MPAA is Awarded $110 Million In TorrentSpy Case

An anonymous reader writes "The MPAA was awarded a staggering judgment in its case against the BitTorrent indexing site TorrentSpy. According to Slyck.com, a judge in California rendered a $110 million victory for the MPAA, and a permanent injunction against TorrentSpy."

Comments

Congrats MPAA...

[Anonymous Coward]

You won $110 million from a site that doesn't even exist anymore.

LOL

[afxgrin]

What're they going to do? Confiscate their pencils and sell them on eBay for 5 cents?

I'm sure the defendants have no where near $110 million, and if they have to keep paying it out of income they receive in the future, what's the point of even working?

Might as well squat an abandoned building in New Orleans instead. Move to some remote wilderness area and live off the land. Sounds like much better options than paying that kind of debt down.

Re:LOL

[Anonymous Coward]

Id prolly just assassinate the judge and all of the MPAA people and their attorneys.

What do you have to lose if you are already wrecked financially for life as you have that on your credit history preventing you from even renting a dump apartment?

Its not just that you have to pay 2/3 your income the rest of your life to the bastards, you will never have one again.

And all this for hosting torrent files? This is bloody insane.

Re:LOL

[Anonymous Coward]

And the $110,000,000 is just for infringements on movies belonging to 5 MPAA members.

Wait until the lawsuits roll in from every other movie studio, tv producer, music studio and porn maker that they held torrents for. They're going to end up owing more than the GDP of the world as a whole.

Re:LOL

[Anonymous Coward]

Bankruptcy isn't that bad. You get a fairly fresh start afterward.

Re:LOL

[Paradise Pete]

LOL all you want, but if you don't think a lifelong financially crippling judgement isn't going to get other sites to shut down then you're just kidding yourself.

Re:LOL

[LrdDimwit]

No, they won't. From a cost/benefit point of view, there's no point in getting an eight or nine figure judgement from someone who's already under one and hasn't got any money to pay THAT one. You'd be throwing bad money after good: your firm would personally be spending a huge amount on legal costs, only to get a worthless judgement (worthless because they will have already been picked clean by the people who won the first time). No, that would only happen if something ridiculous were to transpire (like some crazy people buying TorrentSpy and paying off the judgement) and they somehow paid it all off and reopened for business.

Re:LOL

[Anonymous Coward]

Spoken like some spoiled, protected child who has no idea what he's talking about. You have clearly never been to prison or known anyone who has been if you think bankruptcy is somehow worse than life in prison.

Re:LOL

[easyTree]

Don't get depressed, get even.

If you are screwed-over by the corporations-and-courts system, wouldn't it make more sense to direct your angst away from yourself and towards the source ?

Re:LOL

[cyber-vandal]

Google remove stuff on request.

Re:LOL

[Paradise Pete]

And one might argue that the world would be a slightly better place to live in if it was not so... Imagine. A company actually taking responsibility for its actions.

What would happen is that nobody would be willing to go into anything but the most mundane businesses. Who in the world would put their entire life's assets constantly at risk, especially in the Sue S.A., where misfortune is looked upon as a stroke of good luck.

For example, I was witness to this conversation:

Person #1: "...and they had to amputate his arm."
Person #2: "Oh man he's going to get millions! I'd let them chop off my arm for a million."

Also, the corporate shield is not magically impenetrable. If there's gross negligence, for instance, or fraud.

Perspective

[abscissa]

To put this is some perspective, the US has offered Burma (Myanmar) $3m in aid.

Re:Perspective

[icedevil]

TFA mentions that the MPAA was awarded $30,000 per infringement. So following your lead the US thinks the people of Burma are worth $30 per person (assuming the 100,000 figure is somewhat accurate.)

Re:Perspective

[Anonymous Coward]

You're an asshole. We don't have to offer ANY aid, and the Myanmar government won't let us come in to help anyways. Even France is limiting direct monetary aid because the miliary junta will just use it for themselves, not to help the people.

