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Judge — "Making Available" Is Stealing Music
JonathanF writes "If you were hoping judges would see reason and realize that just using a program that could violate copyright law is about as illegal as leaving your back door unlocked, think again. An Arizona district judge has ruled that a couple who hosted files in KaZaA is liable for over $40K in damages just because they 'made available' songs that could have been pirated by someone, somewhere. There's legal precedent, but how long do we have before the BitTorrent crew is sued?" The New York case testing the same theory is still pending.
Their three-paragraph response was miniscule in comparison to those filed by file-sharing defendants with professional representation.
Ok, there's their mistake, they didn't hire a lawyer. Three paragraphs? That's just crazy.
Hopefully they'll hire one before the time to appeal expires.
It's not a file sharing anything. It's a file transfer protocol.
that's all
The letter vs. spirit of the law and all.
Tsunami -- You can't bring a good wave down!
The files weren't transfered, but they were available, and that's supposed to be the same as distributing?
Is that like being too fugly to get laid, getting busted for prostitution?
I'm not 100% sure, but I do believe that I read a clause about this when I studied copyright law one year ago. Making copyrighted content available to others (online or otherwise) without owning the rights to the work is against the law. Like I said, I'm just going by memory here but I'm fairly certain that I read an older case dealing with this same issue in a non-online context.
Regardless, the article submitting shouldn't be so quick to dismiss a judge's ruling as foobar just because he doesn't like the outcome. I actually agree with the judge's decision, despite my strong disdain for the RIAA/MPAA and its friends.
Hero of Allacrost, a FOSS RPG for *NIX/*BSD/OS X/Win
private_property_dont_download This is where I keep all my albums that I riped from my cd's. Since you already know that anything in that folder is my private propery, downloading from it make "you" the thief.
o wnload_all_of_your_music
The folder that I download tracks to is named paying_canadian_recordable_media_levies_lets_me_d
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
Just think of the damages if they prosecuted one of those little flea-market stands with all the pirated DVDs. They could REALLY clean up if they busted one of those guys!
It seems like gradually an inch at a time, the US is 'criminalizing' protocols it doesn't like. This will probably end badly. Remember that guy who was convicted of 'criminal copyright infringement'? Isn't copyright infringement supposed to be a civil matter? Well its not anymore. The IP Holders make the laws, and if they say if you go to jail for 20 years sharing one song, then so be it. (Just as an example.)
Unless there are major changes in US leadership soon, and there won't be, living in the US has very undesirable prospects in my opinion. Geeks are a minority and Geek opinions are not going to be respected. IP laws or not, this can only end badly. Maybe its time we start asking the 'if not the USA, where?' again and seriously start looking for other countries to live in.
Now I know what you are going to say, 'but why can't we vote people into office to change the rules?' Well, theoretically we could. but Geeks are such a small minority compared to the hordes of 'values voters' out there, any issue you voice out on will be drowned out.
So that begs the question, what are the best Geek friendly countries?
Providing a copyrighted file for uploading by a third party and writing a Bittorrent protocol client are very different. What this couple did is not equivalent to leaving your back door unlocked - they were actively sitting on the back stoop giving other people's stuff away. Whether or not you feel the copyright law is valid as written, they did break it, so the fact they were sued shouldn't be some big surprise.
Also, for a community of people that goes to great pains to point out the difference between "stealing" music and breaking copyright law, the headline of this article doesn't do us much good. Come to think of it, that's quite a sarcastic and vitriolic summary - and seeing as this story doesn't bring anything new to the table with respect to the whole file-sharing issue, why is this even news?
I know, I know, I must be new here!
IAALBNYL*--
The precedential value of this case is very low. It's a single ruling by a trial judge. In all likelihood, the actual opinion won't even be published.
Now, if these folks decide to appeal this ruling, and the relevant Court of Appeals decides to affirm, then there's a real precedent you've got to worry about.
--AC
*I Am A Lawyer, But Not Your Lawyer
They didn't 'leave their back door open' to a thief ... they effectively put a table on the front lawn piled high with music with a big sign saying 'come on in, copy all you want!'. ... and they shall get what they deserve.
... then don't buy the material, don't use it in any form - legitimate or pirated, don't consume the content in any way at all. If you actually have some talent, make your own!
Are they just idiots? There is no excuse here. They knew what their software was doing and if they didn't know they should not have been using it.
Don't like copyrights?
Only by completely ignoring the industry will they get desparate and be forced to relax the licenses they have legally chosen to apply to their property.
Is your life really so empty that you can't get by without your stolen music?
George Bush + Linux = "I will not let information get in the way of the fight against Windows"
Also many Free and Open Source software projects distribute installers via BitTorrent, notably Ubuntu Linux and OpenOffice.org.
All of these torrents are completely legal. Yet many ISPs block BitTorrent traffic - that happened to me with Eastlink back in Nova Scotia. I was therefore unable to check that my own torrents were operating properly! One can try to work around such blockage by using non-standard port numbers, but I understand that it's possible for ISPs to filter based on the content of packets, and not just the port numbers.
I can see the day coming when all peer-to-peer traffic, whether legal or not, is blocked either due to new laws or record and movie industry lawsuits. All of us who have free content and software to distribute will lose out.
Those of us who offer legal files via peer-to-peer networks - not just BitTorrent, as Jamendo also offers eMule - need to work together to lobby both national governments and local ISPs to do away with this filtering. There are many ways to download both music and software that are perfectly legal; we need to dispel the myth that free downloads are somehow necessarily violating the law.
Request your free CD of my piano music.
I sure hope this judge never leaves anything where it could be stolen.
There are many wealthy companies (and individuals) who became wealthy because of copyright law. They obtained the copyrights from the artists who created the content, paid the artists a few pennies, and then went on to make millions from the content.
Naturally enough, they are keenly interested in ensuring as heavy-handed an enforcement of copyright law as possible.
The more control they can maintain over YOU (and what you do with any and all data in your possession) the more money they can make from you.
It is an uphill battle for those interested in personal freedom. But I guess that's nothing new.
As the Internet permeates every aspect of our lives, and the entire world slowly becomes directly entwined with every other part, the definition of "publish" will have to be changed.
Traditionally, publishing was something done via a newspaper, book, or some other "official" work. Duplicating Intellectual Property has long been formal and obvious. The reasons for copyright were clear, intellectual property was expensive and difficult to distribute, and overcoming the cost of distribution benefited all.
Enter the Internet. Suddenly, Intellectual Property can be distributed to anybody at any time simply by posting on a $5/month website.
I have a web server on my home DSL line with MP3s (legally obtained) that I stream via Apache on a non-standard port, that automatically closes every night. (I have to manually open the port on any day I intend to listen) I do not intend to "publish" these, simply listen to them when and where I happen to be.
But, while the port is open, I'm legally "publishing" these files, and based on this ruling, I'm liable for it. Now, I'm pretty sure the risk of my getting caught is pretty slim, but it's not zero. And the truth is, there will be more and more examples of "publish" simply because putting ANYTHING on the Internet is has always been easy, is easier than it used to be, and is getting easier every day.
At what point are you NOT publishing something? If I record a video of my wife lip-syncing to Green Day and post it on my family website, am I "publishing" their song?
There are millions of examples, and I'm sure there are plenty of bad-car analogies coming soon, but the truth remains: the rules are being changed, and we need to PAY ATTENTION!!!
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
It seems to me that putting files up for P2P sharing is the same as putting them on your web site which is the same as publishing. It also seems to me that both the publisher and the downloader are guilty of copyright infringement, assuming that any reasonable downloader would know that the publisher doesn't have the distribution rights.
I'm confused. I've been hearing around here that copyright infringement isn't theft or piracy, because the copyright owner doesn't lose access to their property. Now /. is saying that it is just like theft, because making copyrighted files available is just like leaving your door open.
(Yes, I understand that different people here have different opinions, I'm just referring to the consensus position.)
====
Crudely Drawn Games
"as illegal as leaving your back door unlocked" If you did and found someone in your house copying your music you may consider it a crime.
Analogies aside the law is the law it does not have to make sense, It does what the government wants it to do.
Software is kind of the same. It does not have to make sense, It does what the programmer wanted.
And just like with programs the compiler "judges" what the programmer wrote. Laws have bugs too.
Unfortunately, the court rules on them as they see them. No judicial LINT report.
The Copyright law is very old unlike DMCA. Copying books or music is the same thing. The courts will clarify the issue. The big question is do you want to be a test case, or just read about the test cases in Slashdot.
Look, if you provide the facilities for someone to copy copywritten material, you should be liable. There is no other way for copyright to work.
The 'leaving your back door open' analogy is not a good one. A better analogy is buying a book, scanning it, and posting it on a web page. In fact, it's EXACTLY the same thing, only with a different protocol.
paintball
Growing up, I had a brother that stole things ... mainly my things.
