Slashdot Mirror
Italy May Censor Torrent Sites
An anonymous reader writes "Following a Pirate Bay block more than a year ago, Italy continues its attempts to censor torrent sites. The Italian Supreme Court has ruled that copyright holders can now force ISPs to block BitTorrent sites, even if they are hosted outside Italy. The torrent sites which 'hold' copyrighted materials are accused of taking part in criminal activity. It seems someone should enlighten Italian jurists about technology."
It's not a technological matter. If a country wants to censor a communication medium, it can certainly do so. It will never be 100 percent effective, but censorship does restrict availability of information. We should not fall back to a "we can get around it" position. While that is true, most people will not get around it and controlling their access to information is an undue power.
Arn't they run by judges who are also lawyers? It would be neat if normal people AKA jurists were in charge but I don't think that is/ever will be the case.
I tried to think of a good sig, and this wasn't it.
Can someone tell the italian government to block gmail.com and hotmail.com? I have seen some bittorrent files on those domains.
Italy has plenty of laws that would totally paralyze every aspect of public and private life, were they to be rigorously enforced. Such laws look terrific on paper but don't have any practical effect except in lawsuits where they can be (and are) routinely used to club people over the head with. Anyone who has ever driven a car in an Italian city South of Rome (Naples for example, or tried to cross the street in the same city at a pedestrian crossing that's showing a green light for pedestrians) knows all about the practical value of laws in Italy.
This little decision will satisfy officials who can now tout it as a bold step towards curbing piracy. This is important. Just remember that their prime minister, Berlusconi, owns a whole chain of content-creating enterprises. He can't afford to look "soft on piracy" and retain his credibility in business circles.
As one or two nerdish forum members may already have figured out, blocking a torrent site or two won't necessarily stop people from finding or downloading torrents. To put it mildly.
The only thing it *will* do is to slowly erode yet another form of legal freedom in Italy and afterwards in the rest of Europe.
That's all folks.
Facilitating a crime has, to my knowledge, never been legal in any Western country. That is precisely what sites like The Pirate Bay do for users in certain countries.
Goodbye EZTV?
A house divided against itself cannot stand.
Ever since they solved all their problems related to organized crimes (ie. Mafia), I was expecting them to hit on pirates.
This is extremely worrying.
Let me get this straight. In previous rulings copyright holders were denied the blocking of sites on the grounds of free speech and censorship.
The Supreme court gets involved and blocking P2P sites suddenly becomes a good idea?
We have a Supreme court in the UK and something similar happened recently with "Unfair" bank charges.
Two (maybe one was an appeal?) court cases were held to decide whether bank charges fell under UK consumer law and thus can be challenged that bank charges were excessive. Both times the courts agreed this was the case.
The Supreme court got involved and funnily enough ruled that this was not the case which now means banks can charge what they like.
Since Lord Mandy went on holiday and "bumped into" into Mr Geffen - the recommendations of the digital communications report and the concerns of ISPs were completely ignored. It appears the "3-stikes" legislation is to go ahead after all.
The EU took a dim view of this policy and warned the UK it was illegal and against the EU principles of free speech and human rights.
I'm pretty sure the EU slapped-down France the first time France tried to implement this policy too.
However, recently:
1)France recently tried a second time and no comment from the EU has been heard.
2)Lord Mandy's propsed legislation appears to be going ahead.
3)Italy are ready to censor the internet.
What happened to suddenly make all these points "agreeable" and not challenged by the EU ?
There must have been intense lobbying and money used by copyright holders to silence the many critics of these proposals.
It appears our "democracy" is firmly under the control of commercial entities.
Oh, c'mon, what the heck is happening? I thought we'd be over this Internet police crap by now.
Torrent files are p2p links (trackers enable those links making them dynamic, as they need to be for p2p).
This is utter bull.
With the advent of DHT & magnet URIs, the main remaining purpose of torrent sites is search functionality. Since DHT could handle search too, I wonder how long it is until Bittorrent follows the likes of eDonkey / eMule by being largely for peer to peer for pretty much everything.
This is for US/UK people, to clarify things: the Corte di Cassazione (aka the Italian Supreme Court) is indeed the maximum level of interpretation of the law, but its decisions do *not* set precedents. They are mostly used as a guidance, but judges/prosecutors aren't forced to follow such an interpretation (i.e., there is some kind of discretionality).