The US does plenty of stuff to be criticized for. That's not one of them. Way to go for cheap karma farming on slashkos though.

Re:Perspective

[Original Replica]

the US has offered Burma (Myanmar) $3m in aid.

To put that into perspective, that is about 24 minutes worth of war in Iraq.

Re:Perspective

[Bragador]

You know, if we remove "You're an asshole." and "Way to go for cheap karma farming on slashkos though.", your comment is quite insightful. Why not try to be more civilized next time? So much hatred...

Re:Perspective

[c6gunner]

It is sad to think of it like that. I guess ensuring copyright laws are enforced is worth more than human lives.

Go for a walk through any third-world ghetto, dressed as you are now, and you'll find exactly how much a human life is worth. The best damn teacher I ever knew got killed in Mexico over his shoes and his wife's purse.

Copyright laws help bring about all the things in life which you take for granted. Take a look around your room - I guarantee that every item you see at least partly owes it's existence to intellectual property laws. Those laws helped encourage people to invent and create, which in turn enriched out culture and our society. Without them, chances are that you wouldn't give a damn about the "value" of human life. You'd be too worried about where your next meal would come from.

Re:Perspective

[Anpheus]

The era of perpetual copyright was brought on by a few individuals that refused to invent and create any longer, and instead sought to make money indefinitely off the nostalgic value of their works.

I'm looking at you, Disney.

And to you, c6gunner, I'm not saying that copyright shouldn't exist, but perhaps... the original 14 year timeframe was adequate. The film, Iron Man, made $100,000,000 in three days of sales, in 14, 50, or well over one hundred years can Hollywood justify why it needs to retain the sole distribution rights to something that was envisioned by someone who has already died? (Referring to the 100+ year copyright terms most countries have these days.)

Re:Perspective

[Lumpy]

$3m to Burma will feed everyone and build them all new houses.

$110m to the RIAA/MPAA is caviar lunch on thursday.

Re:Perspective

[Lumpy]

And everything in my room was created by STEALING those intellectual property. How the hell do you think Compaq and Dell came to be? STEALING IBM's Intellectual property.

All cars outside of FORD are also based on STOLEN intellectual Property.

so we either play by your rules and roll back to the dark ages, or we play sane and copy the crap out of everyones idea and actually move foreward in technology.

I'm for copying the every living hell out of everything.

Re:Perspective

[Crayon Kid]

First of all, there's no such thing as "intellectual property" no matter who insists upon it. You can't own information and to pretend anyone does is stupid. You can control where information gets, yes. You can award people certain rights for original creations, yes (that is what copyright is). But you can't treat pieces of information like potatoes, no matter how some people and corporations would like to.

Second, I think you're confusing copyright and patents at least on some level. Most physical inventions are protected by patents, not copyright. As for the incentive argument, it's questionable. There's free software as well as all kinds of content out there available for free. People who create it don't have any incentive in the sense you imply, yet they keep doing it, and they can do so because of copyright.

So I have to disagree to your attempt at putting copyright and patents together as if they were both nothing more than making money for the authors. It's a misrepresentation of both.

Re:Perspective

[jedidiah]

The ability to milk warmed over 500 year old and 3500 old folk tales
does squat for my current standard of living. This is ENTERTAINMENT
we're talking about here and copyright. Even if we were talking about
the right sort of IP (IOW, PATENTS) you're still wildly off the mark
as most of human advancement in the sciences is done through academic
cooperation rather than cut-throat capitalistic competition.

If 100 years ago, patents were like modern copyrights then all of the
cushy conveniences YOU take for granted wouldn't exist.

They would be sued out of existence.

Tivo is a nice case in point here.

Re:Perspective

[Lemmy Caution]

The point is how ridiculously inflated the award is, not how meager aid to Myanmar is, you bilious twat.

Re:Perspective

[NewsWatcher]

Your caricature of third world life is laughable.

I have travelled extensively through poor African and Pacific nations. I have dressed in many different ways, although usually in clothing similar to what I wear down the street in the first world nation I live in.

