European Pirates Arrested in Massive Police Operation

freedumb2000 writes "Europe just witnessed one of the largest piracy-related busts in history with the raid of the popular movie streaming portal Kino.to. More than a dozen people connected to the site were arrested after police officers in Germany, Spain, France and the Netherlands raided several residential addresses and data centers. Kino.to hosted no illicit content itself, but indexed material stored on file-hosters and other streaming services."

Comments

Phonebook websites

[Killjoy_NL]

Dear Police,

According to my research, there are a lot of criminals being referenced in the phonebook websites worldwide, making it easier for them to communicate.
Please take those sites down too.

Sincerely,

Killjoy_NL

Re:Phonebook websites

[Grismar]

Let's say there was a phone directory that listed people, 90% of whom were child molesters with a high degree of certainty. Wouldn't it make sense to use that phonebook and the company that maintained it, to get a hold of the molesters, assuming the problem was getting sufficiently out of hand and there were few or no other ways to get to this group?

And if the point of said directory would be exclusively to bring these molesters together, wouldn't it be fair to shut down the company itself as well? According to TFA the site reported “The domain of the site you are trying to access was closed on suspicion of forming a criminal organization to commit professional copyright infringement.”

Now, you may argue that child molestation is more rare, well hidden and (far) more serious than piracy (if that is even what you'd want to call it). But that won't change the fact that something illegal and organized in the opinion of the powers that be was going on here. And whether you're of the opinion that it should be legal, or that the offenders should be prosecuted, getting the thing to court is worthwhile.

Re:Phonebook websites

[sakdoctor]

According to my research, 90% of the people listed in the phone directory are pirates, with a high degree of certainty.
The rest are ninjas.

Re:Phonebook websites

[Anonymous Coward]

Allow me to play devil's advocate.... What if that percentage of "allegedly" copyrighted material was 80%, or 50% or only 25%?

  Where do you draw the line in making a blanket judgement about a site that is acting as an Index of copyrighted material? What if the website indexed a legitimate percentage of non-copyrighted material - in addition to the copyrighted materials? Those with the best lobbyist / deepest pockets wins?

Re:Phonebook websites

[Hazel Bergeron]

Copyright and patent infringement are the crimes of speaking forbidden things (whatever spin you like to put on it as benefitting mankind, this is fact). I guess it's an extension of this absurdity that that it becomes criminal to speak locations to things which it is forbidden to speak.

Of course, a list of criminals isn't quite the same thing as a list of locations.

Re:Phonebook websites

[Noughmad]

All ninjas have unlisted numbers, you insensitive clod!

Re:Phonebook websites

[Arancaytar]

Bingo! Comparing the unauthorized distribution of data to the sexual abuse of children, and it only took two comments to get there.

Now all we're missing is "terrorists" and "communists".

Re:Phonebook websites

[SharpFang]

I guess the sex offender registry should be shut down then.

Re:Phonebook websites

[torako]

The only reason kino.to existed was to make advertising money on piracy and the police suspect that kino.to had mutual agreements with the hosters. Now, the law is unclear whether watching an illegit stream is illegal (probably not), so they are not going against the users of kino.to. But aquiring the source material to stream definitely involves piracy. This is more of an organized crime case (and it is treated as such by the police and state attorney), then a "phonebook" thing.

Re:Phonebook websites

[Hazel Bergeron]

All I'm hearing is that ninjas are cowards.

Re:Phonebook websites

[Anonymous Coward]

Furthermore, how is indexing copyrighted material wrong? If anything, the infringing parties are the ones making the content available without proper authorization. If indexing copyrighted data is illegal, I can think of several search engines that are going to get in trouble real soon (or rather, their CEOs). Unless the governments, judges and police are hypocrites and decide to make an exception with them, of course.

Re:Phonebook websites

[HungryHobo]

"the law is unclear whether watching an illegit stream is illegal "

Is listening to a pirate radio station illegal?

Re:Phonebook websites

[mwvdlee]

Indexing copyrighted material is only wrong if you're not paying corporate taxes: http://www.google.nl/search?q=site:kino.to+pirates

Re:Phonebook websites

[datapharmer]

But you aren't arresting the people using the phone book, you are arresting the people making the phone book. Even if the phone book could potentially be used for bad things, it is the right of the publisher (at least in the U.S.) to make it. It is called free speech. There is a crap ton of print material out there from fringe groups that isn't stopped on this premise, much of it far more dangerous about how to commit crimes and blow stuff up and make dangerous drugs, but we don't arrest the people printing those. We might "ban" the books, but the authors are protected since they claim it is "for entertainment" or "educational." Why isn't the same true for websites cataloguing content. Honestly it reminds me of the case of a college student paper whose editors got in trouble in the 70s because they printed a listing of abortion clinics in other states where it was legal (the state they were in it was not). Eventually the thing got thrown out - it was free speech. The entire idea of spending millions of dollars attacking websites and thought crime is ridiculous no matter how you look at it. We'll be fighting the "war on piracy" forever, just like the "war on terror" and the "war on drugs." Fighting against ideas is like tilting at windmills!

Re:Phonebook websites

[aaaaaaargh!]

Shouldn't there be Nazis, too?

Re:Phonebook websites

[aaaaaaargh!]

Because we all know that child molesting and copyright infringement is basically the same thing, don't we Mr. Analogy-Guy?

Re:Phonebook websites

[unitron]

"Let's say there was a phone directory that listed people, 90% of whom were child molesters with a high degree of certainty."

And the other 10% were also child molesters, but more tentative about it?

Re:Phonebook websites

[sosume]

What if I make a movie guide. Isn't that an index of copyrighted material?

Re:Phonebook websites

[Taco Cowboy]

If listening to a pirate radio is illegal then only BIG BROTHER will have control over what is legal and we will all be restricted to listen (and watch) the "LEGALIZED CHANNELS".

1984 in the 21st century?

Re:Phonebook websites

[somersault]

Strawman some moar people.

Re:Phonebook websites

[geogob]

Not all ninjas are good at being ninjas...

Re:Phonebook websites

[Squiddie]

No, that's the RIAA and the MPAA. They are the good guys. /sarcasm

Re:Phonebook websites

[Yvanhoe]

The law is unclear but the police moves just in case. I fucking love copyright laws.

Re:Phonebook websites

[Anonymous Coward]

No. The MAFIAA already did that comparison, long before any commenter could do it.

Remember, that some days ago, they officially stated in front of a parliament (forgot is US, UK or Germany), that file sharing kills artists. (Yep, not even "music". But "artists".)

(Well, I guess the MAFIAA found out, that they could not rape that which is dead to them. Oh wait, they try anyway. Even if it needs a shovel and a maggot protection. "A cat is fine too", I guess.)

Re:Phonebook websites

[Opportunist]

Nah, nobody is worried about them anymore. And terrorists are the new communists, nobody takes you serious today if you talk about the Red Threat, but terrorists, ahhh, panic, they already killed in just a decade about as many people as traffic accidents do daily! Gotta be wary!

Re:Phonebook websites

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, in some countries it is illegal to listen to pirate radio. The UK is one. Not in the US, though.

Re:Phonebook websites

[Opportunist]

Doesn't copyright infringement fuel child porn? Or was that terrorism? I get the strawmen mixed up sometimes.

Re:Phonebook websites

[Opportunist]

So they're late, so what? Did you really assume government could get anything done on schedule?

Re:Phonebook websites

[metacell]

It's definitely legal to listen to pirate radio and pirate streams on the Internet here in Sweden. Don't know about other EU countries.

Re:Phonebook websites

[Anonymous Coward]

Only when we are anonymous, you insensitive clod ;)

Re:Phonebook websites

[AmiMoJo]

Where do you draw the line

Where the music industry tells you too. It is easier, faster and cheaper to bullshit the police into arresting site admins than it is to go the proper legal route and sue them. Also makes up for deficiencies in local laws that fail to make linking to copyright material without permission a crime.

Someone should tip them off about Google's filetype:torrent feature.

Re:Phonebook websites

[HungryHobo]

that's really very surprising. If you have any more info on this I'd be interested.

Re:Phonebook websites

[torako]

No, the law is unclear about the legality of *using* kino.to and the policy is not moving against the users. What the *operators* of kino.to allegedly did in cooperation with their hosting buddies is quite clearly illegal though and that's what is being investigated right now.

Re:Phonebook websites

[Luckyo]

There are brave ninjas and there are old ninjas, but there are no brave old ninjas.

Re:Phonebook websites

[Threni]

Moves are afoot in the US to outlaw this, yes.

Re:Phonebook websites

[tibit]

It always brightens my day when one kills someone else's paragraph-or-longer argument in a single sentence. A sharp fang indeed. Have a great day, mine sure started so!

Re:Phonebook websites

[tibit]

Care to link to some legal sources for that, in the relevant jurisdictions?

Re:Phonebook websites

[Ash Vince]

Dear Police,

According to my research, there are a lot of criminals being referenced in the phonebook websites worldwide, making it easier for them to communicate.
Please take those sites down too.

Sincerely,

Killjoy_NL

The only slight difference being that the phonebook contains the same ratio of innocent people to guilty people as society, a torrent site specialising in exchanging illegally copied movies does not. Also, a phone book does not list next to each name the particular crime that individual specialises in, a torrent site lists each illegally posted movie next to the persons name you can download it from.

Torrent sites like the one in question exist to facilitate the illegal exchanging of files. If you think this is actually a good thing (I do) then just come out and say it not hide behind some childish stupid excuse that does not hold any water with the vast majority of the population.

Whatever your attitude to piracy, you must realise that comparing a phone book to a torrent site is a joke. I have spent enough time on torrent sites to know that the vast majority of posts are illegally ripped movies that the poster does not have the legal authority to share. I also know that most torrent sites are very heavily moderated so if someone posts a duff file that is not actually a rip of the film it says it is then it is usually deleted. If they can be moderated to do this then there is an active moderator who knows exactly what is being posted, since the posting of something that is protected by copyright is illegal then in most legal jurisdictions the moderator is complicit in the crime and may be held to be an accessory.

BTW, I actually support the idea of copyright reform I just think your analogy was terrible.

Re:Phonebook websites

[flappinbooger]

There was a guy who created a very very well done "phonebook" website which indexed all episodes and specials of the wildly popular BBC show Top Gear for streaming.

He was pretty successful at staying under the radar but he eventually put on ads to "support bandwidth costs." He was soon given a very stern letter from "TEH BEEBS" and, just as promptly, posted the letter on the site and shut down.

I wonder if kino would have lasted longer w/o having done the ads?

The letter from the BBC mentioned how the guy "even had the audacity to show ads" so I wonder if that is, really, the line that one should not cross when doing an index site?

Re:Phonebook websites

[brainzach]

I am not a lawyer, but I assume it's not based on the percentage but on whether a website reasonably tries to remove materials that infringe copyright. There are many websites that stream copyright content, but will remove the streams once they are notified that they don't have the rights to the material. Websites can claim plausible deniability and get away with it.

If a website doesn't make any effort to remove copyright content after being notified, then it will be much harder for them to defend themselves.

Re:Phonebook websites

[KDR_11k]

kino.to probably had ads because it was operated for profit.

Re:Phonebook websites

[mr_gorkajuice]

When discussing police business, what really matters is that we're comparing breaking the law with breaking the law.

Re:Phonebook websites

[Stormwatch]

Actually yes, it should be. But that's a whole different topic.

Re:Phonebook websites

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't remove what you don't host.

Re:Phonebook websites

[tehcyder]

Has anyone ever been convicted and fined/imprisoned for listening to a pirate radio station? I've never heard of this before.

Re:Phonebook websites

[Anonymous Coward]

We prefer the term AUTHORIZED content distribution channel.

Re:Phonebook websites

[Cederic]

It's not a strawman. It's a valid exploration of the boundaries of what the police might arrest you for.

You may think it's a ludicrous example. Me, I personally think getting arrested for creating hypertext links is ludicrous.

Where do you draw the line? More interestingly, where does the law draw the line, and is it in the right place. At this moment in time, it clearly isn't.

Re:Phonebook websites

[nabsltd]

How, exactly, are these examples "straw man"?

In every case, the example is doing exactly what the site in TFA did...indexing copyrighted material. The only difference is that the indexed material is "video streams", while sites like Google tend to index files for download (which is all any website really is).

Re:Phonebook websites

[nabsltd]

If a website doesn't make any effort to remove copyright content after being notified, then it will be much harder for them to defend themselves.

If a website doesn't stream any video (copyrighted or not), how can it "remove content"?

Since the site in TFA is merely an index, it doesn't have any copyrighted material that can be removed. The sites that it indexes might have every movie ever made, and if they were issued take-down notices and did not comply, then maybe there is a reason to shut them down in some other way. But, since nothing in the article mentions anything about contact with the sites that actually host the content, it looks like another case where laws that were purchased by big media are being ignored in favor of thuggish activities. It appears that the media companies could have saved a lot of lobbying money and just went straight to the SWAT teams every time.

Re:Phonebook websites

[nabsltd]

The only reason kino.to existed was to make advertising money on piracy and the police suspect that kino.to had mutual agreements with the hosters.