It is worth to know here that the same court rejected an accusation on the grounds of copyright infringement because there was no profit involved.
And no, this has nothing to do with the government. The judicial system is definitely of different views with regards to the government.
A CC-licensed illustrated horror novel
No, they can charge the customer agreed to when they opened the account. What the Supreme Court said was "If you don't like the charges, don't open the account. Don't expect the courts to bail you out on something you agreed to."
And this is good for two reasons:
i) Personal responsibility is a good thing.
ii) My banking is free, because people who pay unauthorised-overdraft fees subsidise it.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
...what do you expect from a country where mafiosi like mangano are "heroes" to the main politics, and where we're givin streets name to someone like Craxi ?
seriously, Italy is just a big show, nothing more.
you, Sir, must be a RIAA paid shill
Not to me at least. I've never met an (Euro-born) Italian that didn't have a pole up his ass or didn't think they knew better than anyone else.
There is a war going on for your mind.
The biggest host for torrents would be the DHT network, good luck blocking all those hosts. And also, with the magnet links posted on pretty much all public torrent sites the google cache is enough to get a download started.
Apple built a platform for their ideas, Google built one for everyone's.
Since Lord Mandy went on holiday and "bumped into" into Mr Geffen - the recommendations of the digital communications report and the concerns of ISPs were completely ignored. It appears the "3-stikes" legislation is to go ahead after all.
I think you're absolutely right to be worried. I'm going to talk about the UK situation since that's what I know about, but the situation EU-wide is largely as you describe: governments are caving to copyright owners.
Before saying anything else, it's worth making clear that the "3 strikes" legislation contains nothing to do with three strikes. It is totally silent on the specifics of the chances that have to be given to internet users before they can be cut off and leaves the question entirely to a "code" that has not yet been written and so cannot be reviewed before the bill becomes law. You can read more about this at the link I gave above. The "new" bill pays lip-service to the Government's "commitment to human rights", and seems to be relying on this "code" to avoid the criticism of the EU. However, as the link above makes clear, it gives the Secretary of State a get-out clause to get past the code if he wants to, with little to no oversight or controls.
There's a lot of confusion, even on Slashdot, about the content of the bill. To break down the sections on Copyright infringement (taken from http://www.digitalwrong.org/?page_id=6), the new process in case of alleged infringement is:
This goes absolutely against the presumption of innocence that is such an important part of a modern democracy.
If this all sounds a bit worrying, there is some good news. The bill is entering its committee stage on the 6th of January, and this is the best chance to change it before it reaches the House of Commons, at which point its progress will be faster and more subject to the party whip. So please, write to a Lord and explain to them why the measure is bad, either morally or because - as has even been admitted by the impact assessment - network security means the wrong people will be punished, and what they can do to change it - i.e. go to the open committee session starting on the 6th and change the bill.
Things are advancing very quickly, and I appreciate that not everyone has time to read the 300+ pages of the bill, the debates, the notes and the impact assessment, so if anyone has any questions on their contents please ask and I will answer them. Otherwise, please write in before it's too late, and spread the word - either online or offline - about the travesty that is the Digital Economy Bill.
If someone is overdrawn by £2 and then the bank charges a £35 unauthorised-overdraft is "fair"
If someone is in financial difficulty and the bank keeps charging £35 unauthorised-overdraft fees every month thus compounding the problem. That person could have lost thier job.
These are not hyperthetical scenarios - this has happened to people I know and to a certain degree myself too.
I'm all for personal responsibility and "free" banking is nice.
"..they can charge the customer agreed to.. " - Yeah we all know how banks responsible banks have been recently.
I'm tempted to say your post is troll-like but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and put it down to retarded-like ignorance.
Why is his post a troll? I think the retarted like ignorance applies more to the drooling idiots who are incapable of doing simple arithmetic and understand that more going out than is coming in means they'll eventually go overdrawn. I've never been overdrawn in my life and you want to know why? Because I can add an subtract. Perhaps you and your idiot friends should learn those rather useful skills.
Parent is absolutely correct. Please mod it up, and go ahead and mod me flaimbait or troll I know it's an unpopular position on here, but than again most people that stand up for fairness get shot at.
