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Anti-Piracy Lawyers Caught Pirating Each Other
An anonymous reader writes "We would like to think that the lawyers that are prosecuting alleged copyright infringers are practicing what they preach, but it looks like one of the most high profile firms involved in such cases are just as guilty of stealing others' work as those who are downloading illegal media."
Since there is no creative value in the things they lift from each other, it is hard to argue they are "pirating" it. Can I steal a verb they use, and just call it "stealing"? :)
Also, the general population surely should be held to higher standards than the scum of the earth.
What the hell is that? And how do you download any sort of media?
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
We should encourage this: we can hope they'll fight each other to death, and we can disbar the survivors.
True, but copied fully in accord with the fair use doctrine.
Maybe they are just trying to get into the criminal mind.
The article presents the situation as Andrew Crossley being in conflict with ACS:Law over the use of templates. The problem with that is that Andrew Crossley is in fact the proprietor ("principal?" Don't know the correct term) of ACS:Law, so it would be difficult for ACS:Law to steal his work. To quote WikiP: "The main partner of the company, and its only registered solicitor is Andrew Crossley."
A hero is someone who knows when to run away. I am a hero. -Trent the Uncatchable
There is no hypocrisy. Their job is to work with their client and defend their IP. They are not required to be passionate nor they have to personalty believe in it, their job is to defend their clients.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I hate you and I hate your lame attempts at increasing your pagerank. You are the scum of the earth.
Also, your website looks terrible. When I opened it I assumed you linked to the wrong page and that was a domain filler. Really bad graphic design.
Now, kindly go away.
FTFA: Andrew Crossly claims that the firm contacted him for help, which he provided, but instead of just using his templates as a guide, ACS:Law began to use them as their own without consent. The name is Andrew Crossley. From Wikipedia article on ACS:Law: The main partner of the company, and its only registered solicitor,] is Andrew Crossley. How could ACS:Law steal from its main partner?
"Good artists copy, great artists steal"
Protoplasm. Quiet Protoplasm. I like quiet protoplasm.
You're forgetting that it's completely possible to steal money (the pirates money) that only exists in the future of an alternate dimension where the artist/business made more money. Also, if a sale could ever have occurred and something prevented it from happening, potential profit was stolen and whoever made this sale not happen should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law!
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
They're not hypocrites, they're greedy, corrupt idiots. Obviously.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
Everyone does it.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
If you want to read about what is actually going on, please see this article. The article linked in the summary is riddled with factual inaccuracies.
'The tyrant will always find pretext for his tyranny.' - Aesop's Fables
In this modern day and age, lawyers exist solely to abuse the legal system by screwing as much money as possible out of somebody.
Sometimes it's the defendant, sometimes its their own client, sometimes it's just JimBob-Taxpayer-via-the-government.
I'm not saying that lawyers/soliciters/etc do not understand the meaning of hings like honesty, integrity, common decency and justice - but all they *care about* is how to use those terms to their own benefit.
"Lawyering" as a business is the practice of justice-for-hire. He who has the deepest pockets wins (almost always).
Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
just talked about this in his defcon talk, "You’re Stealing it Wrong" http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/2714
I would expect the riaa and mpaa to drop all their lawsuits tomorrow. There are numerous incidents of them pirating, they cannot even follow their own expectations.
Right, because public defenders and District Attorneys make six figure salaries all the time.
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
Said by a lawyer: "Not all lawyers are crooks, it is just the 99% that make the rest of us have a bad reputation."
Actually, the open software advocates you're referring to are consistent -- I don't think you'll hear any of them saying that someone should be able to incorporate downloaded MP3's into commercial products that are then resold to others. They are absolutely fine with open source software being downloaded and used for free, where they have problems is when the open source software is incorporated into other products and sold rather than given away for free. So there's no double standard.
Of course, many (most?) open source software advocates (myself included) don't bother with downloading illegal content because it's easier to go to Amazon or iTunes and click the "Buy" button than to track down a torrent with a full and complete copy of the music we want to listen to. Once people get out of college and realize that their time costs money, the cost to pirate music exceeds the benefit for many people. There are, of course, the hardcore downloaders that download every album known to man in the genres they are interested in, but hey, it's not like they would have bought those 2000 albums so the music industry isn't losing much real income..
Possibly some of us who frequent slashdot are hypocrites. But to label everyone who visits slashdot as a hypocrite is quite arrogant.
There are in fact quite a few different individuals who post here and people tend to post in articles that interest them. Some days it seems as though nearly every user hear uses nothing but Linux. Other days it seems as though everyone is talking about the benefits of Windows 7. You see? There is no one opinion here. And to claim that there should be is ridiculous.
Possibly some of us who frequent slashdot are hypocrites. But to label everyone who visits slashdot as a hypocrite is quite arrogant.
Can't argue your point. You are quite correct. It just seems the hypocrites are the most vocal.
I stand corrected and apologize.
Anonymous comments are as pathetic as the anonymous "sources" that contaminate gutless journalism from the New York Time
My point about most slash dot open source advocates(which I am one) is they will be the first to sick the lawyers on anyone they feel is not respecting the rights of the authors of said software. But they will be the first to disrespect the work of musicians, movie personnel, or game personnel by illegally downloading their content.
Don't you find it hypocritical that this thread like most threads do nothing but trash lawyers. But what profession do they automatically run to when they are pissed off over a specific subject and THEIR reading of the law?
