Slashdot Mirror
Music Industry Sues Irish Government For Piracy
bs0d3 writes "The music industry has initiated a lawsuit against the Irish government for not having blocking laws on the books; on the theory that if blocking laws were in place then filesharing would go away. On Tuesday the music industry issued a plenary summons against the Irish government which is the first step towards making this litigation possible. This all began in October 2010 (EMI v. UPC), when an Irish judge ruled that Irish law did not permit an order to be made against an ISP requiring blocking of websites. Recently several ISPs across the European Union have been ordered by courts to block thepiratebay.org through legal maneuvers."
The Irish, being a compliant group, will no doubt capitulate without a fight.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
I wonder what is next? Maybe they will put the government in jail? Or as they represent the irish people, the whole nation should go to jail? ARE THESE GUYS CRAZY?
The Irish government is so broke, what is the MAFIAA going get? Ireland is judgement proof.
Do good for your people; time to blow up a few lawyers...
Delta-Mike November Bravo Tango
I was actually going to post something about that, but I looked it up and apparently Ireland doesn't have sovereign immunity.
This is the case of using judicial mean to "force" changes to the law itself, which is in the legislative area.
So, what happened? I imagine this is a precursor to some sort of "treaty" or "trade agreement" with the US (since corporations run the country) and Ireland that will establish these "missing" laws.
Gee, government, not fondling the MAFIAA's nuts enough, so they hit you. Now, are you going to say "I walked into a door" and let them do it again, or are you going to man up?
You know what happens when you give a bully your lunch money? He threatens you for it the next day.
Know what happens when you give the MAFIAA a yard? They take a mile.
There is only one way to stop a bully. Stand up to him.
There is only one way to stop the MAFIAA. Cut copyright to 50 years, and tell them if they don't back the fuck off, you're going to cut it to 20 years.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
music industry is using a failing business model and costing the Irish Government lots of money in lost taxes from the music industry not adapting to the current business environment.
Change the laws: copyright on music expires after 20 days. ISP have to block websites hosting infringing copies of music 3 weeks after being given written notice of the specific file/url/whatever to block. Of course once the copyright expires the block is no longer required (since it isn't infringing anymore).
Everyone wins!
The more I read about all this stuff going on, the more and more I think of Accelerando by Charles Stross. The description in the news of these companies makes them sound like organisms trying to compete in an artificial world, with less and less connection to reality. Soon their actions will be run by programs, and will eventually become sentient :P
(Book is available free online if interested, see http://www.jus.uio.no/sisu/accelerando.charles_stross/)
printf("Goodbye cruel world!\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b");
The crux of the case will lie in proving that there is a causal link between the lack of laws requiring ISPs to block websites, and the damages claimed. The precedent is Francovich v. Italy. However, given that the judge in a ruling against British Telecom forcing them to use Cleanfeed to block access to websites like Newzbin and TPB acknowledge that tools to circumvent the system were available. And, in fact, Newzbin has released a client allowing access to their website despite the Cleanfeed block. The same software allows access to TPB. It relies on both encryption and the TOR network. Newzbin told BBC news that 93.5% of UK users have downloaded their Cleanfeed circumvention software. This flies in the face of the judge's comment that "Even assuming that they all have the ability to acquire [the means to circumvent Cleanfeed], it does not follow that they will all wish to expend the time and effort required."
93.5% of UK Newzbin users may not be "all" people in the UK who want to use file sharing networks, but it certainly means that establishing the causal link between lack of ISP blocking remedies and damages from file sharing will be difficult. People want access to those files, and Cleanfeed has proven largely ineffective at stopping two of the main sites involved in sharing. It should also be noted that these sites are not the actual hosters of the allegedly damaging files; they are merely portals to peer-to-peer networks that have other access methods available (e.g. DHT on BitTorrent). Again, the claim that blocking these websites would prevent financial damage is rather dubious.
"Please describe the scientific nature of the 'whammy'" - Agent Scully
The music industry is suing a sovereign government in a court of law because of a law that does not exist ? ... hang on ... that is what they ARE doing ?!!?
...
What next, sue voters for not ensuring their revenue stream
So in their eyes I can be guilty for not successfully electing a government that ensures their income !!!
I am painting it every which way to try and make sense of this
I wish we could outlaw lawyers but considering that they would be enforcing that law, it may end the universe H2G2 style and replace it with something more bizarre.
So not only do they blame the pirates themselves (because their actions may or may not result in a loss of potential profit), but they blame people (in this case, the government) who don't try to stop them (because, if they did stop them, they couldn't do something that may or may not result in a loss of potential profit)? I guess everyone's to blame, then. Clearly the people didn't try hard enough to force the government to pass such laws. Sue everyone!