Then, they should have issued subpoenas for that information, not sent SWAT teams. Of course, if it turns out the police were completely wrong and kino.to had no direct relationship to the sites that host the files, then they will get heartfelt apologies and compensation for their trouble. And, we'll all be getting ponies.

But aquiring the source material to stream definitely involves piracy.

So, why not shut down the hosting sites? By doing that, kino.to would automatically stop indexing the sites.

Re:Phonebook websites

[torako]

Gegen die Verantwortlichen von KINO.TO und ihre Helfer wird wegen Verdachts der Bildung einer kriminellen Vereinigung zur gewerbsmäßigen Begehung von Urheberrechtsverletzungen in über einer Million Fällen ermittelt.

Press release of the Public Prosecutor General of Dresden. They are accusing the kino.to operators of building a criminal organization that infringed in more than one million cases and led to a profit in the seven figures.

Re:Phonebook websites

[somersault]

Commenting on the raids the German Federation Against Copyright Theft (GVU) claims that Kino.to made “significant revenue” through a “parasitic business model.” GVU states that Kino.to was working closely with the sites that hosted the copyrighted films, and that they profited from commercial partnerships with these companies.

I have no idea how true or how deep that goes, but it sounds like they were more involved in the process than simply letting people upload links.

Re:Phonebook websites

[Anonymous Coward]

thanks for the filetype:torrent info.

In my country , the copyright lobby is aiming to tax my internet connection , so that means i can download whatever i want, because i'm already paying for it. It also means i have to pirate , because otherwise i'm paying for something i didn't get.

Re:Phonebook websites

[kdemetter]

breaking the law , as in 'making the law broken' ?

Re:Phonebook websites

[somersault]

Did you RTFA? They were (apparently) working with the content providers. They were also making a load of ad money from it all. Do you honestly think that companies that do things like tax evasion and other scams via shell companies, shouldn't be held responsible for their actions? They were directly encouraging copyright infringement as their business model. It's right there in the DNS name. Kino = Cinema. If Google had called themselves "Child Porn, and other stuff", I doubt they'd have gotten very far.

Re:Phonebook websites

[tqk]

that's really very surprising. If you have any more info on this I'd be interested.

BBC:
"Within the United Kingdom its work is funded principally by an annual television licence fee,[7] which is charged to all United Kingdom households, companies and organisations using any type of equipment to record and/or receive live television broadcasts;[8] the level of the fee is set annually by the British Government and agreed by Parliament."

If you're in Britain and not paying BBC's fee and listening/consuming, you're pirating.

Re:Phonebook websites

[Anonymous Coward]

It fuels and lubricates pink unicorns and Portman-named individuals with some nutritional cereal, legume and grain based breakfast products all over them.

Re:Phonebook websites

[HungryHobo]

that wasn't really what I meant: if you pay your TV/radio licence and then use your legal radio to tune into Pirate FM are you breaking the law?

Re:Phonebook websites

[bgowing]

So it's time to ban advertising as it is clearly helping to fund criminal activities.

Re:Phonebook websites

[tehcyder]

kino.to probably had ads because it was operated for profit.

And so why are we supposed to feel any sympathy whatsoever for them?

Re:Phonebook websites

[Anonymous Coward]

driving the economies of the world u nutters

Re:Phonebook websites

[tibit]

Thank you!

Pirates eh...

[Anonymous Coward]

For a moment there I thought they were talking about global-warming preventing sea pirates.

I feel rickrolled

[Anonymous Coward]

I clicked the link on twitter expecting naval pirates

I'm sad now ._.

What's the suffix for Somalia?

[ArsenneLupin]

Kino.to goes down, welcome kino.so ! In any case, that domain would be more fitting for pirates.

Re:What's the suffix for Somalia?

[azgard]

I thought kino.so is some kind of shared library..

Re:What's the suffix for Somalia?

[elfprince13]

Eli sacrificed himself to write it for everyone to use when they come out of stasis.

Re:What's the suffix for Somalia?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's an interesting idea. Perhaps Somalia could become the first free state on this planet since the conditions after the fall of Roman Empire. Pirates unite! And then they cut the hardline..

Re:What's the suffix for Somalia?

[tehcyder]

That's an interesting idea. Perhaps Somalia could become the first free state on this planet since the conditions after the fall of Roman Empire. Pirates unite! And then they cut the hardline..

If Somalia's your idea of freedom, why not go and live there? There's not going to be anyone stopping you at the borders, except to laugh.

Re:What's the suffix for Somalia?

[Anonymous Coward]

The Matrix reference was a clue. Although it has to be said that freedom is a subjective thing. The possibilities of formulating a religious state through war and piracy as a livelihood are increasingly rare opportunities for those who seek such things.

Summary incomplete

[aepervius]

"Kino.to hosted no illicit content itself, but indexed material stored on file-hosters and other streaming services."

Copying and pasting the first paragraphn is 1) misleading 2) an extremely poor way to do a SUMMARY. This is what is missing "GVU states that Kino.to was working closely with the sites that hosted the copyrighted films, and that they profited from commercial partnerships with these companies."

So it was not a SIMPLE linking as the first paragraph make seem to believe.

Re:Summary incomplete

[C0R1D4N]

"Kino.to hosted no illicit content itself, but indexed material stored on file-hosters and other streaming services." Copying and pasting the first paragraphn is 1) misleading 2) an extremely poor way to do a SUMMARY. This is what is missing "GVU states that Kino.to was working closely with the sites that hosted the copyrighted films, and that they profited from commercial partnerships with these companies." So it was not a SIMPLE linking as the first paragraph make seem to believe.

Even still, why not go after those sites that hosted the films instead?

Re:Summary incomplete

[PerformanceDude]

"Kino.to hosted no illicit content itself, but indexed material stored on file-hosters and other streaming services." Copying and pasting the first paragraphn is 1) misleading 2) an extremely poor way to do a SUMMARY. This is what is missing "GVU states that Kino.to was working closely with the sites that hosted the copyrighted films, and that they profited from commercial partnerships with these companies." So it was not a SIMPLE linking as the first paragraph make seem to believe.

Even still, why not go after those sites that hosted the films instead?

Because in Russia films host you... No seriously - it is obvious that those sites are in "uncooperative" jurisdictions. So they go for the closer target to get some press. Kino.ru/so/ir/kp will likely be available any day now.

Re:Summary incomplete

[bemymonkey]

They did... according to most German tech sites, the same people who owned the file hosting sites also happened to be the owners of kino.to. Or something like that...

Anyway, they took the hosting sites down too.

Re:Summary incomplete

[buchner.johannes]

Also, kino.to was making literally millions from advertisement. Euro-millions.

If they hadn't, they wouldn't be prosecuted.

Also, the police did not threaten to charge any leechers/downloaders, only uploaders.

This is sane.

Re:Summary incomplete

[think_nix]

Copying and pasting the first paragraphn is 1) misleading 2) an extremely poor way to do a SUMMARY. This is what is missing "GVU states that Kino.to was working closely with the sites that hosted the copyrighted films, and that they profited from commercial partnerships with these companies."

So it was not a SIMPLE linking as the first paragraph make seem to believe.

Good point. Also stated in these articles here: (sorry could not find anything in english) http://heise.de/-1257486/ and http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/netzpolitik/0,1518,767375,00.html/

Basically what was stated is that not only was kino.to taken down but also the filehosting and portal sites behind it. The people running these sites (kino.to and others) are not explicitly being charged for linking copyrighted material(ASFAIK this is still somewhat of a grayzone in Germany) But rather for building an organized criminal organization. If prosecuted in a German criminal court this could lead to a 5 year jail sentence.

Re:Summary incomplete

[Taco Cowboy]

Sane?

Big brother is sane?

Re:Summary incomplete

[somersault]

Upholding the law is sane.

The law itself may not be sane in some places, due to the real world changing over time.

Re:Summary incomplete

[ezzzD55J]

So they go for the closer target to get some press. Kino.ru/so/ir/kp will likely be available any day now.

Ok, but law did the 'closer target' break? It's just that if there wasn't a good legal case, there's no good legal reason the police couldn't come and raid my home either, even if I'm not breaking any law. So that makes me feel some empathy with the raidees, making millions doing shady stuff or not.

Re:Summary incomplete

[gweihir]

An that is where "founding a criminal organization" comes in. Without the commercial gain from working with the ones offering actual infringing content, the prosecutor has nothing. With that gain, the case becomes direct profit ("direct" because of the close collaboration) from copyright infringement, that becomes "commercial copyright infringement" and since this was multi-person and organized, it becomes "founding a criminal organization". There are serious penalties for that.

Re:Summary incomplete

[gweihir]

Also, kino.to was making literally millions from advertisement. Euro-millions.

If they hadn't, they wouldn't be prosecuted.

Also, the police did not threaten to charge any leechers/downloaders, only uploaders.

This is sane.

It is actually unclear whether this is illegal. For example, Sharereactor was taken down when it started to ask for donations. But there never was a conviction, although that was kept pretty quiet. Now, Swiss law is a bit different, and there are incompetent and arrogant judges here, but they typically do not get away with it in the long run, hence no conviction. The thing is that as soon as there is a financial angle, it is a commercial enterprise and the rules on commercial misconduct are a lot stricter than on private.

Re:Summary incomplete

[Anonymous Coward]

This is what is missing "GVU states that [...]

You are doing your argument a severe disservice quoting the GVU. The GVU is purely a content-industry lobby organisation. They'll claim pigs can fly and then bribe politicians to make it a crime to say otherwise.

They tried to have political satire (which used Creative Commons material) removed from video sites and ran their own servers that distributed copyrighted content to catch people downloading it.

The worst part is, the GVU is a private lobby organisation that collects "evidence" which is then used by prosecutors. In other cases, police forwards evidence to them so they can run private investigations. Absolutely no conflict of interest here, just the usual corruption.

The right response to this scum is not to listen to them but to politely direct them to the nearest stake with the help of pitchforks and torches.

Re:Summary incomplete

[laron]

"Also, kino.to was making literally millions from advertisement."
Strange, that the movie industry ignores the opportunity to do the same.

Re:Summary incomplete

[tibit]

You have a point. I remember how hard was it to get Microsoft's development tools in Poland in the 90s. Things such as driver development kits, early "Visual" langauges, MSDN content were available within 45 minutes from the local pirates -- that's about as long as it took to copy things, or, later, burn them to CDs. Getting the same from local Microsoft reps/offices was a multiweek bureaucratic hurdle, even if you had money in your hand and were willing to pay right then and there. To be frank, Microsoft only recently got a clue and Windows 7 is the first version IIRC that you can buy as a download. I hate the wait and waste of resources that is physical shipping of media and license keys.

Re:Summary incomplete

[Anonymous Coward]

did they took down megavideo and duckload? because it's were they were hosting it. and most stuff was movies and series recorded from TV and sharing that is not illegal in a lot of countries

Re:Summary incomplete

[bemymonkey]

Don't think they took down Megavideo, not sure about Duckload. They took down all the ones that were in any way financially affiliated with kino.to (i.e. the ones kino.to was selling/advertising premium accounts for)... Hosters like archiv.to, quickload.to and bitload.to would be likely candidates - not sure which were taken down and which weren't though, haven't really checked.

Of all places....

[Anonymous Coward]

a title using "pirates" for copyright infringers. I'd actually be interesting in a massive police operation against gunships carrying armed pirates off the coast of Belgium. Until then....

Re:Of all places....

[Shrike82]

Not this crap again. Pirate has very obviously become an accepted term for someone who infringes copyright. Why is this tired and meaningless argument that " a pirate has a boat and a wooden leg" trotted out again and again? It's language; fluid and changing. If we're going to bash copyright activist groups for being so stuck in their ways and unwilling to adapt, why can't everyone just accept that pirate now relates also to copyright infringers?

Re:Of all places....

[westlake]

a title using "pirates" for copyright infringers

The usage was current while the Black Flag still flew over the Caribbean.

--- and for so long as the geek frequents and publicizes sites like The Pirate Bay that isn't going to change.

Re:Of all places....

[LordLucless]

Why is this tired and meaningless argument that " a pirate has a boat and a wooden leg" trotted out again and again?

Um, possibly because the original usage of "pirate" is still valid and in everyday use? You see, that's the problem with hijacking existing language for emotional manipulation - it prevents clear communication because people have to derive from context whether you mean nasty-copying-without-permission-pirate, or shoot-up-boats-and-kidnap-people-pirate. When the context is as short as a headline, sometimes there is not enough of it to correctly gauge the meaning.

Re:Of all places....

[Orffen]

Those who infringe on copyright (or what we call Intellectual Property these days) have been called pirates since the 1700's. http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=pirate

Re:Of all places....

[Shrike82]

Your sole argument is that a word can only mean one thing at once, and since pirate still also means the peg-leg booty snatcher it can't mean anything in case there's confusion? I'd like to introduce you to the concept of homonyms.

kino.to was a cesspit

[zaibazu]

The site was well known for fake videoplayer plugins that lured unaware users into useless subscriptions.

Download and raw DVD tax

[sourcerror]

More than a dozen people connected to the site were arrested after police officers in Germany, Spain, France and the Netherlands raided several residential addresses and data centers.

