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BitTorrent Site Admin Sent To Prison
Marc wrote in with a Torrentfreak story which opens: "The 23 year old Grant Stanley has been sentenced to five months in prison, followed by five months of home detention, and a $3000 fine for his role in the private BitTorrent tracker Elitetorrents.
This ruling is the first BitTorrent related conviction in the US. Stanley pleaded guilty earlier this year to 'conspiracy to commit copyright infringement' and 'criminal copyright infringement.' He is one of the three defendants in the Elitetorrents operation better known as 'Operation D-Elite.'"
Rape
Murder
Theft
Or..
Drug posession
Helping people download music
Man sent to jail for breaking the law! What a shocker!
1) I see no need to send someone to jail for copyright infringement. The punishment does not fit the crime, and its not helping society, by removing a danger, nor do I suspect it will be useful in rehabilitating.
2) I hope he stocked up on torrents of stuff to watch/listen/play during house arrest.
What does BitchTorrent mean?
He probably made cash, only has to pay $3k and gets a five month vacation out of his parent's basement.
In this enlightened country, file-sharing is legally equivalent to operating a photocopier in a library!
Of course, you might get frostbite operating the keyboard, so it's a bit of a toss-up.
Guilty of what? Guilty of to 'conspiracy to commit corporate greed infringement' and 'criminal moneygrabing infringement'? I hope it goes in front of the jury and we get Jury Nullification
One of the only good things about the bloated EU legal system is that nonsense and crock like this would be lucky even to make it to court. More and more I am convinced that the judiciary is being bought out by the newest form of governmental lobbies - and this is coming from a sternly traditional republican.
My only hope is that the liberal money in this country eventually wakes up from pointless pandering for touchy-feely issues like the environment and gets down to the vagarities and rediculous loopholes in the system itself - changing a policy without changing the idea behind it is worthless.
Physics is nothing like religion. If it was, we'd have an easier time trying to raise money!
Pirate caught and hung, film at 11. Or as 'hung' as our justice system can manage; I mean hell, murder only rates a couple of years if it is your first offense and it wasn't a brutal gangland slaying or anything like that.
The Napster kerfluffle should have told anyone with three brain cells that building a site for the express purpose of putting people with a copy of a copyrighted file in contact with people who want a copy is infringement. The technology that implements it isn't all that important, it is the intent. And elitetorrents was ALL about warez. Just because the guy wasn't running an FTP site hosting the files wasn't going to save his butt and he should have known it wouldn't.
Don't like the laws? Either work to change em or violate them as an act of civil disobedience and accept the consequences in the hope of gaining sympathy for your cause and eventual change. But don't act shocked that the operator of what was a major warez site got busted and sent up the river.
Democrat delenda est
NOT.
My guess is that he nor any of his users ever got any chance to vote on any copyright law. Can't say I have. Have you? Have you ever gotten to vote on any copyright issue?
Hell, I never even agreed to be any citizen of any country. Show me a signature where I did. So therefore, how do any laws apply to him, or me? As far as I'm concerned, if you have no say so in the making of a law, then you have no obligation whatsoever to have to abide by it.
Kind of like your neighbors down the street getting together and making an assinine aggreement, that all windows in the neighborhood must be left open in the winter time. And then enforcing that law on you. Fining you and or imprisoning you when you don't abide by it. Assembling a police force of patrollers to enforce this rule and smashing down the door and taking prisoner those who are in violation of it. Conformity and enforcement at the end of a barrel of gun.
Only the neighbors aren't down the street, they are 100 miles, or 1000 miles away. Or worse, somewhere back in time, even before you were even born.
Tell me the US version of representational democracy / republic isn't a total crock of ****....
Further, if you're under 18, you have no say so whatsoever. If you're over 18, your say so is generally limited to the joke of a vote. Which is nothing but a weak concession to undermine your primary right, which is the right to riot.
When will we get a legal system where the punishment fits the (lack of) actual crime?
www.isoHunt.com
... what his, umm, sharing ratio will be in prison.
Do you think he'll leave it open for peers after he's done?
__ Someday, but not this morning, I'll finally learn to use the preview button.
Well, I will sleep much better tonight knowing that this horrible criminal is finally behind bars.
should we start moving to freenet now?
--
Stay tuned for some shock and awe coming right up after this messages!
Seriously how fucking dense do you have to be if you think putting up a torrent to Star Wars III: Revenge of the Sith before it was released to cinemas was not going to put you top of the MPAA shitlist and destined for special attention.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
In order to imprison someone for violating the temporarily granted monopoly, the government should have to prove that he discouraged "the progress of science and useful arts". For that, they would have to prove that the people who obtained his pirated material would otherwise have paid for it. That is the problem with the arguments of strict copyright proponents: They fail to recognize that the absence of piracy does not imply equivalently higher sales. Some of us are simply not willing to pay $20 for one decent song on a CD.
The fine might be appropriate, but prison time is completely unjustified.
Trademarked by the "entertainment industry"
1. Make the (US) government happy by paying politicians for
legalizing monopoly over culture practically forever
2. Kill creativity and competition by killing the public domain
3. Nourish crap tastes, sell crap at monopoly prices
4. Profit
5. Goto 1
...crimes that benifit herself and deal with actual money : 5 months
Grant Stanley, crime characterized as sharing : 5 years of butt sex.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
Only fair that gun manufacturers should go to jail when people use their products to commit crimes.
The creators of elitetorrents.org simply supplied a technology for people to share bits of data. The only people that should be prosecuted should be the ones doing the crimes not the manufacturers of technology.
BTW - The FBI/government should be spending taxpayers money to fight terrorism not subsidizing the RIAA/MPAA. Didn't they say something last time like they didn't know or didn't have the resources to figure out the 9/11 attacks before they happened??? Guess they cant use that excuse again if they can waste taxpayers money on this crap...
Jail? For adminning an indexing site?
When are they going to lock up the Google admins?!?
You're using her as bait, Master!
Your employer can deny an employee to do their lawfully expected duty - but they should expect a knock at the door from the local sheriff.
No matter where you go, there will be corruption. It is part of human nature, the dark side of it. There is not a society on earth that is good; eventually at some point they all turn to shit, no matter what grand ideals were at the inception.
The solution is not to move away (like he could afford a private island anyway) but to fight against the corrupt system and try to make a difference, whether it's working within the confines of the system (but against it), or working on tearing it down (as sometimes is necessary when it becomes too evil for its own good).
... had an opportunity to vote on your state's murder statute either. Or, more to the point, that guy creeping up behind you never voted on it. Never even asked to be a member of this country, either. Show *him* the signature. Of course, in my experience anarchists always seem to learn the value of police and courts when it is their own lives and/or property in danger.
:) Its the least worst of all systems anybody has managed to come up with. Anarchists say "Ahh, but its still a bad system, we'd be better off with no system", which just means you end up with a dictatorial government by whoever owns the guns when the current government goes under. Given that I'm 120 lbs and have never fired a gun outside of Duck Hunt I rather hope we don't go Hobbesian tomorrow.