I couldn't hide my stuff well enough, he'd find it. Finally I'd get in trouble for leaving stuff out that he could steal.
Perhaps if the defendants had grown up with my brother, they wouldnt be in this situation.
George Bush + Linux = "I will not let information get in the way of the fight against Windows"
So... how does this square with this wireless "theft" thing reported earlier? Maybe it's using the prostitution analogy... illegal both to provide and to partake?
Another reason to take to heart the adage that a person who acts as his own lawyer has a fool for a client: it just makes it easier for the big guys to make bad self-serving case law.
What do you mean they cut the power? How can they cut the power, man? They're animals!
Sorry, but you are quibbling over accuracy or truth or something. That's like claiming you didn't murder someone with a 45, but a 38.
Legal Precendent: If one is caught with a small ammount of an illegal substance, they can be charged and convicted of dealing, even if they have never dealt. Getting caught with one can of Coke is personal use, but if you get caught with a 12-pack then you are automatically guilty of dealing Coke. Strange but true, because accuracy isn't important, punishing people like you is important.
These people have been supplying me with copyrighted VHS and DVD movies for years.
These bastards have been doing it with online ordering!
There's another nest of pirates, they call themselves, "a library". Nothing but copyrighted works, from books, to magazines, to DVDs, and more besides!
They just turn a blind eye to the possibilities of copying these works. This "library" even lets you photocopy books, right in front of building!
The write of the Slashdot interpretation of this article seems to have the wrong end of the stick.
Using software that potentially shares copyrighted data is not illegal - what the judge found illegal was that copyrighted data was actually being shared and made available for download. The difference between potentially sharing data and actually sharing data is being ignored by this snippet.
I tend to agree - if you are sharing copyrighted data you are making that data available for piracy. It seems to me that if you are making data available for download then you are pretty stupid, as it is so easy to detect. Leechers are given pretty bad press by the various networks (for good reason) but the fact is that if you are a leecher you're probably exposing yourself to the least risk possible.
If I made unlimited copies of the Sunday New York Times or the most recent Harry Potter book and put them out on a street corner -- and people started taking them -- why would I not be responsible in some capacity?
Now, to make the argument technologically more applicable, what if I put up a copier in my house that would automatically copy the New York Times or Harry Potter and then send it in the mail to anyone who asked? Kind of think I'm still responsible...
Note that this is different than making tons of copies of the most recent Harry Potter book and scattering them all over my own home so that I could read Krugman's latest op ed or all about Ron's latest crush in every room. (I believe that I have a right to do this!) But opening up these copies to the general public and making it extremely easy for other people to read them? Sounds like I should be accountable for something.
Just because the technology is different, doesn't change the essence of the argument or the net result.
Where does my logic break down?
So should we arrest librarians for leaving copyrighted materials out in the open for copying? After all they even leave copy machines and scanners for thieves to break copyrights right in the building. Or perhaps the RIAA should go after college kids leaving CDs unlocked in their stereo where their roommates might be able to copy them onto their own tapes/ipods/computers.
Soon, it may be illegal to not have an army of network defense people for your home. After all, its theoretically possible for copyright abusers to go through your obviously porous OS/router to get at your files.
Poor defense of your own or someone else's goods is not illegal. Taking things from someone even over non-existent security is however.
let's face facts, there is only one reason to offer this stuff up. it's not like you can claim otherwise.
not to even mention that leaving the keys in your car if it's stolen is considered neglect and can make the insurance company no longer legally liable for the claim. how is this different?
leaving a gun out also makes an adult liable for it's use by a minor or a thief.
I have to take issue with your attempt to liken posting copyrighted material with leaving your back door open. The parallel would be stronger, if you borrowed your friend's stuff, left your back door open, and posted that fact at a place you know to be frequented by people who would feel no compunction about taking the stuff. This would not result in back doors or local bulletin boards becoming illegal. However, a judge would make you pay your friend for everything that was taken.
Why is it that some people think someone's program, ebook, or music is different than a physical item? They are both the product of time, talent, and effort.
Dump the self-righteous attitude and try on some compassion for a change.
To a politician, one email equals one voter.
...a man who did not lock his house is being charged with larceny.
If you are caught possessing over a certain amount, it can create a statutory presumption (depending on the applicable law) of intent to distribute. A presumption means that this is something that, absent evidence to the contrary (generally a clear-and-convincing standard, or perhaps preponderance. Again, it depends on the law), the State does not have to affirmatively prove. For instance, let's say that possession of Sprite is criminalized, and possession of over a six-pack of Sprite creates a presumption of intent to distribute. You get caught with a case. If you can show, through evidence, that you intended to consume all of the Sprite yourself, you'd have rebutted that presumption.
You're not "automatically guilty" of anything. The reason why this is so that possession of a large amount of a substance is itself evidence of an intent to distribute. It may not always be the case, but the Legislatures have deemed that it is often enough the case that intent ought to be presumed unless you can show otherwise. This doesn't violate due process because intent is only one element of the crime, and the State must still prove the other elements beyond a reasonable doubt.
IAALS.
Let's worry about the actual point being made:
To see how retarded this is, take this "making available" nonsense a few steps down the slippery slope to DRM hell, where sharing is a crime:
Citizen, have you been sharing your password access? Do you have the right to read anymore?
Copyright is supposed to encourage publication for the benefit of the public domain. It is supposed to be a temporary exclusive right to publish. People violating that exclusivity could be told to stop and sued in civil court by the rights holder. Punishing people who are actually performing copyright's original function, without actual proof of damages is little more than coporate welfare. Don't think for an instant that you will be protected in the same manner if some big dumb company takes your text, images or recordings and sells them. A $40,000 judgment is sure ruin to most people, but less than a slap on the wrist to the companies pushing these crazy cases.
If we give this kind of power to publishers, every education will create a life time's worth of debt for little more than access to textbooks. Imagine music industry methods applied to all human knowledge. As Newton understood, every person's contribution to human knowledge is dwarfed by the accumulated store. What you have will be held cheap and you will have to work very hard to get what you need.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
All of these torrents are completely legal. Yet many ISPs block BitTorrent traffic
Why are you assuming they block BitTorrent traffic because they believe the content is illegal? Isn't is possible they block BitTorrent because of the typically high bandwidth BitTorrent users consume?
If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
By far the most insultingly biased summary I've yet seen on a slashdot page, and that's saying a lot because that's Slashdot's stock-and-trade. Can someone fix that drivel please?
Your intent argument did make more sense when these laws were first implimented, as someone with a van with 600 pounds was clearly not going to consume it himself, but now the laws have been incrementally changed to the point where just over one usage is consider proof, yes proof not intent, of dealing. All that is neccessary is the maintain the chain-of-evidence that sufficiently proves you were indeed in possession of the goods.
Did the judge really say it was stealing ?
AFAIK stealing is the MPAA/RIAA propaganda term for copyright infringment and is not the correct legal term.
As a start we should try not to be propaganda victims.
Well, yes, but I'd recommend against that. :) You might try calling a witness and putting on testimony, or testify yourself. Testimony is evidence.
but now the laws have been incrementally changed to the point where just over one usage is consider proof, yes proof not intent, of dealing.What laws, please? I'm going to be a prosecutor in less than a year. I'd really like to know about this great boon to my profession.
IAALS.
Stupid ass judge is placing the entire internet at risk, as well as the PC. Any web server has the "potential to serve out copyrighted material illegally." So does any PC with networking turned on. According to the ultimate extension of his logic, any networked server or PC could become illegal simply by owning/using one. Dumb ass.
You could make an argument that leaving your back door open is illegal under the "attractive nuisance" doctrine. Kazaa makes it so easy to steal, you might think, ah what the heck, why not?
Why, yes, right here somebody was correcting me on another subject, pointing out, that in Australia one can get be fined for leaving their car unsecured.
Similarly, people get all excited about gun-dealers not performing sufficient checks on their customers — never mind, that the dealer merely makes the "gun available", they are being sued over the crimes committed by people, who bought it.
I've also heard the argument from some of the bleedier-heart Californians, that leaving one's car unlocked is racist, because it "seduces" a poor black person to steal it...
Can we, please, have some coherency here?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
all this talk of guilty and innocent...
You all seem to be mixing up one thing here: This is not a criminal case. This is not stealing we're talking about. It's infringement of rights.
Guilty until proven innocent, I'm afraid.
Zing!
Request your free CD of my piano music.
Some people are so careless...
--CmdrTaco
I think that to really show the defendants the error of their ways, they should be given the punishment of having to wear assless chaps to a gay bar.
I bet they never 'leave their back door open' again!