Spain has a tax on empty CDs/DVDs. Wasn't the justification for that to be that it would make non-profit piracy tolerated? (In my country, Hungary we have a similar tax, and it protects users of pirate sites.) This is the first time I hear that users of pirate sites are also prosecuted in Europe. What next, bittorrent users? (Like with Hurt Locker in US.)

Re:Download and raw DVD tax

[Anonymous Coward]

The people arrested were not users...

Re:Download and raw DVD tax

[X-chan]

I'm pretty sure that by "connected to the site", it means people who had an active part in managing the website rather than some users. France also got a similar tax, but I never heard about it allowing non-profit piracy. Your country is awesome if it works like this, because from what I've seen around the world, those taxes are just about stealing money from people without granting them more rights (and most smaller content creators are pretty lucky if they get to see a single dime from this money).

Of course, such taxes contribute to a "it's ok to pirate, I already paid for it" mindset, but hey, why would they care about slowing piracy if they can just increase profits by putting more taxes on the innocent citizens?

Re:Download and raw DVD tax

[Anonymous Coward]

Spain has a tax on empty CDs/DVDs. Wasn't the justification for that to be that it would make non-profit piracy tolerated?

In general, such taxes are used to "compensate" for fair use-like exemptions in copyright (the right to make backup copies etc). It varies from EU member state to member state whether or not non-commercial copying/downloading for personal use is allowed by copyright law (e.g. it is allowed in the Netherlands, but not in Belgium). I don't know what the situation in Spain is.

Such taxes are however never "compensations for losses incurred via illegal acts". Either something is legal and you can tax it, or something is illegal and you cannot tax it (but you can prosecute it).

That said, as has been mentioned above they did not prosecute people who watched/downloaded the movies.

Re:Download and raw DVD tax

[nospam007]

Is it a crime in Tonga, (Kino.to) to list alleged 'copyright infringing' sites?
How do I know that streaming an English movie from Kazakhstan or Burkina Faso is illegal if nobody can find out who owns the rights to stream those movies in/from those countries?
If it's intellectual 'Property', could those countries tax that property, if, or even if they don't put it in the theaters there?

If they want worldwide rights, they should pay taxes on that property worldwide.

Re:Download and raw DVD tax

[Seumas]

That doesn't make any sense. Why do you need to be "compensated" for "fair use"? It's FAIR USE. That's the entire point. Otherwise it' be called "paying a fee to license content for use". I guess there better be a similar tax on all printers, ink, paper, typewriters, and word processing programs, because they may use a quote or a reference in some way and the original content owners need to be compensated for the fair use.

Re:Download and raw DVD tax

[Anonymous Coward]

None of the arrested people were users, they were part the website's staff (admins and other workers). Also, that tax is unrelated to piracy. You're labelling as "piracy" acts that aren't so. That tax is to compensate for the alleged (and so far, never proven) loss of money that "private copying" causes to the copyright owners (at least according to Spanish law, and I'm assuming the law in Hungary is simillar, since it merely applies a European Directive). "Private copying" is the act of making copies of already legitimately released (e.g. leaked albums or movies aren't legitimately released) copyrightable works (excluding software) for private use and not for profit, regardless of whether the maker of the copy is the same who will keep and use it, or if he actually owns a purchased copy of the content (again, according to Spanish law, and assuming that equivalent laws in other european countries with a tax on blank media are worded simillarly). And it is completely legal, unlike piracy. In fact, what protects the users (I won't say "of pirate sites" because what those sites do is not piracy, and probably isn't even illegal, at least in countries with such a tax) is the right to make "private copies" and not the tax. The tax can't exist without that right, but the opposite is not true.

Re:Download and raw DVD tax

[Opportunist]

We got that joke running here as well (as do most countries afaik). The gag in it all is the combination of various little bits that make the whole "media tax" very fishy.

1. Allegedly, the reason for that levy on blank media is that you, the consumer, will use them to record copyrighted material, e.g. by making a copy of a record on a blank tape, or in today's word, a copy of the DVD that you borrowed from a friend. Our law even has a section that explicitly allows you to borrow legally bought media from personal friends (nobody on the internet is your friend, btw, that's established in court, so any internet sources are not part of the deal) and create a copy of it for your personal use.

2. Every single commercial DVD and BluRay (that would be subject to the grounds established in the first bullet point) now comes with copy protection.

3. The law now explicitly also disallows circumventing protection of any sort.

Question for 100: How am I supposed to execute my right to a copy if copy protection prevents me from copying and I must not disable this protection (even if it's trivial)?

Re:Download and raw DVD tax

[metacell]

Such taxes are however never "compensations for losses incurred via illegal acts". Either something is legal and you can tax it, or something is illegal and you cannot tax it (but you can prosecute it).

Sorry for being off-topic, but I have to mention that Sweden has a very amusing spin on this. In Sweden, it's illegal to buy the services of a prostitute. It is, however, legal to solicit sexual services. That means prostitutes need to declare income and pay taxes for the services they sell, even though they are illegal to buy!

Re:Download and raw DVD tax

[metacell]

Here in Sweden, the CD/DVD tax will probably be extended to include external hard drives and thumb drives this fall.

Re:Download and raw DVD tax

[Anonymous Coward]

The people arrested were not users, but the operators of the site.

Re:Download and raw DVD tax

[wideglide]

Psssst. Shut up please, there might be a politician on /.

Re:Download and raw DVD tax

[Anonymous Coward]

That doesn't make any sense. Why do you need to be "compensated" for "fair use"? It's FAIR USE.

No, it's not fair use. That's why I said "fair use-like exemptions". Fair use as a concept simply does not exist in most of continental Europe's copyright law at this time. The logic behind allowing+taxing was generally that that those ways of "making public" the works could not (and cannot) be checked without extreme invasions of the privacy. The taxes themselves of course suffer from various wrong assumptions and implementation problems.

And there are indeed such taxes also on copying machines (at least in Belgium; I believe it's a yearly amount you have to pay based on total the number of copies made -- as I said, wrong assumptions are involved) and probably printers as well.

Re:Download and raw DVD tax

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed. Legally we pay and get nothing in return. However, I see it as a moral justification not to pay for music and movies. They already took my money by force. I'm just making sure I get something in return, since our politicians prefer bribes over just laws.

As long as they take a cut of every storage medium and reproduction equipment (e.g. scanners, printers) I already paid for the media I download.

Re:Download and raw DVD tax

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't, your screwed.

The media people are laughing all the way to the bank.

Re:Download and raw DVD tax

[Anonymous Coward]

Not a spin. What's being taxed is the activities of the prostitute. It would be a valid comparison only if the one being taxed was the client, for making use of the service. In that case, it would be taxing something illegal. Still, it's pretty dumb to allow "soliciting sexual services" but forbiding "paying for sexual services". I guess prostitutes are supposed to do it for free then... But that'd mean they can't declare income and pay taxes for their sexual services.

Re:Download and raw DVD tax

[Anonymous Coward]

But even if a DVD comes without DRM?CSS then it it still illegal to copy it. There are such things as unencumbered DVD, I don't know if you are even allowed to put out an unencumbered Blu-ray or whether its part fo the spec to Have the DRM.?

Re:Download and raw DVD tax

[Anonymous Coward]

> Spain has a tax on empty CDs/DVDs. Wasn't the
> justification for that to be that it would make
> non-profit piracy tolerated? (In my country,
> Hungary we have a similar tax, and it protects
> users of pirate sites.) This is the first time I hear
> that users of pirate sites are also prosecuted in
> Europe. What next, bittorrent users?

  In Germany we also have a tax on empty burnable media (CD/DVD/Blu-ray, even USB-Storage). That does not stop them from prosecuting uploading (downloading is not illegal). And they go after Torrent-Users like crazy for illegal distribution of movies, games and music here in Germany. It is unclear wether streaming is illegal, and so far it is not clear wether they will go after the users of kino.to .
My justification for the usage of Torrents is, as long as nobody profits from it, I see no harm. Same goes imho for piratebay. Not having used kino.to, I am not sure wether they had a profit. As a user I wanted to try it, but got lost in the redirections of the stream and ended up not seeing anything. But I never once saw something where I should have paid for to see a film. Nethertheless it could have been a scam (Torjans for Windows Users?), then they deserve what happened - but so far I see no evidence.

Possible charges could include tax evation ( like Capone ;-) ) and it was mentioned "building of a criminal organisation". Well, as long as they do not go after the users. I still think, it is wrong, but will wait how it plays out.

Also I think the daily user counts are far exaggerated, but even the more realistic 400.000/daily are showing there is a need for something like this, and if there would be a reasonable fee for that, I guest a quarter or more would gladly pay for a service.
The Movie Industry is making the same mistakes as the Music Industry. iTunes & Co prove it to be possible to sell even with p2p.

Re:Download and raw DVD tax

[Anonymous Coward]

personally i use dd or similar to create isos from the original and use the iso to make a new disk.... have yet to have a problem with that, as long as you have disks of equal size (ie 8gig dvds instead of 4gig)

Re:Download and raw DVD tax

[QuasiSteve]

I'd like to start off my reply by saying that although you group together a bunch of countries that share in common a levy on recordable media, the details can differ hugely between those countries.

For example, in point 1 you mention that "nobody on the internet is your friend, so any internet sources are not part of the deal". This, however, does not apply to The Netherlands where it is - for now - completely legal to download music, video and movies even if the rights holders have not given you explicit or implicit permission to do so.

Now to some other finer details, at least as they pertain to The Netherlands:

Yes, there's a levy. That levy doesn't exist because you will be making a particular copy. If it did, they'd make the levy as high as whatever the original material you'd be copying would be. The levy exists because the government at some point realized that people were in fact making copies (on audio tapes, back then), that this was 'unfair' to artists (or business interests, take your pick), but that going after individual infringing parties would be prohibitively expensive and technologies to make this less expensive would be far too invasive. So they went with one of the lesser evils: a levy for all. Even if you were to never record something onto tape - or now CD-R, DVD-R, Blu-Ray recordable - you'd still pay that levy on that medium. Yes, that's 'unfair' to you, but the proposed alternatives wouldn't be very pretty either.
The levy also doesn't exist as a "if you pay 2 cents on this CD-R, it means you can download any $10 album you want, and it would be completely legal" as some have suggested be the case in some other countries. I don't know where people would get that preposterous idea, unless they're applying RIAA/MPAA math in reverse. I.e. the levy is not what gives you 'the right' to make a copy. Other laws deal with that.
Note that this levy in NL is largely pointless. Officially, the levy be â0.60/DVD-R. However, you can get a 25-pack for â6,70 at any store, no fishy deals or ordering from Germany required. If the product is being sold at a price lower than the official levies would amount to, I'd say that levy chain is broken somewhere.
Also note that they're planning on doing away with the levies, but only as part of some measures to make downloading (material from illicit sources) illegal.

So that's as far as levies go, as pertaining to The Netherlands.

Now to move on to your next part involving actually making that copy. You say you have the right to make a copy. we do in The Netherlands as well. However, the Dutch law doesn't state what a copy is. If I take a sheet of notes you have, run it through the ol' photocopier.. do I now have a copy? If I take a show on TV and record it on my PVR, do I now have a copy? In both cases the answer is naturally 'yes' even though I don't have a bit-for-bit perfect copy. And therein lays the foundation for the argument that while you have the right to make a copy, that doesn't mean that the publishers have to make this easy for you. You don't have the right to a copy, you have the right to make one. How you make one is something the law doesn't concern itself with.
In other words, if you pointed an HD video camera at your nice flatscreen, hit record on that, and hit play on your Blu-Ray player to play back that Blu-Ray movie, you're making use of your right to make a copy just as well - and in a way that isn't prohibited by a law regarding disabling of protection techniques as you're not disabling the protection of the bits and bytes. If they wanted to protect the photons coming off of your TV screen they should've gone with that. But as many have stated, you can't close the analog hole.
If you then take captured video and burn it to your CD-R, you still made a copy of the movie onto that CD-R; thus justifying the levy once more.

That's as far as legal bits and pieces go. In practice, hardly anybody even takes these things into account. As I mentioned above, th

Re:Download and raw DVD tax

[BForrester]

There are two fallacies here that need to be addressed:
  - According to TFA, the site was making significant profits, so this is not a case of non-profit IP infringement.
  - Users of the site have not been targeted. It was the operators and/or administrators of the site that have been arrested.

Re:Download and raw DVD tax

[Yuuki Dasu]

it's pretty dumb to allow "soliciting sexual services" but forbiding "paying for sexual services".

Actually, it's pretty brilliant.

In "smart" countries like the US, both sides are illegal, and punishment is much more harsh on the prostitutes than on the johns (they consider it a drug dealer vs. user paradigm). So life is pretty bad for the aforementioned ladies of the night: who are they to run to when a client is physically abusive? How much of a hurry would you be in to run to the police and tell them things they can (and will!) lock you up for?

Now look at the case in Sweden: clients had better toe the line and be good, or they'll be looking at charges of soliciting for sex on top of assault, etc.

It may not be "tough on crime", but it's a great way to help protect a typically-disadvantaged group of people.