The US version of representational democracy / republic isn't a total crock of ****
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
You're much better off using the Freenet network itself to share and download files. Download Freenet here - make sure you get the 0.5 version, not the 0.7 version. Freenet 0.5 is anonymous and offers plausible deniability. 0.7 does not have these benefits yet; you must connect specifically to a set group of people (mostly Freenet developers) and anyone you connect to in 0.7 is able to tell what you insert/retrieve. This will be resolved in the future, right now the top priority in 0.7 is to build a reliable network.
Despite what you may have heard, there is very much an active community on Freenet 0.5. Once you get Freenet running you'll definitely want Frost (see the link above), it's a messaging system that runs on Freenet. There are boards for just about every category you'd find at a torrent site.
Have fun..and contribute..!
Why is everyone in prison gay?
1. Criticize the content industries for having crap products.
2. Get the exact same crap products off of Bittorrent.
3. Get arrested.
4. Whinge about it.
Lets review, shall we: if you hate Hollywood/Sony/the RIAA/EA/pick-your-boogeyman then *get your stuff elsewhere*. Nobody puts a gun to your head and says "You have to pay me $99.99 for Oops I Did It With Madden of the Sith 2007", unless for some strange reason you actually want to use that garbage. If you do, pay for it. If you don't, there are other sources for video games/movies/pop music/yadda yadda. And if you go to those other sources and say "Hey, this is nice, but this movie doesn't have the special effects that I expect with my $200 million summer blockbuster extravaganza" then, hate the break it to you, but the only participant in the system with a problem is you.
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
He could have been sentenced to X number of community service hours until the corporations he stole from was paid back fully. I suspect this would probably be a lifetime community service but it is fair.
If you allowed people to download 100 copies of Windows XP Home full edition, then you should do enough community service to the corporation stolen from to pay for $19,900 in lost profits. That would be around 3000 to 4000 hours. The amount would be reduced if you turn over the people who downloaded those 100 copies. And those 100 people would be ordered to do community service to pay for the $200 in loss profit. You literally pay for what you stole.
\
Why is everyone in prison gay?
because they don't have enough females there
-m10
The Duality of Slashdot never ceases to amuse me.
People who help others get copyrighted material without paying for it and then get busted are worshiped as martyrs.
But if someone dares violate the GPL, those same Slashdotters rise up and demand the heads of everyone involved on a silver platter.
It amazes me that more of you don't run for public office...you've got the "talking out of both sides of mouth" and "double standards" parts well covered.
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
Anyhow, I think we need a big celebrity to get arrested on what used to be a civil crime of copyright infringment, to bring the issue to light.
Meanwhile, if you are not rich, good looking, and popular, don't steal stuff or infringe on copyrights and you will be OK. It's all crap anyhow, right?
That said, if you have an ordinary lawyer, you are probably more likely to get off "scott free", in front of a jury, in a case involving shooting someone who deserves it over a case of some high-falutin' copyright thingamahoochi.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
I just don't get how so many can take the moral high ground when it comes to pirating.
When you pirate, you trample upon the rights of him/her who put the effort into producing the good in the first place.
If they wanted to give their product away for free, they could have.
If they wanted to provide a tiered pricing scheme, they could have.
If they wanted to just ask for donations, they could have.
If they wanted to offer their product free for home use, they could have.
Why should you be able to demand these rights be stripped from creators.
People cry injustice against the law.
I would cry injustice if the law didn't.
All the law is doing is enforcing the right for any person to do what they want with what they create.
...but isn't this what other torrent sites fought in the past?
They don't actually host the illegal material; just a reference to it. If they're going to arrest admins for that, then why are search engines still indexing crack/serial/warez sites?
If you want to get technical about it, the users submitting the torrents are the ones at fault, here. Granted, if the admin is the submitter, then he has every right to be imprisoned for his doings. But if he simply provided the web space for the torrent of copyrighted material to be hosted, and provided the bandwidth for the same, then his liability is somewhat questionable.
I, personally, don't know how that site operated. If I were running such a site, then I would implement a moderation system. But depending upon the popularity and traffic involved in such a site, that could easily become a daunting task.
I see it in the same light as arresting automobile manufacturers for the hit-and-run death of an innocent pedestrian. Sure, the car was used as the lethal weapon of choice, and it was productive in doing its task, but it's not Chevrolet's fault that their Silverado 1500 was used to kill someone. BitTorrent has a valid use, just as an automobile. When it's misused though, it's not the responsibility of the manufacturer, the used car dealer, or even the gas station!
That's just my two copper pieces.
"Intellectual property" == "redistribution of wealth"; it's rent-seeking using government grants of monopoly, not legitimate profit-seeking from making scarce goods more available.
There's no natural scarcity on ideas. Ideas are not mutually exclusive, and thus do not meet the criteria defining "property"; hence why "theft" is defined legally as "denial of use". If anything, copyrights and patents "steal" my ability to use my justly acquired property in specific ways.
As to you earning a living as an ISV, you could sell your services for creating new software instead. The "free rider problem" is a myth -- pure voodoo economics; it's a euphemism for price controls.
I have filed the waiver (basically cannot afford it) of financial hardship several times. Basically I couldn't afford to take a potentially long time unpaid off work .
Now let me get out the soapbox yet again. I don't understand the injustice system. The judge gets paid well, the bailiffs & cops get paid well, the lawyers get paid very well, but the jurors get lunch money. What is wrong with this picture?
If you want to get a jury of your peers, the jury MUST be paid the same wage they would otherwise earn. Without this you'll get nothing but juries which are composed of retirees, stay @ home parents or the unemployed.
Good luck trying to justify your high tech crime to people who know nothing about computers or intellectual property.
I been working 20+ years and I've never had a job which would pay my regular wage for a potentially long time. No thanks.
BTW I have mod points, but once again this needs to be said.
Who will guard the guards?
Fixed.
Does this mean that he can be sent to jail, but OJ Simpson cant?
The Gospel according to lolcat
Should, but doesn't. The US court system has ruled that the preamble to the copyright clause is of no force or effect in deciding the constitutionality of a copyright statute, even though the copyright clause is the only congressional powers clause that has a preamble. In upholding the re-extension of copyright in Eldred v. Ashcroft, the Supreme Court has reiterated its policy of absolute deference in the interpretation of the preamble to the Congress, whose members are subject to control through reelection campaign contributions, unlike federal judges, who hold a life term.
If every possible melody is copyrighted, then no new music can be created. Or do you expect the culture to abandon melody altogether?
Sorry, but it is painfully obvious that all of the people operating these torrent search engines and making ad revenue from indexing links to the downloads of files that are mostly copyrighted works should suffer huge penalties for their actions.
You want to know why they are being targetted? They are making money off of piracy. This essentially paints a giant bullseye on you, and it is well deserved. Good riddance to these sites.
does he have rights to a blog
Good question, but considering that he's already going to jail for what essentially amounts to thoughtcrime ("conspiracy to commit copyright infringement"), I don't think blogging about it would help the situation any.
At this point, the government can put you in jail for pretty much anything. And with the death of habeas corpus on October 18 2006, they don't even have to give you a trial.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
Google becomes liable once it does one of the following:
Not entirely. Too many trackers have a policy of accepting only releases from the warez scene.
copyright infringement infringement, according to the intent of the US constitution on the matter,
would be wrong only when it prevents the promotion of science and useful arts.