Not only have the people in the ghettos valued human life highly, they are not afraid to show it.

I have epilepsy and after having a seizure at a slum in Nairobi I found that while unconscious I had been collected, taken to a taxi and the fare paid to take me to a hospital. My passport, wallet etc was safe and sound.

If you are too scared to explore some of these countries yourself, I don't think you should paint their people as blood-thirsty tyrants.

Re:Perspective

[Archonoid]

Copyright laws help bring about all the things in life which you take for granted. Take a look around your room - I guarantee that every item you see at least partly owes it's existence to intellectual property laws. Those laws helped encourage people to invent and create, which in turn enriched out culture and our society. Without them, chances are that you wouldn't give a damn about the "value" of human life. You'd be too worried about where your next meal would come from.

Bullshit. The printing press wasn't created with intellectual property laws. The wheel wasn't created to be patented. Houses were not created with IP. The greatest poems, stories, and music in history were created by authors with no concept of copyright. Medical and scientific breakthroughs - penicillin, radiation, relativity, electromagnetism, chemistry, gravitation - were not made for IP, but for the use of all - the exact opposite of IP. Man's greatest achievement, his ascent to the moon - and the myriad technologies that quest created - was not fueled by a search for patents.

What keeps me safe and secure is not copyright, it is the society I live in and the value placed on human life and liberty by those who surround me, along with the willingness of the government to protect me with police and military force. What allows me to make money and provide for myself and my family is my intelligence, education and ability to solve problems that people want solved, not laws about what I can or can't do with knowledge and information.

Copyright has jack shit to do with how I am able to secure my lifestyle, except insofar as it prevents me from fully enjoying the cultural heritage that has been created over the last 70 years. The other major form of IP, patents, have encouraged some people to create some things - and at the same time have locked away the best technologies of the century behind proprietary bars, in many cases not even being used by the companies that "invented" them, and have wasted countless time and money from government, corporations and individuals that have to deal with the bureaucratic abomination of the patent system.

Re:Perspective

[Anonymous Coward]

the US thinks the people of Burma are worth $30 per person

No, the US thinks the people of Burma will cost $30 each to save. Big difference. Since many of them could be saved just by properly burying the dead, there is some plausibility to this low figure.

Re:Perspective

[jd]

I was unaware that ethics()-class functions were tail-recursive and could not be called from outside. How do you bootstrap them?

Re:Perspective

[jd]

"have to" is an interesting choice of words. Nobody is compelled to be ethical, civilized or compassionate, that is true. The thing is, you cannot be enlightened, rational or progressive if you are not ethical, civilized AND compassionate, and no nation on the scale of America can hope to remain functional or even a country if it is not enlightened, rational AND progressive. Civilizations that will themselves into uncaring, xenophobic and irrational mindsets collapse. The Soviet Union did not fall because of America, it fell because you cannot sustain an organization on such a scale with a mindset of selfish greed and contempt. Selfishness and paranoia are self-destructive. This is not a political possibility, it is a mathematical certainty, inescapable, merely delayable.

But no civilization (or individual) "has" to survive. That is a choice. It is a choice reflected less by that civilization's attitude towards itself as it is reflected by that civilization's attitude towards others. That is why civilizations with a poor attitude decay, wither and die. It may take a while - the fall of the Roman Empire was spread over 800 years - but if rot is what you give, rot is all you'll have. It may seem a paradox that it is in the giving that you gain, but it is the unmutable truth.

Re:Perspective

[Pig Hogger]

Go for a walk through any third-world ghetto, dressed as you are now, and you'll find exactly how much a human life is worth. The best damn teacher I ever knew got killed in Mexico over his shoes and his wife's purse.

This happens in societies where the law allows a small handful of people to suck all the wealth of a country, leaving nothing to the majority of people. This is the norm for turd-world countries such as Mexico, where people are forced in such abject poverty that all too often, their only way out is through crime.

