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$1,500,000 Fine For Sharing 10 Movies On BitTorrent
another random user writes with news that a Virginia man, Kywan Fisher, has been ordered to pay $1,500,000 to porn-maker Flava Works for sharing ten of the company's films over BitTorrent. "The huge total was reached through penalties of $150,000 per movie, the maximum possible statutory damages under U.S. copyright law." The man did not make any defense in federal court to Flava Works' copyright infringement claims, so the judge handed down a default judgement.
"In 2011 Fisher and several other defendants were sued by adult entertainment company Flava Works. The case in question differs from the so-called 'John Doe' lawsuits as the copyright holder had detailed information on the defendants who had paid accounts on the company’s movie portal. For Fisher the trouble started when instead of just viewing the films for personal entertainment, he allegedly went on to share copies on BitTorrent. These illicit copies were traced directly back to his account through a code embedded in the videos. ... The verdict will be welcomed by Flava and the many other copyright holders involved in BitTorrent lawsuits in the United States. DieTrollDie, a close follower and critic of these cases, points out that it will be widely cited in settlement letters to other defendants, but that the case itself is notably different. 'This was not the normal Copyright Troll case – there was some actual evidence beyond a public IP address. Not a smoking gun by far, but certainly enough to show a preponderance of evidence,' DTD writes.
Yeah, we just watch them for the hidden codes, it's what turns us on.
They probably did a steganography on some key frames in the movie.
That REALLY sucks...
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
After all, this will clearly be a deterrent. Or he clearly caused millions of dollars in damage while he was playing with himself. Or something like that. Logic is not actually relevant when it comes to copyrights.
Palm trees and 8
The problem is not Bittorrent. The problem is what you use Bittorent for.
I I use Bittorent almost exclusivly for down/uploading Linux iso's so I think I'm pretty safe.
Or to download them illegally to begin with, instead of actually paying for watermarked movies.
Play the video on the screen and record it with your camcorder before you share it. The analog-HOLE will save you from detection.... Unless they do the punched hole technique that Hollywood does on some frames in a movie.... Then you are hosed....
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I don't get it. Surely it's only really worth suing someone for some amount that they can actually afford. Is he going to file for bankruptcy and only pay a fraction of this off?
So did the judge watch all of the evidence?
i blame tcp/ip. hacker protocol.
Speaking as someone who writes and self publishes books for a living (see sig), this is an insane judgement. $150,000 per movie? Ten movies?
I don't know how this could possibly be considered fair. Even if the guy 100% did everything that he is accused of, what's the real cost of his actions? If each film is, say, $10, then this means he cost the porno company 15,000 sales, per movie.
The problem is it just doesn't add up. Something free isn't the same value as something paid. I've given away approximately 20,000 books on Amazon, but I've sold about 1,000. I didn't lose 19,000 sales.
Every retailer knows if you give away free samples or even free products you're encouraging people to come back. To buy your new offerings. People are creatures of habit and once we like something we want more of it. This massive giveaway probably did wonders for their signup rates.
But I understand that putting *every* piece of your product online is bad, and making them permanently and easily available is damaging to sales especially in the short term.
But that much damage? 1.5 million bucks total? This is ludicrous. It's insane. There are punishments for real, genuine crimes with real, lasting harm to a person that are less than that. How is he supposed to pay?
So as a media producer, I think that bankrupting someone for sharing ten films online is completely immoral. It's just wrong.
Check out my sci-fi book "Lacuna" at http://goo.gl/MVxX8
As this one was caught via user-specific codes (Something practical only in online distribution, no good on pressed discs), none of that would have helped.
What useful arts and sciences does it promote? And then, why isn't the penalty declared unconstitutional, it is obvious the penalty exceeds the harm done many times over.
"[porn distributor] had detailed information on the defendants who had paid accounts on the company’s movie portal"
Look, anybody who voluntarily surrenders *their own credit card details with their real name on it* to an internet porn distributor just asks for trouble.
The quoted story sounds like it's full of spin. The way I read the story from the BBC was that there were several defendants, most got thrown out of court due to there being no actual evidence of guilt (IP addresses anyone?) and this guy was found against because he didn't bother turning up. Maybe I misread it though.
Korma: Good
Yeah. If someone has problems with addiction we just fine them a million dollars. That'll help them get their life back on track.
I get the joke you're making.
But it wouldn't matter if he had used proxies etc. It wasn't his IP address that got him. It was the fact the video shared had his personal imprint on the file. Flava didn't ever need to see/detect _him_ uploading the video. The existence of the video on the network is enough to press charges.
His best defence at this time would be to say his machine has been hacked by an unknown party who then went on the release the video via torrent. Which almost certanly will become a defence for people in the near future.
The problem is not Bittorrent. The problem is what you use Bittorent for.
