Slashdot Mirror
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."
That is not the problem here. I'm okay with the charges against them, the way they went about DOING it is quite another thing.
Since when does the MPAA get to play police themselves? Last I checked their are not a government law enforcement agency.
Actually they do. Why wouldn't they? The problem with current copyright law is that the burden of policing a work actually falls on the copyright holder, not on the Police or society. If you want to change this, fine, but as it stands they have to do anything they can; all sorts of businesses employ tactics like this to gain information about their competitors etc... its pretty normal, these guys are just stupid for falling for it.
It's not a legal point but a moral one, there are many communists who believe that digital works should be distributed freely and noone should make money off of them.
What the hell, what does the developer of a site has to do with how its owners operate it? That's like making employees criminally responsible if their company does something unethical.
I'm one of those people.
I believe that an ordinary person should not have to be encumbered with copyright law - even lawyers who specialize in it can't give you firm answers about what is and is not fair use. There was just a story yesterday about something like 57% of the population being "pirates".
As soon as you make IP part of your business, however, I believe it is fair to require you to know the ropes. It's similar to tax law IMHO - if an individual screws up their taxes, then they should just pay some interest on the money they owe and move on. If H&R block makes a habit of screwing up other people's taxes, then maybe big fines, restitution, and loss of license/certification is in order.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Apple has done the same in the US. Let's face it, our countries are run by these corporations. Politicians are merely corrupt figureheads.
So the MPAA is guilty of Extortion, gotcha.
>In exchange for dropping his case, he agreed to testify in the UK case and pay the MPAA $10k in go-away money.
Yep, very clearly guilty of felony extortion. Arrest all MPAA fucks, or shoot them, either works. Start with Chris Dodd to make the message as clear as possible.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
After the police dropped the charges they turned over all the computer equipment to FACT, even though FACT is not a government agency, didn't own the equipment, and the owners were not being charged with a crime. The couple sued to get their computers back in 2009 and won in the lower courts, but lost in the upper courts. So, in GB it is now legal for the police to seize your computer equipment without filing charges and turning the equipment over to FACT without compensation. crazy.
It used to be "separation of Church and State". Now it should be "separation of Corporation and State". Unfortunately it likely will take another war for that to happen.