I can think ways that current copyright and patent laws are preventing the advancement that they were intending to promote.
I also think that distribution of information is positive if the information has value, and can be profitable even without sale as
it acts as free advertisement.
The internet is disruptive, as the printing press was. Some are still trying to hold back progress to keep the old business model.
Some pretend or believe that there is some moral right for a company to milk money from old ideas forever.
This is not so, but our current legal trend is leading to more artificial legal information control, and the thought crimes that result.
People who host copyrighted content get punished and people providing links and checksums are left alone.
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
Nice boondocks quote there bud, better credit the author.
"I hope that Australia doesnt end up following America down this path."
Have ya forgot the history on how your own country was founded?
It's your roots man...
Sheesh...
Buy 'em books
Send 'em to school
And all they want to do is eat the teacher
You obviously think everyone here is too stupid to tell the difference between violating copyright law and violating a license agreement. We are subject to law whether we feel that law is just or not. No one is subject to a license agreement unless they *agree* to it in the first place.
It may be impossible to steal intellectual property. But when someone copies something against the will of the copyright owner they have taken from the owner his ability to control how, who, when, where that something is copied. If he doesn't have that control over his IP then it seems like he has lost his copyright on it, (not the piece of paper that says he has it, but it). That seems kind of like theft.
It kinda makes me wonder: what exactly constitutes a "non-useful" art? Let's pretend that I'm the best in the world at weaving creative designs into submersible helicopters made of wicker. If nobody wants, desires, or even critically appreciates my wicker-woven submersible helicopter customizations, does that make their creation a useless form of expression? Could someone flagrantly violate my copyright in this case without repercussion? Does the very fact that someone might _try_ to violate my copyright make the art a "useful" one, and thus make that phrase meaningless?
But I think the GPs point was that GPL violations are largely infringing on the copyright of people who work for the community (read: anyone who wants to join in and use GPL'd software), and an overwhelming amount of the time, they don't get paid for it. On the flip side, the large majority of copyright infringements like those touched on in this discussion are against an industry that rakes in billions a year and has a track record of fucking over customers and artists alike for profit.
You might not agree that this makes it a worse "crime" by definition, but there is definately a pretty clear distinction in many people's eyes.
She's built like a steak house, but she handles like a bistro....
Granted that most of us here on slashdot don't see the big crime in copyright violation, it pays to understand why the RIAA and MPAA are being such jerks:
Revolutionaries are usually guilty of kicking the props out of a government power structure. What is interesting here is that the power structure being threatened isn't a government, it's big business. We've finally reached the point (as in the "Aliens" movies) where the Corporation has more power than the government (because it has more financial clout). Consider: The government is now being used (via the DMCA and the witch trials put on by the RIAA/MPAA) as a mere lackey of the Corporation.
Folks, we're in danger here. The 60's radicals were right after all. War generates profits - maybe that's why we're at war.
Nitewing '98
Everything works...in theory.
It isn't that clean cut though. Chevrolet aren't making their offering as a "pedestrian killer 1500", they are offering something which clearly has a legitimate purpose and are offering it for that purpose.
If someone is running a bittorrent site and they have set up categories such as "TV Shows" or specific show names then I can't see how anyone can claim that they are offering something neutral.
Bittorrent as a tool is neutral. However if you expend effort designing a site in a way which specifically assists illegal use then I don't think it's surprising to be included as part of a "conspiracy". You have specifically assisted people to use the tool for illegal means.
I've not seen Elite Torrents so I don't know how much this applies to it specifically. Having said that from what (little) I have seen "subtlety" isn't a word I'd associate with that sort of site.
Search engines and so forth may contain similar information. However they have not expended effort to specifically help people find that type information, it is just there because it happens to be part of all the information out there.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
I appreciate your general disillusion and disgust with copyright law, but lets not lose _all_ focus here. Fact number 1: The average slashdotter is not a physically impressive specimen. Fact number 2: most of us live in the wealthiest nations in the world.
Yes, you are born in to certain circumstances. But really, in a world where people only felt they needed to follow laws they personally approved, the music you could download legally would not be a fair trade for how often you would get the shit beaten out of you by people stronger than you. Established law and order is a Good Thing.
And second of all, in terms of being born in to certain circumstances, its not like you were born in Niger, or rural China, or Afghanistan. You did not, I repeat, did not get the short end of the stick because there are some shitty laws on the books. So lets be upset, but lets not lose our heads.
Relax I just want some peanuts.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I think the way judges are coming down on this indicate that there is some ratio of legitimate use to illigitimate use that you need to satisfy. I'm not saying the law is great, and I'm certainly not saying that copyright infringement should carry a criminal penalty, but the way the rulings are coming out make it pretty obvious that without a fair ammount of legal use, anything that is used for significant amounts of copyright infringement is illegal.
So to your analogies, again reiterating that I don't think this guy should have gone to jail, his site was not the same as google or a car. His site was nearly to exclusion for the purpose of warez. Google can be used to find warez, but that is a small amount of its actual use. Similarly, despite their utilitiy in running people over, most people use cars for other purposes! So like I said, bad ratio.
Relax I just want some peanuts.
Funny, back in USSR people used to be put to jail for distributing "political information" :)
Now, in USA person gets into jail for distributing music. I guess this is the real Democracy for you
"Pornbits, which gives out free cracked user names and passwords to pay sites"
Those torrents were covered under Operation Afternoon D-Elite.
It's not a question of greater or lesser penalty, even though it comes off that way because all of us slashdotters would rather sell our houses than go to jail. Sending people to jail was never intended to be just a punishment (altough it is a pretty good one), it was intended to remove people from society that posed a significant enough threat to justify the expense of locking them up until they can behave better. Murderers, people who commit assault, etc obviously fit the bill.
I hope we haven't reached the point were copyright infringement is considered a "menace to society."
Relax I just want some peanuts.
In Finland admins of Finreactor were fined about 420000 euros.
Finreactor was a file sharing community.
The judge was just mad at him, getting banned for not keeping the ratio like this.
Doesn't this sort of thing make owning and operating a search engine a risky venture? Should you go to prison just because your particular search engine Just happens to be good at locating certain types of data hosted by completely unrelated entities? Just because a user does a search for "*.mp3" files doesn't necessarily imply intent to commit intellectual property "theft".
Just another example of our already corrupted legal system creating a classification of crime just so it can witchhunt for "criminals".
8==8 Bones 8==8
That is pure evil, copyright infringement. I've seen people get less time for more heinous crimes.
keep in mind that penalties also should serve as a deterrent.
Let's say that the penalty should do no more damage than the crime it is addressing..
The crime is: speeding. 80 in a 40 zone.
The damage done is: none. Unless you cause a crash - none.
The penalty should be: none.
I guess you can see where that idea falls apart.
So what's the damage in copyright infringement... technically, none. Or at least, not measurable.
So the penalty should also be none?
