Slashdot Mirror
Dutch Pirate Party Dragging BREIN To Court
An anonymous reader writes "Last week the Dutch Pirate Party refused to take down their proxy. Then, avoiding the Pirate Party in court, the entertainment industry organization BREIN obtained an injunction against the party's The Pirate Bay proxy (now a list of alternative proxies). After receiving additional demands from BREIN on Saturday night, including one to censor their generic proxy, the Dutch Pirate Party decided to take them to court, to strike the order and convince the judge of the need for due process and the freedom to inform."
From the press release: "The penalties imposed by the court are 4 times higher than those ordered upon the large commercial ISPs XS4ALL and Ziggo..."
As much as I like to see this kind of "stick it to the man" attitude, this is merely the exploitation of a loophole. This will not last. I'll be very interested in seeing what they come up with next though.
How can you be forced to "take down" a pointer? Not only is tpb not hosting anything but pointers... but the proxy is just a pointer to a pointer... *boggle*
This is how it works in a liberal democracy. The side with the most people wins. Donate now to your favorite free speech or pirate cause, because that money is needed to buy more lobbyists, TV spots and print ads than the opposition.
The entertainment industry spent good money to buy those courts, and you DARE to presume you can just come in with no money and use them AGAINST their benefactors?!?!?
I say good day to you, sir! GOOD DAY, SIR!
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
"The penalties imposed by the court". On whom ? For what ?!
Instead of pioneering new, convenient, usable digital ways to distribute content (like free, ad-supported internet streaming of standard-def content over, say, Youtube or Vimeo), the Entertainment industry seems determined to forcibly shut down any alternative, ad-hoc digital distribution means that has sprung up (like P2P & Torrents). Lets suppose for a moment that the Entertainment Industry manages to shut it all down for good... All of it. Really ALL OF IT. No more ways to get free dl links, free movie streaming, or any other way left to download/view Hollywood content online without paying. Will the industry's sales and profits suddenly go up? Perhaps by a measly few percent (say 2 - 4%), as some of the people who used to get stuff free off the internet now grudgingly head to the entertainment store to buy a DVD or BluRay instead, or buy a few movies/shows on iTunes-like online services. But what about the people who really used to love using Torrents and such? They will very likely stop consuming Hollywood movies/U.S. TV Shows/MPAA-RIAA content altogether. Can you live without consuming this stuff at all? Yes, you very much can. Do you miss out on anything doing this? Only if you are a 14 year old teenager who thinks that to be "hip" or "in the loop", you need to see the latest incarnation of the Hollywood trash all your friends at school are talking about. ---- With its latest actions, the Entertainment Industry has proven once more that it is composed of "9 Parts Business/Industry" and "1 Part Entertainment". It has also proven that it lives decades in the past, business-model wise, and that it simply cannot make effective use of the internet as a means of distribution. The likely result of all this? The generation that grew up with P2P and Torrents will probably hate Hollywood/MPAA/RIAA for the rest of their lives, and likely consume as little Hollywood/U.S. made content as possible. It will probably do this just to hurt the MPAA/RIAA back.
Why did the chicken cross the road? Because Elon Musk put an AI chip in its head.
If only we were able to have an organized party like this in the U.S.
Our only choices are "In the pocket of the MPAA" and "In the pocket of the MPAA"...oh, wait...
Great warrior...hrmph! Wars not make one great.
Downloading anything is perfectly legal in the Netherlands. Do not assume the rest of the world is ruled by companies like in the US, despite this news.
Not too long ago we could download pre-programmed selections over the airwaves. It was called tv. I fail to see much difference between that and TPB, except that the latter is on-demand. Funny how the industry was able to survive on ad revenue from TV but never figured out how to make the transition to the Internet.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
Actually, they should be. Because those thieves often pay for things that support the people who hold up the *AAs... They attend concerts, buy memorabilia and swag and act as walking advertisements for the artists who create the product the AAs spend so much time and money protecting.