And don't tell me well the lawsuits the MPAFIAA and RIAFFIA aren't fair because I agree they are extreme, but than again so is the brazen attitude that piracy is OK. It's like Neocons vs Anarchists
both are extremes and both are stupid.
First off people on here need to stop hiding behind the veil of "Oh they are trying to restrict information" and "The don't host the files so how are they at fault!? defense. That is not working any more and it never did.
When the internet came about it was like the wild west. No rules or regulations an open space. But without law things got out of hand quick looting, murder, gambling, prostitution etc. The laws of the internet are now being written in countries and when it comes down to data links to replicas of copy-written material there weren't any rules set forth to protect the works or understanding of what was really going on to try those who were "just hosting links yo".
Yes isohunt, the piratebay, and others are indeed accessories to piracy. Which is against the law.
If you give a map of the building to a thief knowing full well what he intends to take and he robs a bank yeah you are liable.
"But I didn't rob it I was just showing him paper and ink?!" doesn't work.
And people need to learn fast that the free ride days are going to come to an end. If you want to watch a movie, download a song, or use a piece of commercial software buy it. Stop being so damn cheap, and stop saying "well I want to preview what I see before I buy it" is a huge load of crap.
There are trailers/teasers for movies as well as selected scenes released for free for you to preview them.
There are plenty of free streaming samples of songs, on amazon and itunes, and lala, and last.fm, and pandaora, and XM/Sirius , and traditional radio, and internet radio
There are typically trial versions of most software applications
So really the preview attitude is really a poor defense.
I can't go into a restaurant and preview an entire meal and then decide if I want to pay for it. You order you consume you pay for it.
And don't say "well I can send it back.. at the theaters I can't send back a movie!"... actually you can.... within 30 minutes of a film's start time you can tell the box office that you didn't like it and they will give you back your money or venue credit. Got another excuse captain cheapo?
But you haven't had to pay with this loop hole before?!...waaaaah.... and now you don't wanna?....waaaaah
Tough shit suck it up and pay what you owe.
If you don't want to pay THEN don't watch/download/use it!
you talkin about torrent sites . in here you cant even browse videos on youtube . they have censorship and agreements with google .yahoo. every main search engine . for example on yahoo you cant turn safe search off . yet you have the option available but you can never apply it !
on youtube you can watch few selected videos. which are allowed . the worst thing i ever seen tinyurl is blocked .
am ready to give up torrents . let me search freely
Downloading copyrighted material never was a "crime". At most it's an actionable infringement of someone's copyright. Actionable by the copyright holder that is, not the State. It's not even a misdemeanor.
Besides, torrent sites in and by themselves were never "criminal", as they only facilitate an exchange of information which, among many other things, allows people to infringe copyrights.
These kind of actions will see an arms race to encrypted p2p networks like Freenet.
After French laws changed to crack down on filesharers, there was a lot more French people on Freenet.
It's worth trying Freenet out if you haven't recently - it's a lot faster than a year or two ago, and music and movies are shared there regularly. It's also good for hosting websites that have political censorship on the regular internet.
That law in France was declared unconstitutional by there "Conseil constitutionnel" (constitutional council) http://www.boingboing.net/2009/06/10/frances-three-strike.html
Right!
(1) "I'm tempted to say your post is troll-like but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and put it down to retarded-like ignorance."
OK - I did not say the post was a troll and reading the above line what I posted was maybe a bit harsh.
(2) Please do not attack my friends and call them "idiots".
(3) "incapable of doing simple arithmetic and understand that more going out than is coming in" - This is fine if your financial situation is straightforward. If you have a family of 2 kids, both parents are working, husband decides to walk away from everything and cease his financial contribution then things get messy very quickly. Believe me the bank is not understanding at all.
(4) What about the businesses that have suffered from banks withdrawing financial support (there are a few legitimate reasons why this is needed) and then hitting them with "unauthorised" fees afterwards?
(5) I can add and subtract - my finances are fine as I am sure my friends can add and subtract too.
I just think you arguments are very simplistic.
The main issue wasn't really the cost of the charges (even though that's what everyone focuses on), but the inconsistency with which they're applied even within the same bank on the same account. Sometimes it's £10, sometimes it's £25, sometimes it's £40, sometimes it's immediate, sometimes it's after a 7 day warning period, etc. for the same penalty.
Was that the first time?