George Bush + Linux = "I will not let information get in the way of the fight against Windows"
I've never heard of the Robinhood defense working. Not gaining financially from the act changes nothing in the eyes of the court. Simply storing illegal goods is an illegal act. Friend steals a TV and you let him keep it in your closet it's still a crime and both are guilty. It doesn't matter whether you are for or against file sharing it's a matter of how the law is written and enforced. And they were fool for not having a lawyer. In the US justice more often comes from a choice of lawyer than the merits of the case. Sad but too often true. Even if you loose the penalties are radically less if you have the right lawyer. The rich rarely do time and are tough to convict.
In my personal opinion, that analogy in the summary is a bit flawed.
I would say that a better analogy is equating hosting the files on Kazaa as leaving your backdoor open and setting up a large, bright, flashing neon sign on your driveway with the words "KITCHEN AND LIVING ROOM OPEN TO PUBLIC. DROP BY AT WILL." If you get robbed (read: People download from you) because you broadcasted (found by "search" or driving through neighbourhoods at high speeds) your open backdoor (read: music), I doubt the insurance companies (read: courts) will be very sympathetic to your case.
MAFIAA or not, there's not much room to argue against the judge's decision.
So to be inline with the car analogy that the RIAA so proudly hung out like a freaking damn sign, leaving my car parked in the garage is punishable by law to allow someone to steal it? Oh c'mon give me a break!?
Law is even weirder than that.
Right now I'm wearing a red shirt.
Let's say I murdered someone tonight and all the witnesses thought I was wearing a blue shirt. If I was convicted, then my shirt is now blue from a legal standpoint. This is despite the fact that is is really a red shirt. Legally, it's blue. Logic and sanity are not necessarily used when determining the finer points of the law.
This is the same shirt I was wearing when I asked my law professor about this question. (I might have been wearing the blue one. It was the one mandatory law class, three years ago.)
What this means is that if you are convicted of using BitTorrent to transfer mp3s over your modems, then the protocol is a program, the T1 is a modem, and you're doing more time than a bank robber.
IANAL. YMMV. CYLDFD. WDTAM?
---
ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
legaltorrents.com has exactly Zero seeders on the entire site.
As posted slesewhere... TFS is broken. These people did not forget to lock their door. They left it wide open with a Welcome mat out and a big "Help Yourself" sign.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
If that be the case, ie, making something available that can be used for infringement, or breaking XYZ law is considered as illegal, then let me only mention 2 cases:
1. How come gun and ammunition manufacturing companies, who make guns, are not liable for damages when someone gets killed by terrorists?
2. Having sex, creating babies, who later grow up to break the law - will that make the parents liable?
> Look, if you provide the facilities for someone to copy copywritten material, you should be liable.
So why not tell that to all those libraries out there with photocopiers in them? Or anyone who has ever let someone else use their computer (I mean, hey, that person could've copied files off of it!).
> There is no other way for copyright to work.
Well, that's the real problem, isn't it? As enforced by the RIAA, copyright doesn't, it can't work, and it's pretty damn stupid to pretend it even could work in the real world.
I use btdownloadmany.py for my seeds. It's a Python script. What happens is that after running for a week or two, it just stops responding. It doesn't crash, it just doesn't show up when my BitTorrent client tries to download.
I plan to remedy this by running a second and possibly a third downloader at different virtual hosts. I just haven't gotten to it yet.
What I'd really like is some kind of automated monitoring software that would alert me immediately when either my tracker or my seed - and only my seed, not someone else's - goes down. But that is an itch that is as yet unscratched. The way I monitor my torrents is by running the BT GUI on my laptop now and then.
Request your free CD of my piano music.
Copyright is supposed to encourage publication for the benefit of the public domain.
Copyright serves two primary purposes. One is to provide incentives for publishers of creative works. The second is for the benefit of society at large. The public domain is the vehicle for that enrichment, not the end in itself
It is supposed to be a temporary exclusive right to publish.
Actually it is a negative right. Copyright gives you the right to exclude others from publishing your work for a period of time. Because it is a negative right, the onus is on the holder of copyright to police that copyright and go after infringers. This is a seemingly minor distinction, but it matters because even though Big Media wants everyone else to police their copyrights, Intellectual Property Clause of the Constitution is quite clear in placing that responsibility on copyright holders.
People violating that exclusivity could be told to stop and sued in civil court by the rights holder.
Yep. That applies whether you're Random House Publishing or Berke Breathed. The big guys and the little guys are bound by the same rules of copyright. The casebooks are full of instances where larger, more monied operations were swatted down by the courts when they infringed copyright held by individuals.
Punishing people who are actually performing copyright's original function, without actual proof of damages is little more than coporate welfare. Don't think for an instant that you will be protected in the same manner if some big dumb company takes your text, images or recordings and sells them. A $40,000 judgment is sure ruin to most people, but less than a slap on the wrist to the companies pushing these crazy cases.
There are no shortage of copyright attorneys who will represent small defendants. Frequently, the small defendants win. Look at the litany of RIAA cases and you'll see what I mean. Big firms, advocacy shops like the EFF, and other legal outfits are stepping up to help. They're also coming up with some interesting new legal theories (like using the RICO statute to go after the music cartel). The reason Big Media is pushing so hard for legislation that protects their interests is that on balance they have been loosing in the courts.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
That would be the government's view of the hypothetical you that's dealing Coke cans in his example.
... we were lucky to have used toilet paper to hold over the raised hiroglyphics to take rubbings of with the bloody stumps of our fingers, and we counted ourselves lucky to be edumacated.
See my art -> http://herbevore.deviantart.com
What you are missing is the intention.
If you deliberately leave your back door swinging in the breeze this can be interpreted as entrapment. Why did you do it? Were you dumb or stupid or were you trying to create an opportunity for an otherwise honest person to come rob you?
Why did these people put the songs in Kazza? What was their intent?
-----------
This is a very difficult area. What of police entrapment? So we have a single guy walking down the street and he meets up with a gal and she asks "Would you like a date?"
Why not? Maybe she's the girl of his dreams.
Clearly they can construe this as a bloke picking up a ho... but no. He might just be a very nice guy who is a software developer and focuses on what he does... and you know what? This girl might really like what he can do and who he is and so forth. Yes... He might like a date.
Should be be charged? I say no. It clearly entrapment.
I've been there too.
I was at a wet tee shirt bar and met a contestant. I do not think she was a ho. We were talking and this jerk was pestering me about would I like to talk with so and so. My answer: No!
Within 5 mins this jerk punched her in the eye. She ran out and called 911. I ended up talking with them for 15 mins until the cops arrived.
The cops didn't talk to her. They told me to FO. When I inquired if they talked to her and I was a witness to the jerk who assulted her they decided to arrest me.
I'm a single person. My wife died. When these cops arrested me this meant my kids were left alone. I told them I was planning on leaving at 6:30 and will be home by 10. I was not allowed to call them.
My daughter was 13 then. Both kids were quite upset and worried.
So? What was I guilty of?
Was she a hooker? I honestly do not think so. Even if she was... No way. I think she was just out having fun and this jerk beat on her and she was told by friends to just leave.
And the cops?
Entrapment?
Abuse?
My response to this was to start with the Mayor's office. I started right at the top and tore flesh through more than a few rungs. Of course I had rather solid ground. I was 38 and buried my wife after having cared for her for 10 years and I had done nothing worng. Nothing at all. I've been arrested since and have not done anything worng. On this next arrest. I was with the crown prosecutor. She is a friend of mine. She is also very nice and so is her son. Hey - don't do drugs in Calgary but if you are interested in shrooms then I will point out which will kill you and which will get you high and which are just good to eat.
But what do cops see?
See - the issue is intentions. What are people doing and why?
I think you are correct in your assement but the issue at hand is that blockbuster is renting movies to make a profit. These people were not renting anything. What was their intention?
3. Ron Paul.
I am not a lobbyist and I hate politics, but he's the first candidate I've actually been excited about in 10 years. And I'm 25.
A $40,000 judgment is sure ruin to most people, but less than a slap on the wrist to the companies pushing these crazy cases.
There is another danger in their method of casting such a broad net with their lawsuits. It is possible, however unlikely for each individual case, that they will eventually ruin the wrong person and such person, believing that they have nothing further to lose, might target certain high profile members of the RIAA or the record labels for reprisals, violent and otherwise. If I were the head of the RIAA or a studio boss then I would be reviewing my personal security measures as the lawsuits drag on and the situation becomes ever more acrimonious. If there is one nice thing that can be said about the middle east it is that tomfoolery such as this would never proceed past the planning stage over there because everyone is armed to teeth and they pull out the guns over less provocation than this. Lawsuits don't make much sense when the opposition responds with AK-47s and RPGs.
Ah, but there's already an infinite supply of canned music. Those 42,000 concerts listened to one a day would take 115 years. If you include the other music and movies there, you could spend every waking moment of the rest of your life and not hear and see it all.
