Swedish Man Fined For Posting Links To Online Video Feeds

hcs_$reboot writes with a snippet from TechDirt (citing TorrentFreak): "Over in Sweden, it appears that a guy has been fined for linking to an online broadcast of a hockey game. We've heard stories of people getting in trouble merely for linking to unauthorized content, but this story is even more ridiculous. The guy wasn't linking to unauthorized content. He was linking to an online video feed from the official broadcaster, Canal Plus. The issue was that Canal Plus was apparently technically incompetent in how they set up the feeds, and never intended to make the feeds public."

Comments

Similar thing in Germany

[Anonymous Coward]

A map provider sold subscriptions. However their system was a joke. After logging in you would get a URL to the map you wanted. You could pass this URL to non-subscribers and it would work. The map company then sued some real estate company that gave those links to its clients for copyright infringement ... and won.

Security-by-law-suit is the new security-by-obscurity.

Arrggh!

[Mathinker]

It's things like this which will make it so much more likely that I would bother to post such a link in the future --- after firing up Tor, of course!

Without the constant whining of Big Content getting on my nerves (and ruining the legal system), I probably wouldn't bother.

Re:What is the link?

[1u3hr]

If we have the original link, perhaps we can cause a bit of Streisand effect.

RTFA, FFS.

It was a sports broadcast, three years ago.

Re:Damn it Sweden!

[HungryHobo]

the United States was the first country to concertedly undertake compulsory sterilization programs for the purpose of eugenics.
In general, most sterilizations were performed under eugenic statutes, in state-run psychiatric hospitals and homes for the mentally disabled.
over 65,000 individuals were sterilized in 33 states under state compulsory sterilization programs in the United States
though a significant number of sterilizations continued in a few states until the early 1960s
The Oregon Board of Eugenics, later renamed the Board of Social Protection, existed until 1983, with the last forcible sterilization occurring in 1981.

And on a related note the US as late as 1972 poor black men were used in a completely crazy experiment to see how bad their symptoms would get if they weren't told they had syphilis and weren't treated.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuskegee_syphilis_experiment

As late as the 1950's the UK still chemically castrated gay people.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing

Re:What constitutes unauthorized access?

[WrongSizeGlass]

Ok, exactly what kind of a fucking question is that, really?

Rhetorical. It's a super-sarcastic, tognue-in-cheek rhetorical question with a dash of hyperbole to fill out the redonkulous nature of the entire subject matter.

Way to make the opposite point than you intended

[Zero__Kelvin]

"you mean, same as publishers make you pay for books with public-domain texts ? Now, why would anyone on earth to that... oh, wait, you mean there's cost associated with publishing stuff ? you don't say !"

Absolutely. One of those costs is rent for a bookstore, and the cost of security measures. If they didn't want people accessing it for free, then they should not have made it publicly available. They could have used SSL, and enforced proper authorization and authentication, but they didn't do that. If I leave my stuff out on the street unprotected, how is someone supposed to know that I will consider it stealing if someone picks it up and takes it home? Do you really think that the police will actually take me seriously when I try to file a theft claim?