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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'm confused; who was suing whom? This was a British couple in Britain or... What?
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?
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.
Fuck the **AA
I don't really have an issue with piracy when the media companies make it difficult to view the content legally. I have a major issue when someone is making money off piracy. Screw these people. Throw the book at them.
I would agree with you, except I have a much, much bigger problem with corporations sending UNDERCOVER FUCKING AGENTS into people's homes under false pretenses.
If you can't gather enough evidence of criminal activity to convince a rubberstamp-wielding judge to issue a warrant, served by people at least superficially trained in such silly little issues as chain-of-custody, then you drop the issue. You don't hire plumbers to break in and go through your enemies' files.
The summary fails to mention one of the agents was a down-on-her-luck Meg Ryan.
You've Got Subpoena!
When discussing a case that includes both the UK and the USA. make it clear where the cities are located. Not only are there probably many cities called "London" in the USA, but more importantly, there is at least one "Boston" in the UK.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
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 think it's probably the Profit motive. You're a hero if you are providing access to media not otherwise available. If you are seeking money for it when you're not the copyright holder then you're just a money grubbing dick. You might be a money grubber even if you hold the copyright; but then you're at least legal.
It's like the story of the vet who sent something like 10k pirated DVDs over to the desert. Yes, he violated copyright, but people have his sympathy. If somebody took those 10k DVDs and tried to sell them for $2 profit each, the view is much different. People view you differently if you're not doing it for profit, especially if you're 'donating' your own resources to the cause without hope of return.
I don't read AC A human right
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.
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).
Except they didn't break in, they didn't go through anybody's files, they weren't "agents" in the context of law enforcement. It's not like financial companies, insurance companies, service providers and other industries don't have their own investigators who look into things before taking legal action. While there's definitely a few red flags here, the summary presents this like it was some kind of undercover raid, and the comments like this kind of take that even further.
I agree. We've got the *AA's starting to act as quasi-governmental organizations, and that's Phillip K. Dick novel territory.
Pay your legislators enough cash and you don't only control governmental actions, you almost become PART of the government apparently. We're WAY beyond the time when the foot should of come down.
where are the laws to stop that?
This seems like a scheme James Bond would have a wet dream abut at night! The fact that the MPAA went through all this trouble to get these people seems a slight bit more than over zealous one would say. How is it that the MPAA can bring their own investigators and then invite the police along later after they made a complaint... and then to top it off when the authorities decide that their little investigation didnt pass the "sniff" test, they then convince the U.S. authorities to go after the guy who wrote some code for the site. Seems to me the MPAA is acting as their own department of justice and then just asking the goverment to go along and help when they cant get justice another way..shady as hell is an understatment
Pay your legislators enough cash and you don't only control governmental actions, you almost become PART of the government apparently.
Well, corporations are government creations, so it's not entirely surprising. The cycle goes roughly:
1) create permanent private-benefit corporations
2) protect individuals in corporations from nearly all consequences
3) allow corporations to grow much larger than non-corporate business could achieve to gain unnatural economies of scale
4) allow corporations to squelch their competition through favorable laws, incumbent-protecting regulations, court actions, etc. Be sure to speak boldly about new regulations to control corporations, then let corporations write those regulations.
5) take small percentage of corporate profits as taxes
6) take much larger percentage of corporate profits as campaign contributions to ensure cycle perpetuation
7) GOTO 2
You'll notice the loop is positive feedback and doesn't halt so long as resources are available to keep it running.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Mixing these two always seems to lead to bad things. Sigh.
One man's pink plane is another man's blue plane.
And whatever happens, a few more people will buy the licensed product, and a few more entertainers will trust the MPAA or RIAA with distribution of their valuable copyright material.
When you desire more information from a story mentioned in a summary, try clicking the underlined phrase in the text. This is called a hyperlink and will take you to the full article with all the details.
Wise posters of Slashdot past shortened this idea into an easily remembered acronym: RTFA
"Sufferin' succotash."
The thing is the 57% number is *too LOW*. Just about every computer user is a "pirate" under definitions that the *AAs consider valid. Hell, an extreme view of copyright law says that making a copy to RAM falls under copyright laws.
