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BitTorrent Pirate Loses His Last Appeal
Vix666 writes with a link to a ZDNet article on the final chapter of a story we've discussed before: the first user convicted of piracy for using BitTorrent to download a movie has really, finally, lost his case. Chan Nai-ming was sentenced in November of 2005, lost an appeal in December of last year, and appears to have once again failed to convince a judge to let him out. "The Hong Kong government welcomed the judgment, saying it clarified the law regarding Internet piracy. 'This judgment has confirmed that it commits a crime and violates copyright laws for the act of using (BitTorrent) software to upload and distribute,' said customs official Tam Yiu-keung in a written statement. He added the judgment would have a deterrent effect, a view endorsed by industry watchdogs such as the Hong Kong branch of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry."
There's a reason geeks get up at arms over GPL violations, and it's not because of a double standard.
It's because the GPL (and simmilar) was created to sidestep the problems of copyright. If you think current copyright law is a farse, than you release your work as GPL, not public domain. If you release it public domain, people can use it in copyrighted works, thus (indirectly) copyrighting your work.
The GPL uses copyright law to make sure your work never becomes part of the farse of copyright.
"Knowledge is the only instrument of production that is not subject to diminishing returns" -Journal of Political Econom
This is just a joke, sure 1 person loses most of his life so china can make an example to the world that "oh we care about piracy". They are a communist nation and as such have sacrificed one life so they can pretend like they care.
Uhhh, yeah, sure, uh huh, china cares about piracy?????
If anything china is the one country on this planet that in general has no respect for any copyright laws of any other nation. Hell, they will pirate anything. You invent and patent invention a (NOT SOFTWARE), the chinese will steal it, remake it out of the cheapest and crappiest components possible and try their hardest to undersell you, effectively causing you, the inventor/artist/producer major damages. What legal repercussions do you have? Don't look at me, I have no clue.
We pirate movies freely in america, in china you pay for pirate copies of movies in retail stores.
Although there are ethical rules against being a pirate, a pirate must also have a code of ethics, and reselling is against that code. They aren't even to be called pirates from now, they do not deserve the honor with the title, from now on chinese pirates are to be known only as software thieves.