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MPAA Being Sued For Allegedly Hacking Torrentspy
goldaryn writes "Valence Media, the parent company of Torrentspy.com, one of the web's largest torrent search engines, has filed a lawsuit against the MPAA for allegedly hiring a hacker to steal e-mail correspondence and trade secrets. From the suit: 'The Motion Picture Association of America willfully and intentionally obtained without authority, conspired to obtain without authority, purchased, procured, used and disclosed private information that it knew was unlawfully obtained through unauthorized access to Plaintiffs' computer servers and private email accounts, in violation of United States and California privacy and computer security laws.'"
Absolutely! Only the groups we like should be allowed to sue people! When the MPAA or the RIAA sues, it's bad, but Torrentspy is okay in my book, so we'll allow it.
The law according to Slashdot. *shudder*
"Sufferin' succotash."
Uh, because it's a lawsuit filed by Torrentspy and not a federal crackdown?
I'll never understand why Slashdotters get so upset that the FBI does its job and enforces the law in this country. That includes busts of the big piracy rings. You may think you're magically entitled to download everything on the planet with paying a dime to anybody ever, but the law (and common ethics) says otherwise, especially if you're a larger group with a widespread infrastructure facilitating the spread of piracy. The FBI will beat down your door and stop you from your economic sabotage.
"Sufferin' succotash."
What evidence do you have of an oligarchy forming without some form of government interference?
go take a history course
If you cannot keep politics out of your moderation remove yourself from the Mod Lottery.. NOW!
Exactly... And it is also not considered legal to freely distribute someone else's copyrighted work. I'm having real difficulty here understanding why people can't put together the facts on this issue.
Nicely ignoring that the example I give is NOT illegal because of distribution.. Are you capable of reading at all? or can you just post rants without ever listening..
Simple breakdown: (we'll use a music CD as an example)
You have a writer that pens the lyrics to the next great chart topping song. You have the performer who sings it. You have the producer that records it. You have the record label that presses it onto CDs, packages it and sells it. Together, they have created a series of rules as to how the product of their work can be used. They generally state that you can listen to their product privately, and not for profit. They have separate agreements with radio stations and other broadcasters who pay other fees for the usage.
No, they did not create that set of rules together, rather, society encoded a set of rules into law, believing it would help promoting progress of art. Those rules were then hijacked by the recording industry to maximize proffit.
The recording industry needs society for enforcing said rules, so society definitely has a say about what this protection is and is not.
They offer their product to you under these terms for a certain amount of money. If you agree to the terms that they offer, you give them the money, and they give you a CD which contains a copy of their work. You own the CD, but your purchase agreement doesn't give you ownership of the recorded work on the CD, just the right to use that work in a manner consistent with the agreement that you made.
No, I did not sign any agreement when buying a CD, so there is NO agreement any recording company can hold me to. I do need to keep to the local laws however. Again, it is not the recording industry who can set the rules (other then by 'bribing' politicians of course)
Then someone decides to break the agreement by making copies of the work and giving it away for free. I understand that there are people on Slashdot who believe that they can do whatever they want simply because they want to do it, but the fact is that what is happening is violating the rights of the people who own the recording.
You have two problems here:
1. Your idea about what those rights are, and who decides on what they are is pretty wrong as pointed out above
2. Some of those people at least argue that current copyright law is unfair and unjust and in fact conflicts with
the purpose of copyright as mentioned in the constitution. 'Good men don't follow unjust law' is a founding
principe of the USA (being an important part of the justification of rebelling against England) so this is not
that easy to dismiss, regardless of what you believe the rights of the people who own the recording are.
It doesn't matter whether you believe that it isn't that big of a deal, or whether you believe that you aren't really stealing anything. It doesn't matter that you believe that you really own the contents of the CD you purchased. You can believe that you own the Golden Gate bridge, but just try crossing it without paying the toll...
As long as the USA is a democracy and the recording industry needs protection by law, yes it very much matters what the citizens of that country think.
Unlike you believe, copyright is not a natural right, it is a specific protection provided by society with a very specific purpose.
As long as you keep willingly ignoring how the recording industry has been abusing this protection (by withholding works from the public domain, so in effect withholding that what they have to pay for the rights they gained), you are ignoring a very important side of this discussion, and you will also never be able to understand why some people are in fact ignoring the law with a morally correct justification (while others are as you say just freeloading because they can, but that does not take away the issue I point at, it is another issue)