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.'"

Comments

Not "really" P2P

[Gewalt]

This was a release group, and altho they were releasing onto p2p, this is NOT the same thing as all those other cases where the **AA is demanding 3000$ tributes to ignore wrongdoings.

Insanity

[aztektum]

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.

Re:Insanity

[EdIII]

I can see how you got the flambait mod, mainly for the last sentence.

However, you do have a valid point about just what danger to society this person poses and whether or not 10 years is a punishment that fits the crime.

It would certainly seem that the powerful in this country are pushing for stronger and stronger criminal punishments for what would otherwise be a civil matter between 2 entities.

Re:Insanity

[dreamchaser]

A stiff fine would seem to be in order, and civil damages. Jail time is pretty harsh for this kind of IP crime though.

Re:Insanity

[Anonymous Coward]

Clearly it already is in that category -- as "pirates" are regarded to have committed "assault with a deadly modem".

Re:Insanity

[EdIII]

Jail time is pretty harsh for any kind of IP crime. That's just it though; It's INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY crime. It's not tangible.

A copyright defines rights which are granted to somebody from the government. They use these rights to diminish competition and allow them to have an advantage to collect profits for a reasonable period of time. The period of time is certainly no longer reasonable IMO, but that is up for debate.

What is not really up for debate, is that violating these rights falls within the jurisdiction of the civil courts. It was never supposed to be a matter for criminal courts. The GP of your post tried pointing out that seemingly corrupt government entities have been responsible for turning into a criminal matter, what has always been a civil matter. Simply to give them the upper hand. They don't need to spend money in the court systems defending their intellectual property against minor violations.

I recently watched a special about prison systems. I am 32 years old right now. I can remember being 22 years old, but that seems to be as far away from me now as being 11 years old. 10 YEARS is a very LONG time. Assuming that you get 60 years of adult life in this world, 1/6th of that being taken away is a huge punishment.

It's easy to forget that. I'm all for the death penalty and harsh criminal convictions, but only for violent crime. IP infringement is not a crime that we need to take 10 years from somebody for. Let's not forget that we will spend anywhere between 300K and 400K as taxpayers to do it too. Is is really that cost effective for us to do this? To protect big media companies? To protect society, or our values?

I just don't think so. Maybe huge fines and 6 months in jail or prison might be adequate.

I am more concerned by the fact that turning this into a criminal matter has provided government and corporations the impetus to do away with our privacy and rights altogether simply to provide protection for a few companies profit margins.

Re:Insanity

[deimtee]

They don't want nasty violent people in there, they want nice malleable workers who will do what they are told because they are too shit scared to move. You know, white colar recreational drug users.

Re:Insanity

[suck_burners_rice]

Ok let's think about this. What was the Constitution and the Bill of Rights supposed to defend? Your rights, right? Ok, now that we've established that, from whom is this Bill of Rights defending you, the individual? Mainly from the government. Now you need to realize that the government is not some ephemeral entity that determines the order of the universe. It's a bunch of dudes who happened to get elected and happen, therefore, to have power to make things happen. It is from THOSE DUDES that the Bill of Rights is supposed to protect you. Unfortunately, the Bill of Rights is only a piece of paper. It is YOU who must always monitor what is happening and to fight violations of your rights. I believe that in that Bill of Rights somewhere, it says something to the effect that:

Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

Now don't you think that getting the kind of sentence that a rapist might get is a tad bit CRUEL AND UNUSUAL for downloading or uploading some worthless garbage?

It might be a good idea...

[deft]

...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.

Re:It might be a good idea...

[Alsee]

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.

Ok, I won't flame you. However I will mock you mercilessly.

If you want to give an example of security through obscurity working, next time you might want to go with something that's obscure, or maybe something that's working, or better yet maybe even go with something that is obscure AND working. LOL.

Château Miraval. 83570 Correns, France.
Google Maps Satellite Photo.
Article with close aerial photo.
The WIKIPEDIA page for Château Miraval.
Château Miraval's own website.

And no, don't even think of suggesting what is Angelina Jolie's bra size? as a better example of obscurity than her address. 36-C.

Ahhhh... yeah.... the next time you want to say security through obscurity sometimes works, you might want to go with a slightly different example. In fact never ever ever again attempt to use Angelina Jolie in the same sentence with the word obscurity. You're punished. Go sit in the corner.

And no, you can't take pictures of Angelina with you. You're punished means you're supposed to sit in the corner thinking about how bad you've been, not thinking about her being a naughty naughty girl.

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NOT P2P

[EdIII]

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.

10 years? Please USA, get a grip

[The Fanta Menace]

I've seen cases of murderers getting less than this.

Trickle down theory?

[seanonymous]

So, maybe the Warez scene should sue, too, if they're so upset about people stealing their stolen goods.