Copyright laws help bring about all the things in life which you take for granted. Take a look around your room - I guarantee that every item you see at least partly owes it's existence to intellectual property laws. Those laws helped encourage people to invent and create, which in turn enriched out culture and our society. Without them, chances are that you wouldn't give a damn about the "value" of human life. You'd be too worried about where your next meal would come from.

Copyright laws have nothing to do with insuring that purses are not stolen and shoes unkilled. Copyright laws also have nothing to do in insuring investment either. All copyright laws do is divert precious public ressources into protecting intangible "property" that is still used to suck more wealth from the people.

Copyright laws have nothing to do with the clothes I am wearing.

Copyright laws have nothing to do with the chair I'm sitting on.

Copyright laws have nothing to do with the light on my desk.

Re:Perspective

[LonghornXtreme]

I have to disagree that there is no such thing as 'intellectual property.' There certainly is IP. However, you and I likely agree that the IP laws aren't satisfactory.

IP protection to creators and inventors are important because of the need to balance creation with production. In an ideal world, IP laws would only allow the creators enough protection to produce enough (or sell enough software if you don't consider duplicating software as production) product to recoup the costs of creating the success, the costs of creating previous and future failures and make some damn profit.

Without IP laws preventing a 3rd party from immediately taking a creators idea and producing it, you would have little incentive to create because you couldn't make any money off of it. Not only that, you'd find that the most powerful companies would merely be copy cat manufacturers without RnD budgets that would beat the little guy with their economies of scale.

I think copyright should be until the creator's death, and maybe a +10 years from creator's death for creator's assigns. Not this in perpetuity crap.

I think the patent durations might be a touch too long however, the real issue is the frivolity of many patents, not their durations.

Re:Perspective

[easyTree]

Except Burma is corrupt as hell..

lol! You realise that you're posting on a thread which indicates that the USofA is corrupt as hell? $110 fine for helping ppl to watch films lol. Did I mention 'lol' ?

Re:Perspective

[wall0159]

You're absolutely right. Also -- if they don't have bread, why don't they eat cake?

Re:Perspective

[WeirdJohn]

In other words, Ford did for the car industry what Bit Torrent did for electronic Media...

Re:Perspective

[fishbowl]

> We don't have to offer ANY aid, and the Myanmar government won't let us come in to help
>anyways.

From their point of view, they see permanent risks of letting the camel's nose under their tent in response to a temporary crisis. And the value of all this "aid for Burma" is somewhat limited, and coming from nations that are bitter enemies of their very system of government. The dead can't be helped. Nothing is going to bring back the season for the agricultural sector. No amount of "aid" is going to suddenly create an infrastructure that can deal any better with millions of refugees than they can do at this moment themselves. But from the perspective of the Myanmar government (totalitarian asshole dictatorship that it is), it's quite insulting for all these wealthy nations to assume that they can't handle the aftermath of this storm.

I'm not defending them, but I can see why it's difficult for them to accept foreign aid, especially from some of the countries that are offering it, in the amounts being offered. They realize (correctly!) that leaders of some of the countries offering aid would very much like to see the Myanmar government replaced. Why should they be expected to let their guard down when they are weakened? The country will recover from the storm one way or another.

Politics aside, after seeing how the US dealt with New Orleans would *you* invite them to YOUR disaster?

Re:Perspective

[ravenshrike]

*shrugs* The money is the only thing that gives Israel a reason to listen to the US. Do you really think they would have put up with the terrorist bullshit from the territories and Lebanon otherwise? We're paying weregild for Israels dead, pure and simple.

Re:Perspective

[jd]

Ethics is unconcerned with the actions of others. Ethics is concerned with the actions of the individual person or group deciding on how to act. A decision based on others is a decision based on cowardice, because it must result in the ultimate decision being made by the greatest coward. It is also a decision based on foolishness, because it must result in the ultimate power being granted to the greatest fool. The wise do not concern themselves with the folly of others, their concern is with the result of what ends up being done. What ends up not being done, or who ends up not doing it is of no importance. Even the youngest child has wisdom enough to know a copy-cat is worthy of nothing more than a sneer, and to copy another's decision because they neglect their duties to another is the most pathetic copy-cat of all.