According to this article it has now been passed
http://www.v3.co.uk/v3/news/2249617/french-pass-revised-three/
(article dated 16 sep)
OK, I'll bite (even tho I shouldn't feed ya)...
Let's say you have a SO and he/she is suddenly diagnosed with a rare form of cancer and the only hope for his/her survival is an expensive experimental treatment. Since you are capable of addition and subtraction and even multiplication, you know that if you want to pay for this treatment you will have to take out a loan which you can only pay back if you don't get fired in the next 3 years. Let's assume you are also capable of accurately estimating the probability of being fired at 0.01.
Now, wise guy, do you take the loan and try to save your SO's life?
If you said yes, understand that there are another 99 people like you, so on the average someone will end up having trouble paying back his debts.
Welcome to the real world where there are hard decisions, and personal responsibility isn't black and white.
As an Italian I can safely predict that nobody is going to care.
So let me explain it to you. A company that sells to the general market products that can be used for crimes is not liable for their use. A company that happens to unknowingly sell to a lot of criminals is not liable for their use of the goods it sells. A company that knowingly sells goods to criminals is fully liable for their use insofar as it has knowingly facilitated a crime.
From that description, you should be able to grasp why The Pirate Bay and search engines are treated quite differently.
... It seems someone should enlighten Italian jurists about technology.
Err... Italy has worse problems to deal with than petty piracy:
I don't really give a rat's ass for Torrents of craptacular films that just watching them is a waste of lifetime anyway...
Saluti & Baci
Mi domando chi à il mandante di tutte le cazzate che faccio - Altan
No, they can charge the customer agreed to when they opened the account.
I presume the same goes for loan sharks? You may not agree with laws against unfair contracts but they do exist. I too agree that personal responsibility is a good thing but so is corporate responsibility. Here are some example scenarios to consider:
i) A customer misses a payment on a loan with their bank, the bank automatically takes the money out of their account anyway causing them to go overdrawn. This eventuality isn't in their contract and does not occur to them because had they a loan with a different bank such a thing would never have happened, why would any sensible business penalise customers for using all their services? Banks do.
ii) The bank makes a mistake which ends up with a customer going overdrawn. While the bank has it in the contract to add charges should the customer make a mistake, the customer is forced to go through a complaints procedure that can take up to eight weeks in which time the bank is adding more charges and interest on those charges. The customer is unlikely to get any compensation for any problems resulting from the mistake.
iii) A customer falls ill and goes overdrawn because they are in hospital and have no one to cancel any direct debits. The bank does not make any direct debit payments because there is no money in the account, they do however charge the customer for the rejected direct debit which pushes them overdrawn. By the time the customer is out of hospital they are in arrears with various companies whose direct debits have defaulted and on top of that have hundreds of pounds in overdraft charges putting their account further into the red. The customer now has the option to beg the bank to write off the charges out of good will.
My banking is free, because people who pay unauthorised-overdraft fees subsidise it.
This would be valid if people made the choice to gamble the fact that they can micromanage their finances, most don't because the banks don't advertise that as the function of the accounts. If they offered more choice and advertised the purposes of their different packages adequately then this would not be an issue.
There is a wider issue over the imbalance in the contracts between banks and customers. When a customer makes a mistake the bank has it in their contract that they get penalised, they do this in a way that is not technically a penalty (which is disallowed by contract law) but walks and quacks like one. The customer has no such opportunity to insert unfair clauses into the contract or even negotiate on the existing ones, the contracts are considered set products and the customer is expected to go elsewhere if they don't like it.
What makes this issue worse is that they will admit to a court the purpose of charges is to fund their business but won't advertise it to their customers. This is dishonest because they could easily offer both types of account at no cost to themselves, they deny the customer choice by misrepresenting their services as competitive when really they're gambling on their customers misfortune.
Sadly. And the fact that the content industry generates taxes that are badly needed by our nearly-broke governments won't help improve the situation. In an economy that is so reliant on commercializing (and taxing!) imaginary "goods", I have no hope to see those copyright excesses be repelled anytime soon.
