Slashdot Mirror
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
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?
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.
... 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.
There isn't going to be a trial. The prosecutors probably offered him a deal, and he plead guilty. He probably would have been looking at a hell of a lot more time if it went to a jury trial. I certainly wouldn't trust my future to the mouth breathers they get on the jury. After all, all the smart people are dodging the duty because they have jobs that pay more than $5 a day.
-R
Well, I will sleep much better tonight knowing that this horrible criminal is finally behind bars.
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.
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
Jail? For adminning an indexing site?
When are they going to lock up the Google admins?!?
You're using her as bait, Master!
The GPL violator steals from the poor and sells to the rich.
Do you really see no difference?
it seems appropriate to insert a small reminder here that a federal criminal record can have long term consequences.
...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.
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?
As far as I know, no one went to jail for violating the GPL. But I suppose you already knew that, and were fishing for responses such as this, werent you.
More than mere navel gazing.
open source != non-profit
once you go slack, you never go back
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.
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
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
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.
"Good question, but considering that he's already going to jail for what essentially amounts to thoughtcrime"
Conspiracy is not a thought crime. Conspiracy consists of planning and usualy preparation, most often involving several individuals. It's one thing for you to think "I want to kill George Bush", it's quite another if you go up to your friends and say "hey guys, I bought this here rifle...who wants to be my spotter when I go assassinate the president?".
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.
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!
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
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.
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.
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.
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"
For the thousandth fucking time, that bill only applies to non-citizens!
That's ok then - as long as it's only non-citizens* that you treat as being sub-human.
(* And anyone declared to be an enemy combatant for whatever reason, citizen or not)
It's official. Most of you are morons.
We stopped another 10 terrorist attacks today thanks to the Patriot Act! Yay us. Aren't these the same people who were certain that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and then couldn't find them? Aren't these the same people who KNOW (as well as the world) that N. Korea is a bigger threat but in that case, we prefer diplomacy? I wonder what could be the primary difference in those two situations? Maybe if Americans where consuming billions of barrels of Kimchi things might have played out differently.
When the trolls posted a worn out quote, I remained silent,
after all I don't feed the trolls.
When the moderators modded my post -1 flamebait I did not post a reply to my own thread,
after all it would get modded down also.
When a guy got thrown in jail for running a website I did not speak out,
after all he knew it was illegal and he doesn't live in Sweden or Russia.
When I posted an unfunny In Soviet Russia joke, nobody gave me a +1 funny.
Afrosheen
The problem with this solution is it's a losing battle. For every "Bin-*, Abu-*, and Al-*" you kill off, another dozen replace them from a Madrasahs in Pakistan or Afghanistan. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madrasasin )
In the meantime those of us in the West have our freedoms eroded piece by piece.
IMHO the only real solution is a very long term one - Things like funding education in Pakistan so the children learn to read and write and learn geography and history and mathematics - Instead of just studying the Koran all day long and learning Israel is evil and America is the great Satan. But sending textbooks to Pakistan so thirty years from now they don't blow up the Golden Gate bridge or explode a dirty bomb in Atlanta doesn't win any votes today.
I recall reading one right-wing think tank that said the west should buy up the entire yearly opium output from Afghanistan, refine it into morphine and give it to the third world's hospitals. This would be cheaper than the 'war on drugs' and would provide the third world with a drug that they have great trouble obtaining.
The drug use itself isn't the problem, but it's a symptom.
Then why is posession of the drug illegal? You said it yourself. 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. So why is this a crime, again?
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.
Lying and cheating are already crimes (fraud). Thievery and burglary are also already crimes. If this is all that those evil drug users do, then why do we need to make possession a crime? Surely they could be put away for robbing people.
If you swept through a neighborhood and locked up all the drug users, you'd see virtually all other property crime disappear.
You'd see virtually all the people disappear too. Mass imprisonment is not the solution to any problem.