But what are those consequences? A deprived society consumes more than it produces, it is a drain on the economy of the world and a burden to all. A reconstructed society produces more than it consumes and will regenerate the cost of the reconstruction. A society that can pay for itself and more is a society that has repaid those who invest in it being such. A fool might argue that others could benefit too. They probably won't. You tend to receive what you put into other's lives. (You gain almost nothing from what you put into your own life. Hedonists tend to have empty lives and emptier pockets.) An optimal life is therefore one that gives much and gives appropriately. (There are fascinating charts on the different forms of giving and how useful they are. Many forms of giving are not giving at all and are quite useless.)

This is mathematically provable, but it has also been the cornerstone of many a social awakening throughout history. The earliest philosopher-scientists tended to be ascetics, which is going a bit too far, but their underlying principle that all things are linked and that you cannot attain insight or wisdom through the exclusion of a part of life, is sound. That same underlying principle can be found in all social efforts to develop progressive, compassionate societies with minimal suffering.

I've chosen those words carefully, and a few might recognize what becomes the first step. All of life is suffering, and that includes the suffering of fools and idiots. Pomposity, grandiosity, nationalism, copy-cat-ism - they feel great, but ultimately stem from deluded thinking. They are a way of hiding suffering or blaming our actions on others, rather than take responsibility for ourselves. If you believe yourself responsible for your decisions, then the decisions of another are merely the scenery passing by. It is analogous to a full-information scenario. Your strategy, if fundamentally correct, is determined only by the scenario - although the reverse is not true. Not everything determined only by the scenario is correct. It is strictly a one-way function.

If wisdom is ever found in the mouths of children, it is because those adults have lost sight of what matters. Think more like a child, not in their stupidity but in their wisdom. They're smart enough to recognize that many of the things you attach so much weight to just don't matter. They're chimera, impermanent details of the moment, the illusions of ignorance, and have nothing to do with an optimal life.

If you prefer, look at it holistically. A healthy world is like a healthy body. It doesn't matter where a cancer starts, or what mechanisms in the body ignore it, if you fail to treat it, it will kill you. It is of no importance if the spleen fails to pull its own weight, you do what is needed and benefit yourself, or you punish your body to punish the spleen and you will die. If you do what you need to do in the first place, though, the odds of that cancer ever forming are greatly reduced and the odds of you overcoming the harm quickly are greatly increased. That must be your concern, not what some insignificant bunch of cells somewhere decides. (Of course, they do help, it greatly simplifies your task, but the effective cure must be independent of who does what, and be solely dependent on what needs doing getting done.)

This is neither left nor right, neither karmic or non-karmic, it simply is.

Re:Perspective

[houghi]

I like that: X minutes of war in Iraq. Fits nice into the libraries of congress measurement.

Re:Perspective

[Anonymous Coward]

You are saying that the scientific study of radiation was done "for the use of all"? I would bet that some Japanese would beg to differ. "The ascent to the moon"? Please. If "for the use of all" you mean to beat the Russians and win a PR war, sure.
Exactly how has copyright prevented you from enjoying the "cultural heritage" of the last 70 years? If you look at history, there have been forms of IP laws since 500 BC. Do you really know about your famous inventors and their IP stances? Thomas Edison had over 1000 patents to his name at the time of his death. I could go on, but anyone can use google for themselves. In closing, don't be so naive that you actually think that there weren't the same IP problems 500 years ago as there are now.

Re:Perspective

[aussie_a]

Not only that, but the US thinks the people of Burma will cost $30 plus all the money others have donated each to save

Re:Perspective

[gordo3000]

uh.... this is why copyright law was invented in the first place, because things we value could be copied freely thereby removing the incentive to create.

copyright law allows the free market to decide which types of art get funding(i.e. everyone gets to vote) rather than how it used to be, a few very wealthy patrons + the government determining a large body of artwork out there.