( Some would probably argue "yes", but those people can start arguing yes as soon as I can perform copyright infringement on a loaf of bread, and the baker can copyright infringe on wheat and so forth and so on. )
Now let's say that a speeding ticket for 80 in a 40 zone is $1. Who would that stop? Make it $10, and I'm sure plenty of people will still speed. $100 and we're talking plenty of people who are going to think twice. $1,000 and who would still speed except for those speeding for a very specific reason (e.g. get away from cops, rush to hospital, try and make it to a meeting where a greater interest then $1,000 out of your pocket is concerned.)
So what should the penalty for vast copyright infringement be to both 1. address the 'crime' and 2. serve as a deterrent?
"do you really think 5 months in prison is that bad?"
;-)
It only takes one prison rape to turn that 5 months into a death sentence.
Don't shower for 5 months. And let me preempt the naysayers who doubt the feasibility of doing so, three little letters: RMS.
Sorry, hold up there. He mass-distributed /infringing intellectual property/. Labeling it as or drawing analogies comparing it to theft damages my language, and I don't intend to allow that.
He entered into a criminal conspiracy. You are not doing so well with the language yourself, perhaps your recognition wetware needs an upgrade or two. Once you do so try parsing 'conspiracy to commit copyright infringement' again.
0.7 does not have these benefits yet; you must connect specifically to a set group of people (mostly Freenet developers) and anyone you connect to in 0.7 is able to tell what you insert/retrieve.
I thought 0.7 was a friend-to-friend network, meaning you only connect to friends that you know and trust, and they forward files and search requests to their own friends, anonymously. This means only your trusted friends can retrieve files from your computer. This sounds quite safer than 0.5 where anyone can retrieve files from you and then sue you if you sent them forbidden files.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friend-to-friend
The mere fact that you are all discussing the harshness of his sentence very nearly justifies at least one goal of criminal justice system: deterrence.
Some pretend or believe that there is some moral right for a company to milk money from old ideas forever. This is not so, but our current legal trend is leading to more artificial legal information control, and the thought crimes that result.
What a load crap you offer. First these companies are offering luxuries not necessities, so yes they should have the right to milk them. Second the owner of a movie or song should have the right to control its distribution, just as the owner of a piece of source code has the right to control its distribution. Copyright is the mechanism that owners do this with. If we did away with copyright the GPL would be unenforcible. Corporations would be free to take Linux, tweak it, embed it in proprietary products, and not distribute their changes. Things are far more complicated than you suggest, the enforcement of intellectual property laws is a good thing.
I talked to an old friend recently who works in the music industry. He both plays in a band, runs a studio and does A&R. He's always been extremely anti downloading music and we've crossed swords on this a few times as for *me*, the ability to sample huge amounts of music has resulted in me actually buying considerably more CDs.
We had a chat about how in the good old days a band could have maybe 3 or 4 albums before they started to get it together, the label would support them as they grew and matured. The few mega bands, the likes of the Beatles, U2 etc all earned so much money for a label, they allowed them to prop up the other 90% of their roster that lost money. Record companies made money, bands thrived, everyone was happy.
These days an artist gets maybe two singles or an album out the door and if they're not hits (and big hits at that) then they're dropped. Why? Seems the bands that make big money no longer do so. If the price of a CD (or vinyl) since 1980 kept up with inflation, wages etc they should be almost 4 times higher than they are now so the big bands are making the label one quarter of what they were. Thus, less money to support the up and coming ones. A&R is all but a memory for many of them.
On top of that, we have all got used to polished sound so studio time and costs grew to ridiculous levels, again eating in to the bottom line. I read that Heaven 17 only just broke even on their 1982 album last year. Result is that many of the big studios are shutting down as they can't cover costs with production moving to purely PC based setups in many cases.
Music downloads make it even worse as the amount of money everyone gets from a (legit) download is less than from a CD.
It's a bad state but TBH, whilst it means big record labels, studios etc are all falling by the wayside, the alternative model of bands doing their own thing, selling via web sites etc is really taking off, as is live performance. I guess we're seeing a shift away from the 'music industry' back to the musicians. The EMI's of the world see the writing on the wall so are fighting for survival hence the heavy handed tactics. I can't see how they can avoid it now though, the Genie is out the bottle and the power has shifted. Good or bad? I can't say myself.
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
As people point out, it's a shame that he had to end up with jail time, and it does seem disproportionate to the amount of harm he personally caused. But look on the bright side - it sets a precedent that might speed the passage of SPAMmers to "pound-me-in-the-ass" prison!
Sending someone to prison for this is just plain wrong. Then again murderers seem to get only 7 years or whatever, so it's not like the justice system is at all logical.
then MS would owe trillions to all the people and businesses that have bought a Windows OS and had to work to fix the trojans and viruses.
MS could then go back to the originators of that attack and get money off them.
But the core reason for MS having to pay is that they made the decision to allow ActiveX/Office Macros/IE embedding *everywhere*/etc. And they are fully and personally responsible for that irresponsible (from a technical POV) decision.
If "Fair" were part of the justice system.
What was the content that was illegally distributed? Names of movies/songs please.
Considering normal Finnish judgements, the payments are unusually high, even when compared to crimes like rape or murder. The defendants will probably appeal to a higher court so the case isn't over yet.
To make matters even worse, there's a new copyright law in effect. This case was judged by the older, more lenient copyright law. The new law is even more strict than the EU guideline it's based on and other countries have implemented much nicer versions. The Finnish version goes ridiculous lengths to assure that pirates are punished. There's even a clause which allows the copyright owner to demand that the guilty party publishes an announcement about the judgement.
There was a huge (in Finnish standards anyway) public outcry about the law and its loop holes but to no avail. The record industry lobbyists were so successful in getting the trust of the law makers that one of them actually wrote in her public blog about how "it was nice that the men from Teosto were thanking me so much about the law after the nasty public outcry". She was at a party organised by the record industry no less.
Would web site operators be any less liable if they JUST listed the DHT hash URI addresses on their site instead of the tracker file?
Well, I can't speak for the others, but I have zero respect for the Intellectual Property laws. And I'm not exactly sure I believe in Intellectual Property at all as defined here, even though I make a living from my own "intellectual property".
There were artists and innovators long before copyright laws, and they made a living, too.
As far as I'm concerned, the entertainment-industrial complex can fall apart tomorrow, taking Dancing With the Stars and Jessica Simpson with it. Artists, writers, musicians, inventors will still create and benefit from their creation.
You are welcome on my lawn.
5. Learn how to be a better criminal
He went in a non-violent criminal. Let's see how he comes out.
Seriously, we really need to re-evaluate as a society what we actually put people in jail for. I understand that #1 and #2 are applicable in this case. It's just that #5 above is an unfortunate part of the reality of prison. When you put lots of bad people together, they learn from each other.
As someone else mentioned, he's also been put in physical danger by being in proximity to violent criminals and possibly the guards themselves. For a first offense, it seems that 1 year of house arrest and only approved computer usage would have cured this guy. Just make his life a pain in the ass for a while. If he does it again, then yeah, send him to prison for a few months.
The idea is to only punish as much is necessary. Anything more is gratuitous. Sort of like Occam's Razor for the judiciary.