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
Maybe what Italy mostly needs in terms of tecnology is much more knowledge. Not only from the government side, but mainly from the citizens. In Italy les than 50% of the pepoles have an acces to the Internet, and how may of those peoples do you thing actually know how to get around a DNS block (this is what they did last time they decided to block The Pirate Bay)? Furthermore it's to notice that bitTorrent is not so much popular in Italy (at last as far as I can see in my experience), the mostly used p2p protocol is still eDonkey. This denotes a double ignorance: from the "Corte di Cassazione" side is that they decided to block TPB because they know it as a web site (the only part of the Internet they have a bare idea of what it is an how to block it), while they have no idea of what an eDonkey server is, or even how to connect to it. While from the citizens side few knows of TPB, fewer knows of bitTorrent and only some nerdy tecnitians know what DHT just means (almost nobody knows how it actually works). So what's the point of blocking TPB? IMO this is just a way to meet the favor of other UE countries taking measures against file shearing systems.
It seems to me like the dog-eat-dog mentality. While I can respect such principles if genuine, I have to suspect that they only take that position when they are the bigger dog or when it's not their puppy being eaten.
As someone who helps people who get into financial trouble I would also point out that the majority of them are in difficulty through an unexpected change in circumstances, for which the ability to do simple budgeting is no prevention or cure.
Sadly. And the fact that the content industry generates taxes that are badly needed by our nearly-broke governments won't help improve the situation. In an economy that is so reliant on commercializing (and taxing!) imaginary "goods", I have no hope to see those copyright excesses be repelled anytime soon.
I think we might be coming at this from different points of view. I don't see anything wrong with an economy that is reliant on commercializing "imaginary 'goods'" - in fact I don't really see how we could have anything else. Aside from the content industries, the insurance industry, the stock market, futures trading and any number of other sectors work by commercialising something other than physical goods. And while it may not strictly speaking be stealing, making use of these services without paying does harm the industry and does, undoubtedly, have serious consequences for its future. When talking about the content industry this means illegal file sharing, which is and should be punished.
Where I object is when we lose perspective and abandon the very principles of our justice system in order to pander to the content industry - that is what is happening now in the UK, in France, in America and probably in many other countries, and it is against this that we should be protesting. I don't want to put words in your mouth, but people calling for the abandoning of copyright and legitimization of file sharing cause a problem for those people opposing the laws currently being passed, since they make it easy to characterise the opponents of the law as selfish, short-sighted "pirates".
Why are the knee jerk politics in individual countries actually taking us backwards? According to EU legislation, the single market also applies to AudioVisual products http://ec.europa.eu/avpolicy/reg/tvwf/index_en.htm The single European market - one of the biggest achievements of European integration - applies to television broadcasts as much as anything else. Everybody wins broadcasters can attract larger audiences and viewers get a greater choice of channels Just as any of us is free to buy chocolate, wine or a new car in any EU country, we can also watch TV channels from all over Europe. As this is supposed to be written into member states national law by the 19th December 2009, how can the Italians actually justify their actions? They are denying people the right to download content which can be seen as legal in the light of this law. I think we can safely say that a lot of P2P activity involves TV Series that are not available outside the country of origin. For many of us, bitorrent is the only way we are able to keep up to date with TV programming from back home when living abroad. IPTV products such as the BBC iPlayer and ITV CatchUp are now in breach of EU law by limiting access to their service to the UK. P2P at least allows us to view the programming as per EU Legislation. It is oxymoronical that you have to break the law in order to be able view what is now technically legally available content.
Shitaly
For what it's worth, I wish I had mod points today. It is nice to see posts that don't reduce the whole copyright debate to some sort of all-or-nothing dichotomy, and which acknowledge the idea that you can have a reasonable idea but a flawed implementation. This seems far more constructive than just painting a crude picture of selfish pirates fighting greedy megacorporations, where everyone has extreme views and there is little scope for compromise and finding some middle ground.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Well, except that if enough people leave out the pay step in the software purchase, the software company loses money there too. Or conversely, why should the paying customers of the software company subsidize the non-paying users? If it costs $1 M to develop and market a particular program and only 10% of the users actually pay for it, either the software company loses money or the program will cost 4x as much as if 40% of the users pay for it. Not saying every pirate would be a customer here, but if you make piracy too easy compared with legitimate purchase, you make it too hard for companies to stay in business even with a reasonable internet-based business model. Where would Redhat be if most of their paying customers suddenly decided to download their own source and maintain Linux in-house?
We are the 198 proof..
ACTA negotiations with the US? With everything under the covers, all sides have plausible deniability about who is pushing for the most draconian copyright measures.