The value is not in the can. It's beautiful and it takes real skill to make and can it, but the value is in the sharing. Going to a concert is fun, and it's profitable for the musician. Sharing what's in the can with your friends is fun. Making your own is even more fun. When you get over the music and movie industry hype, what you realize is that a song and dance can be both priceless and worthless at the same time.
This kind of lawsuit has got to be the most disgusting abuse possible for music. A $40,000 judgment for making a song available. How do the lawyers sleep at night knowing that their victims have just had their life savings wiped out? Will the judge go help them move out of their home when the bank comes to take it? How can they feel justified? Fuck the industry by never giving it another cent for entertainment they don't know how to enjoy themselves. Discover and support real artists instead.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
They failed because the failed fair use doctrine. Fair use allows you to transfer from the original media to another device or backup but not from that device or backup to anything else, they had simply gone one step to many, it is only fair use from the original media.
Now of course they can try appealing and getting a lawyer and at a minimum force a fair damages claim against actual damages accrued.
The very first thing you do when they pursue you in the initial claim, is backup data that you want to keep, then format and re-install, the is no law that requires you to retain your original HDisk state until such time as they ask for it, then of course it is techinically to late, you are not a company, you are not required to retain HDisk data. If you want to confuse the issue do not forget to change your BIOS data to same random earlier data and then do all the re-installs of programs advancing the date between each install, all your original data which show a random series of other dates.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
There are these bizzare things called 'Radio Stations' that make songs just as available as someone on Kazza. All I have to do is pipe their output into a tape recorder. Granted quality is less than stellar, but then again, so are most people's ears from blasting 90 db music for years...
The made the biggest mistake possible, admitting to anything at all.
No, their biggest mistake was to try to have fun with something that's owned by assholes. Cases like this make me want to delete every non free piece of music I own. It's time to teach the assholes who's boss. Stop giving them your money. Then, just maybe these stupid laws will go away.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
If you sell TheSubstance, you will go to the bad jail for a long long time.
"Hey, lets shift the burden of proof of trafficking to the accused! We'll say that anyone with a lot of TheSubstance was obviously planning to sell it!"
So now, if you are caught with a year supply of TheSubstance, you will go to the bad jail for a long long time.
Therefore, it is much safer to be a client of organized traffickers, so that you yourself are never in possession of TheAmount than to grow yourself or to buy in bulk to save money.
Ergo, only traffickers have large amounts, and their business model is safe from the threat of self-sufficient amateur botanists. More people are spending more time in jail, and the cartels are rolling dough... the system works!
You can't take the sky from me...
2. Having sex, creating babies, who later grow up to break the law - will that make the parents liable?
I don't know where you live, but where I do, until the children are of age (18 in france), their parents are legally responsible for their acts. So yes, they are liable.
Write boring code, not shiny code!
> Fair use allows you to transfer from the original media to another device or backup but not from that device or backup
> to anything else, they had simply gone one step to many, it is only fair use from the original media.
Even assuming this is true, you're missing the major point which is that damages were awarded for distribution. IANAL, but I'm pretty sure that the violation of copyright you're describing is something different.
Can't wait till they get legal council that informs them it's not there fault, but the one who installed the software. There goes the neighborhood kid. Spending the rest of his life in debt or worse jail.
Are we now going to be held criminally liable for what we might do?
Did I wake up this morning in Minority Report?
Are they also saying, then, that since the version of PING that comes distributed with, say, Fedora Core or Redhat is a DoS tool and therefore illegal to own, simply because you could use many copies of it spread out over many computers, run with maximum message size, no delay, and running ad infinitum? Or that if I happen to have tools in my garage that could be used to break into someone's house, that it's the same as actually committing breaking and entering?
Oh, wait! I have the math and physics skills to determine critical mass! I must be teh terr0ri$t! Everybody panic!
What's next, then? If you have a Bittorrent client that you use only to download completely legal files (like, say, Fedora Core) that by association, Fedora Core must be illegal because you use an "illegal" piece of software to download it?
I'm being a little rediculous -- but only a little. This is exactly the sort of mentality I'm coming to expect these days. :p
Thats like saying.. I left my axe in the back yard but some crazy jumped the fence and grabbed it, hackup a jogger and got away, but yet, i'm to blame for the murder.
Just to point out, if you were being tried for murder, (first, you should never correct the prosecution as to the weapon you actually used) and the victim was murdered with a .45, and you owned a .38, and there was no evidence that you were ever within 5 feet of a .38, much less owned one or touched one... it *SHOULD* be very difficult to convict you based on the argument that...
"Your honor, the victim was killed with a gun, and the defendant owned a gun. The difference in calibers is unimportant."
That said, the fact that they were caught sharing copyrighted materials would indeed make it much easier to convict them of wrongdoing. If they were being charged with copyright violations specifically for sharing files on Kazaa, after only a BitTorrent client was discovered on their computer, then your statement might be more accurate.
Also, it depends heavily on the state (in the US) that you are in, how close you are to a school, and the substance you are caught with, but in general the amount of a substance you have on you, as well as the circumstances in which you are caught with it will decide what you are charged with... not just simply the fact that you were bagged holding nasty controlled substances. You won't get charged with dealing grass if you are found with a couple of joints in your cigarette pack when pulled over for speeding in the state where you live.
Sorry, I'm just quibbling over accuracy and truth.
"I love deadlines. I love the whooshing sound they make as they fly by." -D. Adams
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Sorry bro, this would require those who care enough about music sharing to commit murder over it to emerge from their basements, a task not easy for their portly bodies and their snow-white skin.
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So possession of blank cds and dvds is also illegal?
Money for nothing, pix for free
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Good thing I have Comcast, now I don't have to worry about making ANY files available with bittorrent.
In Ontario radar detectors are illegal since they are a device used to sense radar. Kaza is a known program used to share programs, whether those files be legal or illegal.
So now say I turn the device on. At that point it is illegal. If on the other hand the device is in an envelope or box that is sealed then the device is not illegal.
I am thinking the judge is using the same logical here to whether or not deem legal or illegal.
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
> I don't know where you live, but where I do, until the children are of age (18 in france), their parents are legally responsible for their acts. So yes, they are liable.
No they aren't. Those who are responsible to take care of the children are liable (and only in a limited way). Otherwise that whole adoption thing would become quite complicated (and I think it was obvious that the parent was speaking about the biological parents).
Your chineese made costumes and Tshirts are probaply solde in "legal" USA shops.
While underage kids have cerated those cheap clothing in poor countries.
But that shop selling famous brands of Tshirts makes big money of it.
While you knew that clothes are coming from those countries who dont have the same laws.
Who dont have the same public welfare, still you buy items from those countries.
Thereby your sporting things who are not legal in your own country.
this looks much like the RIAA case but only i changed it to Tshirts, and it seams that it is accepted.
You keep your courts rather bussy with some small topic as music
While fair trade of real goods is not even in your minds, that is just to sad to be real.
The "artist" in your countries might starve from income.
In other countries people create real product but also de realy starve poor income.
But that ofcourse is not your interest you rather talk about mu - sick.
I know you're out there. I can feel you now. I know that you're afraid. You're afraid of us. You're afraid of change.
Defendant: But, your honour, if you look at exhibit a: printout of /var/log/xferlog, you will see that nobody actually downloaded any of the files in question.
.....
Judge: That does not matter. The fact is that you made the files available, so someone could have downloaded them. Your ADSL gives a maximum upload speed of 768kb/sec, is contended at 50:1 and the creation date on the files is four weeks ago, so that's 28 * 86400 = 2419200". In every second you can upload 786432 bits or 98304 bytes, and if you were sharing with 49 others then that would be 1966.08 bytes per second. Which over 4 weeks makes 4 756 340 736 bytes. Or over three days of music in the form of 128kbit, ferric-oxide cassette quality MP3 files!
Defendant: Are you going to do me for rape as well, your honour?
Judge: Are you admitting to a count of rape?
Defendant: No, but I have got the equipment
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
Well - it's certainly amusing for the morning seeing all these silly knee-jerk reactions from people who like to pirate music. If you have a street stall with pirated DVDs on, that's illegal, even if they're being given away for nothing. This does not by extension mean that benches which may be used for pirate stalls are illegal.
publishers aren't aliens, but people too, people whose work is being freely given away by others constantly, and that is not sustainable.
You want to talk about what copyright law was supposed to do? it was snot supposed to allow you to share you commercially produced music collection with 2,000 people you never met right across the globe while you were asleep. fair sue is a great idea, some people with no fucking conscience have taken it way way way too far and basically fucked it up for honest people. Don't blame the music producers for this mess, but the bastards who thought it was cool to distribute other peoples work on a massive scale for free.