This is undoubtedly something he did because he thought he was like Google -- providing a search and point kind of service without actually downloading or uploading the illegal material himself. Now that he's been disabused of that notion, I'd say that there's a good chance he'd never do it again -- especially if he knows that the next step is FPMITA prison. It's tough to be the first guy EVER prosecuted for something when you see others making billions per year doing essentially the same thing.
He only got 5 months!
Actually, I'm with this guy, and I'm not going to post anonymously like 90% here who fear for their karma.
What, now white collar criminals are supposed to get it easier? What about Enron execs? They didn't physically hurt anyone. They just caused billions in damage. Jeff Skilling got 24 years, all for what comes down to lieing.
These guys were in the fraud business as well. Oh wait, he's a geek, so we MUST be outraged. Whatever... So everyone is anti-RIAA and anti-MPAA, but nobody here can honestly defend the legality of their actions. If a DVD retails for $15 (whether you agree with the price or not) and they assisted in transferring millions of copies, then I think he got off light with 5 months.
And don't give me that crap about getting raped and getting hocked on drugs. Give me a break. This guy got a slap on the wrist by anyone's account. 5 months is barely enough time for him to get through processing. He'll wind up in some low security work release area, or minimum security with face-to-face visits from mommy and daddy.
Anyone here who thinks 5 months and a $3000 fine is so severe... you've lived a sheltered life. People get longer times in local jails for writing bad checks, or prostitution, or too many PIs (public intoxication). This guy is getting a 5 month vacation to sit around, watch cable TV, get coffee and donuts served to him every morning, play some basketball every afternoon, and back to watching more TV. He'll be in just long enough to read a decent sized Stephen King novel.
Punishment not fitting the crime? Please, he broke federal law and got a slap on the wrist even by local yokal standards. And when he gets out, he'll be spending 5 months at home playing XBox. Yeah... he's got it REAL hard. He'll probably have a cushy IT job when he gets out, unlike those "bad" guys, who have nothing to look forward to but minimum wage factory work for the rest of their lives living in 2 bit apartments.
But no, let's treat him like he's Nelson Mandela standing up to "The Man". Do the crime, do the time. I have no sympathy for someone who knows they're breaking the law. Kill my karma if you want to, but I'm not karma-whoring for this chump.
I8-D
This is according to a friend of mine who was sent to prison for 18 months for his actions during what was supposed to be a peaceful protest, and was also sent to county for a similar offense but the sentence was shorter:
:)
Prisoners are not nearly as rape-happy as they're made out to be in popular culture. There are fights, drug deals, and a lot of angst and widespread hopelessness. But the few outright rapists in the general population are stigmatized and not well-respected. Keeping to yourself and minding your own business go a long way in lockup.
In comparing federal to county: You are better supervised in federal prison, which means there are actually far fewer assaults, sexual or otherwise. Federal prisons have more controls in place for dealing with problems.
And that's about all he was willing to share on the subject. Thankfully, I have managed to stay out of prison myself, so what I am imparting to you is second-hand information.
It always seems like a good time to link to this essay, when everyone starts talking about the money model for recording artists.
From the essay:
The band is now 1/4 of the way through its contract, has made the music industry more than 3 million dollars richer, but is in the hole $14,000 on royalties. The band members have each earned about 1/3 as much as they would working at a 7-11, but they got to ride in a tour bus for a month. The next album will be about the same, except that the record company will insist they spend more time and money on it. Since the previous one never "recouped," the band will have no leverage, and will oblige. The next tour will be about the same, except the merchandising advance will have already been paid, and the band, strangely enough, won't have earned any royalties from their T-shirts yet. Maybe the T-shirt guys have figured out how to count money like record company guys. Some of your friends are probably already this fucked
http://www.negativland.com/albini.html/
My UID is prime!
In other countries people photocopy books and leave them in the library? How insightful.
Where is that guy who'd die defending what I had to say when I need him?
lets just burn this mother down.
Kill your TV
No, the smart people show up, so that they quit getting letters from the Jury Commissioner. Then when we prove we have an IQ with at least 3 digits, we get dismissed by the prosecuting counsel because we're not pansies. Having duly appeared, we are then are exempt from nuisance for x years. Then we go back to our jobs with double-digit - per/hour wages.
So much for "Jury of your Peers".
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
You think the government has a nicy shiny prison for just this type of convict?
Nope. He's going somewhere that has room. Someplace that has a bed. The government will want to try first light-to-medium security because it costs less per inmate, but if there isn't any room, he's going where ever they have room. Period. If he's next to rapists and murderers, so be it.
Do you really put THAT much faith in the government? They can't stop illegal immigration. And when someone tries, the bleeding heart liberals start crying to the NY Times and Washington Post. The government can't provide transportation infrastructure. They can create all the laws in the world, but they can barely enfore 10% of them. And you think they have a prison set up for this guy to sit and "think about it" for 5 months? HA!
This guy is going to prison, and he's probably going to be someone's girlfriend.
Look, no law is written in stone. Our democratically elected senators and represenatives have decided many times to change the copyright laws to give longer duration and more power to the copyright holder and I have yet to hear of ONE politician who has lost re-election over this copyright issue. You know what that means?
It means We The People are A-OK with how things have progressed as far as copyright is concerned. So this "geek" outrage over the way copyright has turned out represents a tiny teeny percentage of the overal US population. And in a democracy such small groups of people almost never get their way.
Deal with it.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
why nobody sue the marketing people who keep promoting their products to everybody through TV, radio, etc mediums? coz they are the people who build other people interest/desire to watch, buy & using something. so movie company is legal to promote their movies to everybody around the world when they fail to offer that products according to local price? and maybe fail to offer that product in that area. who want to get something illegally if they knew they could get it legally? 5 months prisons is obviously CRAZY
What makes you think this is such a big difference? Operating a network and encouraging users to infringe copyright through the network is still contributory and/or vicarious infringement, whether the site provides the software itself or merely mentions the software by name or URL. The private BitTorrent trackers have it even worse because unlike the old Napster, which had plenty of garage bands, many private trackers accept only releases from the warez scene.
Ask any person on wall street and he/she will tell you that markets are brutally honest. They strive for efficiency. Capital flows away from bad ideas and into good ideas.
The markets have dictated the "price" of music for some time. There are an overwhelming number of bands that produce immense amounts of content (good or bad is subjective). Supply is quite high. Unfortunately, thanks to cell phones, game systems, ring-tones, broadband, digital cable, high-def programming, on-demand movies, netflix, portable game systems, laptops, PDAs, and satellite radio. There is much more competition for entertainment dollars than ever before. This will naturally reduce the demand for music and other forms of entertainment. The movie industry is also feeling the pinch.
The music industry, without any reliable metrics, blamed this loss in revenue on illegal P2P downloading. While I'm sure this does contribute to some of the problem, that theory does not account for all the other ways that people spend their entertainment dollars.
Even if the recording industry is successful in eliminating all forms of illegal file sharing, I don't think they will every see the revenues they saw in the past. The CD era was the golden age for recorded music. Lots of demand, coupled with low competition for entertainment dollars. Those days are gone - never to return.
-ted
5 months isn't a "prison" sentence, it's a little county jail sentence where he may get out to go to work...
dB Masters
As many readers pointed out, the root of this case is the assessment of certain service of certain type as criminal or not.
