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Usenet Group Sues Dutch RIAA
eldavojohn writes "With the Pirate Bay trial, it's been easy to overlook similar struggles in other nations. A Dutch Usenet community named FTD is going on the offensive and suing BREIN (Bescherming Rechten Entertainment Industrie Nederland). You may remember BREIN (along with the IFPI & BPI) as the people who raided and cut out the heart of eDonkey. This is turning into a pretty familiar scenario; the FTD group makes software that allows its 450k members to easily find copyrighted content for free on Usenet. The shocking part is that FTD isn't waiting for BREIN to sue them. FTD is refusing to take down their file location reports, and is actually suing BREIN. Why the preemptive attack? FTD wants the courts to show that the act of downloading is not illegal in the Netherlands. (Both articles have the five points in English that FTD wants the courts to settle.) OSNews has a few more details on the story."
It's in the mind of the people.
When someone is tried, he's at least "sorta" guilty, right? Else, hey, nobody gets arrested without some reason, right? At least there's suspicion that he MIGHT have done it. When he is tried, there's a reason, right? Hey, they wouldn't go to court if what the defendent does isn't at least "sorta" illegal...
This isn't how the justice system works, but this is how people think. Nobody is dragged to court without at least some kinda reason. So suing instead of waiting to be sued is, from the PR point of view, quite sensible.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
There are two sides to the story. The criminal aspect, and the civil aspect.
I'm not sure about dutch law, however, a lot of the recent UK law (which I am more familiar with) has been enshrined here via EU directives aimed at legal harmonisation. So don't take what I say too seriously...
The civil aspect covers the violation of the copyright license associated with the works. You are not criminally liable for merely breaking a license. The criminal aspect only comes into play when you break something enacted in statue.
Consider, The Copyright, Designs and Patents Act (1998) here in the UK -
http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts1988/ukpga_19880048_en_5#pt1-ch6-pb5-l1g107
s.107 covers the criminal offense (Criminal liability for making or dealing with infringing articles). It limits criminal acts to those performed in the course of a business, in terms of sale, and those performed other than for "his private and domestic use".
The civil issue is different. Merely obtaining something does not mean you agree to a license. But common law has long established that using something, in a certain manner - often in accordance to normal use - can imply a factual agreement to contract.
Therefore, one should assume that aquiring a copyrighted work does not mean you have to assume the terms of its license, but once you decide to use the product in a non-domestic, public or commerical manner, it is implied you accept the incorporated restrictions (which will prohibit such use). You will then be liable.
So there is this big grey area that needs testing!
FTD is doing horrible things to usenet, they're a plague on any newsgroup they descend upon. FTD makes software so people can use Usenet as a P2P system without ever interacting with the newsgroup. This has not been popular with most newsgroups that have standards for posting. FTD does things their way, and when massive complaints from newsgroup participants are posted, the FTDers never see them. I've seen newsgroups destroyed by floods of FTD posts. The regular participants (the most valuable members of the newsgroup) have their contributions buried by massive floods of off-topic posts. And there's nothing you can do to stop them.
On most usenet groups, FTD is commonly parsed as "Fuck The Dutch." They want to exploit Usenet for their own ends without participating in Usenet culture. Fuck em.