In the case of art works, the original has no value without some type of restriction of reproduction.

This, in the end, is just one of those funny verdicts that makes me think of Dr. Evil. Torrent Spy did break the law as it has already been interpreted. It would have taken a great case and no shady actions by them to pull off a victory(though it was possible). But then, who cares if it's a 110 mm dollar verdict or 1mm dollar verdict. The company doesn't have 7 figures of money... I doubt it has 6 figures of money even after taking into account the value of all it's assets. They have probably been draining most cash and assets to pay for lawyers for the last 2 years so the MPAA really gets absolutely nothing in the end.

The debate shouldn't be about what the courts ought to have done(the interpreted the law as is). The debate should be about what copyright law needs to be modified to in the 21st century. of course, as long as it remains just this easy to break copyright laws, I doubt anyone will expend the energy or political clout to tackle this issue. It's just not worth it for the vast majority of people. The RIAA has probably not even gotten around to suing 10,000 people. That is against probably 80 million people in the US committing infringement (and countless more around the world). Really, what kind of political movement can be started by 10,000 people who had to pay a 3k fine? We have bigger problems (really, we do in this country) to worry about what kind of fine you should pay for breaking a long standing law.

*shrug*

[Anonymous Coward]

they've spent a fortune on litigation, to obtain a judgement they can't collect on & a worthless injunction, against a site that was never any good in the first place and shut down a few month ago anyway.

More fool them.

Re:*shrug*

[InlawBiker]

It only shut down when the legal threats began. Meanwhile how many new torrent trackers have popped up? This is the definition of "hollow victory."

Re:*shrug*

[DesScorp]

they've spent a fortune on litigation, to obtain a judgement they can't collect on & a worthless injunction, against a site that was never any good in the first place and shut down a few month ago anyway.

More fool them. They never expected to collect any money. This was all about sending a message to other Torrent sites and P2P networks. "We've got legal precedent and unlimited resources. We're coming after you."

Re:*shrug*

[Slawshdork]

Please note that parent is not legal analysis and does not at all represent how federal courts in the United States work. See my post on precedent for an explanation. For the most part, it doesn't seem that the issues in this case are even related to the interpretation of "making available." According to News.com, "The studios originally sued TorrentSpy in February 2006, alleging that the site promoted and contributed to online copyright infringement by helping people locate illegally copied films and television shows on the Internet." Contributory infringement != making available. Thanks for playing.

Re:*shrug*

[xenobyte]

The Legal team over at google is looking at this and going 'oh fuck no'.

Exactly, and yet no. Google is simply too big for MPAA/RIAA to go after. Googles lawyers can keep a case like this tied up in courts for decades and the MAFIAA knows this.

But in reality it is exactly the same thing. The court actually said that despite efforts to remove copyrighted materials, despite inplementing a tool that made it easy for rights owners to remove their IP, TorrentSpy are still liable for the stuff they index. Google indexes millions of pages containing illegal stuff, from kiddie porn, over terrorist manuals to IP in all its forms, and they've made no effort to make it easy to remove these things from the index (which would be censorship, but still), so if TorrentSpy is liable, so is Google and to a much higher degreee.

Re:That's all?

[Weaselmancer]

Why start playing by the rules now?

No crime, but still punished.

[joocemann]

Did they not have a posting that says "We are not responsible for the torrents we index" ??? From my understanding it is not illegal to refer instructions for things that may be illegal. For example, I can go buy books with instructions on producing illegal substances, bombs, and weapons. Does that make borders a criminal? If the torrent indexing site was not directly providing illegal property, but only directions on how to get it, they should not be penalized. Oh... And a thought I had today: Lawyers are adults that act like children; trained to help adults that act like children.

Re:No crime, but still punished.

[Anonymous Coward]

Downloaders update the tracker. A tracker site like TorrentSpy could be said to be coordinating the activity.

Re:No crime, but still punished.

[joocemann]

So if you ask me where to buy a gun, I say "go to walmart". You go to walmart buy it, then kill someone.... That means I coordinated the murder?