There are several factors that should contribute to this assessment:
1. What is the legal and illegal percentage of usage of this technology and of this service? Note, that copyright infringement is illegal and criminal according to US law.
2. What was the intention of creating this technology and this service? Is the criminal intention proved in this case beyond reasonable doubt?
My answers:
1. Inasmuch as I understand that bittorrent could be used to transfer any large volumes of data, including correspondingly licensed audio and video information, as far as I understand, vast majority of the usage of this technology is to illegally pass copyrighted movies.
2. Most likely, the creators of this service had criminal intention, which I cannot prove. So legally, they did not have criminal intention.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
Sure, and that profit is what builds up your pension fund and pays the salary of the kid across the street, just like any other big corporation. Where do you think the money they make goes, into some black hole that has no benefit to society? Contrary to popular Slashdot opinion, not all corporatations are crooked organisations that divert 98% of their profits to the board, and not all investors are multibillionaires.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
This actually made me angry because in my case I only download movies so I can watch old horror films that can't be rented anymore.
So in my case I'll raise my share ratio and if everybody does the same it will be everything but a "deterrent".
Why did he plead guilty in the first place.
He did nothing wrong by running a tracker server, and sets a bad precedent. So what if the users committed copyright violations? Lets be consistent here, and arrest everyone that has produced any software that can be used for anything wrong. ( that includes IP stack, the interface, graphic viewers, everything )
What is next 'thought crime'? "yes i thought about doing something bad,so that's the same as doing it, right?"
And its so good that we have solved *real* crimes and we are now safe and have time to go after this pansy ass garbage. Last i heard we still had entire countries wanting us dead.. Where the hell is the sense of priority gone
---- Booth was a patriot ----
There is no exact line... that's why cases go to court. Every case is different.
That's a fundamental problem. If you don't know exactly what the law is, how do you know that what you're doing is legal at all?
The whole point of statue law down is to stop judges from subjectively convicting someone after the fact. We write laws down so that everyone can know what's legal, what's not legal, and where the exact lines are, and live their lives in such a way as to stay on the right side of the law at all times.
You can't do that if the exact line is "somewhere over there".
I'm sick to death of all this bs. If I leave my bike outside at night tied up with a piece of rope and someone steals it, sure, sure they committed the crime, they stole my bike. It doesn't change the fact that I'm the idiot who trusted my bike to strangers and a piece of rope. In fact if I left someone else's music, I mean bike, protected as such I'm the one that would be held responsible. In this case admittedly its probably impossible to fully protect the music without crippling it but its unreasonable for them to think that anyone, least of all young teenagers won't take something that they see as being free. I don't know what the solution is I just know that want they're doing now is not the answer. It just demonizes the music industry.
Why aren't the people providing crowbars to other people going to jail? I mean these crowbars are being used to steal people's physical property. How is this any different than a BT tracker?
there is very little justice here
but a whole lot of unearned money
you can see greed turn art into evil
after all I was not a communist.
When they locked up the social democrats, I remained silent;
after all I was not a social democrat.
When they came for the trade unionists, I did not speak out;
after all I was not a trade unionist.
When they came for me, there was no one left to speak out.
Martin Niemöller
fedora 6's torrent was so slow?
Power to the Penguin!
until I said "and creatin' a nuisance", and they all came back, shook my hand . . .
Just sayin'.
This is why you don't to this sort of hosting in nations that have stringent internet crime laws. Go to New Zealand ( I think ) or one of those newly formed Euro countries who don't seem to care that much. This is how the good torrent sites that I use (no I will not list them) stay afloat, thank God for that!!! VIVA LA TORRENTS!!
I don't think copyright infringement should be a criminal offense, but it is, and so long as it is, the punishment seems to make sense to me.
It's illogical to express the idea that copyright infringement should not be a criminal offense, yet you support prison sentences for an action which you believe ought not be criminal.
Reboot.
The issue many people have with what you claim is "straightforward" is; Who really should be able to give that permission?
... but that's a secondary issue. Nonetheless, it also influences people who feel like there's no moral/ethical "need" to obey a corporation that lied to the artists to get them to agree to the terms and conditions they enforce.)
Right now, the RIAA and MPAA say you need *their* permission, yet they haven't created a single second of the content itself. The artists did. And in many cases, the artists would be perfectly happy with you redistributing their content, despite the complaints of the RIAA or MPAA.
Of course, strictly legally speaking, the RIAA and MPAA are right. If you pushed them, they surely could provide a piece of paper that the artist signed, giving them control of the work. But this battle goes beyond what's strictly legal, according to the "letter of the law".
What many folks out there are saying (and putting into action) is that realistically, the idea of making no copies for others without permission is nonsense. It's an artificially constructed legal scenario that you need this permission, because as long as industries like the RIAA or MPAA can threaten people with it, they stand to squeeze extra profit from consumers who feel "compelled" to buy something they would have otherwise just made a copy of.
(There's also the whole debate on whether artists fully realized what they were getting into when they signed these contracts in the first place
At several points during her juror examination she was asked if she was an attorney or had attended law school--she is not and did not. I guess the prosecutor and defense attorney figured she has her head screwed on straight and would be fair. To their credit, she wound up doing the negotiating that prevented a hung jury, saved everybody a lot of time retrying the case.
So, yes, senior-level professionals do serve on juries, and yes, this is a good thing.
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
When an Open prison releases an inmate, do they have to do so under the GPL?
"My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right." --Senator Carl Schurz (1872)
Kid, have you rehabilitated yourself?
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
Maybe the solutions isn't more jails, but rather decriminalizing things that aren't crimes, like addiction.
The harmful behaviour of drug addicts isn't the using of the drugs themselves. If junkies bought drugs with their own money, then quietly shot up in the corner and never bothered anyone, it wouldn't be an issue. The problem is that these junkies, being incapable of holding a job, yet still needing money to feed their addiction, turn to other harmful behaviours, and those do affect other people. Mugging, robbery, burglary, prostitution all go hand-in-hand with drug use. Also, their behaviours while high are harmful. Many drugs make the user more aggressive and violent. They impede your judgement and ability to drive, making them dangerous weapons on the roads.
People who blindly advocate decriminalizing all drugs are naive, and would be well-served to spend a day with an addict to educate themselves on the reality of what it's like to live that life. The drug use itself isn't the problem, but it's a symptom. The people who are in prison for "using drugs" are not innocent drug users. That's simply all they got caught for. But make no mistake: they are liars, cheaters, thieves, burglars and in many cases, much worse. They merely got away with those other crimes. If you swept through a neighborhood and locked up all the drug users, you'd see virtually all other property crime disappear.
Like woodworking? Build your own picture frames.
Very interesting... http://etorrents.info/map even if (I guess) many torrent servers are missing...
Animoog.org
The screenshot from the site has the Homeland Security logo on it.
So now software piracy is a matter of Homeland Security? Ehm..lol?
http://www.negativland.com/albini.html
Any time there is mention of the word "conspiracy" there is a huge number of people making fun of "tin foiled conspiracy nuts". Sometimes I wish those people worked as judges and/or lawyers.