I I use Bittorent almost exclusivly for down/uploading Linux iso's so I think I'm pretty safe.
No, for the particular use case this guy (and the GP) are talking about, Bittorrent is, in fact, a dumb solution. The downloading isn't the problem, the sharing back of data you didn't originate is.
And more generically, you're wrong anyway. If someone rooted one of the seeds of your Linux ISO and stuck a bunch of child porn in it, you're guilty of both downloading and distributing child pornography at that point. It doesn't matter what you say you were doing, or that you didn't produce the ISO. And you can't really detect there's a problem until you've already downloaded the whole ISO so you can hash the file. Now, maybe you get your .torrent files from somewhere secure, but people get onto distro servers with some regularity.
So, the GP is absolutely right -- using Bittorrent to download and re-seed anything you didn't explicitly produce yourself is, in fact, unsafe, and doing so with content you know is illegal is just plain stupid.
tl;dr
from TFA: >For Fisher the trouble started when instead of just viewing the films for personal entertainment, he allegedly went on to share copies on BitTorrent. what if my computer is stolen or simply hacked and then those films were putted on bittorrent from someone else? Do i have to be responsible of those movies even in those circumstances so, i don't own them but i'm responsible as if i was a co-author ?
Shouldn't the award AT LEAST be limited to the highest conceivable profit those movies could have *possibly* made had they not sold a single one? There is NO WAY they would have made even a fraction of that had this guy COMPLETELY killed their business.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
I have had a look myself and reckon you could find enough free porn to watch it for several hundred hours every day. A lot of it is 2 minute excerpts with links to try to get you to paying sites, but there is also plenty of 20-60 minute stuff with no strings attached.
It's called watermarking, and is a reasonably sane alternative to DRM.
We mainly just put them in jail and punish them for the addiction.
Because unlike all those commie socialist countries in Europe, that actually works. (Or so my Republican candidate for senate tells me).
He declares bankruptcy, and all his debts get wiped away. This could actually help his finances more than hurt them if he is like the typical American and has more debts than assets.
So Linus, what are we going to do tonight?
The same thing we do every night Tux. Try to take over the world!
Yea, I'm surprised it's not used more.
I heard at one point the RIAA wanted to do the same with music files legally downloaded; put some watermark that no one would notice in the audio portion of the file.
So what Flava Works is saying here is that Kywan Fisher would have been better off had he never paid for his Flava Works pornography in the first place. After all, if he hadn't done the right thing and supported the studio, they never would have had his credit card details to begin with, unless his credit card info was stolen...
To those of you who think purchasing Flava Works's "works" is a good idea, let this be a less to you and torrent their content. What if your computer get stolen and the thief takes your porn collection and posts it to bittorrent sites? What if you get a virus and your porn files leak? What if you share a Flava Works file accidentally? I realize that that's a little hard to do with bittorrent, but you get the idea.
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
Or the imprint was forged, or at least able to be. We don't know how the files were imprinted as no defence was made, he didn't try to refute the evidence. All we know is that the prosecution told the court: “Plaintiff has proprietary software that assigns a unique encrypted code to each member of Plaintiff’s paid websites. In this case, every time the Defendant downloaded a copy of a copyrighted video from Plaintiff’s website, it inserts an encrypted code that is only assigned to Defendant. In this case, the encrypted code for Defendant is: ‘xvyynuxl’,”
Therefore this case was open and shut, the defendant didn't even show.
This logic gets silly, though. The same could happen if I buy a magazine which somebody has for some reason taped child porn inside, and, say, lend it to a friend or something. Same as how somebody hiding something stolen in my car doesn't make me guilty of handling stolen goods unless I was provably aware of it.
If you are going to sign in to something in a way that can identify you, and then share possibly watermarked files, it doesn't matter what you use to share the files. The files can be traced back to you. Of course you could say you were hacked if the files were not shared from an IP associated with you. I'd say the two - your ip, and the watermark are enough to say it was probably you. Though if you have others in your family, it could have been them. For instance what could they do to two roommates that share a computer? Each could say it was the other one who shared the file.
...
In a civil suit isn't the burden of proof only 51%?
...
The only thing stupid here is your entire argument. If the distro box got rooted, they could start seeding child porn ANYWAY. They don't need torrents to do it either, they could just start up Apache serve it up on port 80 over HTTP.
This is just thinly veiled FUD to try to stop people from downloading and hosting files from the internet. Well, fuck that. That is the whole POINT of the internet, it is how webservers work, it is how mail servers work, it is how chat servers work (streams instead of files though), and people caving to fear that assholes like you spread only hurts it. OH NO! SOMEONE MIGHT ROOT MY BOX AND START HOSTING ILLEGAL MATERIAL!
Get. The. Fuck. Off. The. Internet.
But his crime was not watching porn. His crime was sharing it illegally. So his addiction would have to be not feeling guilty about being a bittorrent porn leach.
