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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."
If something is on the internet, then doesn't that implicitly authorize access?
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.
There used to be a time when you'd be able to read a story like this, shake your head, smirk and say/think to yourself: "Only in America".
Now, unfortunately, it's no-longer the case you can make that generalization. The whole world's gone crazy...
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.
I think you're thinking of the judge who was rejected for the U.S. Supreme Court, Robert Bork Bork Bork.
RTFA, FFS.
It was a sports broadcast, three years ago.
If it was hidden behind a badly done pay wall, I think it fairly clearly implies you should be paying first, even if the technical side is a debacle.... leaving something unprotected is no more implying access than leaving your front door open. It's bloody stupid, but that's another matter entirely...
Anything on the internet that is reachable without security is public by definition. Doesn't matter if it was also 'behind' a paywall; it it could be reached by a straightforward url without going through the paywall, then it was public. And it is a false analogy to compare it to the front door of a private house; it was a business website that invited access, even if it only wanted paying access. Using the locked door analogy, it is as if a pay to view facility (a cinema or museum say) had a pay counter on one street door, but left another open.
But honestly Canal Plus, the web is considered “public domain” and you should be happy we just didn’t “lift” your whole hockey game and put some other team's name on it!
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
It's not the laws that are flawed, it's our judges in the courts.
A good lawyer can tweak any country's law to prove anything, it's the judges role to keep em in control.
The Swedish judges have over the last year broken the constitution over and over and over, and no one care.
It has gone so far that yes I do think they are bribed. Either with money or power (fast track to higher positions).
But the worst thing is that no one (almost no one) cares. If I tell people that the judges break the constitution they don't react at all. Nothing. Blank.
If that is from lack of interest or knowledge I don't know, but I guess both.
We in Sweden are so used to get fucked by the authorities now days that it looks like we have just given up.
I used to say that not for anything in the world I would live in the USA because money can buy anything, and now Sweden has become a puppet to the states. It's time to migrate to Norway (our brother country that are not as corrupt, yet).
BUT if you leave your garden hose running and pooring out into the street, you can't expect the police to arrest the walker by who lets his dog drink from it.
This guy did NOT break in or walk in to your house.
If you have the windows open, then you can't expect people walking by not to look in.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Yeah, and if you don't have a sign on your front door which says, "You can't come in unless I invite you" then any Tom, Dick and Harry is free to come in and take what they like.
Are you nuts?
Unless Tom, Dick or Harry are vampires. Then they'd have to wait to be explicitly invited in ;-)
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?
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
If your "house" is a website on the net, and the stuff they "took" is still there when they are done, than it absolutely should be expected. For some reason when I "break in" and "take stuff" from millions of other websites, they don't even notice or care (save that they encourage it in most cases.)
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Bad analogy is bad because the server invited them in. A better analogy would be you standing on a corner with a table covered in cookies. No sign with a price, just a table of cookies. Someone walking by asks "Can I have a cookie?" and you say "Sure, here you go" and he walks down the street and tells his friends "Hey, that dude gave me a cookie!" and they ask for a cookie and get the same treatment as the first guy from you.
Now is there ANY court that is gonna allow you to bust the first guy when you did NOT 1.-tell him he couldn't have a cookie. 2.-Tell him not to tell anyone you gave him a cookie. 3.-treat those coming afterward as any different and gave them cookies too? Of course not. There is a reason why we have passwords and server/client security models people, because it is not the job of the guy walking down the street to figure out you want money for the cookie it is up to you to set the price and restrict the giving away of cookies. So I'd say the ONLY person that should have gotten in trouble is the dumbass who "designed" their site and he should have gotten a good firing. What's next, we gonna allow websites to sue anyone who accesses them unless they hunt down a TOS and see if they qualify to access it?
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Ah, Sweden, that bastion of freedom that has the US's dick so far up its collective ass that they trump up a charge on Julian Assange to make him become a fugitive while discrediting him (regardless of Assange's reportedly crappy personality), where the media is now tripping over its collective feet to be even more draconian than the US with regard to IP laws. It's a shame, used to be a nice country before it became a little banana republic police state that will do anything the US tells it to.