Running a BitTorrent is a conspiracy now? But all the people who refuse to answer questions about 9/11 are not a conspiracy? Great. So, copyright violation is definitely a no-no, but when people have some questions regarding something that's never happened before, such as a steel skyscraper collapsing from fire, they are tin foil hat wearing nuts. Great.
Look, IP is a very legitmate thing. One ought to be able to control how his ideas are used unless he expressly gives up that right. Without this idea, corporations could crawl though places like MySpace and Friendster or everything on blogspot.com and look for images to use in their marketing.
/. folks would probably steal the designs of Intel rather than make their own.
/. crowd is so against IP law because they don't actually create anything worthwhile themselves and have no appreciation for it. it is equally disturbing that the /. crowd has to cheer on criminals like this guy or Kevin Mitnick even when most of the community probably work in a lucrative field and come from relatively proveleged backgrounds. It is sad really. Stop selectively applying your morals and go out and pay for something other than your WoW subscription and Bawls and be sensible about the way the real world works.
And don't for an instance believe that this can't/or won't happen. It will and it is. Imagine how little content will be on free sites because there is no copyright protection. It is no more proper for a marketing agency to use my photographs in their ad campaign without my permission than it is for me to do the same with their material.
There used to be a civilized attitude in society that you just didn't rip people off. Now we need to send people to jail in order to barely make a point that these things aren't OK.
It is amazing what little respect that the GEEK community has for the property of others. Heck, if it were possible to produce CPU's and motherboards at home, most
The current attitude of "if it can be copied, it is free" reminds me of being a college student and having almost anything that wasn't nailed down someplace wind up in my sticky fingers. Better yet, it reminds of Homer's assertion that anything with a toothpick in it is free.
I imagine that the
Our whole society and economy is based around Intellectual Property. Take a U.S. $20 bill, for instance. What makes a $20 bill any different from any other piece of paper? The information that's printed on it. Information, I might add, that only the government is allowed to copy.
Honestly, all property is rooted in the concept that "I can use this and you can't". The Native Americans (if rumors are true) never saw land as something that could be owned. Is saying "you can't walk on this land because it's mine" that much different than saying "You can't copy this book because it's mine"?
The purpose of Laws is to create a functioning society. We have found that 'property' is a useful concept in the realm of the physical, and many people have found 'property' to be helpful even in the intellectual realm. Just because something doesn't have a direct physical effect doesn't mean that it shouldn't be illegal. Fraud, Forgery, Libel, and Slander are all examples of 'Intellectual' crimes, all of which harm people. For instance, if I told police that you had bodies in your basement, you would probably be searched, causing you inconvenience and property damage. I didn't do anything physical to you at all, but I would imagine that you would want to prosecute me anyway.
Copyright laws seem to increase the creation of widely-spread intellectual property. Thus, one could argue that they benefit society, just like 'real' property laws benefit society. Certainly having your arms cut off hurts more than being slandered, which is why someone cutting my arms off would get 40-life in prison, while someone slandering me would get a fine.
You are reading a copy of my copyrighted post.
You seem to not understand why the GPL exists. If copyright didn't exist, I really don't think that the GPL would be needed at all.
Not so. There's a mechanism right now to distribute your works as though copyright didn't exist: release them as public domain. Sure, someone could take the copy you gave them and change it and redistribute it (even without source! gasp!) without giving you those changes for free, they could even demand money for the act of distributing anything. But you could do all those things in a copyright-free world too. About the only difference copyright law makes there is if they change a copy of something you made, you legally obtain a copy of their changed thing, and then distribute copies of their changed thing, they could sue you. That is a bad thing (in my opinion), but it doesn't keep you or anyone else from distributing copies of your original thing, and thus doesn't make it any less free.
The GPL relies on copyright as much as any other license does. To draw a political-economic analogy (and probably flames as well): A copyright-free world is like economic anarchy (aka anomie if you're a capital-A anarchist). No one can keep you from doing anything with anything, but no one can compel you to do anything with it either. Commercial licences and the GPL are like communist and corporatist states, respectively: both use the force of government to tell you what you cannot or must do with resources, for the benefit of The People or The Corporations, respectively.
The problem with copyright (GPL or commercial style) is that information is infinitely reproducible and thus there is no scarcity, and thus no need for regulations on it's fair distribution (for whatever value of "fair"). If there ever became scarcity because no one made anything, and there was still demand, those who needed it would be willing to pay for it's creation (ala bounties), after which there would again be an infinite fountain of copies of that information, no scarcity of it, and no need to regulate it's distribution.
If you disapprove of copyright, release your works public domain. If you can't afford to do so for free, and no one is willing to pay you for the initial creation, then you shouldn't be in the business of information production. If we had a just distribution of wealth, with our modern levels of prosperity people ought to have plenty of free time and money to produce art and science for art and science's sake. In addition, good artists and scientists would be hired as consultants to solve a specific problem or create a specific work, and paid for their labor in doing so, not for some illegitimate right to a monopoly on the distribution of the ephemeral products of that labor.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
It's all so stupid. They could massively reduce the piracy and make a lot of money at the same time by adopting the Blockbuster postal DVD model. i.e. A system where you pay a flat rate of $20 or so a month and you can download and watch whatever you want. It would be far better than Blockbuster since with DVD's there are a limited supply and you often have to wait months to get what you want. No such problem exists with online media. There would really be no point in pirating anything since you could watch what you want when you want for a really cheap price. I don't care if they DRM it since it's rental and I wouldn't expect to actually own anything.
The Studios could cut the Broadcasters and advertisers out of the loop by offering their content to us directly. Obviously they would need to band together and create a blockbusterish front company to collect all the different content together conveniently.
IRONY- Since the industry really has to expend its own funds for much of the investigation and retain lawyers simply to deal with pirates, the actual loss to the industry needs to factor into the assessment of damages just how much the lawyers cost. Obviously many trivial economic crimes are really far more costly to the victims than more clear cut crimes such as murder. - END IRONY Intellectual property would assume its real value if piracy was valued based upon the actual economic harm it caused, which is generally trivial or non-existent. Lawyers would fin themselves working pro bono or even looking for second jobs to may their mortgages and car payments. When you consider it, publically available "private intellectual property" is an oxymoronic concept. No sooner does one utter an idea publically (regardless of the nature of the idea) than it becomes publically held. -Think about it first- We try continuously to make workable, but the clear motivation of the "owners" of such property is to pick your pocket. The process only works as long as the "owner" values their "property" reasonably in the public's mind.
------ The only greater hazard to your liberty than n politicians is n+1 politicians.
People who blindly want to criminalize "drugs" (really medical technology) should be poisoned by "religious extremists" until they come down with a medical condition (like I was), then they should be denied access to medical care (even if you can afford to pay cash, like I was), until the condition becomes so bad they now have a serious uncurable conditions (such as kindey failure and strokes, like I have), then they can join in the "fun" of dealing with the controlled medical system.
Why should I have to go to the trouble of arranging for prescrptions and such? There is no reasonable reason whatsoever to require prescriptions for a lot of medications and medical technology. Why for blood pressure medications, dialysis solution (steralized sugarfied salt water), eyeglasses, epogen, acid reducers (ranitidyne--now OTC--and prevacid), and so on. None of those are even addictive. The only one of those which could be abused is epo, but if some athlete dies because he wants to cheat, who cares? Fuck him.
