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MPAA Agent Poses As Homebuyer To Catch Pirates
bonch writes "The MPAA used an undercover agent posing as a potential homebuyer to gain access to the home of a British couple charged with running a streaming links site. UK authorities decided not to pursue the case, but the MPAA continued, focusing on a Boston programmer who worked on the site, leading to an unprecedented legal maneuver whereby U.S. charges were dropped in exchange for testimony in a UK fraud case."
I guess even police work and evidence collection is getting outsourced these days....
On a serious note, what right does the MPAA have to place 'undercover' agents?
This is getting too wacky and out of hand. I mean, piracy is one thing, but playing police?
Next thing you know laws will be privatized for the highest bidder in a location. I think we need to step back and ask ourselves, is piracy really worth letting this crap slip by?
I think we should start by reducing the amount of legislation and bureaucracy and let the police do their job. Then we write the minimum amount of laws required to protect start up industries, and then we hang all the lawyers anyways because they're ridiculous and will ruin everything (as always).
Simply blackmail in a legal way: you sue the programmer in the US so he has to spend tens of thousands of dollars to defend himself: that will bankrupt him. Or he won't spend that amount of money to defend himself and the torts from the lawsuit will bankrupt him. Now the MPAA has a lever and can coerce the programmer to testify for them.
Welcome to the legal system of the United States of America. If some people with italian sounding names did such a thing, they'd be prosecuted under RICO.
Sounds like gaining entrance to home under false pretenses should be prosecuted as fraud as well.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
>They were even allowed to investigate the confiscated equipment themselves.
\Wouldn't any lawyer be able to get this easily thrown out? The police giving away evidence to the plaintiff to do as they wish with it aster the case was dropped? Isn't that stealing, conspiracy, possession of stolen property, tampering with evidence, etc, etc , etc.....
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
where are the laws to stop that?
Sounds like the couple aren't the ones who should be charged with fraud. Verifying the identities of the 'interested parties' would have likely quashed this whole debacle before it progressed into the absurdity it is now.
If the MPAA/RIAA are going so far as to infiltrate your home with 'actors' to thwart copyright infringement, they really have hit the bottom of the cesspool. That's absolutely disgusting!
It's only a crime if the people in power say it's a crime. Right now, the people in power are the MPAA.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
Please. They've sued dead people. If you think this is rock bottom you've forgotten the last 12 years.
They're also re-writing the laws with their checkbooks, implementing censorship to protect an obsolete business model. Whacky spy shit does not trouble me. Taking away our rights is, morally, rock bottom.
Private corporations are not law enforcement officers.
It means that the sick greed which drives the movie industry knows no bounds.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating