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Anti-Piracy Lawyers Accuse Blind Man of Downloading Films
souravzzz writes "As the mass-lawsuits against BitTorrent users in the United States drag on, detail on the collateral damage this extortion-like scheme is costing becomes clear. It is likely that thousands of people have been wrongfully accused of sharing copyrighted material, yet they see no other option than to pay up. One of the cases that stands out is that of a California man who's incapable of watching the adult film he is accused of sharing because he is legally blind."
What if the movie he downloaded caused his blindness in the first place!? Check his palms!
Was the film in braille?
Maybe he just wanted to listen to the deep conversation and intricate plot points. You know, just like some people buy playboy to read the articles...
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
No, but it does require some degree of explanation as to why somebody is passing off a movie which he didn't watch. The most likely explanation would be that he wasn't the one that was sharing it.
the network-security professional recounts the rookie mistake that got him into this mess.
"I didn't have time to set up the wireless network in my old apartment,"
This is not a mistake. Providing a free wireless Internet connection to neighbors is legal. An IP address is not a person.
Currently the minimal threshold for filing suit is way too low. The "rights holders" here surely have some colorable claim that infringement happened (i.e. some kind of network monitoring log, and a claim from an ISP that the monitored IP address belonged to this guy). So far US courts have decided that this is enough to file a lawsuit, something which creates a lot of work for lawyers and greatly advantages those who file extortionate suits -- the cost of actually defending a suit like this (tends of thousands of dollars) is much higher than the cost of settling. Worse, by filing suit the plaintiffs get the right to use the courts to coerce the defendant into assisting in the investigation (and to pay the costs of that!).
A second problem is that even if you are successful in defending a lawsuit you are unlikely to get your legal (let alone indirect) costs reimbursed.
So, the solution is: first, to require more evidence before a lawsuit can be filed, and, second, to make cost shifting the default when a lawsuit is dismissed on the pleading.
Well, Bruce Schneier doesn't put a password on his WiFi either for that matter from what I hear.
Qu'on me donne six lignes écrites de la main du plus honnête homme, j'y trouverai de quoi le faire pendre.
Just because someone is legally blind, does not mean they have no sight whatsoever. There is a massive difference. I do know people who are legally blind who download and watch plenty of things. They can see, but just not very well. It is possible this guy could watch porn, he just can't legally drive a car.
So, you never looked at your hands afterwards? :)
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
A former RIAA lobbyist, Beryl Howell, is a now a federal judge ruling on these copyright extortion cases and siding with the extortionists:
This appointment mischief was covered previouslyon Slashdot.
As pointed out previously, Beryl Howard is a Obama appointee, and not his first RIAA appointee.
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
The mere suggestion that he swaps illicit smut online could jeopardize his career.
At very least, HR would have questioned the status of his being blind and taken away his handicapped parking privileges.
Have gnu, will travel.
How do you know he didn't watch it? Lots of blind people enjoy movies, and even go to movie theatres. Who's to say he didn't get turned on by the moaning?
And he's not blind either, but legally blind. Big difference. So am I, and I read and type this without a problem.
This guy could use a computer through magnification. That means he could also watch video through magnification. Whether blurry or not, it couldn't have been blurrier than the text he's able to read, and likely better perceived quality than the 320x200 16-color animations people downloaded as porn from BBSes in the 80s.
For those that do use bittorrent for movies, why do you still do it ? The question isn't about the propriety but rather the risk. It takes a $1 to rent a movie from Redbox and about an hour to rip it on a Core i7. That's as opposed to 3 hour/day/months to download it from the Net and you could wind up getting a bad encode as well as a case of the lawyer - ISP crabs. Granted Redbox doesn't do porn, but places like SugarDVD do and you get to choose what you want.
When you masturbate, you're likely to pull your pubic hair out (no matter your gender).
Surely this depends on how you masturbate, how well endowed you are, how hirsute you are, whether you're mutilated or not, and a bunch of other factors.
You people give handicapped parking privileges to legally blind employees?
Yeah, no. That makes no sense, and that's not the joke. The joke comes from the very old myth that masturbating makes one grow hair on their palms (hence everyone will know you're a bad person).
Don't explain if you don't know the explanation.
Yeah, no. That makes no sense, and that's not the joke. The joke comes from the very old myth that masturbating makes one grow hair on their palms (hence everyone will know you're a bad person).
It's not a myth so much as it is a way for nosy parents and priests to check whether kids have started masturbating. Mention this lie while talking between adults, and if the kids sneak looks at their palms, they probably have. Not that it's any business of the adults.
As someone that knows, you might find it interesting to understand the definition of "legally blind" vs. more functional blindness.
