Finland: Open WiFi Access Point Owner Not Liable For Infringement

New submitter mjrauhal writes "In Finland, the operator of an open WiFi access point was found not guilty for copyright infringement allegedly committed over said access point. The operation of such access points would have become legally risky were this decided otherwise. Appeal by the Finnish Anti-Piracy Center is still possible for this district court ruling."

Comments

Duh?

[Wattos]

Offtopic: Can we please automatically delete all posts with links to my clean pc?

Ontopic:
This baffles me on how money is wasted on anti-piracy. This case should have been dismissed at the very beginning. How can you blame someone simply on the basis of ownership? This is like suing an owner of a car for not locking his car, because his car stolen and used in a crime.

What happens if I use WEP encryption? Would I be liable as well? I wish that the media corporations stopped trolling and started creating some business models which actually make sense in this day and age. All others have already moved forward.

Re:Duh?

[brit74]

> "I wish that the media corporations stopped trolling and started creating some business models which actually make sense in this day and age. All others have already moved forward."

I was on reddit the other day and the creator of Isohunt mentioned several times that making money from piracy was the holy grail and he had no idea how to do it. (Yeah, Kim Dotcom got money off of piracy, though I'm sure he was earning far less than market value, which makes sense since he didn't have the burden of any costs of production.) So, here's your chance to give suggestions. Preferably ones that don't end up making a *lot* less money than the current system. For example, I recently read a suggestion that companies should put all their movies on something like Hulu for free (but ad supported). The problem is that ads aren't close to paying the bills once you include the cost of making movies and the bandwidth of sending them to you. The only reason ad-supported movies are even available on Hulu is because they're long past their prime, so they're being used to make a few extra bucks. Maybe the solution is to only create movies that cost less than $10 million to make - then, even if piracy grows and takes 90% of your profits, you could still get by. In many ways, I think that's a sad outcome for the movie industry. Even more worryingly, I've noticed a lot of articles talking about new ad-skipping technologies (http://www.dishtvblog.com/dish-news/the-dish-hopper-adds-all-new-feature-auto-hop-that-will-allow-for-a-commercial-skipping-option/) and several people I know have been talking about how they always skip the ads. Which makes me think: gee, people don't want to pay for their entertainment and they're becoming more empowered and pushy about being able to skip the ads, too. I wonder how anyone is supposed to pay for the costs of creating stuff?

So, I just thought I'd put that question there. It's easy to say "hey, you guys should figure out a way to ...", but doing it is harder than saying it. I'm skeptical that there are any business models that can undercut piracy which don't also involve a large cut in revenues.

Re:Duh?

[Raved Thrad]

That's the thing, though: the "rights-owners" act as if the people who want to pay are pirates themselves, or potential pirates. DRM doesn't convince people to pay for a product; rather, it's more likely to convince people that it's not worth the hassle of trying to be good, and end up pirating anyway. DRM is targeted at the people who are paying for the product, rather than the pirates who are going to hack the product anyway and never would have bought it in the first place.

It's illegal in Germany.

[purpledinoz]

In Germany, you are legally obligated to secure your wifi. There's a reason why the Pirate Party is receiving many votes in the state elections. If you're in Germany, a lot of YouTube videos (most of them are legit) are blocked because of GEMA (the German RIAA). I've heard that some bands aren't even allowed to post their OWN music on YouTube because GEMA won't allow this. My guess is that the old East German Stasi was just renamed to GEMA.