Nowhere in the article do the words "steal" or "thief" appear. The judge ruled that it was copyright infringement. Copyright infringement is not theft. This is not nit-picking, this is a complaint about Orwellian newspeak. Everybody (apart from communists) agrees that theft is wrong. By labelling it theft, media corporations want to make people believe that copyright infringement is wrong without considering it on its own merits. Let people think for themselves!
Fair use allows you to transfer from the original media to another device or backup but not from that device or backup to anything else, they had simply gone one step to many, it is only fair use from the original media.
So you're saying that if I copy my mp3 collection (that I created from legally bought CDs) to another hard drive that would be illegal. If true that's some really fucked up laws...
If my neighbors were on vacation, and I went over to their house, picked the lock, and put a sign out on the road saying "Door unlocked, owners out-of-town, please help yourself", should I be surprised if someone loots the place and I get my butt sued over it?
"If one is caught with a small ammount(sic) of an illegal substance, they can be charged and convicted of dealing, even if they have never dealt."
At least in the U.S., the "small amount" that qualifies one to be a dealer is proscribed by statute. It's not exactly "legal precedent," which implies common (judge-made) law. Having read a few of those statutes leads me to conclude that you consider a cup of sugar a "small amount" to put into your coffee.
What those who want activist courts fear is rule by the people.
I actually know a case where a guy was arrested possessing a very large amount of cocaine. He was charged with intent to distribute based on the law as an earlier post described. His lawyer got him off by presenting testimony that that the accused actually did consume cocaine in that kind of volume. I don't remember the amount, but I remember being amazed that anyone would consume anywhere close to that amount of cocaine in a reasonable time frame.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
$40K for leaving a back door open on your computer.
How much should Sony pay for infecting millions of computers with a root kit, for the second time!
The newest Sony root kit is worse than any file sharing program, because it cannot be seen or easily removed by the user.
I am the unwilling control for my Origin.
Too many people fail to realize how easy it is to prove that the music on the computer and the music out there on the file share network(s) are the same. Just check the file size and MD5 of the version on the computer and the versions out on the network.
Now, if you have ripped the track from a CD yourself, the MD5 hash will be different, even if you name the file the same thing as an online version. This then proves that either you have downloaded the music illegally, or you are the source of the versions found out there on the file sharing networks. Either way, you are caught, and if you are in a RIAA lawsuit, you are in trouble.
Once you have been shown to either have been the source of the version out there, or you downloaded it, the continued use of a file sharing application shows that if you planned on it or not, you ARE uploading it, compounding the crime of the illegal download.
Yes, there are ways to protect yourself, but most people just don't THINK. They figure they are downloading stuff for free, not thinking how these things are available.
The file sharing networks themselves may not be subject to being shut down or made illegal, but that does not mean that people who do illegal things with those networks should be immune to prosecution. The whole issue of the VCR possibly being used in an illegal manner, or guns, or anything else follows the same logic. Just because a device MAY be used for illegal purposes does not mean that by its nature it IS an illegal product.
A society that is democratic in the fuller sense (rather than just voting every four years) would give the population as a whole broadly similar rights, including such things as the right to radiation detectors, a right to hack hardware, a presumption of a right to perform experiments, etcetera. Detecting radiation simply shouldn't be criminal.
Wikileaks, no DNS
The key is that this was a pro se case. Defendant was not represented by counsel.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
They knowingly have their files available in Kazaa...and people think they are not guilty? Ummmmm, maybe I am missing something, but I don't understand that. That in my mind is not comparable to just "leaving your back door open" at all. That is basically being the distributor...and should likely be punished more severely than the people downloading them.
dB Masters
Federal mandatory sentences were found unconstitutional in 2005 and are now interpreted merely as guidelines. The district and appeals courts now have full discretion over sentencing. So even if your claim was once correct, it's not so correct anymore.
If you charge for "pirated" goods, therefore, you are taking from producers, at roughly one dollar per dollar that you charge. Unlike straight copyright infringment, charging for rip-offs is theft, or at least acts like theft (for those wanting to quibble). Accordingly, fines and punishments should be in proportion to the money made from sales.
Sharing with strangers should be discouraged since it infringes upon an artist's moral rights, but it should not be a right that an artist can sign away to another, although they should be able to relinquish such rights either to all or selectively.
Wikileaks, no DNS
And Walmart isn't distributing Oreos by putting them on the shelf. Get a better argument, and shame on slashdot for endorsing such a ridiculous view.
It isn't the judge's job to prepare someone's case for them. There are two sides, two scholarly legal arguments which take conflicting views of the law. The judge determines which more accurately interprets the law with respect to the actual written law and legal precedent.
Your slippery slope actually "leads" to one example which is basically the same as the case in question and two that are already illegal - lending CDs is not covered in the "licence" that goes with standard CD ownership and you're not allowed to (and it doesn't apply to libraries who have permission via the agreements they have), and publishing copyrighted material which you do not have rights to publish certainly is certainly illegal and should be. The need to pass ownership of physical product containing material (as in CDs) was merely a function of a historical inability to distribute the material any other way. It was never intended that you gained the rights to use and redistribute the material, the fact you could and the implication with it was just an accident of the technology available. As for the ruling, it's perfectly fair and most of the parallels people are throwing around are nonsense. If I went and burned a load of music CDs and left them on a table I was sat at in a bar and made it clear that i wouldn' object when people took them I'd rightly be seen as distributing. Why? Because given a choice I've decided to do things that allow others to take the material and have acted on that choice (it didn't just happen). For any decent P2P client (including those being referred to here and all the most common ones) making your music collection available is something you have to do actively, it doesn't just happen. If you choose to do it then you have actively chosen to make copyright material available. Given that what is the defence? And that's also why it's not a ruling against P2P - it's a ruling against the way some people choose to use P2P.
Good post, parent. I appreciate the links to the various Open music download portals.
As far as blocking p2p... I have read about corporate distribution methods that have wanted to use p2p to reduce the load on their servers. Imagine a digital movie distribution site where you can buy a 4 GB HD film and then download it. When 10,000 people are downloading the copy of the latest Rambo movie that they just bought... it is much easier for such a service to function by letting their customers download from each other and not a centrally located server.
For this reason... I don't think p2p will go away completely.
Support the 30 Hour Work Week!!!
People are not blind if they don't share in the truthiness; they are blind when their convictions are fact-free.
For the record, I still believe that the artist has moral rights, but ideology of all sorts makes people ignore reality. Argument makes better progress when it is rooted in the physical world.
Wikileaks, no DNS
man, if you have an ENTIRE CAN of coke then I think they can get you for intent to sell. We all know that a serving is only 8oz.
--
Wonderful precedent set. We seriously need a pro bono group to aid people being sued by the RIAA and MPAA, because they have seriously overreached their bounds.
If 'making available' is now tantamount to theft, then basically all libraries are now engaged in stealing. I'm sorry, but the additional thought is that people are stupid, people don't secure things, and so at what point is something considered making available?
Yes, of course, I believe that setting up file sharing for others to download is a bit more than accidentally leaving windows file sharing on without a firewall, but then again, I'm not familiar with all software, and I can't be certain that the software itself doesn't seek out files to share. Was that shown in court?
At any rate, again, 'making available' is a bad precedent. I mean, if I borrow a DVD and rip it, or a CD and copy it, will the MPAA and RIAA be able to go after the library?
Reality is, if these people didn't download the files, and created them under 'fair use' (which I know the MPAA and RIAA don't believe in, and will lobby until that aspect of copyright law is removed), then under most jurisdictions, they did not commit a crime, as they were not distributing.
This, of course, would change if they were operating a program by which they were rewarded for the number of downloads they made available. But then, there is a compensation being received.
Linux - because it doesn't leave that Steve Ballmer aftertaste.
I am glad someone raised the library issue. Libraries lend books, CDs, and DVDs for free. Once you have it, you can copy it or do whatever. Are libraries the next target?
How is a library lending out DVDs different from you publishing a DVD on a public share?
What if you locked it down so only one person could download it at a time? That way only one person is ever using it?
Crazy mixed up world.
The only reason people bought CDs back in the day was the lack of space and compute power. 700 MB of uncompressed audio on a 33 MHz PC with a 100 MB HD meant you could not keep your CD collection on your PC and ripping was painful. Now, music is easy.
They could make a decent HD DVD format (1080P at 60 FPS, maybe 1 TB) that would make online transfers daunting and storage difficult (for a few years). I don't see multi-TB drives coming to my house for a while, but it could happen...
If you've got any interest in copyright issues, you'll have heard of Oberholzer-Gee and K Strumpf. Your assertion that file sharing costs the producers is unsubstantiated.