Re:Download and raw DVD tax

[SimonInOz]

The problem is simple. It costs USD200,000,000 to make a movie, right? (Ok, that's an expensive one - but what the heck, I like expensive ones).

Now, a fair number of movies are flops - and it's hard to predict this in advance.

So the studio needs to earn an awful lot of money from the good ones to stay in business (and we all want the movies to get made, right?)

How do you do it? If everyone downloads the movie for free, then the studio goes broke and doesn't make any more movies. Or do you want everyone else to pay, and just special computer-savvy people to get it for free? Is that it? Because that's what's happening now. Doesn't sound quite fair to me.

So stop moaning about how the studios are stealing your money - instead come up with a decent workable business model so you get a fair product for a decent prince, and everyone can make a little money.
And we can all sleep much better.

And you can stop moaning.

Re:Download and raw DVD tax

[Seumas]

Thanks for the clarification!

We tend to think of other countries as having much more fair and rational copyright practices favoring information and individuals, but it sounds like that can often be anything of the case. I can only assume that there is also a lot of overlap between "people who do/did/will work for content creators" and "politicians who are having the public pay a tax to those people every time they buy some form of media that can store data".

Re:Download and raw DVD tax

[Anonymous Coward]

Ye olde analogue hole is your answer.

Re:Download and raw DVD tax

[Tei]

"Spain has a tax on empty CDs/DVDs. Wasn't the justification for that to be that it would make non-profit piracy tolerated?"

No really. The tax is for backups. Yea, you have read right. The law supposedly exist since if you make a copy of a CD, to have a backup, since you are copying music, but not buying a new copy, the original author of the song lose anything. It may not make much sense, but thats is.

What is unrelated, is that you are free to download music from the internet, and you are not breaking any law. We even tried to lure our national MAFIAA to sue people, publically copying files, and nothing.
The mass media are friends of the our MAFIAA, so the mass media tell people that is against the law, but is not actually true.

Another fun thing ("fun"), is that our MAFIAA has managed to put a "tax" on any public show of music. Even people having a party, marrying, a taxi, a bar, ... everything!. And another tax on everything that has memory.. and that one is very pricey.

We are not happy at all.

Also, since (based on the laws) what most P2P networks do is OK, our govern has invented a system to close websites withouth a judge. This after a lot of judgements that favor P2P websites. That way the govern can close websites that help P2P, but don't break the law.
I think our govern do this thing, because USA want us to do that, so we are friends of USA. But USA has a greedy history.. it only favour us wen seems theres a profit to be made. We are "customers" of USA, not friends. Sadly.
We pay with (part of) our freedom to stay friend to USA. Hope it works :-P

Re:Download and raw DVD tax

[Windwraith]

The "Digital Canon" doesn't apply only to blank DVD/CD. It also applies to cameras, video cameras, hard disk drives, anything including a hard disk or memory card storage, memory cards, computers themselves and plenty of specialized hardware if it can be used to store anything.
There is no option or counteroffer, you have to pay the price yes, or yes. The value of the canon itself varies, but for items like cameras it meant a +20-30â difference.

Re:Download and raw DVD tax

[vgerclover]

Simple, I only buy low budget, excellent movies (The Man From Earth, [REC] and [REC]2, Primer, Moon, Ink, Tambien la lluvia, El Secreto de sus Ojos — not so low budget, 9 Reinas, El Aura, L'auberge espagnole, Russian Dolls, Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amélie Poulain, Monsters, most things from Woody Allen, The Blair Witch Project... I could go on) and don't buy nor go to the cinema to eat over expensive popcorn and endure awful blockbuster shit (Michael Bay, I shit in your general direction).

Re:Download and raw DVD tax

[KDR_11k]

Registering a domain in a country does not mean everything done on the website is under jurisdiction of that country. Evidently these people had all their meatspace stuff in Europe. One guy I know has a domain in the Soviet Union ccTLD, that doesn't make him subject to Soviet law.

Re:Download and raw DVD tax

[Anonymous Coward]

The tax is not only for backups. "Backup" assumes that you own a purchased copy of the content. The tax is for "private copies", which are defined by the law in such a way that does not mandate they're made from a purchased copy of the content owned by the same person that makes or will own the private copy. A private copy of a private copy is still legal, and wouldn't qualify as a backup if its owner doesn't also own a purchased copy of the content. Backups of things other than software qualify as "private copies", however.

Also, the fact that the act of downloading music is legal is not unrelated. It is legal because it is a form of "private copy".

Re:Download and raw DVD tax

[sourcerror]

Ok, then I misunderstood "a dozen people connected to the site were arrested" expression. I thought that as IP connection log.

Re:Download and raw DVD tax

[Opportunist]

If the DVD contains any kind of "copy protection" (while they cleverly avoided defining what "copy protection" actually is, maybe it's defined a bit like porn where the judge gets to say "I know it when I see it"), this is already illegal (in my country, ymmv) since you circumvented the protection by using a tool that doesn't give a shit about it.

Note that the copy protection does not have to actually prevent you from copying to make copying illegal. It only has to exist, so anything you do to create a copy automatically required you to circumvent it, else you could not have copied it. See the Catch 22?

Re:Download and raw DVD tax

[Opportunist]

The right to make a copy is null and void if at the same time the creator may forbid you to make one (something our copyright law actually clearly forbids, the right to create a copy is a right you cannot waive). And with the combination of "the creator can include copy protection" and "circumventing copy protection to create a copy is illegal", the creator CAN actually and effectively forbid you to make a copy. By including copy protection. You must not circumvent copy protection (even if it was trivial, as it is in almost all cases), hence creating one is not allowed.

So which law trumps which now? The one that says I cannot waive the right to create a copy, or the combination of the latter two that state I must not create a copy?

Re:Download and raw DVD tax

[Opportunist]

Erh... what's that got to do with the levy on media to compensate for copies that must not be created?

The original statement for the reason why that levy exists was that it is legal to record from radio and TV, and that it is also legal (in my country) to create copies of content someone bought for a personal friend. If this is pretty much outlawed by including copy protection on all media and creating a law at the same time that outlaws circumventing copy protection, no matter whether it actually protects anything, the levy isn't justifiable anymore. If it is supposedly a compensation for illegal downloading and illegal copying, we're talking about a blanket fee charged from everyone for the transgressions of some.

Or, to get a car analogy into this game, it's like demanding a certain amount of money from every driver for speeding because all of them could and some even will.

Re:Download and raw DVD tax

[Opportunist]

How long 'til it will be outlawed to re-record something?

Re:Download and raw DVD tax

[metacell]

Yes, that's exactly the reasoning behind it here. The system's drawn criticism from some sex workers, though - they think they have a perfectly valid business model, believe themselves safe when they receive clients in their own homes, and don't like their clients being scared away by the police.

Re:Download and raw DVD tax

[vgerclover]

What I posit is that you don't really need USD200,000,000 to make a good movie. If you can do a good movie for USD250,000 and nets you USD1,000,000, that is a 4x return on investment. The ones that I see complaining for the loss of potential profit due to piracy are the big studios.

Have you ever heard of somebody going broke due to piracy? What about due to obscurity?

I think that applying laws written a long time ago to solve the problem of for-profit copyright infringement to individuals, is fucked up, but may be that's just me.

Re:Download and raw DVD tax

[Richard Dick Head]

Yes, the computer-savvy restriction is exactly how it should work!

Right now piracy is acting as a regressive subsidy where rich teeny boppers with mom and dad's fat pipe are getting the most benefit, and those who are poor and don't have internet see none of the benefits. Not to mention, it is indirectly subsidizing Red China by diverting the flow of funds from software developers and content makers to the purchase of hardware and trinkets. How is that fair to anyone?

It is simply too easy to pirate, and that is the real reason why the RIAA and other legal constructs are on the offensive...there needs to be a filter, even something as simple as requiring a command line entry, to keep the numbers down so it doesn't draw international attention like it is.

I don't think it is unfair to restrict access to intelligent types who actually have a chance of being inspired to contribute something to society with the content or software they "borrow". The Al Bundys of the world are going to grow up to be overweight shoe store salesmen. Types like this will abuse any freeloader system they come across.

Re:Download and raw DVD tax

[Raenex]

You're still dodging the issue. There is no "USD1,000,000" if nobody is paying for the movie. When it is not illegal to download for free, and doing so becomes the norm, hardly anybody is going to be paying for movies.

Re:Download and raw DVD tax

[Travelsonic]

That isn't dodging - your entire point is nothing more than repeating the same doom and gloom crap that has been spouted since just before the BETAMAX DECISION. People will pay - even those who pirate something. Piracy has existed fro decades now, and people still pay. Downloading legally free content - copyrighted or not - has always been legal, and yet those projects that seek donations still get some, it is not ALL OR NOTHING like you seem to believe.

Re:Download and raw DVD tax

[Raenex]

That isn't dodging

It certainly is dodging if he never addressed the issue. At least you made an attempt to do so.

People will pay - even those who pirate something. Piracy has existed fro decades now, and people still pay.

The big point you are missing is that it is illegal to infringe on copyright, and illegally copying stuff for free still has a stigma attached to it that encourage many people to pay. When copying anything for free is legal and becomes the norm, it is a completely different environment.

Downloading legally free content - copyrighted or not - has always been legal, and yet those projects that seek donations still get some, it is not ALL OR NOTHING like you seem to believe.

I recently looked at Mozilla Firefox Addon projects to see if there was any worthwhile money in developing them. The short is no, there isn't. This is an environment where it's completely the norm to download for free, and PayPal donations are encouraged and made easy. Yet successful projects with thousands of downloads have made enough money to buy something like a couple of dinners.

Citation available on request. I'd have to dig up the forum thread again.

Re:Download and raw DVD tax

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but the point is that the laws (as in my country, Canada, too) are intended to tax everyone for 'speeding', even if one doesn't.. so, on the assumption that (as is ALSO true in most countries) that you can't be taxed for unproven illegal activities, the clear implication is that all forms of media copying are implicitly *sanctioned*.. or else govt's will HAVE to drop the tax...

Re:Download and raw DVD tax

[Anonymous Coward]

special computer-savvy people also go to the movies....... often...
and as the old saying goes: if you like it, you buy it.....

Any other sites I should know about?

[TubeSteak]

Although the site was most popular in German-speaking countries, it didnâ(TM)t escape the eye of the MPAA either.

Unfortunately, I'm not in a German speaking country.
Can any foreign /.ers tell us what sites are biggest in their country's sphere of influence?

Re:Any other sites I should know about?

[value_added]

Couldn't you just google "David Hasselhoff" and see what sites turn up?

Re:Any other sites I should know about?

[Anonymous Coward]

My guess it's the ones listed in the MAFIAA redirector FF extension.

http://www.hq-streams.tv/
http://www.atdhenet.tv/
http://www.rojadirecta.es/
http://www.rojadirecta.es/
http://www.torrent-finder.info/
http://www.hq-streams.tv/
http://www.firstrowsports.eu/
http://www.ilemi.eu/
http://www.ilemi.eu/
http://www.ilemi.eu/
http://www.freeonsmash.com/
http://www.rapgodfathers.info/
http://www.tvshack.bz/
http://www.tvshack.bz/
http://www.watch-movies-tv.info/
http://www.fastpasstv.ms/

Re:Any other sites I should know about?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Sites"? 1995 called! It wants its file sharing technology back!

Seriously, have we gone full mountain, into the valley of idiocracy?
(Share directory = You put a file in, it gets automatically shared. No further action needed. Search = Built-in!)

0. FTP: Multiple centralized insecure servers without search or share directory.
1. Napster: Single centralized insecure server with search and share directory. (ScourExchange was bigger and better anyway.)
2. eDonkey: Multiple centralized insecure servers with search and share directory.
3. Gnutella: Completely decentralized insecure network with search and share directory.
4. Freenet & Co: Completely decentralized secure network with search and share directory.
0. BitTorrent: Multiple centralized insecure servers without search or share directory.
-1: Websites: Multiple centralized insecure servers with search but NO sharing at all.

FAIL.

Re:Any other sites I should know about?

[arth1]

Unfortunately, I'm not in a German speaking country.

Neither am I - how is that a prerequisite for reading German?

Anyhow, just use Google to translate, and if there are certain parts that don't make sense, ask about them. Don't be lazy and expect people here to do a full translation for you.

No

[Anonymous Coward]

No, I think these europeans are skitso, none of their legislation is correct.

Cool... so

[Anonymous Coward]

Does this mean we now have official sites where we can stream / download movies in decent formats for reasonable cost? Like DivX sites operating in a erm... unofficial capacity under DMCA safe harbour provisions. These are reasonably anonymous with user uploaded content and a good selection of obscure / hard to find stufff.

AFAIK there's not a single legitimate video site that would satisfy my criteria and even youtube is operating in a grey area. Nobody wants to see compulsory licensing introduced as a result of market failure. Copyright may be a form of monopoly but there's no reason rights holders should be exempt from market forces.

Re:Cool... so

[aaaaaaargh!]

Mod parent up,please!

I have money right now and would definitely pay for watching movies but in my country there is absolutely no working legal movie streaming site with decent choices. It's completely ridiculous.