We are the 198 proof..
All the country you have listed, France, Italy and UK are the most e-Fascist oriented in the EU.
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
Thank you!
The internet tends to encourage knee-jerk, poorly thought-out responses, and that makes it much easier for politicians to dismiss the objections to their copyright bills as the delusions of immature online pirates. The discussion of the Digital Economy Bill in the House of Lords over here has been dominated by reference to the "online reaction" - specifically the 23 pages of comments on the original BBC report, characterised by the idea that all media should be free to download and the media companies "aren't losing any money anyway". This has lead some well-intentioned members of the House to believe that the objection is not based on an objection to the law itself, but rather on selfishness and greed, which undermines the argument against the law.
If you're in the UK, can I encourage you to write to your MP and a Lord to explain this? If not - or even if you are - if you could throw me a link to http://digitalwrong.org/ I'm taking over the running of the site from now(ish) onwards and hope to explain what the bill really is and that there is a reasonable objection to it.
Well, for one, the ISP is the direct conduit for the illegal activity as it is what connects the user to The Pirate Bay. No sane legal system brings in tertiary parties like utilities and computer manufacturers when there is a clear party that is in a relationship with the defendant who can be coerced into effectively stopping the activity. It doesn't help your argument that the ISP also can intelligently block certain activities whereas all a utility or manufacturer can choose to do is stop selling. The courts single out the parties who have the greatest role in enabling the activity and who can most effectively prevent it in cases like this (hence why the Italian courts don't target the utilities...)
I don't have mod points but if I did I would mod this up - it's an important issue that needs to be seen.
so it seams, I didn't see that one.
it is very sad.
It is excessive. I wouldn't sign up for that deal. If you signed up for that deal, and didn't arrange a small overdraft at the time (say 20 quid, which would almost never be refused) to cover precisely that contingency, you're not competent to deal with your own finances. Seek professional advice.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
I don't see things the way you do. I know full well that the companies represented by the RIAA do not pay for their material in a fair manner. They are exploiting their employees, which is on par with human trafficking in my mind. So who are the bad guys here?
they only take that position when they are the bigger dog or when it's not their puppy being eaten.
That is why I hate banks. I, for one, do not partake in the massive ponzi scheme that is the lending industry. I once did, got burned badly, and now I live on cash. I have a chequing account, but no loans nor revolving credit cards. My life is so much better, I know exactly what I can afford, and I'm not siphoning 10-15% of my already-tight income to a small family of profiteering gluttons.
The fact that a $0.01 overdraft can cost a person between $30 and $75 in overlimit fees, to me that's patently ridiculous. If that's not usury, then I don't know what is. Banks invented the game, and they keeping making up new rules or changing existing ones, whatever makes them richer. In my dictionary, that's called cheating. What's worse is that it is becoming ever more difficult to avoid playing the banking game, now that almost all payroll is handled via direct deposit. Now I'm of the firm opinion that if a beneficial service is required by the great majority of citizens, it should be socialized and the profit factor eliminated from the equation. Remove profit from banking and we end up with lower fees, saner interest rates and less irresponsible lending.
Now those of you who are thinking about bashing me over the socialist angle, consider this: a great many of us support free software as a cost-effective and democratic alternative to paid apps. How are socialized government services any different ?
-Billco, Fnarg.com
The idea is that if you have a tool that can be used for legal and illegal purposes, then whether you are liable depends on what exactly you are doing with it. If I have a crowbar, for example, because I frequently need to move very heavy objects and the crowbar is convenient, that is one thing. If I get caught hanging around the back door of a business after closing with a crowbar and other burglars' tools, then claim when arrested "Oh, look, see, I need it for $LEGIT_PURPOSE" you should not expect this defense to work.
If something not only is capable of being used illegally, but in fact, is almost exclusively used for said illegal purpose, does that matter? If those who created the service give every indication that the illegal purposes are the intended purpose, only to sing a different story in court, does that matter?
And before you say "none of those things matter", another question: Would your answer be different if, instead of copyright infringement, we were discussing hit men? Supposing for the sake of argument that somebody operated a totally anonymous bulletin board called "HitMen4U" where anyone could post anything they wanted, but conveiently the board was set up to easily allow searching by dollar amount, location, and name of victim? Further suppose the operators often make statements supporting peoples' right to solve their problems with violence, and that huge numbers of people were being murdered as requested by this board. Would you support the site's right to exist?