...
The problem is abuse of the law.
Interesting notions but you assume that the lawmakers actually care about common sense.
They don't. They care about keeping their palms greased.
If someone rooted one of the seeds of your Linux ISO and stuck a bunch of child porn in it, you're guilty of both downloading and distributing child pornography at that point.
No, you're not.
With very few exceptions all criminal statutes have intent as a key element of the crime. If there was no intent, there was no crime. In many cases mere knowledge is enough to satisfy the intent requirement, and in some it can be argued that it's sufficient that you should have known. But in the case of downloading Linux ISOs, barring some additional information you had, there's no reason you should have known it contained kiddie porn, and therefore you haven't committed a crime. That's not to say you couldn't be charged and tried (which could seriously screw up your life), but the prosecutor would have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that you knew or should have known that the files contained illegal material in order to convict you. Which means the government would have to have pretty compelling evidence that you did know, or at least had strong hints. That's pretty unlikely.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
No, the problem is the law itself and the people who support the people who write them
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
The point that is not being made here, is that like the MAFIAA, the porn studios themselves are propping up a failing business model (having to complete with free amateur porn), by recruiting pay-or-we'll-sue ambulance chasers to shake down people to generate revenue, or barring that, forum-shopping for sympathetic judges and sueing 'pirates' into oblivion.
Given that pornographers are drawn from the criminal underclasses anyway, it doesn't surprise me that they would stoop to these levels.
Yeah. If someone has problems with addiction we just fine them a million dollars. That'll help them get their life back on track.
I'm all for treatment for any type of addiction, it's best to get help BEFORE it gets so unmanageable. If someone is caught driving drunk, now they get fined/jail time. If that person kills someone while driving under the influence, now they're in for a lot of jail time. And it could have all been avoided if the person knew their limitations beforehand. There's a lot of people in jail re-thinking the decisions they made. This story's just another example of that.
No you aren't. You only need to provide an offer, good for 3 years, to provide the source code for a nominal fee. If you are distributing the source code unmodified, then you can provide a copy of the offer that you received from upstream[1]. Any Linux ISO that you download will also contain this offer, so by passing it on unmodified you are not violating the GPL.
[1] This actually provides a fairly simple loophole if you're willing to wait three years: take some GPL code, modify it, and give it to a third party. They then sit on it for three years and then sell it as a binary-only product. They pass on your (now expired) offer, and no one has the right to demand the source code from you.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Yes, criminal copyright infringement is that way. Civil infringement is a strict liability tort. That means you're on the hook even if you took reasonable steps not to infringe and did not ever intend to infringe.
So you could still be on the hook for the infringement of copyright if a copyright owner took you to civil court. Going to federal PMITA prison would require mens rea.
Nah, the problem in this case is that getting sued and not showing up for the case is really, really dumb.
Can someone explain to me why the maximum judgement is also the default? Why does that make sense?
Interesting notions but you assume that the lawmakers actually care about common sense.
They don't. They care about keeping their palms greased.
WRONG metaphor to use with this story, now it will take a few strong drinks to get that mental image out of my head...
Cool story bro!
Could've used a vampire, though.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Most kiddie-porn statutes do not require ANY intent, just simple possession is enough to get you busted.
Nobody would say "he shared data on http", so please stop confusing the BT protocol with BT trackers.
The only thing stupid here is your entire argument. If the distro box got rooted, they could start seeding child porn ANYWAY. They don't need torrents to do it either, they could just start up Apache serve it up on port 80 over HTTP.
Is this a reading comprehension problem, or a knee-jerk response to a "zomg, someone saying something bad about something I use" nerve?
Because, while you're quite correct that they could be serving child porn via any mechanism they wanted on that rooted server, this isn't about the bad guy, this is about the GP's assertion that he's safe using BitTorrent because he only downloads Linux distributions. And, for the same reason you don't see lawsuits about people downloading pirated porn movies via Usenet (because they aren't sharing them back), from the perspective of the person downloading the Linux distribution, the difference between getting it via HTTP and BitTorrent is *huge*, from a legal standpoint. (The laws are VERY different between possession and distribution... and to address another comment someone made to my reply -- the question of intent is completely irrelevant when it comes to something like child pornography. Your reputation is ruined the moment the accusation is made, and very few people win with the "it wasn't mine" argument... most people plea out to little or no jail time and registering as a sex offender.)
Try to become a witness in a high profile case that will require that you be put into the witness protection program. Problem solved. No more obligation to pay $1.5 million fine.
If someone is caught driving drunk, now they get fined/jail time. If that person kills someone while driving under the influence, now they're in for a lot of jail time.
Unless, of course, they happen to be a US Senator.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
The minute we can choose between someone besides tweedle dee and tweedle dum, I'll blame the voters.
