sharing is the best thing to happen to music since the invention of the LP (it completely rekindled my interest in popular music after years of apathy, and the same goes for many of my friends). Copyright is supposed to be about the interests of the consumer. Well, it's quite clear that the interests of the consumer are served better by the free exchange of music than by having to financially support an industry.
People will still make and distribute music if they aren't being paid (for all sorts of reasons). If you don't want to, you don't have to. But don't crap on the listeners who have no need to support an outmoded business model. No one has any moral right to make money from music, just as no one has any moral right to make other people pay every time they tell a story you told them.
File sharing is like marijuana - you just aren't going to be able to stop people from doing it.
"by that I mean people who don't sit on slashdot all day wondering why everyone else isn't building robots" DECS
Those who argue "Serves them right, they knew it was a crime" don't realize just how bizarre this whole situation is. You have police come to your house, take your computer away, and you'll get fined with thousands of Euros for something which is utterly trivial. If this is taken to an extreme, it's even worse than the "war on drugs": You don't even have to leave your house to be labeled a criminal.
The music industry has this funny idea that they can scare consumers into using iTunes and similar networks. This will work -- for a while. But when you have all the technologies mentioned, copyright infringement that is undetectable will become prevalent -- because you just download 1 GB from your friend via IM, or swap DVDs (or soon HDDVDs), or use IRC and FTP. And it's not like you have to be a technology savvy guy to do these things. My mom can use IM, when she gets broadband, she can swap files.
So, what you are left with is completely arbitrary enforcement on some services, scare tactics that work against some, while the underlying "problem" keeps getting "worse" because of technology (hardware, software). Just wait until the next file sharing application with a built in "how anonymous do you want to be?" slider comes along.
The problem will only go away when those who make music embrace sharing as a way to popularize it. Those who like it, will pay. What will work better in the long run -- scaring people into paying? Or letting them choose to? If the industry doesn't realize the answer and tries to criminalize society instead, it's time for people to force them to. I really hope that initiatives like the Swedish "Pirate Party" are successful in working towards the decriminalization of non-commercial copying.
Marijuana is legal in quite a few countries. It can happen.
No, in no case is copyright infringement stealing. They are two completely different things. (If you broke into my house, took the masters of the songs I'm working, and copied the stolen data, that would be both copyright infringement and stealing, but still two seperate acts.)
Perhaps. That doesn't means that a state-created artifical monopoly on the act of making copies is, or ever was, a good way to see that authors and creators get paid; any more than making people sing royalties for singing in the shower would be pratical, moral, or just.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
So this must mean that Germany has solved all of their problems with child porn, identity theft, extortion, and all of the other shady activities that can happen online, right?
Because there's no way that they'd place corporate trademark and copyright issues ahead of the safety and security of their citizens, would they? On the taxpayer's dime, too?
Slashdot: come for the pedantry, stay for the condescension.
If you STILL feel inclined to hold your misguided, fanciful, but NOT-thought-out *beliefs* after reading this, and choose to reply... I don't know if you're more stupid or brave...
(Is it "brave" to be steadfastly wrong?
"To err is human, to totally fsck things up requires an election." - L.W. Hale
Copying for private use neither a criminal nor a civil offense in Germany, as long as the source is not an evidently illegal one (ie a movie before its released on DVD - or filesharing).
Copying from an illegal source is a civil offense. So law enforcement still isn't involved at all.
However, distributing copyrighted material is a criminal offense (up to 3 years in prison). And since one can't really download without uploading, law enforcement must investigate any complaint by the copyright holders.
What the attorny said was that "they expect to find all kinds of material, ranging from music to child pornography".
The server also wasn't run by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), but was monitored by them with a "custom developed software".
Also, the operation of an edonkey server is legal in Germany.
Copying somebody else's work against their wishes is also bad.
Copying somebody else's work against their wishes is NOT bad. In fact, the purpose of copyright law is exactly to make this happen.
Copyright law was a deal between the public and content producers that gave content producers the right to limit distribution for a limited time, in exchange for the requirement that their works fall into the public domain (i.e., can be copied against their wishes) after that period. The goal was to balance an economic incentive for content producers against the public's right to copy.
What has happened with copyright law is a perversion: content producers effectively have gotten copyright in perpetuity, through numerous technological and legal tricks. And, worse yet, people like you actually wrongly believe that people have some sort of basic right to control information after they have made it public.
If you don't want your ideas to be disseminated, keep them in your head; you have a right to do that, that works, and you need no goons to enforce it. People like you want the adoration and profit that comes along with sharing your ideas with others; if you want that, you should lose your ability to control your ideas after a short while.
Germany's copyright laws aren't that strict actually. It is still perfectly legal to copy a CD or MP3s from your neighbor or even a DVD you rented for private use. And you can make copys of these copys and share them with your family and friends and it's still legal. Of course the industry is constantly trying to change that. They managed to get an insanly stupid copyright act introduced, which makes it illegal to circumvent "effective technical copyright restriction". To this day, their is no clarifying judgment on what the heck is an effective restriction and what is not. After all, you could argue that as soon as the restriction is cracked, is isn't effective anymore.