Last time that I quoted the study, I was told that "only pirates quote this study". Well, I haven't pirated anything for several years now. However, I am opposed to the propagation of falsehoods in argument. Your perspective only appears to be common-sensical because it is rooted in an ideology that is widely held, but it is very easy to pick another perspective that is more reality based: if you are a music or film fan, you are likely to seek music and film from all sources. That it comes from one source (piracy) doesn't mean that you'll stop going out to see films, concerts, or buy that CD that you really want (remember that you still have the money to buy it).
If we can drop this false assumption about the effects of file sharing, we can then have the real debate (the one that moved me to stop copying), and that is one of artists' moral rights.
Wikileaks, no DNS
Ummm... WHAT!??
Where do these mythical cases come from?
In what world is this insightful?
I have never seen a case of the RIAA or any Music Vendor accusing an author of copyright infringement
for them selling their own copyrighted material.
Only SCO is this stupid. It is called slander of title and would also be abuse of copyright by
the Record labels. This would open them up to treble damages, lose of enforcement of the copyright
on the affected material, and punitive damages.
I'll confess the RIAA aren't terribly bright, suing your customers generally isn't productive.
Although it may be profitable for a time.
If you can name a case where the RIAA has done this, list it.
And while we're on this subject, if you've copied your music onto your PC and installed a P2P
and listed your music there, then yes you've made available copyrighted material to be copied and pirated that you do not own the copyrights on.
Now if they had some P2P application on their machine but only shared things that were not owned by someone else then they'd be innocent, but
that doesn't seem to be the case here and the judge ruled as he must... in accordance to the law.
So the fact that i have 800+ cds in my book case at home, and if i leave my front door unlocked then that is 'intent to distribute'?
What about my 2000 books? Intent there too?
What about my kitchen, its full of food. Does that make me an 'intent to feed' and cause me to be considered a restaurant?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Everyone needs to wake up here. Everyone knows that the RIAA has been suing everyone they can for mp3 trading. Yet, everyone still thinks that they are entitled to get something for nothing. You all justify out the wazoo how Kazaa is not a p2p file trading program. Yet, if you think about it, at least 90% of people who have that program installed on their machines use it for trading mp3 files. Even assuming that the original purpose of Kazaa was not for mp3 trading, that does not make it legal for people to use it for that purpose.
You all go ahead and keep downloading illegal mp3 files. Just ask yourself, is it really worth it to lose your life savings on this one, even if you were right and the judge was wrong? You'll be sitting in your cardboard box home under a bridge when you're 70 saying, "Well, at least I still have my ipod with 10 bazillion hours of music on it." And the rest of the world won't care.
Congratulations, Idiots
"Where do these mythical cases come from?"
Same place that the "I want the privacy to do illegal things and not get caught" come from.
"In what world is this insightful?"
Remember we're your posting?
The number of posts admitting to piracy and taking responsibility can be counted on one hand. The rest simply demonstrate the human capacity of self-rationalization that'll keep us from achieving the ideal vision we have tried to claim since the beginning.
I wanted to truly thank you for that post. I don't know how you can come here and post something as thoughtful and eloquent as that among the rabid "information was mean to be free" and "IP is 19th Century concept that should be abolished".
Watch out, you have made new, and potentially mentally unstable enemies with a coherent post. Boy, now you've really went and done it.
1st off: Very poor analogy. 2nd off you aren't advertising that your door is open, and that you have 800 cd's, 2000 books, come on in and help your self to a copy please make sure you leave the originals.
Why wouldn't you hang a sign on the door of your house letting everyone know it's open? I am giddy with excitement awaiting your reply. Lets see if you can answer it in 4 words or less.
The article summary posits a non-analogous argument ("using a program that could violate copyright law is about as illegal as leaving your back door unlocked") which doesn't properly reflect the plaintiff's position nor the objective facts of the dispute (a false analogy in this case, not a straw man fallacy). Setting up an anonymous file sharing device, and then not checking or knowing if illegal material has been stored there by others, is not like leaving your door unlocked. For a moment, let's assume it's not the emotionally laden and Slashdot sacred material of copyrighted music which was stored on the PC of a hapless KaZaa user. Suppose the material stored had been child pornography embedded stenographically with secret messages from Ossama bin Laden transmitted between members of Al-Qaeda. It's likely that no court would send the morons to jail, right? Probably. So the outrage might be justified.
However, the cause is not served by this fallacious argument, which appears frequently in Slashdot discussions, typically unchallenged. Transliterated from cyber to meat space, it's more like leaving the door to your house unlocked, for months, and ignoring the traffic that comes and goes while a 3rd party sets up a meth lab in your basement, or counterfeiting operation, or child pornography operation, or bomb-vest making and Al-Qaeda nut job brainwashing factory, for months. If you are an absentee landowner, you might not be held responsible, but if you're simply ignoring the fact that other people are using your property for illegal activity, then you're likely to be found liable to some degree. Hmm... it's really more like somebody set up a CD piracy print shop in your garage. It's exactly like that. You would probably go to jail.
Now, it might well be the case that copy right law run amok. I'm only speaking to a particular fallacious argument which one sees frequently on Slashdot, and now in this article summary.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
You're stealing potential profits from the copyright holder. Whether or not you think the sale would have been made if you hadn't pirated their work is irrelevant. If there is even a minuscule chance that you would have paid for it (and there always is), you are stealing potential profits.
It'd be like a pokie machine not paying its players. The payout wouldn't necessarily happen, but you pay for the chance of a big payout (or the thrill really, because you stand next to no chance making steady money from them). The pokie (or whoever owns it) would be stealing from you, even if you didn't happen to get a payout.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
I know eggsactly who'll be first against the wall!
Ruin comic guys life over this sort of stuff and he just might take up arms.
You know that bit from Star Wars where Luke finally decides to join the rebellion after his entire family is murdered. That isn't just a cliche. That tends to happen in real life. Some jackasses will push some peasant too far and he won't have anything left to lose.
What does it take to breed another unibomber?
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Pretty soon the US government will sue DARPA the creators of ARPANET, since it's the Internet and that all this stuff (torrent,p2p) needs to exist. Making the Internet available let all this happen ;)
So, following this logic, a rapist can walk free just because a woman made herself avilable by walking down a dark alley in a skirt?
The brunt of the responsibility of a crime should go to the people who actually commit them, be it stealing or otherwise.
You can get books, music, movies, printed music, and more copy written stuff at your local library. And they definitely have intent to distribute.
Like it or not, copyright law in the US reserves certain rights for authors, musicians, etc. The fact that nobody's sure how many people downloaded the song you made available doesn't make it legal, it just makes it more difficult to estimate damages. You also can't print up 1000 copies of a popular CD and leave them on a street corner.
While I agree that the RIAA should take a long walk off a short pier, there's a problem with the analogy. Let's say you install P2P software and it "helpfully" searches your hd for media files to share. You launch the software. You've now provided access to these files using software specifically designed for the purpose of file sharing. Arguing the absence of intent is like saying to someone, "I'm not gonna punch you. I'm just gonna hold out my fist and walk towards your head, and if your head hits my outstretched arm, that's your fault." Even if you intentionally leave your back door open, unless you hang out a sign reading, "Attention! Behind this wide open door there is a 72" plasma television on a dolly," you're not actively encouraging theft. Negligence at the most. Which leads to the scary part for me.
The Scary Part: Going with the modified back door analogy you could only be criminally liable for the theft of the telly if IT DOESN'T BELONG TO YOU, since you can't steal from yourself. So what this is saying is that having copyrighted music or media of whatever variety on your computer now carries with it some sort of custodial responsibility. Whee! I wonder how long it's gonna be before there's a Steam for music...
This unbiased moderation brought to you by the Porcine Aviation Group!
People pirate the music (movies, software, what have you) in vast quantities because they want it, they enjoy it, and it suits their purpose.
That's not a good idea. Giving the industry your mind share is almost as bad as giving them your money. Why do that when there's a whole alternate industry that does not mind if you share their work? There's enough free software, music and movies to entertain you forever so you don't need the stuff from the greed heads.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
When you buy a new CD, you are putting money into the pockets of
the RIAA. When you buy a used CD, you put your money into the
pocket of whoever last bought the CD, and the RIAA doesn't get
a penny. But neither do the artists
You can't take the sky from me...
Our GigaTribe software ( http://www.gigatribe.com/ ) lets users share specific folders on their harddrives with a private community of friends. Now, what's the difference with making available a portion of your harddrive to friends and making copies of the key to your front door and distributing them to friends? As far as I know, the latter is still legal (and people could walk in and borrow CDs), why shouldn't you have the right to let a few friends access your PC? (perhaps our GigaTribe software isn't really part of the main debate since our software is designed for private communities, and not millions of complete randoms?!)
If you can show, through evidence, that you intended to consume all of the Sprite yourself, you'd have rebutted that presumption.