Until then, I'm not going to pin on them the natural results of a rigged system.
now it will take a few strong drinks to get that mental image out of my head...
Bad idea. Very Bad!
You have heard about Beer Goggles, right?
"I have downloaded hundreds and hundreds of records, why would I care if somebody downloads ours?" Robin Pecknold
Interesting notions but you assume that the lawmakers actually care about common sense.
They don't. They care about keeping their palms greased.
WRONG metaphor to use with this story, now it will take a few strong drinks to get that mental image out of my head...
Maybe a few 'shots'? <badumching>
It's a hidden code in a movie where every, so taboo!
Oblig ref: http://xkcd.com/981/
Please explain to me, in paranoid nerd terms, what exactly is wrong with watermarking.
You can still format shift and play on any device you want. You can still make backups for your own use. All of the classic arguments about rights restrictions don't apply to watermarking.
The only thing you can't do is share content which you don't own the copyright to.
I'm personally OK with watermarked files, because I can do pretty much everything I want with them, and I don't like stealing content anyway (assuming the payment goes to the actual creators).
The context was CP distribution, not copyright infringement.
Dilbert RSS feed
It doesn't even matter what the "corrupted" bittorrent server was serving, torrents are hashed in pieces, if some part of the torrent network starts sending you CP you would reject the piece immediately anyway. The only thing that needs to be trusted is the initial .torrent download itself. Are you seriously implying that the police are going to start prosecuting people because they downloaded a .torrent file from ubuntu.com and started seeding it and then it turns out some asshole got access to the main ubuntu servers and made a fake .torrent file and seeded it with CP? You are an idiot, this is just a bunch of FUD.
At least you didn't quote Charlton Heston, it would be quite ambiguous in this context.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
How did you do that, get in my brain?
*grin*
And more generically, you're wrong anyway. If someone rooted one of the seeds of your Linux ISO and stuck a bunch of child porn in it, you're guilty of both downloading and distributing child pornography at that point. It doesn't matter what you say you were doing, or that you didn't produce the ISO. And you can't really detect there's a problem until you've already downloaded the whole ISO so you can hash the file. Now, maybe you get your .torrent files from somewhere secure, but people get onto distro servers with some regularity.
You are wrong on this point, you do not have to download the whole ISO to verify it. Bittorrent combines all the files to be transfered into one big data chunk and then splits up the chunk into pieces which are individually hashed. The resulting .torrent file ends up recording all the hashes from the individual pieces plus a "master" hash which is the hash of all the individual hashes. The master hash is used to check that the .torrent file itself is not corrupted.
This means that if if someone modified an ISO to contain child pornography and then tried to seed this in the same swarm as the unmodified ISO, the pieces containing the data with pornography will fail the individual hash check, thrown away and redownloaded from the swarm. If a single peer repeatedly sends a data piece where the hash check fails, the protocol will assume that his copy of the data is corrupted and ignore that peer. Bittorrent will never upload an incomplete piece to others because until you have the complete piece, you can not be sure that the data in it is correct. The Bittorrent protocol guarantees that the data you have downloaded matches the data described in the .torrent file so if anyone wants you to download child pornography, they will need to give you a .torrent file which says that this data should be included.
If seeding fake data would work, movie studios would have done this years ago. As the protocol stands, seeding fake data will slow the downloading process down because pieces will fail the hash check, get thrown away and downloaded again, but as long as there is at least one person who have the correct data, you will get it eventually
Yes actually it is. A good water mark does nothing to disturb any legal use case. And if it is done well, it does not noticeably degrade the quality of the image/video.
The main problem is not the watermarks themselves, but the abusive charges imposed upon the defendant. The watermarks were a tool to single him out and allow for the increasingly absurd copyright laws to be applied over him. I would have no problem with watermarks if he had been ordered to pay U$ 1500,00 for this, but 1.5 million is beyond ridiculous.
f someone rooted one of the seeds of your Linux ISO and stuck a bunch of child porn in it, you're guilty of both downloading and distributing child pornography at that point.
That strikes me as a somewhat unlikely, paranoid reason not to use bittorrent for anything. I think it's much, much more likely that someone who decided they didn't like me would simply plant a flash drive full of such material in my house. And much much much more likely that I'll get hit by a bus. There's no such thing as being absolutely safe, bittorrent or any program is never going to be 100% secure from dangers like that. Doesn't mean they're dangerous or stupid.
The voters are the ones who rig it by not voting for the alternative candidates that are on the ballot. The voters do have the choice, and thus they are the ones to blame. It lies squarely on their shoulders, and nowhere else. Attempting to shift the blame only aggravates the problem, and it plays perfectly into the hands of the bad guys who want you to think precisely as you do.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Not true. It's rare for child pornography statutes to have strict liability.