Re:No crime, but still punished.

[Dan541]

So is the users ISP

Re:How is this even possible!!?!?!?!!!

[SYSS Mouse]

Exactly, Google index Pirate Bay results. Is the MAFIAA going to sue Google?

And people wonder...

[hairyfeet]

Why the USA is looked at as total idiots. Betting the entire economy on imaginary property that can be easily copied for $0 while gutting our factories and even outsourcing our jobs at home through H1-B visas. Hmmm-I wonder where the flaw in THAT plan is? The simple fact is just as the automobile has forced those in the horse buggy business to adapt or die so will ever more powerful broadband and MP3 players force software and music companies to change or die. Instead of seeing that change is a part of progress and looking for ways to make capital on this new business model the *.AA along with their lackeys in congress will try to put the genie back in the bottle with ever more draconian laws.

Meanwhile the rest of the world will adapt while we sink further and further into a third world fascist state. While I really hope that we'll see the writing on the wall and our leaders will realize granting themselves and their big business buddies ever more increasing powers over our lives is a dead end road, after watching this march as it continues its dance of failure for the past 20+ years I sincerely doubt we're in for anything other than more of the same: More of the same bad leadership, more of the same bad laws,and more of the same police state crap to protect us "from terrorists and those evil child predators" which is of course a smokescreen for more business and government control over our lives. But that is my 02c,YMMV

Re:And people wonder...

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe the same thing. Cisco is a prefect example. They hire cheap labor and manufacturer overseas. When the cheap labor makes some "counterfeit" overruns, the local police officers and the FBI, step in to lend Cisco a hand under the cover of national security issues [1]. That enforcement is our tax dollars. Companies like Cisco get it good from two angles. Cheap labor and tax payer dollars to fight the clone/overrun non official parts. Think about it, Cisco could manufacture the devices in an area that they have more control which would cost Cisco more, or choose China and let the taxpayers foot the bill for the control.

[1] If the government was so concerned about the national security from using non licensed Cisco products, why are they not worried about using the "real" Cisco approved products made in the same plant by the same people?

Re:How is this even possible!!?!?!?!!!

[tepples]

Torrentspy contained ZERO copyright material Neither did Napster. Is there a difference?

Re:What is the method of determining damages?

[Gewalt]

The only way to semi-accurately calculate their losses is to look at their declining profits year to year, which I would consider a real value partially accountable to piracy. But... Their profits have been rising... Year over year, their blockbusters are increasingly more profitable. And its the blockbusters that get pirated the most. So by your logic (and most sane peoples logic), piracy is actually helping their sales. What's killing their profits is the movies they produce that aren't any good.

someone forgot to tell the immigrants

[Anonymous Coward]

that we are a delapidated, third world country. i guess those millions of people from mexico, africa, asia, etc, who come here must be under some delusion. but once they find out you cant set up a website to help people get movies for free, i guess they will figure america is, truly, a third world country, and head back to a mequilladora to make 3 dollars a day

Re:How is this even possible!!?!?!?!!!

[nurb432]

Knowledge transfer is forbidden in this society.

This is just the beginning..

Re:How is this even possible!!?!?!?!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Except, theres no such crime as accessory to copyright infringement, or 'contributory infringement'. It doesn't exist, the RIAA/MPAA wants there to be one very badly, but such a thing doesn't exist yet.

You are, as an individual, either personally infringing, or your not.

Telling you a drug dealer lives down the street does not make me 'contributing to narcotic distribution' (or whatever the fuck we'd call it) anymore than telling you theres an illegal copy of a movie at www.torrentsite.com/illegalshit.torrent makes me responsible with what you do with that information.

Information, and acting on that information are two different things. Thats why you can download the specs for building a goddamn H bomb off the net.

Knowledge truly is free, thats not some open source feel good slogan, its true. What is done with that knowledge is the important part, and the only part thats actionable.