Errr yeah, £20 is "so much better" than £35!
What would be better is that the bank notified you and gave you 5 working days to clear it or a chance to avoid the charge. They used to many, many years ago but not now.
But instead you prefer to get financially-raped instead.
That's like saying "OK - you can F*** me up the arse but could you use a little more lube instead?"
Sir, I believe it is you who should "Seek professional advice".
And yet going overdrawn means you've used money you don't own to pay for something. Why should the bank be liable for your irresponsible behaviour?
If people only spent the money in their account, and no more, then they wouldn't get hit by those charges.
As for removing profit from banking, I've only paid fees to a bank once in the last decade, and that was for a high value CHAPS payment. My bank does make a profit out of me, but it also provides a large number of very useful services to me without charging me a penny for them.
But then, I'm responsible enough to only spend my own money...
If you have a change in circumstances that cause financial trouble, going overdrawn without first negotiating with your bank is frankly the most stupid thing you can do.
Overdrafts are one of the worse sources of credit available; unauthorised ones even worse.
Why should a bank take on significant business risk funding an overdrawn customer that's not only spending beyond their means (for whatever reason; that the spending is on rent and food doesn't alter the fact that they can't afford it and are thus unlikely to pay it back any time soon) but are also too stupid to actually come and discuss it with them.
You set up a business giving out money to homeless people. Tell them you want it back as soon as they can afford to repay it, but that until then there's not interest or fees associated with it. Tell me, how much much profit are you expecting there?
People do get into issues, they can end up with higher expenditure than income, and they do need short term financial support to deal with that. However, blaming the banking industry for being unwilling to give money away doesn't acknowledge the other side of the situation.
You misunderstand. You *agree* an overdraft of 20 pounds. That way, when you go 1 pound overdrawn, you don't get a penalty charge at all. Simple. Not as simple as you, but pretty simple.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
Indeed - my letter to my MP focussed on the lack of legal rigour required to 'punish' someone for alleged illegal downloading and the obvious impact on other innocent household members.
I did mention that I dislike current copyright laws, but also stated that I do support copyright as a concept, but with far lower timeframes than at present.
Sadly my MP hasn't responded to me, and based on past evidence is unlikely to vote against the bill in its current incarnation.
Worse still he's a member of the shadow cabinet so I'm probably going to be stuck with him past April too :(
Grrr... Stupid new buggy posting system is eating my replies.
Short version: ditto to almost everything you wrote (except for the nature of my MP) but isn't your MP required by law to reply to you if you are a constituent?
Also, while the government bigwigs seem to favour big money at the moment, I find it reassuring that the policy documents coming out of the IPO recently are actually going beyond Gowers (who basically limited his report to what was immediately practical under current European law) to recognise that not everyone agrees about copyright's benefits, the current system is out of sync with popular expectations, and if fixing this requires changes at European level then that is what we should be driving. Though I loathe the idea in principle, for once I find myself hoping that the civil servants will do their thing without paying too much attention to what their elected masters want...
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Errm... you are fully aware that banks reorder transactions in order to make you go overdrawn if at all possible, and additionally in order to obtain the maximum fees?
That's a very cynical view, and the bank I work for does not do that.
(and yes, I know the people that wrote the 40yo mainframe banking system)
If your bank does, switch banks.
Hell, the bank I use (one of the biggest in the UK, which is different to the one I work for) lets me go £1000 overdrawn for a week with no charges. I don't make use of that facility, but it's there. If you need that much that quickly then you need to go and talk to your bank anyway..
If you have a change in circumstances that cause financial trouble, going overdrawn without first negotiating with your bank is frankly the most stupid thing you can do.
No, what is stupid is a bank charging £35 to an account that has no money in it for the privilege of bouncing a direct debit payment, then charging again for the account being overdrawn.
Overdrafts are one of the worse sources of credit available; unauthorised ones even worse.
I agree, you find me a bank that sells its customers basic bank accounts rather than super platinum 'I hope you can afford this' accounts and it might support your argument better.
Why should a bank take on significant business risk funding an overdrawn customer that's not only spending beyond their means (for whatever reason; that the spending is on rent and food doesn't alter the fact that they can't afford it and are thus unlikely to pay it back any time soon) but are also too stupid to actually come and discuss it with them.