Re:Cool... so

[Opportunist]

Can someone who didn't post yet hand that guy a few mod points? This is pretty much dead on the problem.

I have money and I would gladly spend it on content. If it was offered to me, and offered in an acceptable way.

It takes AGES (years, literally) before a new season of whatever show I'd like to watch gets available in my country. Of course, dubbing and all takes time, but I'd be happy to have it in plain ol' English. And not only because the dubbing stinks for 9 out of 10 shows, where jokes get mutilated to the point where you can't even understand why it was supposedly funny. We're at least one-two seasons behind on our networks. Writer's guild strike? Some actor going bonkers? We won't feel it at least another year or two, and by then they certainly compensated with something. Hey, what a blast!

Then there's my pet peeve about anime. Some of the dubbing is just atrocious if you understand at least a few words of Japanese. They often get butchered with cuts that change the whole story, not to mention that certain animes won't ever make it here since, hey, comics are for kids and these things aren't suitable for our kids! Think I'll ever get to see a German dub of Hellsing OVA? Doubt it. Not only 'cause of the Nazis.

So let me buy what I want to have and I'll gladly throw my money at you! But please refrain from casting it in a package that I cannot accept as a licensee. If you force me to sit through half an hour of unskipable ads, I'm not going to buy. I paid for the content! If you want to litter it with ads, show it to me for free on private TV!

Re:Cool... so

[metacell]

There's a service called Voddler which streams legally licensed films and TV shows over BitTorrent, but the content is still very meager compared to a pirate site.

Re:Cool... so

[elashish14]

So true. I remember a few weeks ago I wanted to watch a baseball game on espn.com (bless those souls for being the only broadcaster to embrace live streaming over the internet - finally a distributor that provides something customers want!). I was ecstatic and looking forward to it a lot (don't have cable, and watching on the computer is just too damn convenient - plus the MLB package is way too expensive... 100 USD per season).

I turn it on only to find out that I can't watch it because of a blackout. Yeah. Bummer. That was what finally convinced me to get streamtorrent up and running on my Ubuntu box, which I had pulled out many hairs over previously because it was so damn difficult. Well now I got that running, so I won't have to bother doing it the legal way.

You wanna know why I pirate, content companies? Piracy doesn't get blacked out. Yeah, it's not surprising that consumers are gonna go to a source that doesn't block them out for no reason whatsoever. Long story short: if you don't want people to pirate, stop fucking them over.

Re:Cool... so

[westlake]

Does this mean we now have official sites where we can stream / download movies in decent formats for reasonable cost?

There is Netflix.

30% of "prime time" download traffic in the U.S.

Standard and HD resolutions to1080p. Client installed on every "Internet enabled" HDTV, Blu-Ray player, Roku set top box and video game console. Prices start at $8/mo.

There is Hulu and Hulu+ Amazon VOD...

There are the many free or low-rent sites like Crackle which stream anime and other genre films at standard definition or below.

Not a bad way to test-drive something like Steamboy, which is available only on DVD from Netflix.

Re:Cool... so

[xtracto]

Funny that you mention this. About two days a go I posted a question in Reddit asking for legal alternatives to Hulu, Netflix-stream and iPlayer in Germany.

Unfortunately the only replies suggested using a VPN.

It depends on your definition of "massive"

[Stormtrooper42]

police have arrested a total of 13 people thus far. A 14th person is still being hunted.

13 people. How massive.

Re:It depends on your definition of "massive"

[Anonymous Coward]

13 people. How massive.

You misunderstand. The operation was conducted by massive police.

Re:It depends on your definition of "massive"

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe they were 13 obese couch potatoes?

Re:It depends on your definition of "massive"

[Anonymous Coward]

police have arrested a total of 13 people thus far. A 14th person is still being hunted.

The 13th person was His mother, but they will never catch Jesus, not this time around!

Re:It depends on your definition of "massive"

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, according to heise.de (german), about 250 policemen were involved. On my scale that is massive, even if the number of people arrested is not that high.

Re:It depends on your definition of "massive"

[Anonymous Coward]

It was a massive effort (as in tax euros wasted), not necessarily a massive success.

Re:It depends on your definition of "massive"

[black soap]

Maybe they were all morbidly obese?

Re:It depends on your definition of "massive"

[Anonymous Coward]

police have arrested a total of 13 people thus far. A 14th person is still being hunted.

13 people. How massive.

Erm, any of them weigh over 600 kilos? Maybe by massive, they referred to tonnage?

Re:It depends on your definition of "massive"

[Anomalyst]

probably neutronium bone replacement surgery, or parasitized by cheela http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starquake_(novel)

Re:It depends on your definition of "massive"

[Anonymous Coward]

This is insightful? `Massive' applies to the police operation, NOT the number of people arrested.

At least you did RTFTitle, so what do I complain...

Re:It depends on your definition of "massive"

[Rakarra]

Well, according to heise.de (german), about 250 policemen were involved. On my scale that is massive, even if the number of people arrested is not that high.

19 policemen per person seems like a bit of overkill.

Probably because they wouldn't help the police.

[elucido]

I'm sure the police offered to let them keep their site up and to become informants. Chances are they refused the offer and got raided as a result.

Usually police love to have control over these sorts of websites so that they may more easily sting pirates.

Molestation

[Anonymous Coward]

> Let's say there was a phone directory that listed people, 90% of whom were child molesters with a high degree of certainty. Wouldn't it make sense to use that phonebook and the company that maintained it, to get a hold of the molesters, assuming the problem was getting sufficiently out of hand and there were few or no other ways to get to this group?

We might call it "worldsexguide" or "craigslist." Just, you know, hypothetically. (Neither refers specifically and explicitly to child prostitution, AFAIK, but both are used for advertising or referrals in renting people's bodies out in the sex slave trade.)

respondents: pause for a moment before rationalizing the rape of a child or pretending it doesn't exist.

Re:Molestation

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course the child exists. If it were a dream, I wouldn't be able to smell the fear.

Posting anonymously because child rape jokes don't go down as well as, well, children.

Re:Molestation

[Anonymous Coward]

Posting anonymously because child rape jokes don't go down as well as, well, children.

Glad I'm not a parent; otherwise I wouldn't understand the hilarity in this.

like

[Anonymous Coward]

I really like that you have a tags list in the sidebar.

just shut all down

[devent]

I really wish they would shut down every site out there that illegal links or shares copyrighted material, so that people have no way at all anymore to download movies and music. Then I would see the whole movie and music industry go in to oblivion because nobody will buy there crap anymore.

Are they really believing that if people couldn't share the movies and music, the people would suddenly buy more stuff? If anything, they would buy less stuff because they don't know anymore new artists or new movies.

As I was 18 I used a lot torrents, and I mean a lot. Like 5 movies and games every week. Now I don't use that anymore, do I buy more movies and more games? No, not at all. Why? Because that crap is just so expensive and I found so many new alternatives for entertainment. Like youtube where I watch news and starcraft 2 movies, and southparkstudios.com, and collegehumour.com. And I read a lot of blogs and news on the internet. For music I have youtube and lastfm and other services.

If I go to the Mediamarkt I see it why I stopped to buy new movies or music and why others are not buying, too. I see it because all the DVDs and all the music CDs are laying there around for years and nobody touches them. Because they are so freaky expensive. 20Euro for a old DVD movie, 30Euro and more for new movies and 30Euro and more for TV series.

Every time I go to the shop and see a nice movie, I see the price and I think: do I really want that DVD for that price? And the answer is every time: no, because it's just too expensive for just one movie that I will watch one day and then it will lay around collecting dust. If the DVDs would be like 5Euro each for new movies and under 5Euro for old DVDs I would buy them. But not for that price, no way. Because I have so much free entertainment.

Re:just shut all down

[samjam]

At ASDA DVD's are £5 a throw and often less.

I buy them and watch them once or twice and think I've had good value for money.

Re:just shut all down

[Anonymous Coward]

Where I live at least there are a number of options for legally watching movies at reasonable prices.
The local library has a number of movies and tv series on DVD; recently they switch most tv shows to being per-season check-outs instead of per-dvd. (Caveat: the library system has been voted number one in the US a number of times, so their level of service probably isn't typical)

Next, I have a netflix subscription; steaming fills many of my needs, but I get a number of DVD's (only ones I can't quickly get from the library). Since there's a distribution center in my city and since my employer has their own post office, I can usually mail out a DVD in the morning and get the next one in my queue the next day (some times it takes two).

Finally, there are a number of redboxes at local stores (some within walking distance which is saying something as I live in a suburb in a location choosen as its 4 houses away from a park), at $1 a night, plus monthly deals for free nights, and the fact that I, my wife (rarely), my 5 children (biological + step), and mother-in-law can all watch the movie for that price makes it a good deal.

I end up watching a lot of movies; typically I'll do something else (like programming) while watching them and a number of them are children's movies or at least family friendly. We've also had a lot of thunder stroms lately (its been very atypically wet) so that's also influenced our behaviors.

Re:just shut all down

[TheTurtlesMoves]

The last few DVD i got didn't play on any of my 3 computers or the DVD player. They refused to give me a refund.

Re:just shut all down

[Kjella]

I really wish they would shut down every site out there that illegal links or shares copyrighted material, so that people have no way at all anymore to download movies and music. Then I would see the whole movie and music industry go in to oblivion because nobody will buy there crap anymore.

Yeah, because it was all going to oblivion before the Internet and P2P, right?

As I was 18 I used a lot torrents, and I mean a lot. Like 5 movies and games every week. Now I don't use that anymore, do I buy more movies and more games? No, not at all. Why? Because that crap is just so expensive and I found so many new alternatives for entertainment. Like youtube where I watch news and starcraft 2 movies, and southparkstudios.com, and collegehumour.com. And I read a lot of blogs and news on the internet. For music I have youtube and lastfm and other services.

Good for you. But everyone else, why are they then downloading all the TV series and movies? Oh, because they actually want them not the youtube garbage. This is the old "I don't like them so neither should you".

Every time I go to the shop and see a nice movie, I see the price and I think: do I really want that DVD for that price? And the answer is every time: no, because it's just too expensive for just one movie that I will watch one day and then it will lay around collecting dust. If the DVDs would be like 5Euro each for new movies and under 5Euro for old DVDs I would buy them. But not for that price, no way

Every time they offer something for X$, there's someone who comes along and says "If only it was available for X/2$ I'd buy it. But if you actually lowered it, most of them would now say X/4$. Or X/8$. Reality is that we know the truth, those who really liked it already bought it at the high price and those who don't will find some other excuse not to buy it.

I don't mind copyright as such when I buy say a paperback book. The author wrote it, whatever deals good or bad he did with the publisher is not my problem, and he charges a price per copy. I buy my copy and that copy is mine, end of story. No DRM, no regions, no EULA, no licensed player that won't let me flip several pages at once (no fast forward), no disappearing ink pages that'll be gone if I resell it (one-time codes), I can sell it, burn it, make paper planes of it and it's a straight deal in every way except for the few limited rights actually in copyright law.

The problem is copyright enforcement which has turned into a huge inconvenience for the customers and is also threatening lots of privacy, due process and other laws. I don't want companies sitting on remote disable/delete buttons to everything I own. Of course you might say I should become a cultural hermit and just reject all commercial TV, movies etc. but I'd rather just take it while I wait for them to clue in and provide a service equal to the torrent sites - at any cost. I do buy the best on BluRay/DVD as the DRM is broken, but they go mostly unopened as I've already had my "digital delivery" long ago.

Re:just shut all down

[samjam]

Sometimes it's easier to get them to agree for an exchange.

Quite possibly when they get to the shelf they won't find any if your friend has them all in his trolly as he walks around frozen veg.

Having already accepted the point, they then give the refund or a credit note or 3 "smiles" or something and your friend can put them back before he leaves.

But I agree, quality and customer service at ASDA are going to hell.

Re:just shut all down

[EvilAlphonso]

Every time they offer something for X$, there's someone who comes along and says "If only it was available for X/2$ I'd buy it. But if you actually lowered it, most of them would now say X/4$. Or X/8$. Reality is that we know the truth, those who really liked it already bought it at the high price and those who don't will find some other excuse not to buy it.

You see, a few years back, there was a huge price difference between the country where I was living (Luxembourg) and the country where I currently live (Germany). The content was identical, only the packaging differed (slightly)... I actually MD5'd discs to check. Now, how can the content industry justify an up to 300% markup on identical product between two neighboring countries? A TV series boxed set was 35 in Germany and 100+ in Luxembourg. In my first year in Germany, I bought way more content than the decade before. Then I lost all interest in the crap that passes for entertainment nowadays... I do have far better things to do than sitting in front of a screen for untold hours at home after spending untold hours in front of a screen in the office.

Of course you might say I should become a cultural hermit and just reject all commercial TV, movies etc. but I'd rather just take it while I wait for them to clue in and provide a service equal to the torrent sites - at any cost.

Commercial TV and movies is entertainment, not culture... seriously.