And there's the rub. It is nearly impossible to prove a hypothetical future, especially when dealing with controlled substances where people generally do not keep records, or are willing to provide testimony, etc.
These legislative presumptions are usually used as clubs by prosecutors to force people into plea agreements.. You can plead guilty to simple possession, or you can go to trial on possession with intent to distribute which has a much larger potential penalty.
One can try to work around such blockage by using non-standard port numbers, but I understand that it's possible for ISPs to filter based on the content of packets, and not just the port numbers.
Theoretically, yes. In practice, no, as this would be hideously expensive and slow down ALL traffic considerably. Blocking a port, on the other hand, only involves checking the packet header - relatively trivial, and often cheaper (although it does have a cost in router CPU capacity) than buying more bandwidth.
(I am a Network Engineer for an ISP.)
If someone puts a copyrighted book on a copier and says, hey, here's a copier, if you want, you can come push the button and take home a copy without paying the copyright owner!, should that be illegal?
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
No, alleged is still alleged, copyright infringement is copyright infringement, and copyright infringement isn't theft under any set of laws, you dolt.
If you believe in privacy, and believe you have "nothing to hide" at the same time, you're a goddammed idiot
How do YOU sleep at night knowing that 'making available' a song that you don't own could wipe out your own savings? It's such a little thing, and SO easy to avoid... And yet, you do it anyhow.
The harder the RIAA makes things, the more they seal their doom.
Cases like this make me want to delete every non free recording I own, because it is increasingly difficult to enjoy or even own that music without risk. Long ago, I gave the asshole owners a substantial amount of my money for my music library. That was a mistake which no one should make today. The easiest thing to do now is to avoid music and movies that are owned by people who would happily ruin you for sharing. I've never used P2P to acquire or share music, nor have many of the accused. In this case, simply having the music where it could be seen was enough to ruin them. It's such a little thing with such huge consequences, why would anyone risk it? Music that can not be freely shared has no place in the digital future. The RIAA is signing it's own death warrent.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Well, 2015 is only 8 years away. And according to doctor emmitt brown, by that time we'll have abolished all lawyers. Then the world will be a much nicer place.
They make CDs available for stealing, too. At least while no one is looking. Should we sue them too for allowing CDs to be stolen?
That's just the web page misreporting seeders. I found your post amusing so I tried downloading something that had N/A for seeders (like everything else), and there were 3.
I agree with the sentiment though that it is time, now, for creative commons-licensed music to be *the thing*. In case anyone else isn't aware of it:
http://www.unsignedbandweb.com/
is worth a look.
I probably have opinions on all of this MPAA business, except I can't think of any MPAA release presently in print that I would *want* to download. Movies are dirt cheap; I can't be bothered to tie up bandwidth like that.
On a practical level, and I'm not advocating this - why not just join NetFlix, pay the fee, and safely rip movies of your preferred quality, dozens per month? It's still what they call theft or copyright infringement or stealing, or whatever the hell you want to call it, but it's easy, quick, and a lot safer than dealing with p2p issues. It blows my mind that people actually spend the time to download crap like, I don't know, one of the Matrix films, when they can probably find it online for ten lousy dollars somewhere.
As for seeing films before they're released, I literally cannot think of a time in my entire life this has been important enough to me to tie up bandwidth for that purpose. Seriously, and I've ranted about this before, that people would even take minimal risk to pir8 some Michael Bay or Jerry Bruckheimer shit...I'm surprised fans of movies like that have the IQ to even get their computer booted.
The bit that everyone is missing here is that people have MANY OTHER OPTIONS. Most MPAA and RIAA releases are crap. Sure there are isolated exceptions, but I have to wonder how much great music people have missed because they took so much time locating and downloading the commercial shit these organizations tell you to like, that you could have spent trying out NEW or UNSIGNED bands not yet on the MPAA's or RIAA's radar. From hip hop to sugary pop to bluegrass to death metal, there's free music of all kinds out there now that people could be listening to instead.
The best way to avoid being sued is to stop sucking at the record and movie industries' teats - because while it is true that a lot of "free music" sucks, is this not equally or more true of corporate rock or pop?
(1) Stop buying crappy, manufactured, paint-by-numbers, overproduced pablum out of aesthetic principle. Stop spending money on these miserable industries. As for "classic" rock or "classic" records, do you REALLY FUCKING NEED TO HEAR HEY JUDE AGAIN? HAVE WE NOT ALL HAD JUST ABOUT EFUCKINGNOUGH OF STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN? THINK ABOUT IT.
(2) Locate alternative sources for music that are aware that we live in the 21st century and that restricting content is a lost cause, however anyone feels about it from a profit perspective. Support them in whatever way you can. The age of the rock star must be brought to a forceful close, along with the distribution, marketing, and bureaucratic leeches who make money off of art but contribute nothing of worth in an age when artists can cheaply and effectively distribute music on their own terms, cheaply.
(3) Expand your damn horizons.
If you're pissed, the best thing you can do - the best thing anyone can do - is stop sharing your tired, worn-out, middling RIAA and MPAA crap, and share only the stuff you love that is free and where artists need the exposure the most. From my perspective, this stuff just cruds up my search results when I'm looking for something original or different.
Deny these companies their revenue stream by refusing to purchase their goods, or by being lawsuit bait by illegally sharing them. Watch the industry collapse and toast marshmallows over the flames. Yeah, I know, this kind of boycott has been called for a million times on Slashdot alone. But the consequences to these companies over the long term can simply be a side effect; the main reason to boycott
Oh and before someone else mentions it - unsignedbandwb.com isn't, as far as I know, Creative Commons, but it is free. By what license I do not know.
I'm on the Internet. I'm already an anonymous coward.
This way, people can track what I say and determine if it's worth it.
--AC
How long before the RIAA, if they haven't already done so here, create a phony case that they can absolutely win, just so that they then have the precedent to shove up every other judge's nose? The judges in this country seem to run in packs. Whatever one does, the rest find easier to follow than change. And many of them admit they don't even understand the technology -- or apparently copyright law -- yet they're willing to make decisions on it!
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Code 2319! We have a Code 2319!
"We are Microsoft. You shall be assimilated. Competition is futile."
> Now, if you have ripped the track from a CD yourself, the MD5 hash will be different
Are you sure about that? If two people use the same program (or at least the same algorithm) to rip the same song from two different physical CDs from the same production run, would the MD5s be different?
I'm not sure what I'm supposed to be putting up with, but here's a random sample of attorneys who appear to focus on the sort of hypo you presented. It took me ten minutes to find these via Google:
I'm not sure where you got the $5k retainer figure. Have you actually had that experience? You've tried to get legal help and no lawyers would help you without a $5k retainer?
I have to take issue with your comment about the characteristics of lawyers in general. You're making an incredibly broad generalization that covers a huge swath of territory, encompassing everyone from transactional attorneys who work for the county government, to public defenders, to the lawyers who work at the EFF, to cutthroat IP litigators. Saying "the characteristics of lawyers in general" is like saying "the characteristics of programmers in general." It's an unsupportable statement.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Now instead of a KaZaA application to search for other KaZaA applications, how about a "file sharing" program that doesn't publish any files in its own share directory, but just looks for the passive shares on publicly connected XP machines and lists their contents? You're not actively file sharing because you're not running KaZaA. You may have just put your music there for your other family computers to see. Are you "Making Available"?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
"If you were hoping judges would see reason and realize that just using a program that could violate copyright law is about as illegal as leaving your back door unlocked, think again."
More like standing out on a street corner handing out free bootleg copies to anyone who asks. All the rationalization in the world isn't going to convince anyone with any common sense that making p2p files available isn't circumventing copyright. Try setting up a web site with the ability to download the files. It's no different and just as illegal.
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[/ramble]
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Not if you use encryption like SSL. If you do, there's not possible way for them to tell the difference between bittorrent and online banking.
Oh, no! People are using the Internet! We'd better stop that. Crazy customers, thinking they actually paying for more than just the paper their bill is printed on.
They weren't stealing, they are guilty of copyright infringement. Unlawfully distributing music you don't own the copyright on is a violation of copyright law, that includes letting people download it from you. Each download you allow is a copyright violation. You own one copy of the music to do with as you please, as long as you don't make copies and give them away.
You may as well make 1000 copies of the latest rolling stones cd and hand them out to people on the street for free. You'd get the same treatment if you got caught. Anyone else see the similarity, outside the cost of the cd media and distribution medium?
How's one action different from the other, outside of the distribution media? This law is as old as copyright is... the fact it's happening on the internet doesn't change anything. It just makes it easier, faster, and a lot cheaper to do it. Just because it's easy and cheap, doesn't make it legal or excuse you of the penalty for this, which is to pay the copyright holder a royalty for every copy you distributed.