United States

[Swampash]

Hear that sound, that enormous wash of white noise like the mother of all surf on the mother of all beaches?

That's the whole world laughing. At you.

Damn you Glan Dickman, Damn you!

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh well, one falls by the wayside and three rise up to replace it.....

They proved a point or two.

[gnutoo]

You can't do business in the US because there is no free press there. It's the Napster case all over again and the courts have learned nothing in the last decade. Their lust to protect what they perceive as a big US business interest has them reaching these absurd rulings for tenuous secondary encouragement of copyright infringement. The fact that it's impossible for anyone to tell who "owns" a digital file is reason to rethink copyright not destroy people's ability to share things they have every right to share. Decisions like this will leave the US a broadcast backwater in a world that's bursting with free culture.

Re:They proved a point or two.

[ravenshrike]

The only reason they even got in trouble was because they started to delete the actual forum logs and such after the trial had started. At that point they were boned, seeing as it was a civil case and pretty much all the time destruction of evidence = guilt in such cases.

Re:They proved a point or two.

[Anonymous Coward]

Those are some funny +5 Insightful questions.

Two questions then:

1. Why is it impossible to do business in a place without a free press? Please describe in detail the micromechanical sequence by which business will be impossible.

2. What is the definition of a free press, and by this definition, which countries have a free press considering that the US doesn't? It would be good if you could refer to any European countries you know about, because that's where I am from.

Open-source it!

[DigitAl56K]

Maybe TorrentSpy should open-source their entire system and upload it to TPB...

Re:One Hundred and Ten MILLION Dollars

[freedom_india]

Of course not one single cent would go to the arists and actors.
All the money would goto lawyers who would buy two more resorts in Panama.
And the actors and directors would be none-the-less-wiser.
I say the actors guild should sue the MPAA now and ask the Judge to hold the money in an Escrow account until accounting is resolved.

This is a difficult issue.

[jd]

Arguably, since the cyclone/wave damage was only severe because the mangroves were all cut down, the human suffering from nature was a direct result of the natural suffering from humans. Was this their own decision (which could be considered a Solomonesque consequence), a decision of their Government (a remarkably foolish one, if so, and only a fool would deny the needy of aid on the advice of a fool), or commercial pressure from countries like the US (which is the primary cause of rainforest destruction)?

If outside commercial pressure is the root cause of the devastation, then the blood price (as the Celts referred to it) should be a function of the gain from that pressure, not simply a function of the need ultimately caused by it. To deprive others of environmentally-provided protection from the inevitable is a crime against society. Indirectness is no excuse if the chain of events is pre-determined and inescapable. However, nobody at this point has identified that that was the reason the mangroves were cut down, so this is no more than an if/then.

If this was an internal political decision, then I fail to see the importance of the politicians. America has never respected sovereign status on any other issue, when it has been convenient, so why recognize it when it is not an issue of convenience but life itself?

If this was a local decision, made in the knowledge that it was completely suicidal, well, if we are now recognizing the right of individuals to terminate their own lives of their own free will, and societies are merely the product of the consensus of individuals, what right do we have to deny soieties the right to terminate themselves? Again, this is an if/then, not a judgement or an opinion of whether this was in fact what happened.

No one has unlimited resources

[Anonymous Coward]

They may have lots of money, but it still costs them money and time and effort.

Re:What is the method of determining damages?

[Anonymous Coward]

The best justice system in the world that money can buy.

The best democracy that money can buy too.

Re:nice while it lasted

[tzot]

Abortion is advocated only by persons who have themselves been born.

Nice quote. I had no idea RR had such mastery of subtlety.

Neither did he, nor his advisors. I don't know about the guys who write the presidential speeches, though.

Re:nice while it lasted

[badasscat]

Nice quote. I had no idea RR had such mastery of subtlety.

Makes you wonder if he also said anything to the effect of "wars are advocated only by persons who have not been killed in one" or "capital punishment is advocated only by persons who have not been executed." Somehow I doubt it.

Goes to show that eloquence and logic don't always go hand in hand.