For example, New York State's is penal code article 263. Possession: "A person is guilty of possessing an obscene sexual performance by a child when, knowing the character and content thereof, he knowingly has in his possession or control, or knowingly accesses with intent to view, any obscene performance which includes sexual conduct by a child less than sixteen years of age."
The federal statue is what you're most likely to get prosecuted under if they can demonstrate that the material was transmitted over the Internet (and if they don't like you). This is a decent summary, but 18 USC 2252 is probably the most illustrative. Note that every statement in subsection (a) indicates "knowingly".
[1] This actually provides a fairly simple loophole if you're willing to wait three years: take some GPL code, modify it, and give it to a third party. They then sit on it for three years and then sell it as a binary-only product. They pass on your (now expired) offer, and no one has the right to demand the source code from you.
They can't. If they can't fulfill the requirements of the GPL (offer to provide source for 3 years), then they can't legally distribute the code.
But that's not the way this law was initially designed. Look at overzeetop's post above. These laws were originally designed to fight people who were reproducing copyrighted material commercially for profit. This guy has no profit motive and was not distributing commercially. While not violating the letter of the law, the maximum fine sure violates the spirit of the law.
If Congress wasn't at the beck and call of lobbyists, they would surely pass a new law that sets new statutory limits on noncommercial infringement.
:(){
Interesting notions but you assume that the lawmakers actually care about common sense.
They don't. They care about keeping their palms greased.
WRONG metaphor to use with this story, now it will take a few strong drinks to get that mental image out of my head...
Maybe a few 'shots'? <badumching>
One is enough if you place it right.
So it seems that the ToS made the subscriber accountable for any infringement.
First, it's actually pretty clever that they sign and mark the downloads. They should have informed their users, this probably would make a lot of folks pause to begin with.
The "defendant" (who didn't defend himself) could have claimed that his computer was hacked or someone made copies without his permission. The pressure would be on the company to prove that he uploaded the files himself.
Car analogy: if someone steals my car from my garage, and runs someone over, am I guilty of the hit'n'run?
Wearing pants should always be optional.
Most of you need to start watching foreign films so that you don't get robbed by the movie studios. Most movies aren't even worth $5.00 dollars. The fine should be a percentage of the cost of the movie, like $0.50 cents per movie. Paying $150,000 dollars is robbery.
I think you'll find that sharing only part of a copyrighted work is just as illegal.
It's called watermarking, and is a reasonably sane alternative to DRM.
What about two people comparing their respective downloads and filtering out the differences? :-)
Ezekiel 23:20
If I put a sign on a pallet of bricks at a construction site that says, "Free Bricks!", and people take them, programmer logic would say I haven't stolen anything. But if they catch me you can bet I'm going to be in trouble.
I believe the point he was making is that the 3rd party is not required to distribute the source code if it is unchanged, they only need to "forward on" the offer from where they got it. Since where the 3rd party had originally gotten it from is now beyond the 3 year limit, they don't need to provide it either anymore.
IANAL. I'm not saying it is true, or that is how it works. Just clarifying how TheRaven64's claim could possibly work, if all the things he assumes are true are indeed actually true.
Addiction or not, it has nothing to to with the fact that this guy watches porn. He got fined because he shared what he bought.
It is not a porn addiction, it is a sharing addiction.
They knew it was the custom coded file only he downloaded.
They knew the IP sharing it was his.
"I was hacked and rooted!" Well, here's a video you uploaded to YouTube with you talking about sharing porn from that web site and daring "coppers" to come "getcha".
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Storage Liason: One book, "Swedish-made penis pumps and me. This sort of thing is my bag, baby!" by Austin Powers.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Flavaworks movies on KickassTorrents - http://kat.ph/usearch/dorm%20life/
I can think of worse ways to get your sexual gratification. Not everyone has the option of a "healthy" sex life - whatever that means.
Let's suppose it means a mutually satisfying relationship between two monogamous consenting adults (for the purposes of illustration, I'm sure this is what you mean). What if your partner has a different (let's say, much lower) sexual appetite than you? What qualifies as the healthiest way to make up the difference - masturbation, having an affair with someone else, having an "open" relationship, voluntary chastity on your part?
None of them are ideal. People with children and a sense of responsibility to them, and a sexually inactive spouse with conservative views, are faced with a quandary. They either suppress their urges, which is stressful and unhealthy, have an affair, which is likely to get them divorced and separated from their children, or they can masturbate, which is usually made easier if not more satisfying by porn.
Or alternately what if you just can't get laid via normal means? Maybe you have a deformity or other medical condition that precludes you forming healthy sexual relationships. Maybe you're working three jobs and just don't have the time to form personal relationships.
Sure, it's the sexual equivalent of junk food, but it's arguably healthier than denying your urges until you end up suffering from some stress related disease, or acting out sexually in a way that is actually harmful rather than just embarrassing and sordid. The pent-up denial of sexual urges is likely what leads to such high rates of child molestation amongst the priesthood - along with the Catholic guilt about sex probably convincing them that the priesthood is the cure for having a "shameful" sex drive in the first place.