I lived with a blind girl for a while. She was functionally blind and could see only extremely bright and extremely high contrast objects. For the most part, she couldn't see anything and was around five years old before she realized other people could see things.
A friend of the blind girl's was "legally blind". This meant that she couldn't get a driver's license but otherwise was quite functional. She could certainly watch TV, go to movies and read large-print books.
Legally blind does not mean "can't watch a movie" in any respect.
Hopefully they would have done that the first time the *blind* guy parked his car in that spot...
I think the biggest reason people pirate movies is simply convenience. It's the same reason people use Redbox and Netflix. The problem with Redbox is the selection is extremely limited. It really only works if you are interested in the newest and most popular movies. Redbox also requires a physical trip, and while a few mile drive may not seem like much, a few miles is still a lot more than none (particularly if you live through Minnesota winters like me).
Netflix has a lot better selection, but it still doesn't come anywhere close to what is available to pirate (there are even out-of-print movies). A lot of Netflix's movies aren't available for streaming either, so a 15min torrent download is about 2 days faster than waiting 2 days for mail. I'm not sure what kind of internet you have that it takes days to download a movie, but a typical ripped/encoded movie torrent is only about 2GB.
Now I'm not saying these reasons excuse/justify movie piracy, I'm just giving some thoughts on why people still do it. I bet a lot of people don't even know about these anti-piracy lawsuits either (it seems like common knowledge to a slashdot user), and probably assume they aren't going to be sued for millions of dollars because that would be insane. ;)
, and if the kids sneak looks at their palms, they probably have.
Conversely, if the kids do not sneak a look, they probably have anyway.
Answer: there is no Redbox DVD rental service in my location, you insensitive clod. :) The (legal) DVD stores in my location only sells old movies. The legal stores have actually reduced their price to match the price of an illegal DVD, but they still don't have the advantage of being able to sell the latest movies.
"What if you interpret stealing to be "Obtaining non-free content without paying for it". Now it doesn't matter whether you shoplift it, or download it. No matter which way you try to bend words, downloading movies is a form of theft"
Interpretation would not be enough. You would have to redefine the word theft.
You commit two major sins in this debate. The first is the straw man of assuming that just because someone objects to equating copyright infringement with theft that they approve of copyright infringement. The second straw man is that in your attempt to ridicule to opponent you misrepresent him by mentioning a coupel of his possible lesser important arguments, leaving out the biggest reason that copyright infringement is not theft.
Theft takes an object away from the original owner. If someone steals my car, the spiteful part of me may hope that the thief won't enjoy it, but the major reason I'm feeling pissed off is that I no longer have a car. Copyright infringement does no such thing. Since copyright infringement doesn't share the most important property of theft, it is not theft.
Copyright infringement, may take a sale away from the copyright holder. This is by no means certain, the infringer may not have legally licensed/purchased even if he couldn't get it for free. At best you can say that copyright infringement take away a potential sale. In some cases this is not even true, since some infringers does indeed end up purchasing the product.
So these two actions are different and the reason copyright holders want to equate them is an attempt to get more sympathy from the public. This attempt at redefining the word "theft" is disingenuous but you seem to have fallen for it nonetheless.
Note that this post does not mean that I approve of copyright infringement. It is a different action, but it may still be objectionable.
As someone that knows, you might find it interesting to understand the definition of "legally blind" vs. more functional blindness.
I lived with a blind girl for a while. She was functionally blind and could see only extremely bright and extremely high contrast objects. For the most part, she couldn't see anything and was around five years old before she realized other people could see things.
A friend of the blind girl's was "legally blind". This meant that she couldn't get a driver's license but otherwise was quite functional. She could certainly watch TV, go to movies and read large-print books.
Legally blind does not mean "can't watch a movie" in any respect.
He needs emails read to him, and to have magnification. While "legally blind" does not alone constitute "cannot watch a movie", this guy in particular does not watch movies, because his legal blindness is close enough to "true" blindness that he can't see any of the imagery. So, while your point is valid, the particular circumstances of this case remain true... he wouldn't have downloaded a movie, because he doesn't/can't watch movies.
WARNING! This girl exceeds the MAXIMUM SAFE standards established by the FDA for BRATTINESS
When copyright cartels get so greedy they don't care about collateral damage from forcing innocent bystanders to cough up exorbitant settlements just to avoid an expensive legal defense. Standing up for yourself is suicide. Unfortunately, the MAFIAA knows this and accordingly sees fit to not care who they are aiming at. They are goliath.
They've sued dead people and old grandmothers that couldn't possibly have been guilty. They even got some default judgements and pressed on knowing damn well they had no case.