Re:just shut all down

[sgt scrub]

Not to mention if you buy a discount DVD they are usually filled with advertisements. Rip'd movies allow you to stream a list of .avi files to a player or just start the file. You get to enjoy the movie without all of the annoyance of the DVD interface, adverts, warnings, and promo's.

Re:just shut all down

[drinkypoo]

I think it's really true that the value of hard copy media has gone down. For those of us with access to Netflix streaming there's a vast library of relatively high-quality content available with relatively little trouble. Any more I will only buy deeply discounted DVDs. Most of my recent DVD purchases have been very old movies I got used on DVD at yard sales. It's probably been more than a year since I bought anything new on disc. The last thing I did buy new on disc was a box set that turned out to be an illegal copy (SG-1...)

Re:just shut all down

[tibit]

You live in Ohio?

Re:just shut all down

[HeckRuler]

I don't mind copyright as such when I buy say a paperback book. The author wrote it, whatever deals good or bad he did with the publisher is not my problem, and he charges a price per copy. I buy my copy and that copy is mine, end of story. No DRM, no regions, no EULA, no licensed player that won't let me flip several pages at once (no fast forward), no disappearing ink pages that'll be gone if I resell it (one-time codes), I can sell it, burn it, make paper planes of it and it's a straight deal in every way except for the few limited rights actually in copyright law.

No search, no backup, physical storage medium means lugging it around, and most of the cash you spend on it DOESN'T go to the author. I prefer directly downloading the pdf. If the author has a system, that's great, if not, I'm ok with getting it where ever and sending the author a buck anyway. My preferred DRM system is guilt.

Re:just shut all down

[vorlich]

I go to mediamarkt and compare their prices to Mueller. Then I check amazon.de and last amazon.co.uk. The UK site is usually the cheapest although Mueller did have all four seasons of Supernatural for 10 euros each. Of course the UK DVD's don't have German overdub...

Re:just shut all down

[vgerclover]

The US has Hulu. The rest of the world doesn't. That would be enough to cut a lot of TV series pirates. Movies? I've realized that I'm looking less and less American films as time passes, and the best movies I've seen have consistently been not blockbusters. Also, I'll never feel bad for copying a movie made and paid for before I was born a quarter of century ago.

Re:just shut all down

[devent]

"Every time they offer something for X$, there's someone who comes along and says "If only it was available for X/2$ I'd buy it. But if you actually lowered it, most of them would now say X/4$. Or X/8$. Reality is that we know the truth, those who really liked it already bought it at the high price and those who don't will find some other excuse not to buy it."

True, but what is wrong with that? That is capitalism, why should I pay more if I can get it for less (or free)? What all the media industry want is communism, aka copyright. The only difference is that the entities controlling it are not governments but private entities. But where is the difference if all media would belong to the state or if all media would belong to a few media cooperations? That is what copyright law have now become, that media belongs to a few cooperations that claim to represent all creative work.

Furthermore, the few cooperations have such a power of the government that they are creating laws that benefit only them. The Mickey Mouse Law is the prominent example, in with Disney pushed the US government to extent copyright just before Mickey Mouse would go in to public domain.

I don't see any moral obligation to follow the current copyright laws. It is not beneficial to creating more cultural works, and we have now a different technological landscape that we had 200 years ego. I see no moral in paying the overpriced DVDs when the film in the cinemas pays for itself in the millions and the production costs for a DVD are so low. I see no moral in paying for music CDs for the artists gets only a tiny fraction of the price.

Re:just shut all down

[Raenex]

Commercial TV and movies is entertainment, not culture... seriously.

Lots of culture is about filling up idle hours with entertainment. What do you think music, dancing, plays, and the like are all about?

And when people then reference that entertainment in their conversations, which stand in as symbols and shared experiences, that's culture. Your snooty disdain for commercial entertainment doesn't make it not so.

Re:just shut all down

[EvilAlphonso]

culture /klCHr/

Noun: The arts and other manifestations of human intellectual achievement regarded collectively.

Would you classify Hamlet with Jackass 3D, an opera singer with the current wave of auto-tuned "singers", Mary Shelley with Stephanie Meyer? If you answer yes to those, please keep calling me snooty while I weep for our species... and check how I landed on "News for entertainment buffs, find out who is on the next round of American idol... after the break" when I clicked on "News for nerds". To each his own, I guess, but I would rather do something productive with my free time instead of paying for the privilege of watching drivel.

Re:just shut all down

[Raenex]

There are many definitions of culture (for example: "the characteristic features of everyday existence (as diversions or a way of life) shared by people in a place or time <popular culture> <southern culture>". You cherry picked one, and even that one can apply to many films that aren't on the level of "Jackass". Try watching other movies that don't appeal to the lowest common denominator. There are plenty of them out there, many of them commercially successful.

I'm not a fan of opera, and some of the singers on American Idol are very good. I don't even watch or like the show, but I can admit quality when I see it. As soon as you start thinking that everything that is either commercial or popular is trash, you have blinded and prejudiced yourself to potential quality.

Re:just shut all down

[Rakarra]

Every time they offer something for X$, there's someone who comes along and says "If only it was available for X/2$ I'd buy it. But if you actually lowered it, most of them would now say X/4$. Or X/8$. Reality is that we know the truth, those who really liked it already bought it at the high price and those who don't will find some other excuse not to buy it.

I used to buy a lot more movies when they were $15-$20 on DVD. Recently though it's been ranging at $25-$35 and it has to be a -really- good movie for me to want to spring for it. I thought the early-2000s pricing model was a pretty good trade-off.

Re:just shut all down

[Rakarra]

Commercial TV and movies is entertainment, not culture... seriously.

How is it not both?

Re:just shut all down

[Kjella]

True, but what is wrong with that? That is capitalism, why should I pay more if I can get it for less (or free)?

The point is that the argument is fraudulent - people claim they'll stop pirating if their demands are met, but instead they simply make new ones and continue pirating. And stealing is cheaper that buying, if you don't care about laws and such - is that capitalism too?

What all the media industry want is communism, aka copyright. The only difference is that the entities controlling it are not governments but private entities. But where is the difference if all media would belong to the state or if all media would belong to a few media cooperations?

That it's fascism, right-wing totalitarianism not communism. The media industry want to own ideas, hence IP. Intellectual Property has just as little place in communism as regular property, so you're on the completely wrong side of the axis.

That is what copyright law have now become, that media belongs to a few cooperations that claim to represent all creative work. Furthermore, the few cooperations have such a power of the government that they are creating laws that benefit only them. The Mickey Mouse Law is the prominent example, in with Disney pushed the US government to extent copyright just before Mickey Mouse would go in to public domain.

That Disney is still hoarding 70 years old material doesn't mean that the people that live now and make new stuff now doesn't deserve to get paid.

I don't see any moral obligation to follow the current copyright laws. It is not beneficial to creating more cultural works, and we have now a different technological landscape that we had 200 years ego. I see no moral in paying the overpriced DVDs when the film in the cinemas pays for itself in the millions and the production costs for a DVD are so low. I see no moral in paying for music CDs for the artists gets only a tiny fraction of the price.

Apart from the many niche series and movies that don't make enough to keep going - particularly sci-fi that I love, the logic doesn't add up. No film ever pays for itself, maybe other people paid for it so you could freeload but being a leech on the cinema-goers doesn't sound quite as glorious. And little is generally better than nothing at all, if you hired a plumber but told him that since his company is charging so high and taking so much only giving him minimum wage so you choose not to pay, do you expect him to be grateful? Really?

Re:just shut all down

[EvilAlphonso]

You cherry picked one, and even that one can apply to many films that aren't on the level of "Jackass". Try watching other movies that don't appeal to the lowest common denominator. There are plenty of them out there, many of them commercially successful.

I'm not a fan of opera, and some of the singers on American Idol are very good. I don't even watch or like the show, but I can admit quality when I see it. As soon as you start thinking that everything that is either commercial or popular is trash, you have blinded and prejudiced yourself to potential quality.

Yeah, with literally thousands of legally acquired DVDs on my shelves, hundreds of channels available at my fingertips and VOD being bundled with my internet connection, my opinion on popular entertainment must be based on a lack of access to quality content. It's not like I was a heavy consumer of said entertainment for most of my life.

I do agree that there is quality content out there, it's just statistical noise in the diarrhea of lowest common denominator stuff. In the last 12 months, my TV sets have been turned on for about 4 hours... 2 hours were on xmas day to watch a show with friends and 2 hours were for a very interesting documentary. A couple of years ago, I noticed that the vast majority of the entertainment I really enjoyed was either produced more than a decade ago, a remake of something originally produced more than a decade ago or a documentary... with the exception of maybe a couple hours a week on TV. Then I realized that actually I didn't care enough about those few hours to watch them live so I started recording them with MythTV to watch later. Then I realized that I didn't even care enough about those to watch them time-shifted... so I turned off my MythTV backend and haven't started it since.

TL;DR: Out of hundreds of channels available to me, broadcasting content 24/7, there isn't much remotely interesting enough to get me in front of the tube.

Yayyyy!!!

[jmcvetta]

Fascism for the win!

They raided ships over the Internet?

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought the north sea was safe.

PIRATES !! PAEDO !! ONE IN THE SAME !!

[Anonymous Coward]

Paedos. Pirates. Hard to tell them apart since they are to most one in the same. It is rate to find a pirate that is not also a paedo. I don't know one pirate who has ever said he was not also a paedo. Are you a paedo ?? Are you a pirate ?? One yes means two. Proven as fact !!

Re:PIRATES !! PAEDO !! ONE IN THE SAME !!

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably not, but I suspect the reverse is true. Most of the non tech savy pedos get busted quickly. Those remaining, having already demonstrated a disregard for the law, are likely to engage in piracy.

Sadly, even the basic knowledge necessary to get torrents working is beyond a large fraction of the general populace.

just shut all down: Slashdot!

[Anonymous Coward]

I really wish they would shut down every site out there that illegal links or shares copyrighted material, so that people have no way at all anymore to download movies and music. Then I would see the whole movie and music industry go in to oblivion because nobody will buy there crap anymore.

Are they really believing that if people couldn't share the movies and music, the people would suddenly buy more stuff? If anything, they would buy less stuff because they don't know anymore new artists or new movies.

Why do you believe marketing will suddenly disappear? Word of mouth? Why do you believe "good enough to steal" but not "good enough to buy"? Do you even realize that invalidates the whole "but piracy doesn't hurt anybody" argument? Or even better "piracy benefits those we steal from".

Re:just shut all down: Slashdot!

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do you believe "good enough to steal" but not "good enough to buy"? Do you even realize that invalidates the whole "but piracy doesn't hurt anybody" argument? Or even better "piracy benefits those we steal from".

There is no stealing going on. Prove me wrong.

Re:just shut all down: Slashdot!

[Squiddie]

Fist, it's not stealing. And second, if you read the post, you'd realize that he would watch movies for free, but not if he had to pay for them. He has other forms of entertainment that are free, legally. So no, he didn't just invalidate that argument.

Re:just shut all down: Slashdot!

[Opportunist]

Why do you believe marketing would make people have more money to spend on movies?

Do something useful

[toxickitty]

Dear retarded goverments please stop wasting more resources on hunting down people who cost corporations money and put it into, I don't know, maybe hospitals, schools, scientific research. You know, things that actually matter...

WTF is wrong with the police?

[mihamicka]

WTF is wrong with the Police? WTF is wrong with this world?.. Police makes this "great" arrests instead of arresting the drug dealers and murderers and many other shits from the streets? OMG..... what world we live in? A world dominated by money? a world where even arrests are made cos some rich ppl who make some movies ask that? WTF? If the movies would no be so expensive probably a site like kino.to would not be needed.... but it is... and all this shit will only bring rage and need for revenge to many ppl including me.. I feel like we all start to live in Ceausescu time... where somebody was "managing" to copy some anti-communist book.. and ppl was giving that book from hand to hand, in secret, to be rad by everybody.... is same shit that so called "movie industry" does.... this reminds me of another article i rad here some time ago.. about some police in Australia who arrested a journalist for writing an article about how to hack computers using Facebook... after a friend's computer was hacked that way... same shit... WTF... police does not work on itself anymore... they work for the ones who pay better? oh and as far as i remember: we, all of us pay the police to be fair... we pay their salaries by paying taxes... WTH?

Re:WTF is wrong with the police?

[gweihir]

Even when they arrest scumbags, the news is not to be trusted. The great European child porn raids of the past came down to basically nothing. If I remember correctly, they got less than 100 convictions for >1000 people raided, because most were actually innocent. The press still reported the high number and that is what the police seemingly was really after.

Re:WTF is wrong with the police?

[betterunixthanunix]

Police makes this "great" arrests instead of arresting the drug dealers and murderers

So we are supposed to believe that by virtue of selling drugs, someone must be a bad person? Obviously selling drugs makes you worse than violating copyrights, and puts you on the same level as a murderer, right?

Re:WTF is wrong with the police?

[cheekyjohnson]

drug dealers

I'm going to disagree here. If someone wants to put something in their body that harms them, I couldn't care less. Likewise, if someone wants to sell drugs so that people can accomplish that goal, I don't care as long as they aren't doing anything that I would consider "bad" (like murder or actual robbery).

