Slashdot Mirror
MPAA Scores First P2P Jury Conviction
An anonymous reader writes "The MPAA must be celebrating. According to the BitTorrent news site Slyck.com, the Department of Justice is proclaiming their first P2P criminal copyright conviction, against an Elite Torrents administrator. The press release notes, 'The jury was presented with evidence that Dove was an administrator of a small group of Elite Torrents members known as "Uploaders," who were responsible for supplying pirated content to the group. At sentencing, which is scheduled for Sept. 9, 2008, Dove faces a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison.'"
10 years in prison? I realize that's a maximum, but the reality is he's done nothing that should be even closely considered to being a danger to society.
This hangup about defending our bullshit economy which truly only services the "haves" in the first place is being taken to extremes and I'm getting tired of it.
I say pirate everything, convince your friends, family, etc. Let's see what they do when EVERYONE is downloading their shit. Are they going to throw us all in jail? Then where will they be?
Fuckers.
No sig for you!!
...to NOT name your group on a torrent site something that allows information about structure to be gleaned.
Sure, uploaders may be only uploading only legal content blah blah blah, but there's no reason to publicize your role in the organization unless you can sure as hell sheild yourself while these lawsuits are bounding about.
Even the mob knows to call people "freinds of ours", not money launderers, assasins, gun runners etc. Please don't flame me because this is "security through obscurity".... because sometimes it works i.e, I still don't know where angelina jolie lives. Well played angelina, you hot little baby collector.
There's nothing Intelligent about Intelligent Design.
You gotta love these people. They are trying to make it sound like P2P itself is criminal, or certainly criminal by association.
This piracy group merely chose P2P as a medium to transfer it's files.
That would be like government catching a bunch of whatchamacallit smugglers on bicycles and then announcing "the first bicycle whatchamacallit criminal conviction". Ummm, yeah right. What the hell does bicycles have to do it?
It's not surprising that piracy groups have chose P2P to transfer their files. It is most efficient transfer medium with the highest market share. It used to IRC DCC transfer, and then before that it was FTP. A long time before that, it was file transfers through BBS. Bootleg copies used to be made on cassette tapes as well. Did that mean cassette tapes were also inherently "evil" and predisposed towards piracy? I think not.
Sorry, I guess I just can't get over how completely full of shit some people are. We can argue about piracy and intellectual copyrights all day long. That's fine. Let's just not be intellectually dishonest doing it.
In other words... these guys were using P2P at the technical level, but they were really doing the uploading of the content. **AA has a long win streak against uploaders, it's downloaders that they've had so much problems with.
Despite how bad it may sound, this is more or less not a big deal for the average person. It is like video game companies going after people who host ROMs of copyrighted games... Not that bad. Now if they won for a downloader or innocent uploader... That would be different.
No this is horribly bad. First, it is a basic travesty of justice. Prison time for P2P? Unless he was putting nuclear weapon designs on P2P, there is no reason for this. lets put people in jail for twenty years if they steal a loaf of bread. That's progressive thinking!
Second, the legal system loves basing later decisions on prior landmark cases. this has just told every judge for the next fifty years that criminal punishment id ok for civil infractions.
Third, the economy is in the dumps, and every peerson we imprision for piddly ass crap like this is costing taxpayers $$$. Ten years is not cheap. The people responsable should be dragged into the street and tarred and feathered for such frivilious use of taxpayer money.
Finally, bad laws erode respect for good laws. The more people become acoustom to breaking laws that are poorly written, the more acoustom they become to breaking laws in general.
Very bad ruling.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
If you'd like to come over with your car-duplicating equipment and make an exact copy of my Ferrari without damaging it, you're welcome to do so.
:-)
My truck is like a series of tubes.
It's the maximum sentence, dumbass.
You're the dumbass. It's immoral, stupid, hateful, vindictive, corrupt, and absurd to even have the option for a penalty this severe in a case like this. Under any sane legal system, this would be a CIVIL case, not a criminal one.
Death was "only the maximum" sentence for witchcraft too at one time, dumbass.
Excuse the language, guys, but I'm replying to a witless anonymous coward. Anything goes in this case.
So, some pirates can get 10 years, yet we have Massachusetts' representative James Fagan calling a 10 year mandatory sentence for 3 time offending child predators 'draconian'. Ridiculous.
-Bradley H.
I agree,
Theft of imaginary property should be served in an imaginary jail.
An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"