If they started leaving innocent bystanders alone, I would have a lot more respect for them.
We need a loser pays system so that they can get stung when they fuck up. And so that innocent bystanders aren't afraid to fight back, possibly with the help of white knight sponsors like the EFF and whatnot that can then fund their defenses and get their money back when the lawsuit blows up in the plaintiff's face.
You need the license to operate equipment capable of receiving broadcast television signals (including a video recorded connected to an antenna). You also need it to watch live streaming of television channels over the Internet (i.e. the stream is at the same time as the live broadcast). You do not need to to watch live streams of things that are not shown on TV (e.g. webcams), streams that are not live (e.g. iPlayer or 4oD streams of things that have already been on television), or to play back recordings.
Normal copyright applies independently of the TV license.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
The quote said, "stealing copyrighted material". In English, this means one was stealing something that was copyrighted, since "copyrighted" is an adjective. All definitions of stealing accepted that I'm familiar with regard stealing as "taking away wrongfully". Stealing a DVD from a store is an example of this, since it satisfies that that the material stolen is copyrighted.
However, even if we were to look past this grammatical error and say, "they're also guilty of stealing," we create the problem touched on that downloading information is not stealing. It is copyright infringement. There is no taking away from anything. The information is merely copied, just as much if I were to take a picture of a painting. I did not steal the painting, I simply copied its information. If stealing were copyright infringement, then copyright infringement would have no use to the legal system. Stealing and downloading would be equals, and treated as the same. Because what's the difference between stealing 20 DVDs from a store and downloading 20 DVDs then?
Copyrights were invented to help contend with this problem that it isn't stealing. Copyright infringement is its own crime, but calling infringers guilty of stealing as well is simply wrong and an attempt to tug at our feelings. I know they teach logic in law school, but lawyers do seem to love to make the appeal to emotion fallacy.
Now it so happened in the days of old Edo, as Tokyo was once called, that the storytellers told marvelous tales of the wit and wisdom of His Honorable Honor, Ooka Tadasuke.
This famous judge never refused to hear a complaint, even if it seemed strange or unreasonable. People sometimes came to his court with the most unusual cases, but Ooka always agreed to listen. And the strangest case of all was the famous Case of the Stolen Smell.
It all began when a poor student rented a room over a tempura shop - a shop where fried food could be bought. The student was a most likeable young man, but the shopkeeper was a miser who suspected everyone of trying to get the better of him. One day he heard the student talking with one of his friends.
"It is sad to be so poor that one can only afford to eat plain rice," the friend complained.
"Oh," said the student, "I have found a very satisfactory answer to the problem. I eat my rice each day while the shopkeeper downstairs fries his fish. The smell comes up, and my humble rice seems to have much more flavor. It is really the smell, you know, that makes things taste so good."
The shopkeeper was furious. To think that someone was enjoying the smell of his fish for nothing! "Thief!" he shouted, "I demand that you pay me for the smells you have stolen."
"A smell is a smell," the young man replied. "Anyone can smell what he wants to. I will pay you nothing!"
Scarlet with rage, the shopkeeper rushed to Ooka's court and charged the student with theft. Of course, everyone laughed at him, for how could anyone steal a smell? Ooka would surely send the man about his business. But to everyone's astonishment, the judge agreed to hear the case.
"Every man is entitled to his hour in court," he explained. "If this man feels strongly enough about his smell to make a complaint, it is only right that I, as city magistrate, should hear the case." He frowned at the amused spectators.
Gravely, Ooka sat on the dais and heard the evidence. Then he delivered his verdict.
"The student is obviously guilty," he said severely. "Taking another person's property is theft, and I cannot see that a smell is different from any other property."
The shopkeeper was delighted, but the student was horrified. He was very poor, and he owed the shopkeeper for three month's smelling. He would surely be thrown into prison.
"How much money have you?," Ooka asked him.
"Only five mon, Honorable Honor," the boy replied. "I need that to pay my rent, or I will be thrown out into the street."
"Let me see the money," said the judge.
The young man held out his hand. Ooka nodded and told him to drop the coins from one hand to the other.
The judge listened to the pleasant clink of the money and said to the shopkeeper, "You have now been paid. If you have any other complaints in the future, please bring them to the court. It is our wish that all injustices be punished and all virtue rewarded.
"But most Honorable Honor," the shopkeeper protested, "I did not get the money! The thief dropped it from one hand to the other. See! I have nothing." He held up his empty hands to show the judge.
Ooka stared at him gravely. "It is the court's judgement that the punishment should fit the crime. I have decided that the price of the smell of food shall be the sound of money. Justice has prevailed as usual in my court."