Because if they weren't self interested or bigger idiots than their customers then they would use their judgement to provide a service designed to avoid these sorts of problems. Banks like people going overdrawn, they've admitted in court that their business is reliant on people going overdrawn. This is an idiotic system that encourages banks to make things as hard for customers as possible and should be exposed as such, not encouraged under the guise of free enterprise with the slogan 'only dumb people go overdrawn anyway'. The method for this is is debatable, if you don't like regulation then you are trampling on your own ideals by encouraging an unsustainable business model rather than shouting loudly that banks need to do better.
You set up a business giving out money to homeless people. Tell them you want it back as soon as they can afford to repay it, but that until then there's not interest or fees associated with it. Tell me, how much much profit are you expecting there?
Oh, now we descend into 'you just try feeding a mouse an lion' territory. Tell me, why should I respond with anything more than disdain? Go lend money to the homeless yourself, you brought it up.
People do get into issues, they can end up with higher expenditure than income, and they do need short term financial support to deal with that. However, blaming the banking industry for being unwilling to give money away doesn't acknowledge the other side of the situation.
Who said anything about blaming them for being unwilling to give money away? I'm blaming them for running their businesses in a way that makes things needlessly difficult for their own customers. If they can't afford to do without extortionate default charges then they shouldn't have jumped on the superficially competitive bandwagon by building their business around subsidising 'free' with what amounts to needless gambling for many people.
Well ... you pose two very different questions here, which I agree are entirely reasonable questions to ask:
(1) should we have the freedom to commit copyright infringement?
(2) Should we abolish copyright altogether?.
I believe the answer to question (1) is "Yes" and to question (2) "No".
Here's why.
Under current law, copyright infringement is a civil (not a criminal !) matter, and moreover one that only becomes actionable after the infringement takes place. When I drive my car I have the physical freedom to enter one-way streets from the wrong side, to drive on the pavement or in pedestrian zones, or even to drive on the wrong side of the road. But if I do there will likely be trouble.
To me that's the essence of freedom. The system is designed for people with common sense, but it still *does* allow me to break the rules in an emergency or for what I consider sufficient reason. I know I may face a fine (or the loss of my drivers license) if I do, but it's still my decision to make, not someone else's. What's proposed now is to shackle data-transmission and computer so that they can no longer even commit a copyright infringement. That's equivalent to creating cars that will automatically override drivers whenever they attempt to break a rule.
I can, to a certain extent, agree with monitoring data-transmissions by the FBI and NSA when it's about spotting potential terrorists. It's probably the worst single effect that terrorists have had, and in a sense they have won. The Western world is under a lot more surveillance today than it was 20 years ago. Or when the Cold War was on. I hate that, but I can't change it.
What I find totally unpalatable is to see the same intrusive powers that were granted to the guardians of state security to protect us from attacks under the current (extreme) conditions re-purposed to protect the financial interests of the Mickey Mouse industry. I simply do not believe that is worth it.
So yes. I think we should at least have have the _technical_ ability to infringe any copyrights we want for whatever reason we can think of. But of course that doesn't mean we should have immunity from legal action and being sued for damages if we do.
That brings me to question (2). By and large I believe that copyright law serves a purpose and should be upheld. Even if copyright laws are routinely exploited to their maximum extent (and even irresponsibly extended and abused) by all and sundry to protect all sorts of financial interests or business models that include and often supersede the effect that copyright laws were designed to have.
The RIAA for example doesn't seem to need any new powers to serve as a strong deterrent. Existing rules (and the existing standard of proof in court !) by and large seem adequate. Of course it's still possible for the system to grossly misfire (see e.g. the idiotic verdict plus damages in the Jammie Thomas case). Besides I personally think that "damages" awarded should be in reasonable proportion to the value of the infringement (in cases of people committing copyright infringement for private use and not for commercial gain) plus the cost of detection and prosecution plus a reasonable deterrent (say 1% of someone's annual income with a minimum of 250$).
I'm more comfortable with the burden of detection and prosecution being placed on the copyright holders and not the State. I know it's far from ideal, but I think it's better than alternatives such as criminalizing copyright infringement. We need the Police for far more important things to oblige them to go out and detect and prosecute 15$ copyright infringement offenses.