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
Copyright is an artificial right that has been granted by the public to encourage the creation of works, with the understanding that those works will be contributed to the public domain in a reasonable amount of time. It is a bargain between creators and the general public.
We've lost the plot somewhere. 5-year copyright swelled to 7, 14, 28, 50, 75, 90, 120 years...
With each increase of copyright duration, the copyright lobbies have robbed the public of that much more creative works. We, the public, have fulfilled our end of the bargain, and we have granted a monopoly to the rights holders. They taken a tool we bought them, purchased with our tax dollars and our court system, and they have turned it into a weapon of control against us.
We have the power to take this weapon away from them any time we want--lobbyists and politicians be damned. Do not give these companies one cent. They are using what we gave them to exert ultimate control over us. Until they start giving back to the public domain, feel free to add "torrent" to any search for their creative works.
Well, Ireland is part of the EU and voluntarily subordinated its laws to those of the EU. So this sounds like a proper jurisdiction to me. If this court doesn't agree, then the suers have pretext to take up the case at the EU court level.
Strange, I didn't think there were any Irish lawyers.
None of them can pass a bar.
The full article about Saint ColmCille and his fight for free access to knowledge and Copyleft is available here (PDF).
(and after all, if those lawyers working for the music industry are serious about that copyright shit, why don't they join the army and fight that battle on the front line, huh ? Hand me a banana bomb, there's a cluster of them coming our way...)
In Soviet Russia, our new overlords are belong to all your base.
That's a bit like suing someone on skid row nowadays.
So they say file sharing is killing the music industry. Even if they're right (and that's by no means a given) ... so what? People can still record and distribute music without any music industry. With computers and the Internet it's easy and pretty cheap. But even if somehow all musicians decided to stop recording and distributing ... again, so what? We can live without recorded music. All the money people currently spend on CDs would be spent on other entertainment instead, such as live performances.
Copyright is a tool for the benefit of society, not a natural right of artists (or the parasites who trick them into lopsided contracts) to make money. As far as music goes, there's just no measurable benefit to society to justify any significant effort or expense on copyright enforcement.
I say the proper response to this demand is to declare music to be outside the scope of copyright. Entertainers, learn your place and watch your step.
Music is no longer a "product"; it is becoming a "service". (Streaming, downloading, etc). Music has actually been a service throughout most of human history, i.e., before recorded music you had to go where the musicians were to hear them. The "record business", starting around 1905, turned music into a product -- records, then cassette tapes, then CDs. The product is essentially "containers" for music that require a distribution infrastructure. But today we no longer need those containers and distribution costs nothing. How the "record companies" initially got so much power over the musicians is a sad story. Imagine if the people making wine bottles had control over what wines got made!
The mature (fun) ones do. You need to stay away from little girls; it's illegal.
Am I the only one thinking that they don't want money, they want precedent?
Really, can a corporation really sue a government for not passing a law and win??!
That's not even wink&nod bribery, that's outright treason!
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
A government declare war against a corporation?
"The Irish government recognizes any employee or person affiliated with the RIAA or MPAA as an enemy of the Country and will be killed on sight. We ask the United states government to allow us to run a military operation and bomb the corporate locations of all RIAA and MPAA operations, their lawyers offices, and anyone that claims affiliation with them."
They are terrorists just like Al-Quieda, why cant a freedom loving country declare war against them?
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Why are you sawing up women, are you a fucking magician?
We had music be for we had the wheel; culture existed before copyright. Besides, we have more than enough PAST music that little new is being created. This protectionist system is not adding much benefit to society.
Nobody has a right to a job doing whatever they want to do. Industries must be allowed to die when their time has come! This isn't about car company bail outs, we still need cars. This is more like banning teleporters because it'll put the airlines out of business.
The greed mentality is what it is always about; take everything away from you as possible and make you pay somebody who controls it. We've gone so far as to privatize ownership of WATER, including the rain and make people pay for the water collecting naturally in their own backyard- literally. It has been done and that evil thinking continues to spread; as CRAZY as that sounds the issue will come to your area someday in the future unless trends change. Privatization has always been about handing power to the politically connected so they can leverage that power into profit and it never has anything to do about helping anybody. Copyright has NOTHING (today) to do with helping the "starving" artists and everything about control.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
They're not being sued because a law doesn't exist. They're being sued because they allegedly haven't implemented an EU-wide law which they are (allegedly) obliged to; such implementations are a condition of membership of the EU. If you, as a citizen of an EU member state, have suffered harm from your nation's government not implementing an EU law which it has been obliged to, then yes, you can sue your own government. It's called a Francovich claim and is the basis of individual citizens ensuring that their own government can't shirk on their responsibilities to implement EU laws.