I don't mind that they protect the content. I *do* care they they have bought and paid for a system that operates in a "guilty until proven innocent" system where all they have to do is *accuse* someone of being a thief or being an accomplice to thieving to get what they want. The AAs can start legal action and sue the *downloaders* all they want, and that's perfectly allowable, legal, and nobody will complain... But when they can force entire domains offline because someone posts a link to some content without having to get so much as a warrant, that's over the line. That's why it's a problem.
But, I guess we'll see. Some artists have embraced the new world of digital distribution. Let's see how they do.
The older geeks here might remember. Back in the 80s, our politicians didn't give half a shit about environment. The forest died, they ignored it. People protested, they ignored it. All because the industry was fearmongering that any environmental laws would threaten "Germany as an industry location". The sky was falling, companies were supposed to leave Germany in droves if laws were passed that dared to order filters for the pests they pumped into our environment.
And behold, a party came into existence that had very few agendas safe one: Environment. And the second time they stood in elections, they gained a few seats in the parliament. And it grew because the established parties continued to ignore the issue. And what a joke that party was! People who didn't have a clue about politics, or so it seemed, they came in jeans instead of suits and didn't know how to "behave". And the longer they were ignored, the bigger the party got.
30 years later the Greens are an established force in pretty much every parliament in Europe. In some countries they are or were already part of the government. The "big players" now have to deal with another party that siphons votes away from them, and as much as they'd love to, they can't really get rid of them anymore. The Greens became part of the political landscape in Europe.
History repeats itself now. The issue now is privacy instead of environment, but the cards are played exactly the same way. Privacy is eliminated and ignored by the established parties, despite protests, citing the threat of losing jobs in the entertainment industry if we don't eliminate freedom and the right to privacy. People don't like that, or even oppose it to the extreme. And a party is formed that you actually know very little of besides one thing: It opposes this.
And if the established parties continue to ignore what people actually want from them, they'll soon have to deal with yet another party sitting around in parliament cutting into their share of the cake. I cannot help but wish for history to repeat itself.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
This demand from BREIN comes hot on the heels of a University of Amsterdam research (in Dutch) which shows that the blocking the Pirate Bay URL and IPs on certain ISPs has no noticeable effect on torrent downloading activities. Taking down proxies is probably not going to make much of a dent in that either.
Don't worry, it's all just 1's and 0's anyway...
Fine. Ask the person standing in the unemployment line who just got laid off due to excessive "marklar" against the company he used to work for if he sees it as somehow not theft, as his very livelihood was stolen from him.
THEY TOOK OUR JERBS!
Ask the guy laid off so the board could save a few bucks and he'll say they stole his livlihood, ready to jail them for their theft?
We can just call it all theft. Jay walking = theft of right of way. Murder = theft of life, littering = theft of cleanliness, disturbing the peace = theft of quiet, law enforcement = theft of theft.
Copyright infringement is what most people do. They make a copy for themselves without authorization. Copyright theft is what the *AA and company do, wrongfully claiming to own copyright on someone else's works (especially on youtube).
"I am quite certain however that even in The Netherlands it is NOT legal to download the latest Hollywood blockbuster from an American DVD rip before it is even released on DVD on this side of the pond, even though you won't go to jail for it."
You are wrong, this is just one of the wrongs in your post:
-if it is legally obtainable _you_ can make a copy. The reason unreleased stuff isn't covered by copyright[*] is the fact that a work has to first be released by the rightful owner to be covered by copyright.
-_YOU_ can make a copy, a third party making a copy is someone making a copy available (distributing), which is against copyright.
-if you own a cd/dvd you are not allowed to break encryption (but only if it is an effective scheme), part of EUCD.
-there are no restrictions to the source being copied, there is no distinction for an illegal source (p2p) of legal source (tv broadcasts).
Please actually read the damned thing before making such comments.
*:
%s/copyright/auteursrecht/g
copyright is the wrong name for the law, it is not about the right to copy but summation of rights of the owner of its works. It also describes situations that aren't infringements on the owners rights (such as making copies for striclt personal use or education).