Re:WTF is wrong with the police?

[westlake]

WTF is wrong with the Police? WTF is wrong with this world?.. Police makes this "great" arrests instead of arresting the drug dealers and murderers and many other shits from the streets

The police can multi-task.

Re:WTF is wrong with the police?

[mihamicka]

comon... violating copyrights is "crime" who harm no one... except someone's bank account... drugs kill ppl, sex offenders destroy lives... do not tell me that some "super-mega-extra-stars" will die of hunger cos some guy posted some movie on some site.... comon... what i meant was : those ppl are not the " big criminals" the police said they ware... i apologies if my English is not very good... i am not a native speaker... :) do not get me wrong... i do IT security for a living :)) but things like that make me throw up.... i will trust the police again if someday they will say " we arrested today 20 big criminals who ware running some child sex offenders ( or whatever how are those sites called) sites" those are big criminals not some guys with some normal movies on a normal site....

Pirates violently rob ships at sea.

[nick_urbanik]

The word "pirate" has been hijacked from the meaning of robbing ships at sea using violent threat to meaning copying a CD. This hijacking is convenient to the record industry, but I object to its use here. I do think that robbing ships at sea using violent threats is wrong.

Re:Pirates violently rob ships at sea.

[Opportunist]

So what? Everybody committing a crime against a government is suddenly a terrorist. Inflation doesn't just affect money.

Re:Pirates violently rob ships at sea.

[Anonymous Coward]

I used to feel this way to, but I've recently come round to accept this changed perspective. Yes, the RIAA/MPAA has successfully indoctrinated the world (and were slavishly followed abroad in other languages -- Dutch uses the word "piraterij"...).
I'm guessing this started as an effort to make the action seem egregious. But you know what changed my mind: Somalian pirates.
Hearing of Somalian pirates and seeing them in these small dinghies, I almost had to laugh.
Sure, I realise that they are dangerous and desperate. But thanks to all the indoctrination, I just had this fluffy image of them. They were no worse than file sharers. "Sure, they sail around with guns, but it's not like they'd use them, you know?".
And then I realised that (despite my vehement objections to the term) my own notion of piracy has changed. Piracy (to me) is done by some lazy kid in a comfy chair at home or in a dorm. Somalian piracy is similarly perpetrated by some reasonably-intending folk. Piracy isn't very ill-intentioned, it's just a matter of not having sufficient money (to splash out on the latest media). Those Somalian pirates don't come across as evil*, they just need to be educated a bit on the difference between right and wrong.

(*) They are evil. Robbing anyone is evil.

When I instinctively feel that capturing innocent civilians, kidnap and extortion are "not very ill-intentioned" just because of a certain term, that term has lost its edge. I am now a member of the group of people where Piracy Isn't Really Bad (tm).

Thank you RIAA/MAFIAA. You desensitised me to the one word that used to mean one of the most horrible crimes on the high seas.

Re:Pirates violently rob ships at sea.

[Anonymous Coward]

The word "mouse" has been hijacked from the meaning of rodent animal to meaning input device. This hijacking is convenient to the hardware industry, but I object to its use here. I do think that grabbing a mouse and moving it over the table tapping his head is wrong.

Of course, on the other hand, you may just think that languages evolve in time, and there is a thing called "polysemy". You may want to get a dictionary to look for its meaning.

Re:Pirates violently rob ships at sea.

[Mascot]

I don't really see a problem. The word has several meanings. Robbing ships, copyright infringement, trademark infringement (counterfeit apparel). It pretty much boils down to 1) Robbing ships and 2) Everything else.

What I'm getting at is that there isn't really a lot of room for confusion when used in context. Nobody's going to think you boarded a ship if you "bought a pair of pirate Nike shoes", or "pirated Angry Birds". A lot of people won't even think of the pirates of old (the salty kind) if you mention piracy. They have no other frame of reference than copyright infringement for the word.

If I'm wrong, and a large percentage of people in the "western world" actually do associate "piracy" in the context of applications/media with "killing people" rather than "not respecting intellectual property rights", I'd agree with you. But that does not seem to me to be the case.

I have much bigger issues with cracker/hacker. Those words used to mean distinct things. That they have blended into sharing the original meaning of "cracker" is a royal pain, since no new word has really taken the place of "hacker". So today you have to explain how a hacker is not a cracker whenever you use it in a sentence. Now *that* is a royal pain. Pirate? Not so much. People know what I mean when I use that word.

Re:Pirates violently rob ships at sea.

[Anonymous Coward]

Arr, The Pirate Bay scuppered that distinction matey.

Re:Pirates violently rob ships at sea.

[EvilIdler]

Wikipedia (yes, I know) points to this 1603 reference to "word-pirates":
http://www.luminarium.org/renascence-editions/yeare.html

400 years if you count that non-pillaging use, 300 or so if you count the US copyright law (second reference in that Wikipedia article on copyright infringement).

The pirates arrested were guilty of piracy in that sense: organised copying and redistribution for profit. Piracy is a fine word. What I'm opposed to is people being labelled pirates for just copying movies to watch, if they're going to use that definition :)

Re:Pirates violently rob ships at sea.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yet you call misusing a word 'hijacking', apparently without irony.

Re:Pirates violently rob ships at sea.

[Anonymous Coward]

Shut the fuck up, moron. Pirate is accepted usage in this case. +5 insightful, unfuckingbelievable. What a bunch of asshole sympathizers who got mod points today.

Re:Pirates violently rob ships at sea.

[Anonymous Coward]

This. IP theft by copying media in violation of copyright law is still theft, but it should NEVER have been called piracy in the first place.

(Side comment, it would truly be piracy to take over a ship on the high seas, and use it as a floating manufacturing plant for copyright-violating media streaming. This would get coolness points, and a visit by major navies.)

Re:Pirates violently rob ships at sea.

[Anonymous Coward]

Downloading is stealing, and European "pirates" that copy bits are the same as Somali pirates who take over boats with guns, killing people and demanding ransom.

The following is very convincing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=964MLq1db4s

Arrr!

Re:Pirates violently rob ships at sea.

[Ash Vince]

The word "pirate" has been hijacked from the meaning of robbing ships at sea using violent threat to meaning copying a CD. This hijacking is convenient to the record industry, but I object to its use here. I do think that robbing ships at sea using violent threats is wrong.

And the word "hacker" has been hijacked to only mean someone who breaks into computers without the owners permission, but fighting against this is like pissing into the wind. Once a critical mass (majority) of people start using a particular word a particular way it has entered common use and there is nothing that can be done. Providing all parties to a particular conversation know what is actually being meant, the specifics of the words being used do not really matter.

Since slashdot is a very geeky website I generally assume that most people here feel the same way about the words "hacker" and "pirate" so it does not really matter. It is like moaning about other peoples poor grammar because that is the only way you can say anything against the argument they are putting forward.

Re:Pirates violently rob ships at sea.

[LordLucless]

Fine, so it was hijacked a long time ago. That makes a difference how?

Re:Pirates violently rob ships at sea.

[Anonymous Coward]

Meanwhile, back in our world, the term "piracy" has been applied to unauthorized copying for a whole four centuries..

Re:Pirates violently rob ships at sea.

[Mashiki]

Don't you know? Canadian pirates ride around the internet in virtual schooners, firing cannons and sending boarding parties out to steal data. It's the only way we can sate ourselves when hockey is on it's summer break. Or when the cup play-offs suck giant monkey balls.

Re:Pirates violently rob ships at sea.

[Anonymous Coward]

When I first read this headline I thought "finally, they did some good with the piracy situation in... Europe? Europe has pirates too? Well, it's a start..." and then I realized they were talking about people who make or distribute unauthorized copies of copyrighted works, and NOT people who kidnap, optionally rape or torture, and kill professional and amateur sailors at sea.

So, yeah, don't care anymore; my feeling the world was being improved went away.

Re:Pirates violently rob ships at sea.

[Anonymous Coward]

And you're misusing the word "hijack". So what? There's very rarely any real confusion here. Languages change.

Re:Pirates violently rob ships at sea.

[westlake]

The word "pirate" has been hijacked from the meaning of robbing ships at sea using violent threat to meaning copying a CD.

The usage was current when the Black Flag still flew over the Caribbean.

The poor have to pay for their flicks and tunes or go without.

P2P demands a substantial investment in hardware and services.

To the geek, the free media fix is his technocratic and middle class entitlement.

To the judge and jury. it is white collar crime.

Re:Pirates violently rob ships at sea.

[Anonymous Coward]

And you are using the word "hijack" to refer to a mere definition change, not the forcible siezure of a vehicle on a highway.

The reasoning

[dnaumov]

Every now and then, someone tries to argue that torrent trackers are supposedly invinsible because they don't outright host copyrighted content, but only the .torrent files. I really wish people would start focusing on something else, because by now it should be blatantly obvious that such reasoning does not fly with the courts. In my country (Finland), there was a court case regarding Finreactor, a major finnish torrent tracker and the defendants tried to argue this very defence. It didn't fly. At all. The court concluded that the site was MOSTLY used to facilitate illegal activity and that the site maintainers made no reasonable effort to clean the site up from torrents pointing to copyrighted content. The tracker admins were found gulty and sentenced to heavy fines.

No, this logic does not apply to Google, because Google is not used MOSTLY to facilitate illegal activity and no, this logic does not apply to gun manufacturers, because guns are mostly used by law enforcement and army and not to commit murder and robbery.

Re:The reasoning

[metacell]

It does apply to selling distillation equipment to private persons, though. It's almost exclusively used for making spirits illegally.

Re:The reasoning

[Anonymous Coward]

"guns are mostly used by law enforcement and army and not to commit murder and robbery" [Citation required]

Re:The reasoning

[Mr0bvious]

this logic does not apply to gun manufacturers, because guns are mostly used by law enforcement and army and not to commit murder and robbery.

Sorry for going way of topic here, but you may want to reconsider that last statement..... Law enforcement and army don't murder or commit robbery? That really depends on your perspective..

Re:The reasoning

[Anonymous Coward]

and no, this logic does not apply to gun manufacturers, because guns are mostly used by law enforcement and army and not to commit murder and robbery.

You wish.
I think in the USA, most guns are used by civilians. Whether they are criminals or on a shooting range is another question.

Re:The reasoning

[misexistentialist]

The defense of torrents is still valid, but the courts are wrong. Without opposition repression will spread. Already in most countries the same corrupt legal theory that some legal things are also illegal has led to the criminalization of armed self-defense. Already Google has had to alter its website to block torrent suggestions, and governments are seizing unapproved websites. Copyright parasites are demanding royalties from Google, and are pressuring ISPs to filter connections.

Re:The reasoning

[cheekyjohnson]

I agree. I wish supporters of file sharing would stop using such silly arguments. It's clear that the courts no longer care if the content is directly hosted on their websites or not.

this logic does not apply to gun manufacturers, because guns are mostly used by law enforcement and army and not to commit murder and robbery.

Huh? Yes, they do. It just depends on your perspective. But even from the average American's point of view, there have been times when they have indeed murdered innocents.

It doesn't apply to gun manufacturers because the ones who made the guns didn't commit the crimes.

Re:The reasoning

[PhxBlue]

... and no, this logic does not apply to gun manufacturers, because guns are mostly used by law enforcement and army and not to commit murder and robbery.

I had to read this twice, because I didn't see the "not" in "not to commit murder and robbery" the first time. :)

Re:The reasoning

[cheekyjohnson]

Also, how do the courts even determine of the website is "mostly" used for copyright infringement? I certainly hope that they are looking at every single torrent file on the website and weight the illegal ones against the legal ones to find this out. Otherwise they haven't actually proven it. Or do they do it some other way?

Re:The reasoning

[Anonymous Coward]

Please do not speak in absolutes. Courts in certain countries do indeed care about where the content is hosted.

Re:The reasoning

[cheekyjohnson]

You're probably right. I just meant that countries like these ones sometimes do not.

Re:The reasoning

[Anonymous Coward]

Really? I wonder why Google implemented all those filters to eliminate filesharing sites from search requests if nobody was searching for them.

Re:The reasoning

[Anonymous Coward]

"no, this logic does not apply to gun manufacturers, because guns are mostly used by law enforcement and army and not to commit murder and robbery."

And against whom do these enforement and army personnel use their guns ? and what do they use?

It is your logic that doesn't apply.

Re:The reasoning

[orlanz]

By default torrent trackers should be held innocent. They aren't any different from Google or Gun manufactures. On those points, why doesn't the government ban Google from indexing torrents? Or make +torrent searches invalid? As for guns, the AK-47 and other particular guns are primarily used in terrorist/genocide/bad-stuff activities as defined by the US (and sometimes even the UN). Why don't we treat the manufacturers & traders & even the users of these particular items the same way we treat the users who commit illegal activities?

I understand your reasoning that if a site blatently supports or encourages copyright infringement then they are accessories to the infringement. I think the opposite case is obvious that a site that clearly doesn't support it via filters and proactive monitoring is innocent. However, even if a torrent tracker operates in a user driven, automated fashion where no monitoring but the application of owner driven DMCA notices & local laws are complied with; I don't think should be held accountable. The courts may have ruled otherwise; but that doesn't make it right. Especially since each tracker actually tells everyone (including the traded material's owner) of all the IP addresses that are currently trading in the ware! The owner is free to file for discovery from current legal methods.