You people really need to pick up a copy of "This Business of Music" before you start quaffing about how evil a copyright holder is for standing up for themselves. Read the section on copyright, what it's for, and how it protects the artist and their agents.
Anyone that claims ignorance of the law is FOS because everyone knows it's wrong by now. If you take the risk you pay the price when you get caught.
-AC
This has nothing to do with YOUR back door... this is more like taking *someone else's* CD collection and putting it out on the front lawn with a "Free" sign. And then putting duplicates out on the lawn everday until 100s of thousands of CDs are taken. That is way beyond fair use.
Sharing files when you don't have permission to is a crime. No ifs ands or buts.
You're not "automatically guilty" of anything.
Sorry, I don't buy that. If I possess a large quantity of a controlled substance, the state can prove that I am guilty of possession. I am innocent, until proven guilty, of distribution or "possession with intent to distribute". A law stating that possessing X grams means I intend to distribute it is only evidence of the legislature's ignorance. Yet they turn around and put the burden of proof on me. Since it's impossible to prove my intent, no matter what it is, I can't meet that burden and I go to jail. I have then been found guilty of possession with intent to distribute, without the government having made their case beyond a reasonable doubt. This is utterly wrong.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
If it's the customer, they get busted for solicitation, not prostitution.
We are the 198 proof..
The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers.
I know this is OT but this is something I'd like to know, is legaltorrents.com really just a frontpage of torrents with no way to search or browse them? Is the site really that limited or am I just being stupid?
Does anyone watch 'Bait Car' on Court TV, where police departments place unlocked cars with the keys in them in high crime/ high traffic areas, then arrest anyone who helps themselves to the cars? Under this precedent, wouldn't the police departments also be liable for the car thefts?
Having Windows installed is potentially sharing data with people too. Those damn security holes.
\
But if you have a large amount of it, then a presumption enters in favor of intent to distribute. If you do not refute that presumption, then the State does not have to prove anything. There is no actual burden shift, because you do not accept the burden of proving your innocence to the level of beyond a reasonable doubt. You must merely refute that you had any intent to distribute to a standard below beyond a reasonable doubt, usually clear and convincing, though I'm sure some jurisdictions might use lower standards like preponderance of the evidence or even a scintilla.
Finally, it is not impossible to prove intent. Every criminal case in the history of the common law (with the exception of a very few strict liability crimes) requires proof of a mental state. Every capital murder trial requires proof of intent. You can easily refute any presumption within the law.
IAALS.
Beyond even what another poster has said, there's a problem. Those are sentencing guidelines. They don't factor in during the guilt/innocence phase of a trial. You may not know this, but most trials have two parts -- the adjudicatory phase, where your guilt or innocence is determined. Then, if you're found guilty by the fact-finder, you move on to punishment. In the federal system, you are then exposed to the sentencing guidelines. While I agree with you that this vastly limits the discretion of judges and juries to affix proper punishments, it does not provide the prosecutor any aid at guilt/innocence. In fact, these guidelines can be counter-productive for the State as well, because sometimes juries impose harsher sentences that the guidelines would call for.
IAALS.
Hasn't anyone noticed in just about all these filesharing programs that the file you are downloading is being shared at the same time and you have no control over it. The files come down in pieces and as another piece is downloaded the previously downloaded piece is being shared. It's all done in the program and is necessary for all the pieces to stay where they are in order for the file to be reconstituted by the program. The user cannot control that part of the process and given that description the current statement by the judge is flawed. Also program controls rarely affect this feature as it defeats the entire point of filesharing in the first place. If anything even if the file is blocked from being uploaded the filename isn't, just because you can see a filename doesn't mean you can get the file and upload capability isn't always indicated. Wake up judge, there is alot more here than meets the eye.
The home of Sheriff Arpaio.
'Nuff said.
You want "justice" - stay out of Arizona, Texas and the rest of those "hanging judge" blue states. Not that the rest of the US is all that sharp in that regard...
Should have let Mexico keep 'em - let them enjoy "Mexican justice."
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
To prove a crime, the State must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that you intentionally or knowingly possessed a controlled substance as defined by the relevant law. If you possess it, you may not do so intentionally (it was left at your house by a guest, and you had no knowledge of it). You still have to be proven guilty.
For simple posession, yes. In order to prove someone guilty of possession with intent to distribute you have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that both they possessed said substance AND that they intended to distribute it. If you fail to prove either condition beyond a reasonable doubt, then you have not proven the case for posession with intent to distribute.
There is no actual burden shift, because you do not accept the burden of proving your innocence to the level of beyond a reasonable doubt.
OK, maybe the burden doesn't shift to me, but it certainly shifts away from the prosecution which means that it is not meeting the standard of reasonable doubt.
Finally, it is not impossible to prove intent.
Not only is it impossible to prove what my intent is, it's impossible to prove that I am capable of intent at all. Go ask a philosopher how he knows you're not a zombie.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
The only albums I still buy are from Weird Al. A cool enough guy to give away songs on his website and to make a song called "Don't Download this Song" which pokes fun at the message being delivered by the RIAA (and MPAA). I'll drop $250 to go to a Weird Al concert before I'd spend $15 on someone elses crappy DRM'd CD.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
Google claims your third acronym is the only instance of those six characters on the whole internet. I am impressed.
Well, not exactly. When you talk to your bank, it's generally between your computer and the bank's server, and only on ports 80 and 443. Bittorrent generally opens up connections to a bunch of computers on a bunch of random ports and starts transferring large amounts of data between them all. It's pretty obvious what's going on without peeking into the packets themselves.
When lawyers talk about intent, we're talking about something different than philosophers (I wear each hat occasionally, so bear with me). Intent is a mens rea. In fact, it's the most common mens rea. It is "proven" in a court of law by circumstantial evidence, testimony, etc. "Intent" in philosophy is something different, something subjective. It can't be "proven" by philosophical standards, because proof in philosophy is vastly different than proof in the law.
IAALS.
we leave the facilities and the origional work unattended maybe? could I come into a library and start making a thousand copies of the entire latest time magazine for instance so I could hand them out to random folk for copies of magazines they've made at their library? Yet we can still read the magazine at the library because society feels that this is a fair use.
Well, wow.
Consult Your Local Dealer For Details.
The last one is "What Does This Acronym Mean?"
---
ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
Actually, the RIAA does benefit (monetarily at that) from this transaction: only a little thought is necessary to show how.
It's tempting to interpret used music sales as "sunk sales" or battles already lost, but that's not how money or economics work. When you buy a used CD from Used CD Shop LLP, or even through a private sale between individuals, you 1) provide incentive and 2) give material aide to the seller to buy more RIAA wares. No matter how many transactions removed any particular transaction may be, the origin was the RIAA's sale of that CD (to _anyone_ else).
Money flows rather like the flow of electric current in your house: The electrons you use didn't come all the way from the power company, and they didn't have to for the power to originate there. Your bank notes or wire credit etc. didn't have to go all the way to the RIAA-entity for them to benefit from your transaction.
At least a few, probably many, and arguably most transactions involving "second-sale" CDs or whatever provide economic stimulus to every link in the industry-chain. That even includes the "current" owner, because that's $5 they could recoup and spend on something else! The current owner thus has the same incentive to sell that every previous buyer-come-seller had: get money for something else.
Actually, ISP's blocking BT traffic might not be a P2P issue. More likely, it's a matter of money, i.e. they don't want to support your (or their other customers' who use BT) high bandwidth use. So they use the P2P angle as an excuse for blocking a huge percentage of the packets going through their pipes. After all, P2P has such a bad rap these days among the official types that if you say anything that might be taken to support its use, you're automatically presumed to have a desire to infringe on someone's copyrights, resulting in your arguments being marginalized. Heck, you live in Canada; that's already true for when you buy storage media.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
If the Bell labs had not invented the transistor, they couple would have never commited the act. Clearly AT&T should be sued.
... it's also WHERE and HOW you make it available! If your property is in my unlocked house (or PC) and someone steals it, I obviously had no criminal intent. But if your property is in my driveway garage sale, that's an easy call of intent to traffic in stolen goods. Whatever's in a Kazaa upload folder is in the garage sale.
It's more:
1. The We'll Say And Do Anything To Acquire And Retain Power Party (1), backed by the Oil and Media industries
2. The We'll Say And Do Anything To Acquire And Retain Power Party (2). backed by the Media and Oil industries
Just like he said, if you want tyranny, then kill all the lawyers.
I agree with you, Shakespeare was right when he observed that lawyers are one of the strongest bulwarks against tyranny.
It's like leaving a lawn chair out in your yard while you go out. Somebody could conceivably swipe it, but you don't have an excuse since you didn't chain it down.
98% of America's teens drink alcohol, smoke, and have sex. Put this in your sig if you like bagels.