For the record I think a healthy sex life is whatever makes you content and doesn't harm anyone - use contraception, find partners that you enjoy, and form the best relationship you can with them. Whatever you do is your own business.
The big movie studios file their abusive lawsuits in order to intimidate people into behaving legally. A lot of people here don't like that. I get it.
These porn creatures are different. They like people downloading their stuff illegally. Then they can sue them and actually take their stuff. It is a business model for them. They are very bad people.
Beware!
[1] This actually provides a fairly simple loophole if you're willing to wait three years: take some GPL code, modify it, and give it to a third party. They then sit on it for three years and then sell it as a binary-only product. They pass on your (now expired) offer, and no one has the right to demand the source code from you.
Not really, here's the GPLv3 clause and the GPLv2 clause is similar:
c) Convey individual copies of the object code with a copy of the written offer to provide the Corresponding Source. This alternative is allowed only occasionally and noncommercially, and only if you received the object code with such an offer, in accord with subsection 6b.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Not really. Our voting system mathematically favors a two party system, which is why not only the US but other countries also using the same system end up with two parties. Countries that have more then two parties use a different type of voting.
You clearly know so much of the intimate details of his life from these few actions, I didn't know one could infer so much.
Couple of things though.... could you please explain what a "debasing" sex life is? What was "debased"? Also, what is a healthy one? What are you basing these judgements on?
Clearly he was in no danger of disease, thats pretty healthy.
Sounds to me like you have some need to see porn watching as bad and unhealthy...and are likely projecting your own faults on to others. (much like the homophobes who get rock hard watching gay porn)
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
It is circumventable... Just like DRM. The difference is that that it does not interfere with the legal use cases of a normal user, while DRM does.
Most kiddie-porn statutes do not require ANY intent, just simple possession is enough to get you busted.
Cite?
I can point to several counter-examples.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
I work for a provider of digitally downloaded music, and we use watermarking.
Several years ago, we had an incident where a high-profile music score was released earlier than intended (a winner of a talent show of some sort IIRC), sold a handful of copies before realising the mistake, and then removing the track again. It popped up on piratebay shortly after, and thanks to watermarking, we were easily able to locate the exact individual who shared the track.
Turned out the marketing guys didn't wanna follow up on the case, apparently because they were afraid to lose reputation with the legit customers.
To this day, I still have this weird "What is power if you don't use it!" feeling when thinking of the case, and I'm regularly annoyed by uneducated masses who essentially doesn't believe such technology exists and can practically be applied.
Posting anonymously for probably obvious reasons.
Just a thought: is there a legal minimum resolution of an image of CP? Can someone spread a tiny picture of, say, 4800 pixels (80x60), stuff it into a piece with specially calculated junk bytes so that the computed hash would match up?
Not that it's happening, and even if it was I don't think anyone would notice, but this is more of just a mental exercise.
More Twoson than Cupertino
You are wrong on this point, you do not have to download the whole ISO to verify it. Bittorrent combines all the files to be transfered into one big data chunk and then splits up the chunk into pieces which are individually hashed. The resulting .torrent file ends up recording all the hashes from the individual pieces plus a "master" hash which is the hash of all the individual hashes.
Actually, that's explicitly why I said they needed to compromise the source of the torrent, not one of the seeders. I'm quite aware how bittorrent works.
b) Convey the object code in, or embodied in, a physical product (including a physical distribution medium), accompanied by a written offer, valid for at least three years and valid for as long as you offer spare parts or customer support for that product model, to give anyone who possesses the object code either (1) a copy of the Corresponding Source for all the software in the product that is covered by this License, on a durable physical medium customarily used for software interchange, for a price no more than your reasonable cost of physically performing this conveying of source, or (2) access to copy the Corresponding Source from a network server at no charge.
I don't see where this "passing on the offer" part came from.
If I demand the source code and the vendor tells me "we're passing on the offer to you, but too bad so sad it's expired already" then that's fraud, plain and simple.
It's no different than if I brought something on eBay and the seller tells me "the item is no longer being manufactured and thus I can't fulfill your order, thanks for the free money sucker".
[1] This actually provides a fairly simple loophole if you're willing to wait three years: take some GPL code, modify it, and give it to a third party. They then sit on it for three years and then sell it as a binary-only product. They pass on your (now expired) offer, and no one has the right to demand the source code from you.
There's nothing I can see in the GPL (v3 is the one I looked at) that actually lets you pass along any offer, let alone an expired one.
I am still not a lawyer, but looking over at least the GPL v3 that you provided, it would seem that TheRaven64 is incorrect. The right to "forward" is covered under section 4, but that is only in source form which would defeat the purpose of trying to hide the source.