One time I had to go for almost a week without blood pressure medication (which you are not supposed to stop at all) because the doctor was too busy, then there was a 3 day weekend on top of it.
Also I have difficulty getting to the pharmacy, and their mail system sucks. With the prescription system even trying out different mail order pharmacy would take a month or two to switch, and if they suck too, it's another month somewhere else. I could possibly be without essential medication (my blood pressure goes dangerously high) for a couple months looking for a mail order pharmacy that works, and I could not just magically find transport and go down to the origional pharmacy because they wouldn't have my prescription anymore.
I don't fucking care if some stupid junkies get shot up, overdose, or go fuck themselves. As for crimes they do, plenty of other people commit crimes for other reasons. So, what are you saying? Should we take away money, so those who don't work get the same things as those who do? Somebody already tried that, ask a Russian if they want to bring communism back. I bet most of them will not only say no, but they will beat the fuck out of you just for suggesting it.
Medical technologies should be avaliable to anyone who needs them.
IANAL. Well, the difference with a copyright monopoly you could make a competing work and have a monopoly too. I think copyright was supposed to bring artistic works and such in line with selling physical goods.
The problem is the laws have been so distorted that the first guy will sue you into the ground claiming any vague similarites are "copyright infringement" when they are not. If you can't afford expensive lawyers, you are compeletly screwed. Even if he loses, you have spent lots of money on lawyers, and he can DMCA you off the 'net by using bots who complain your work "kitten love" is the same as "Love of ages" because they both have the word "love" in the title. It is slander of title, but when have you ever heard of anyone even bringing a slander of title suit against anyone who filed a false DMCA?
It sounds like you are advocating DRM here. Many things are easy to steal, but most people don't because they are honest. In fact, I think copyright infringement doesn't really affect the "entertainment" and software companies because many people still buy their products even if they don't have to (I do, but I don't use commercial software much anymore). The people who copy the movies, music and warez probably wouldn't buy it anyway. They either don't have the money or are like "pay you back tomorrow guy" and just mooch off everyone.
DRM is just a way for the cartel to screw people even more. Instead of just having to pay for low quality software and entertainment, and all the commercial interests I've seen (MS, RIAA companies and hollywood) are putting out low quality crap for high prices, they'll make you pay to copy things you make.
To make software, you'll have to buy a cert to sign it, otherwise it won't run. You'll probably also have to watch a bunch of adverts before the OS will start your program too. To copy your pictures from your digital cam to your computer for editing, you'll have to pay a fee for each one, since they "own" the camera and/or computer and not taking them to a developer you are depriving them of profit. They've already fooled my mother into buying a "developer system" which requires her to pay as much for her printer's picture paper as she would to go down to the local mart and have it developed.
DRM is a way to milk more money out of the people.
Too bad your intellect obviously can't grasp the relevance of my initial post. Burn any good books lately?
I still find the pattern of moderation interesting. But you're right, and I owe you an apology. I'm sorry.
In the future, I'll think twice, submit once. Mea culpa.
I swear to god I'm going to take a claw hammer to the next person who repeats that myth. For the thousandth fucking time, that bill only applies to non-citizens!
If you ACTUALLY READ THE LAW, anyone deemed an "enemy combatant" is no longer considered to be a citizen. POOF. there go your rights.
Cute little loophole in the law, isn't it?
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
Of course the money cycles around. I'd prefer my money going to a better cycle however.
I could buy a cd for $25 or buy hosting, a couple of domains, etc...
Someone stole $300 from me.
They did it at an ATM.
Their picture was taken.
It was clearly identifiable.
They did not go to jail.
Your rights are only protected if you have lots of money to begin with. The law only seems to work for people making an example out of someone. I've lost all faith in the legal system. The law is manipulated by money and doesn't serve the people that really need it. Protect yourself. The law won't.
Ops, I shuld have usd the prevuwe but in.
Somewhat offtopic, but copyright infringement should deny suffrage?
I know this is a day old, but wouldn't this be a very serious problem in the US? The high general population ratio and over-representation of minorities and poor in the judicial system would lower the quality of democracy. The current administration uses the expression 'bring democracy to the people' as justification for some pretty heavy shit - seems kinda hypocritical.
Does the US actually deny over 1% of its population the right to vote?
Let the corporations die or turn into something else (much leaner, less-involved musical promotion companies). Conglomerates should not have control of copyrights. It's bad for music.
+++ATH0
Prescriptions are a saftey-valve in the system. Pharmacists spend quite a bit of time keeping up to date on current medicines, and their interactions. Take a trip down to your local pharmacy and ask one about the last time they caught a prescription coming through that would have caused a nasty (potentially lethal) interaction with another prescription the person was on for a different condition being treated by another doctor.
I realize most people don't know/understand the purpose of prescriptions, but my mother is a pharmacist, so I've got a different level of understanding here. You really *don't* want to get rid of the prescription system. You want it to be easier/cheaper/faster to *get* the prescriptions, but you want to keep them in the system.
Drug interactions are pretty common. Most of them are minor, and can be treated with another drug, but some of them are potentially (or even definitely) lethal.
As for eyeglasses, the prescription is what tells the technician what sort of lense you need to correct your vision. Without that prescription, you'd get a crap-shoot for whether the glasses you buy would even help you see better. (On that one, I say 'get a clue'.)
I think you've been smoking too much of the taliban's crack. Obviously you need someone to determine your eyeglass prescription. However if all the doctors insist you need 20/1 vision when 20/20 or even 20/40 will do, and the hugely overcorrected lenses cause your eyes to go crosseyed, and the stupid doctors won't listen, you can't get glasses that work! This has happened not only to me, but several people I know. Do you like crosseyes? Do you like tripping over flat ground? Do you like walking as if you are on the edge of a cliff while on flat ground? I don't! Having a slightly weaker prescription fixes the problem.
So what the hell do prescriptions have to do with needing to go to a pharmacist, and what is wrong with letting people handle their own medications? If they just start popping pills without finding out about interactions or checking with doctors, it is their problem if they die. Some medications interact with OTC stuff too, so why don't they require pharmacists as well? Not requiring a pharmacist to buy a drug doesn't mean you will not be allowed to see one. You don't have to check with anyone to buy window cleaner and bleach, but if you mix them and breath the vapors, you will either get really sick or die. Should we require a pharmacist for window cleaners and bleach too?
You also completely ignored my statements about being denied medical care. Prescriptions are one of the methods used to do it.
No. IIRC, there have actually been some economic studies indicating that slavery was basically a drag on the economy, aside from all of its other inexcusable faults. And it isn't hard to see how it would have slowed industrialization down: if you have a population of slaves to do manual labor, you have a lot of sunk investment into them, and it's harder to get you to mechanize.
More offtopic, but here goes. I can agree that the Colonies didn't benefit as much, but everyone likes to ignore the large supply of cheap raw materials that were produced using slave labor that helped fuel the North and the UK.
As for the on topic stuff, i agree with most that you've said, and realize that i've done a sloppy job articulating.