It's broken. The 19th century definition just doesn't fit when everything can be expressed as bits. It just doesn't work.
Fortunately, we've got a 21st century definition, in the form of the recently-updated copyright act, which expressly addressed things like copying to RAM. You may have heard of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, no?
You can dislike it for myriad reasons, but "the act is 200 years out of date" is simply not a valid one.
You have to realize that Slashdotters never click the links to read articles. They rely on the summary to tell them what reaction to have so they can post comments about it. Actual reading of the article or may or may not occur at a later date.
You mean "communists" like Thomas Jefferson?
(quoting from memory): "The thinking power we call an idea appears purposefully designed by nature to be shared with all humans. I can share my idea with others, without depriving its usefulness to myself, just as I can light your tapir with my own fire, without darkening myself. There cannot then be, in nature, a right to exclusive ownership of ideas."
Should people make money off their artistic works? Sure. Should they have the power to break-into your private home w/ false pretenses? Absolutely not.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
Not only were Hollywood representatives taking part in the questioning, they also brought along investigators who were allowed to examine the equipment.
Why on earth are they allowed to look at the equipment? Can company X allege something now against company Y in order to look through Y's internal files?
Its obvious that the movie industry is too flushed with cash. They have been able to get fines and punishments in the laws that far outweigh the size of the crime. Like making the fine for say a speeding violation $20,000.
The is a principle that has been lost here that the punishment needs to fit the crime.
The other red flag is all the independent detective work by them which ain't cheap.
We have a classic case of unstable wealth divide where when the wealthy get enough extra cash to start to heavy handedly suppress any competition or threat to their profits, we end up with more of a seperation of weath and things like debtors prisons.
We sort of have that now with private prisons who have a vested interest in keeping people in jail, not rehabilitating them. Or hospitals that are for profit that either cut you up and send you out so they can turn over beds and fees rather than whats best for the patient. The profit motive does not always benefit society as a whole, just those with a money interest.
It funny too with the Republican party trying to capture the center of the religious board with the DOMA and anti gay and anti woman (see Roman church's suit against contraception and the health insurance), at the same time abandoning the least of us Social Security, Medicare , Medicaid, food stamps, national health care. Seems like a selective reading of the religious texts. But then we know Heaven won't be crowded by fat rich people, only those skinny enough to get through the eye of a needle.
The profit motive is greed which leads to avarice. Those in the markets say its run on Greed and Fear. What a sand pit to build our economy on.
You need to work the following into your loop:
x) As a judge, always find in favor of the bigger business or wealthier individual. Eventually take better paying job at a private arbitration firm where you can crucify the little people, enforce your decisions just the same as US court judgments, all while having no obligation to follow civil procedure, legal precedent, or the US Constitution.
x) As a regulator, always ignore violations of the largest and most profitable companies you are supposed to be regulating, while coming down hard on any start-ups that might rock the boat. After a few years of service, assume an executive position for one of the companies you were regulating, or work for them as consultants or lobbyists.
x ) Dismantle whatever power the common voter has by closing down courts and outsourcing litigation to private arbitration firms, replace the US military with private security contractors who HAVE NOT taken an oath to defend the Constitution or follow the Geneva Convention, outsource CIA, NSA, FBI and other operations to private intelligence firms that DO NOT have to report to Congress, privatize and offshore prison operations, and drop local law enforcement from the budget so communities end up with amateur neighborhood watch organizations.
I can share my idea with others, without depriving its usefulness to myself, just as I can light your tapir with my own fire, without darkening myself.
Not quite; igniting tapirs is a good way to get PETA on your case.
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
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.
If they are going to deceive you like that, then who's to say that they aren't terrorists or child porn distributors?
Money. Lots and lots of money.
Soon they'll all have their own private, but state-funded, police force, like Apple and REACT. I'm sure they'll be flash-banging people and murdering family pets in no time...that'll teach those filthy pirates!
Why would the elections have any bearing on who's in power? Have they finally put the seats on all of the corporate boards onto the ballot?