Anonymous comments are as pathetic as the anonymous "sources" that contaminate gutless journalism from the New York Time
U2 might be able to help you dismantle that. :P
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
The president doesn't want you to set that precedent
Don't you find it hypocritical that this thread like most threads do nothing but trash lawyers. But what profession do they automatically run to when they are pissed off over a specific subject and THEIR reading of the law?
The hypocrisy is people like you who can't cope with the fact that tools can be used for both good and evil. The law is nothing but a tool, a very abstract tool but a tool nonetheless. You'd use a gun if somebody attacked your family with a gun, right?
People often trash lawyers because of hypocritical lawyer behavior. Lawyers frequently claim they do what they do only because their clients tells them to and that they have no responsibility. Nonsense, as the lawyers themselves say "the responsibility is joint and several". Being paid doesn't magically absolve such lawyers of responsibility.
I have high respect for lawyers like Lawrence Lessig. I do not agree with everything he says but he is fighting a good fight. However, the bottom feeding scum suckers supporting artificial scarcity and the victimization of the less fortunate in society who are costing society nothing are in another category altogether.
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Like software, intellectual property law is a product of the mind, and can be anything we want it to be. Let's get it right.
Don't you find it hypocritical that this thread like most threads do nothing but trash lawyers. But what profession do they automatically run to when they are pissed off over a specific subject and THEIR reading of the law?
No, not really. Because the organization that typically pursues violations of the GPL etc. in the US is the EFF and they have a very solid reputation for trying to solve matters in an amicable fashion first. Only when the other party categorically refuses to play ball do they start involving the justice system.
There is a group of people that feel they have the right to download anything and everything on the planet. There's also a group of people that supports open source and doesn't appreciate it when the license under which it is distributed gets violated. Both of these groups can be found on Slashdot, but that does not mean they consist of the same individual people.
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
Slashdot is made up of thousands of people, some of whom have different opinions to others. The people who actively contribute to and defend Free Software are not necessarily the same people who torrent loads of music and movies. Sure, there are some people who do both, and a lot of the torrenters will make noise about Free Software, but that doesn't make me a hypocrite.
Perhaps because the RIAA doesn't represent the interests of musicians, the MPAA doesn't represent the interests of movie personnel, and EA doesn't represent the interests of game personnel?
Just saying.
I think you're missing the point that things like creative commons licenses were created in the first place as a response to IP law becoming too far reaching. It's the community saying fine, if you want to be overly restrictive we can play that game too. Therefore it's entirely consistent when the same community both actively wants to see an end to overly restrictive copyright and at the same time is strongly pursuing those who infringe on OSS licenses. It's like saying, we'd rather live in a world where there were none of these licensing issues, but until we get to that utopia, you guys have to play by your rules too.
They should lose their license to practice as copyright lawyers altogether....sort of like a cop killing and trying to get away with it
Don't you find it hypocritical that this thread like most threads do nothing but trash lawyers. But what profession do they automatically run to when they are pissed off over a specific subject and THEIR reading of the law?
Um, I find it predictable that they trash lawyers after they ran to them :P
---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
It just seems the hypocrites are the most vocal.
If you think this is something peculiar to slashdot, I have news for you.
Unlike the US, in the UK, individual lawyers first duty is not to the Client, but to the Law Society (Guild in other words) so the point here is that there is a difference between Andrew Crossley, individual lawyer, and Andrew Crossley, company with a single partner / lawyer.
You get a lot of "odd" cases that this throws up, especially in Family Law where it is quite likely that a given Client has at some point instructed more than one Lawyer in more than one Case (eg two separate cases against the ex, or two separate cases against two ex's) and you try to hand documents issued by the 1st Lawyer to the 2nd Lawyer, who will not want to touch them, see them, or even discuss them (seriously) with you.
The point being, the Law does some strange things, it throws up anomalies like these, that don't make sense at first to laymen, and never will without an adequate explanation, which these sorts of articles make a point of never giving, instead highlighting the inanity.
http://slashdot.org/~GuyFawkes/journal
I'm pretty sure that fair use requires attribution...
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
He's not trying to increase his page rank. Slashdot adds rel=nofollow to all links in comments, so linking from Slashdot doesn't help there. He's trying to make people click (which you did), probably to infect them with some malware (but, of course, you run Linux and browse with Lynx, so you're safe).
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Most lawyers don't do this. You just notice the bad ones because if the highly-visible consequences of their actions.
I guarantee that if you ever find yourself wrongly accused, you will be very grateful that a lawyer is available to defend you.
So I guess octopi and squid had better watch out.
Like the link to the article? That's pretty good attribution.
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
As has been said before, there are varying opinions here. For example, I hold two registered copyrights I believe should have passed into the public domain already, while many here think perpetual GPL is a good thing. I don't -- copyright should be an enticement to create so that the creations enter the public domain. IMO tewnty years is long enough. I should be free to sell copies of the late Jimi Hendrix's work, let alone the late John Lee Hooker's, whose music was published before I (a geezer) was born. Those copyrights should have expired long ago.
I also think that non-commercial use of anything intellectual should be considered non-infringing. If you take my journals and republish them, fine, just give me credit and a link to my original. If you make money republishing them, I want and deserve a cut.
There's nothing hypocritical about that stance whatever. Hypocricy is sending cease and desist letters that have been copied verbatim from someone else's cease and desist letters.
Free Martian Whores!
"I stand corrected and apologize"
Bravo! Slashdot would be a better place if humility was displayed more often than hypocricy.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.