Section 6, which you quoted from, should have been quoted in its entirety for completeness since you only need to satisfy one of the conditions, and you only provided one of them -- although it was the most likely clause TheRaven64 was referring to. That said, I don't see any other clause in section 6 that would allow for what TheRaven64 claims. As such, I'll quote the relevant portion of section 6 below.
6. Conveying Non-Source Forms.
You may convey a covered work in object code form under the terms of sections 4 and 5, provided that you also convey the machine-readable Corresponding Source under the terms of this License, in one of these ways:
a) Convey the object code in, or embodied in, a physical product (including a physical distribution medium), accompanied by the Corresponding Source fixed on a durable physical medium customarily used for software interchange.
b) Convey the object code in, or embodied in, a physical product (including a physical distribution medium), accompanied by a written offer, valid for at least three years and valid for as long as you offer spare parts or customer support for that product model, to give anyone who possesses the object code either (1) a copy of the Corresponding Source for all the software in the product that is covered by this License, on a durable physical medium customarily used for software interchange, for a price no more than your reasonable cost of physically performing this conveying of source, or (2) access to copy the Corresponding Source from a network server at no charge.
c) Convey individual copies of the object code with a copy of the written offer to provide the Corresponding Source. This alternative is allowed only occasionally and noncommercially, and only if you received the object code with such an offer, in accord with subsection 6b.
d) Convey the object code by offering access from a designated place (gratis or for a charge), and offer equivalent access to the Corresponding Source in the same way through the same place at no further charge. You need not require recipients to copy the Corresponding Source along with the object code. If the place to copy the object code is a network server, the Corresponding Source may be on a different server (operated by you or a third party) that supports equivalent copying facilities, provided you maintain clear directions next to the object code saying where to find the Corresponding Source. Regardless of what server hosts the Corresponding Source, you remain obligated to ensure that it is available for as long as needed to satisfy these requirements.
e) Convey the object code using peer-to-peer transmission, provided you inform other peers where the object code and Corresponding Source of the work are being offered to the general public at no charge under subsection 6d.
Yea, I'm surprised it's not used more. I heard at one point the RIAA wanted to do the same with music files legally downloaded; put some watermark that no one would notice in the audio portion of the file.
First of all, a watermark doesn't matter if the credit card is stolen, the login has been hacked or the person's PC has been hacked or it's been accidentally shared or whatever, doing this would quite quickly lead to a shit storm. And there's no such thing as a watermark "no one would notice", very quickly on file sharing sites they would notice the same file with many different hashes or if not before the first time you mention it in court. Compare them and you'll pretty quickly find out how it's watermarked and learn to remove it, that's why the RIAA gave up on the idea. It only works when you have a very limited number of copies to track and getting multiple copies is hard, like for example in what cinema a movie was recorded or the movies sent out for Oscar nomination. On the mass market any popular system would quickly get circumvented.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
He won't pay it. He'll declare bankruptcy, much like many content providers that might have made it if people had actually paid for their product.
In this case the problem actually was BitTorrent.
Had he gone down to the local store and physically stolen the 10 DVDs, he would have gotten a $150 fine and banned from the one store (For a year or two, until it changed ownership)
It really sucks that the store owner would have been out the money they paid for those DVDs, and doesn't at all deserve that.
But clearly when we go about not depriving anyone of anything the fines are in the multiple millions of dollars, yet depriving someone of property will be in the three digit range.
I'm not sure what you are talking about - not saying your're making it up, but I've never seen it. Usually people just get a magnet link from pirate bay, and voila, there's the file.
...
The suit was in Illinois and the guy was in Virginia. So you could quite literally be sued anywhere and have to haul your butt across 5 state lines and hire an out of state lawyer with proper standing in whatever jurisdiction you happen to get served for.
That's even assuming that you properly get served to begin with.
I don't think anyone ever established this guy was properly served. He might have found about this the same way that the rest of us did. He might not even know about it still.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
You can watermark pressed discs too. As far as I'm aware, most advance copies are watermarked so they can find the source of high-quality leaks that occur prior to normal distribution. There have been some pretty high-profile cases of advance copy or screener releases being traced to the source in exactly that way.
All you had proof of was that SOMEONE leaked a watermarked file owned by someone else, nothing more.. You had no 'power'. You would have to prove the watermarked file was willfully provided by the owner, and a watermarked file fished out of the sea of the internet is not going to cut it.
Good-bye
Wow, smart marketing guys. That's not something you see every day.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
GP was probably thinking of age of consent laws which often are strict liability.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
You had no 'power'. You would have to prove the watermarked file was willfully provided by the owner, and a watermarked file fished out of the sea of the internet is not going to cut it.
Apparently it is, as the main article proves.
If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
... You mean two body shots and one headshot?
Just trying to keep things sexual ... o_O
IM pretty sure the article says he didnt show up, rendering a default judgment. No evidence (shaky or otherwise) required.