Legal is basically going after torrent trackers cause it is the easy mark. Cause getting the actual person committing the crime is too hard. Society already gave a lot to content owners; and we give them (and their next generations) too much today. Yet we have people argueing that we need to give them more!! The least owners can do is be a caretaker of their work and prosecute those who do them harm. Yet they ask that we not only bare the burden of "encouraging" them to produce more but also fully foot the bill to taking care of their work & current failing business processes, AND expand the criteria of what is considered a criminal to bystandards.

To the content owners... SCREW YOU!

Re:The reasoning

[Anonymous Coward]

No, this logic does not apply to Google, because Google is not used MOSTLY to facilitate illegal activity and no, this logic does not apply to gun manufacturers, because guns are mostly used by law enforcement and army and not to commit murder and robbery.

"...guns are mostly used by law enforcement and army to commit murder and robbery."

FTFY

Re:The reasoning

[Shagg]

It doesn't apply to gun manufacturers because murder victims don't own as many politicians as copyright owners do.

Re:The reasoning

[Travelsonic]

By sensible, you mean the comments that make up false things about the /. community, take arguments out of context, and basuically ignore facts for baseless hyperbole? *laughs*

The largest search engine for illegal downloads

[Petersson]

At first, Google shall be jailed. They have largest search engine for illegal downloads.

Bad headline?

[sirdude]

Considering that this is /., the submitter's alias is "freedumb" and the linked article is on torrentfreak, isn't the headline rather poorly constructed? The torrentfreak article is titled "Kino.to Raided In Massive Police Operation, Admins Arrested" which is a lot more accurate.

If only Police showed the same willingness for...

[master_p]

...other cases, like corrupted politicians, cartels, drug and people trafficking, the world would be a much better place.

Grey Area

[gweihir]

It is quite possible that at least the ones arrested in Germany will walk free. Currently it is unclear whether linking and indexing even can constitute a crime. It is however unlikely that in that case the state would have to compensate them for lost business, as the business is somewhat amoral, which is a factor in civil law. (Prostitution is legal in Germany, before you ask.)

My guess: Police hoping to make big positive headlines (which they have), but the case will collapse.

Re:Grey Area

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't it wonderful how Germans politicians have made prostitution a legal business, but cracks down on movie streaming, and claim that is "amoral". Follow the money.

Re:Grey Area

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean in this era of corruption, epidemic crisis and nuclear mismanagement currently observable in germany, that the police doing this in such a manner is being taken positively by the public?

Maybe by the regular "Bild" reader (similar to your Fox channel, only as newspaper), the general public just shakes their head in a negative manner.

Not that those guys responsible from kino.to need any help - they were willfully serving malware and thus need to be taken responsible for their actions (plus it looks like they did not only link but were also hosting the stuff and taking payments).

Fortune on this page

[pinkushun]

Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison. -- Henry David Thoreau

We constantly hear about how piracy is a crime, but how on earth did the entertainment industry manage to lobby this so high up that it gained such prominent elevation in the police force?

Re:Fortune on this page

[Anonymous Coward]

All the money we give them affords them the opportunity.

Re:Fortune on this page

[Anonymous Coward]

"We constantly hear about how piracy is a crime, but how on earth did the entertainment industry manage to lobby this so high up that it gained such prominent elevation in the police force?"

The entertainment industry lobbies politicians, not police. That's how the issue got prominent elevation in *politics*, not in the police force.
However, police is an instrument of politics.

Re:Fortune on this page

[Anonymous Coward]

$$$$$$

Re:Fortune on this page

[Shagg]

We constantly hear about how piracy is a crime, but how on earth did the entertainment industry manage to lobby this so high up that it gained such prominent elevation in the police force?

Money. Lots and lots of money.

Re:Fortune on this page

[pinkushun]

[/close rhetorical question]

CAPTCHA: Overlooks - a comment AI that doesn't understand reply context.

Pirate = Flamebearer in most languages.

[Anonymous Coward]

The first pirates were either illuminists of wisdom, or physically had bright reddish auburn hair, and it always seemed that both was the case because they pere verry prominant flambuoyant diverse people.

Today, all these fake pirates are cannibal rapists from mud countries trying to steal modern appliances and anything not tied down or any ship that gets near them. Totally libelous and uncalled-for, but that 's the nature of Corrupt government using their power to torment non-citizens from making claims in the *cough* government courts.

"Largest piracy bust in history" == 12 people?

[AtlantaSteve]

THIS IS THE GREATEST EXAMPLE OF HYPERBOLE ON SLASHDOT EVER!!!!!

But seriously... customs officials at any of the world's borders make bigger busts than this all the time, for trafficking actual physical goods. For that matter, taking out a single Somali rowboat would be a bigger "piracy bust" than this.

Lame, editors.

Re:"Largest piracy bust in history" == 12 people?

[Anonymous Coward]

Here be ye pirate busts!

http://www.hotpiratebabes.com/

Or perhaps this is more to the eye:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/04/07/female-pirate-statue-in-g_n_184346.html

Re:"Largest piracy bust in history" == 12 people?

[Anomalyst]

A 34A would be a bigger bust.

Re:"Largest piracy bust in history" == 12 people?

[Anonymous Coward]

THIS IS THE GREATEST EXAMPLE OF HYPERBOLE ON SLASHDOT EVER!!!!!

"And all those exclamation marks, you notice? Five? A sure sign of someone who wears his underpants on his head." (Terry Pratchett)

Arab Woman Site About Beautiful Arab Girls

[qistas]

http://saudiarab11.blogspot.com/2011/06/princess-amira-altaweel-of-saudi-arabia.html Arab Woman Site About Beautiful Arab Girls

Sadly, you missed one

[Anonymous Coward]

Copying and pasting the first paragraphn is 1) misleading 2) an extremely poor way to do a SUMMARY

3) Almost universal in /. stories these days.

For a moment there ...

[SimonInOz]

For a moment there, I thought they'd actually busted some Somalian pirates - you know, the people who actually steal ships and kill people.

But no, it's just a few people who make copies of stuff.

Re:For a moment there ...

[WRX Gav]

Of course given that it's pirates, they probably Arrrrrrr-ested them

hello webmaster

[formation]

Check to see if your Company name is available http://bit.ly/m2IHF4

Access Denied

[Anonymous Coward]

Category:
          Peer-to-peer/File Sharing
Blocked URL:
          http://torrentfreak.com/kino-to-raided-in-massive-police-operation-adm
ins-arrested-110608/
PoOp on my shoe

And Geeks Bit the Heads Off Chickens

[RobotRunAmok]

The "Waah Waah Content Pirates aren't Pirates, they don't have ships or parrots!" whine is even more tedious than the "Hackers are computer hobbyists, and not necessarily bad!" screed.

Language evolves (c.f., the original meaning of "geek" in the subject here).

I first heard the use of the word "pirate" in this modern context to refer to the people who were stealing satellite signals from premium cable TV networks back in the '70s, pre-dating popular Internet usage by around 15 years. Get over yourselves and move on.

Re:And Geeks Bit the Heads Off Chickens

[Anonymous Coward]

Waah waah waah the truth is tedious when it is repeated!

Waah Waah Waah it's not entertaining me any more.

Waah waah waah I'd rather tolerate minor civil offenses characterized as thievery, murder, terrorism or any other criminal offense than listen to the boring truth any more.

Waah waah waah I'd rather let the xxAAs destroy lives, ruin markets, and hold back technology rather than think of new ways for artists to get paid, as long as I''m not bored.

Waah waah waah.

Wanker.

Re:And Geeks Bit the Heads Off Chickens

[wintercolby]

The copyright lobby have pirated terminology that's still in use, perhaps it's time to start calling them the pirates. I imagine they have a lot more booty for the plunder than the average copyright violator.

Re:And Geeks Bit the Heads Off Chickens

[Anonymous Coward]

Why? Because still theres's nothing stolen but the owner still has it?

Re:And Geeks Bit the Heads Off Chickens

[Anonymous Coward]

"Piracy" implies "stealing" something, and "to steal" means to take something away from it's owner without having the owner's approval. Now then, to "take something away" means that this something will de facto cease to be in the rightful owner's possession. which is not the case if this something is data or information, and by stealing is meant copying or permitting a third party to copy, and not moving it.
Furthermore, I consider intellectual property to be bullshit. It states on top of these posts that the content of the posts themselves is owned by the poster. This is not so. You have read these propositions that I have written here. You can agree with them or not, you can think over them and, if you consider them to be true, you can consider them yours own. Or you can mock them, misquote them or whatever you see fit. Or, again, you can ignore them altogether. Once written down, reified (transformed from subjective thoughts to objective things), they are no longer in my power, and I cannot defend them.
The Hittites were the first to discover how to obtain iron. They tried to maintain their monopoly on this discovery and failed. But consider how would the world be today if they would have took this knowledge to the grave with them.

Re:The reasoning - rigor

[gizmod]

Your comment lacks sufficient rigor. Something the law is supposed to provide when ruling over issues. If there's no rigor, then hell the courts can do almost what they want without *rigorous* application of the law. But then again, I cannot deny that I have always been a supporter of "Spirit of law" vs "Rule of law". In a perfect world when we try and reconcile the two we'd want the "interest of the public" to prevail. Now what's in the interest of the public and whats in the interest of the corporate world are, almost, always different. Devil's advocate time, who defines these things? You? Me? Us? Slashdot? God? The Pink Unicorn?

Good use of money, time, and resources.

[cheekyjohnson]

Potential profit is... potentially being lost! Better raid those responsible because this should be high priority right here!

Stirring up the ants

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting how cops have time to go after piracy in Germany, Spain, France but not the bilderbergs, rothchilds, and banksters who are screwing the entire world and driving many to piracy itself. Think about it if the worlds monetary systems were not so fucked up, people would have jobs, and buy a stack of movies each week.

Also let's not forget, it's possible some users may actually have authorization to use copyright on some copyrighted works. And then there's yet others who might buy a movie after seeing it first.

Speaking of bilderbergs... 2011 http://www.prisonplanet.com/bilderberg-2011-prisonplanet-com-master-page.html

Re:Stirring up the ants

[JockTroll]

Interesting how cops have time to go after piracy in Germany, Spain, France but not the bilderbergs, rothchilds, and banksters who are screwing the entire world and driving many to piracy itself.

Because they're rich and powerful. Do you have any meaningful questions or are you just asking if water is wet?

Re:The reasoning - rigor

[Raenex]

Your comment lacks sufficient rigor. Something the law is supposed to provide when ruling over issues.

Courts routinely have to make subjective judgments on legal issues. There is no ideal fantasy world where they don't. Human issues are messy.

I found the grandparent's comment quite reasonable and rigorous enough for a general court theory, and it's inline with the original Napster ruling and other similar rulings. You'll find similar guidelines with pre-existing copyright case law when deciding copyright infringement (such as commercial gain being a deciding factor).

What of upholding insane law? Is that sane?

[zooblethorpe]

Upholding the law is sane.

The law itself may not be sane in some places, due to the real world changing over time.

I'm still undecided about this kino.to issue, but your comment here piqued my interest.

If a law itself is insane, how is it sane to uphold such a law?

It would seem to follow that an insane law would thus be insane to follow. Else we're all just mindless nutters.

Cheers,

Re:What of upholding insane law? Is that sane?

[somersault]

Well, we should try to change insane laws. One of the quotes at the bottom of Slashdot recently mentioned that it's illegal to have your bathtub inside the house in one state (I think it was Virginia).

Of course most of us only pick and choose what parts of the law we want to obey, but the government should always act within the law IMO.

Re:What of upholding insane law? Is that sane?

[zooblethorpe]

Well, we should try to change insane laws. One of the quotes at the bottom of Slashdot recently mentioned that it's illegal to have your bathtub inside the house in one state (I think it was Virginia).

Of course most of us only pick and choose what parts of the law we want to obey, but the government should always act within the law IMO.

I certainly agree with you here. And upon reflection, it is precisely this selectivity of following and enforcing laws that has allowed this horribly unwieldy US legal system to develop. If *all* laws were enforced across the boards, the obsolete laws (and sometimes just plain silly laws, like the one about bathtubs in the house) would be immediately and glaringly apparent, making it much more likely that old and no-longer-appropriate laws would be revised or rescinded.

That said, in the real world of what is likely, I'm not all that sure how this could be implemented -- there is just so much inertia, and so many vested interests at work...

Cheers,

Re:If only Police showed the same willingness for.

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, leave Sting, Andy Summers, and Stewart Copeland out of this!

Re:The reasoning - rigor

[gizmod]

Alas, the world is not perfect your right. But just because something is done a certain way and accepted as such by the court of law or anyone for that matter, it doesn't necessarily make it right or acceptable. But as I said, what defines these things called "right", "acceptable" in this context? See, citation, even if the facts are correct might not even be enough because, human morality, thinking and understanding is uhm, fudgeable? But this is a topic for another day, getting way too philosophical and I've had too much wine ;)