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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
When will we Get a LEGAL system that isnt Bought and Paid for by Greedy Corporations.. It took a NUMBER of Years for Enron Folks to be tried and imprisoned and they stole Billions and Destroyed peoples lives.. I guess the Law and rules only work in favor of the Rich and powerful :(
What a Crock of Manure.
The problem is, most people are content to live like this. Without questioning their rights (hell most people I've come across don't even know what their rights are). We live in an apathetic society, where people are happy just waking up every morning being alive and going to work without being shot at. And it only gets worse every day.
- Aetheral Research -
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
For anyone that makes it this far, theft is legally defined as "the dishonest appropriation of property belonging to another with the intention of permanently depriving that person of it." Until recently, copyright infringment was a civil matter. That means that you couldn't be brought to court by the state, and you couldn't serve jail time. You could be made to pay reparations to the party or parties whose copyrights you infringe, though.
So seriously, five months in prison is a gross miscarraige of justice. It's definitely five months, an arrest, and a criminal case too much.
Jail? For adminning an indexing site?
When are they going to lock up the Google admins?!?
You're using her as bait, Master!
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.
Yahoo! Pipes are awesome. How awesome? http://pipes.yahoo.com/jesdynf/slashdot
As somebody who loves innovation and change, and sometimes dream of the pie in the sky, I normally hate this saying with a passion, but I must say it. C'est la vie. There is nothing else I can say. You have to either live with the current system, work and change the current system from within, or relocate to a place where the laws and values matches yours. There are no alternatives. Although I have libertarian-leaning views and I remain a staunch individualist, I also recognize that we don't live in a vacuum; it is very inconvienent (and almost impossible these days) to live on an island or another secluded area by yourself, with no help from anybody. Nobody to grow your food, nobody to make your clothes, nobody to build your housing, nothing. Nobody to talk to, nobody to be with, just lonely. There is a cost to living in a society. We all have some implicit social contract to obey both the explicit rules of society (governmental laws) as well as the implicit rules (moral codes). Sometimes those rules are bad rules that are flawed, foolish, or downright stupid. But you must either live with them, change them, or leave.
Is a private island with your own rules, your own laws, and your own government (assuming that you have one) worth the seclusion, the loneliness, and lack of help and resources from the outside world? If living with my loved ones and friends meant not being able to legally download movies and music on BitTorrent, then I'll choose my loved ones and friends. My free movies and music can stay on Utopia Island.
It's not he didn't know what he were doing was determined to be unlawful and punishable as a federal crime.
It's not? It sure is the first time that I have heard someone being prosecuted for providing the technological means to somone else to violate copyright law. For that's all a Bittorrent-tracker is. It is NOT an act of copying or distributing anything, merely a way for clients to get in contact with each other in order to copy something.
As far as I can tell, this verdict means we will haul librarians to jail if they put a photocopier into the library: providing others with the means to violate copyright.
Where exactly is the line here? Which section of the USC was actually violated here?
We're all born with nothing.
If you die in debt, you're ahead.
The GPL violator steals from the poor and sells to the rich.
Do you really see no difference?
Calling copyrighted information intellectual property isn't any better. It's still Orwellian doublespeak.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
I pity you. Truly. To have so little regard for human rights and decency that you think putting this guy in a place where he will probably be raped reapeatedly, beaten and stand a greatly increased chance of developing a chemical dependency degrades us all, including you.
All for sharing a 1s and 0s.
Was he wrong? Undoubtedly. But until the law catches up with this class of crime, this is simply mob justice.
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?
Messing wit da man's money is a bigger crime than killin each other.
illegal, maybe, criminal? no.
this is and should only be considered a civil case and jail time should NEVER have even been considered. this is beyond ridiculous.
MABASPLOOM!
Yep, definitely missing the point. IIRC, jacking a car while the driver is inside (ie. forcing/demanding their exit from the vehicle so you can take it) constitutes a violent felony, and carries greater penalty than stealing a car while it's parked and unattended. It may not be a huge difference, but yes, violent crimes should carry greater penalties than non-violent crimes. Hell this doesn't even constitute "theft" (denial of use), it's merely "theoretical loss of possible future revenue that we think we might have made". Hardly grounds for five years in prison.
You want to see the Enron exec go to jail. Fine. But don't start whining when the smaller fry have to serve their time as well.
There is a vast, vast gulf of difference between premediated corporate fraud causing direct and demonstrable loss, and casual, non-profit copyright infringement. So vast a gulf, in fact, that it's difficult to see how the two can even be considered vaguely similar.
Or tell them to fuck themselves and flee the country. Neither outcome - a lifetime of debt in imaginary restitution, or hard time in prison - should be lent legitimacy by a just society as punishment for contributing to the casual infringement by a bunch of internet dwelling poor teenagers of some silly moves. Should we destroy a young person's life for contributing to the infringing distribution of copies of Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy?
Isn't it enough that this guy is now a convicted felon? He is 23 years old. He was just a college student. But now for doing something stupid in school - something of which most college students know no shortage - he has lost his right to vote - his right to a voice in our democracy - for probably the rest of his life, he has lost the right to bear arms, and he will carry this mark on his record at every background check and job interview for years to come.
Is this the way to show the way for the next generation? Isn't this enough? But now we need to throw him in prison too?
We The People grant copyrights - temporary and limited monopolies on reproduction - to promote the Useful Arts and Sciences, not to promote the bottom line of large corporations. Somehow I find it hard to believe that the promotion of Useful Arts and Sciences afforded by some corporation making a few more bucks off of Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy outweighs the destruction of a young man's life.
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!
We are all citizens...
When the constitution was written it did not at any point say that these rights should only apply to a subset of people. Americans have over the past 200 years changed into something else, a people that have no regards for the rights of the people that the constitution was supposed to protect, that is 'ALL' people. It is now simply, I'm OK so fuck the rest. Americans are losing those rights at such a fast rate that it will not be long before you will see the real stupidity of what you are saying. Yesterday you would have shouted about how the government can only spy on non Americans but today you see that they can spy on you too. Today you say but it is only non Americans that can be locked up without a reason, what will you say tomorrow?
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
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!
Or anyone who is determined to be an enemy combatant. And the rules for being declared an enemy combatant is that the president says you are. So yes, it DOES apply to every single person, since anyone at any time can be declared an enemy combatant for any reason.
"Information wants to be expensive" - Stewart Brand, the same guy who said "Information wants to be free"