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Court Rules "Locker" Site Is Not Direct Copyright
suraj.sun writes "A federal judge in Miami has dismissed direct copyright infringement charges against Hotfile, a popular online "locker" service that the major Hollywood studios allege is responsible for massive copyright infringement. But he allowed the case to proceed on charges that Hotfile has induced and profited from the infringing activities of its users. The case, which began in February, represents the latest front in the never-ending arms race between Hollywood studios and users seeking free copies of their movies. Hotfile is a "cyberlocker" site. Users upload files they wish to share with others and are rewarded financially if these files prove popular. The studios allege that the overwhelming majority of the files users upload to Hotfile are copyrighted content being distributed without the consent of copyright holders' like themselves."
Court rules title on website not a full.
This is fairly standard given current law, and is the "easy" part of the win. Hosts of these kinds of user-driven content sites (e.g. YouTube) are not themselves considered to be violating copyright when copyrighted material ends up on them. The harder part is that sites alleged to be largely organized around promoting infringement can be held liable, under circumstances not completely clarified, for some variety fo inducement or contributory infringement. The Napster case was the leading one in that area.
So the fact that they got direct-infringement charges dismissed doesn't mean a whole lot, for better or worse; that was mostly a foregone conclusion, and I'd guess was thrown in just on the off chance that plaintiffs would get lucky with their draw of judges. The controversial part of the case, whether Hotfile is more Napster-like or more YouTube-like, is still to come.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
"users seeking free copies of their movies" is being a little disingenuous. How many of the people who would download the movie off of hotfile actually own the DVD? I'd wager a vanishingly small percentage.
Find comfort in knowing that while the copyright trolls continue their march into the bowels of the internet, other companies will have opportunities to succeed who take advantage of more creative business models (i.e. Hulu, Netfix) rather than force old models down the throats of customers. Those new models don't have to spend millions on lawyers and instead can spend that money on R&D and outpace and outprofit those older models. Essentially the damage has bee done, these companies are the new Borders to Amazon, or Best Buy to NewEgg. They won't win, even if they win this battle.
Carl Sagan quotes get you an automatic +5 on all posts.
Many firearms are used in the commission of a crime here in the United States, go ahead and try to ban guns based on that fact. Never happen.
At some point, we have to accept that people are going to misuse services and devices to break the law. Throwing the baby out with the bathwater by banning said service or device because of the misuse by a small segment of the population is a tad too Orwellian for me.
They want more than that. They're totally unreasonable. They want to kill off the entire Internet. They want to turn the clock back for us to circa 1985 when the Internet was unknown to the general public, hard drives were far too small to hold 80 minutes of music, the mp3 format and the CD-R didn't exist, and they had a rock hard monopoly on distribution. They themselves would like to benefit from newer technology, as long as the rest of us can't.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
and they're using all of the Democrats that they've bought off. Hollywood = Democrat. Democrats = the ones pushing crap laws these days about "copyrights" and making it a felony to have a video camera in a movie theater.
They're not even trying to hide it anymore. Five RIAA lawyers placed in cabinet positions by Obama? FIVE of them. Even Bush didn't obviously suck up to one trade group like this administration has.
Don't just blame the Democrats. Republicans from the deep south are equally on the hook here.
It's really rather bizzarre. They happily bend over forwards for interests in another state 2000 miles away that they will gladly eviscerate as totally immoral.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Bittorrent =/= The Pirate Bay.
As for the piracy figures, how the hell does anyone even know for sure what percentage is being used for what? Are ISPs now capable of reading bittorrent packets and seeing what type of file they are pieces of, and even if they are capable, are they legally allowed to do it?
Just another case of Big Media playing the "moral panic" game to try and secure their monopoly on content delivery again. "I hear that there might be child porn on the internet, guess we'd better shut it down until we can stop it completely. Oh, wait, that's literally impossible. Oh well, might as well keep it shut down for good."
If you don't think that's the trick they're trying to pull, you're either naive or willfully short-sighted. Big Media gets caught infringing on just as many copyrights as regular joes, but no ones shutting them down...go figure.
and they're using all of the Democrats that they've bought off. Hollywood = Democrat. Democrats = the ones pushing crap laws these days about "copyrights" and making it a felony to have a video camera in a movie theater.
*yawn* not this stupid canard again. Republicans are just as much supportive of this crap as the Democrats. Hell, the DMCA was introduced to the House by a Republican Representative and face pretty much no Republican opposition neither does most of the other copyright lunacy.
They use DRM.
That is, they have decided to create a situation where pirated content (the stuff they don't get paid for) is worth a lot more: easier to use, more reliable, more functional, and interoperable with more devices than their own for-sale content. And they are entirely in control of this; it's a decision, not a accident of fate or luck.
If you offer them money in exchange for hassle-free content, they say NO.
If they wanted to get paid, they would offer what pirates offer, except in exchange for money. Pirates have already done the research and proved that people want it. Moving to a for-profit model would be a move completely free of risk and R&D.
If someone says No to money, and continues to voluntarily create conditions which punish people who stubbornly pay them, and benefit those who give up on the hassles of doing business with someone who doesn't want to do business, I think that is pretty strong evidence that they want to not be paid.
Interestingly, they are owned by companies that also produce hardware (e.g. Sony). I'm not saying they're not in business, just that they're not in the business of selling content.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
I think someone was trying to make a distinction between vast majority and small minority. Yes, some firearms are used to commit crimes but only an extremely small minority of firearms in the US are used for such purposes (as in 99.999% are not used for criminal purposes). So yes, some sites are used more heavily for non-infringing purposes and some sites are used almost exclusively for infringing purposes.
Overall, I agree that shutting down types of sites is wrong. However, shutting down individual sites based on their usage and how they promote themselves, etc. may not be. To continue the gun analogy... shutting down licensed dealers and gun shows is generally wrong but shutting down the guy selling out of the back of his van in a back alley in downtown big city is probably a good way to prevent guns from being used for criminal activities.
Isn't the DMCA supposed to protect such services against these kinds of lawsuits? So long as the operators of these websites respond to DMCA takedown requests on a timely manner, they really should not be held responsible for their users' actions. To make the operators of these services liable for their users' actions would no doubt harm those who seek to use them for legitimate purposes such as distributing their own original content.
"In prison you just have to shut your eyes and take it. Here you have to shut your eyes and give it."
*facepalm* Are you really that fucking stupid or dense? Of course the Pirate Bay was an example of a Bit Torrent tracker. The point is that Bit Torrent is used for far more than the kind of crap you find there. Jesus christ, numbnuts.
My sig can beat up your sig.
hmm. You don't sound reasonable!
http://www.acetonestudio.com
Politics and morality... An interesting combination... Is that like sweet and sour?
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
But not a majority of guns are used in violent crime.
* Roughly 7% of all violent crime in 2008 involved a firearm... ( http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/glance/percentfirearm.cfm ) ... let's say 98,000 ... this does not include manufactures outside the US.
* Number of violent crimes in the US in 2008 - 1,392,628 ( http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm )
* Quick math: 97483.96
* there were over 4 million firearms manufactured in the US 2008 (4,152,082)
* there were about 3.8 million produced in 2007
That's 2.4%-2.5% of guns produced (just of the US made guns, so this is a high estimate) being used for crime.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.