Good-bye
And more generically, you're wrong anyway. If someone rooted one of the seeds of your Linux ISO and stuck a bunch of child porn in it, you're guilty of both downloading and distributing child pornography at that point. It doesn't matter what you say you were doing,
I think I'll take my chances, but thanks for reminding me that we live in a dystopian future :(
Anyone using BitTorrent to download movies is stupid we know film industry is cracking down, and fining people Slashdot has at least one article a week about film industry. BitTorrent technology itself is used for legitimate sharing and allows for fast speeds. This is an example of people using good technology innovation for bad things plain and simple.
http://www.thetechnologygeek.org
Cool story bro!
Could've used a vampire, though.
Maybe, but "the Communist Manifesto" is still a better love story than Twilight.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
You can watermark pressed discs too. As far as I'm aware, most advance copies are watermarked so they can find the source of high-quality leaks that occur prior to normal distribution.
How? Pressed == identical.
Are advance copies pressed?
Watch this Heartland Institute video
Who cares? We have primaries before the final 'runoff'. The voters can work the math as they wish. And, with very few exceptions, those countries with more than two parties in their parliaments aren't really any less corrupt than the US. The system and the winners reflect the corruption and laziness of the voters. It's that simple.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
What if he sold his copy to someone?
If someone rooted one of the seeds of your Linux ISO and stuck a bunch of child porn in it, you're guilty of both downloading and distributing child pornography at that point.
Pretty sure bittorrent hashes things for a reason..
1 a week out of ... how many torrenters? Millions of millions I'd figure.
If you believe in privacy, and believe you have "nothing to hide" at the same time, you're a goddammed idiot
You're justifying theft with envy.
Uploading copyrighted material is against the law in the U.S.
Since the US adopted the Berne Convention, anything copyrightable is copyrighted to its creator (barring contractual copyright assignment obligations or local work for hire laws that may assign it to someone else) automatically as soon as it's fixed in tangible form. In a lot of ways, that's sort of a nightmare, but it does make just about everything that everyone creates copyrighted. Including this post and your post which I'm replying to. Even if you make a reference to permission later in the sentence, please try not to spread the idea that we're not all copyright holders. I get so sick of seeing the term "copyright holders" being tossed around as if it's a title belonging only to certain wealthy and influential industry groups rather than meaning all of us.
ah, the enemy browses slashdot
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
As to having my posts modded 'troll', not at all was I trolling, I just stated my opinion that pornography debases women and, incidentally, also the viewer of porn. This is a strange site sometimes. Someone posting feels he's the 'authority' of /. . Power-crazed geek? Possibly. Spending too much time in his mom's basement. Possibly. I'll get through, somehow (*sniff*), though I don't know how I'll ever show my face at StarTrek Cons again.... ;-)
That's... kinda not the point. I think what is being asked is, if you aren't sharing the entire work how can somebody reasonably be nailed for sharing the entire work as opposed to part of the work, and how can what they want be considered anywhere near proportional?
If you believe in privacy, and believe you have "nothing to hide" at the same time, you're a goddammed idiot
if you aren't sharing the entire work how can somebody reasonably be nailed for sharing the entire work as opposed to part of the work
Nobody is being sued for sharing "the entire work". They're being sued for sharing any part of the work.
how can what they want be considered anywhere near proportional
The penalties in these cases are always statutory penalties, not damages. They're not designed to be proportional to the harm caused, they're designed to discourage that behavior. They may still be wildly inappropriate, unreasonable, or unfair for this kind of case. But "proportional" is not one of the things they're intended to be at all.
But, to more directly address the original problem -- what jbarr was proposing was trying to avoid prosecution on a clever technicality. That is, a bunch of people are collectively sharing a file, but no one person is the entirety of the file. The two problems with this are that (a) the technicality he's trying to exploit doesn't exist and (b) trying to exploit what you think is a clever technicality in the law generally doesn't work nearly as well as you would think.
Hmmmm. An interesting question. I know I have some old Linux ISO's from 2004-2005 on some old hard drives here, some of which are from some now long-defunct distros. I don't think anyone would argue that I'm doing something wrong if I distributed these old ISO's, but I don't have the source code and it's entirely possible that the source is no longer available, would that put me in violation of the GPL?
If the distro is defunct then it's a victimless crime; GPL violation can only be pursued by whoever wrote the code. If the distro is defunct then they won't be able to lawyer you down.
Didn't mean to imply you were pushing some sort of agenda. It just galls me a little whenever I see that the language used in the discourse on any particular topic seems to be automatically slanted to one side. I just mention it to get people to think about some of the automatic assumptions that are made all the time in the debate.
Interesting how you think prostitution should be legal... Does it debase women? Maybe it's all about adding in the camera ;) There seems to be a slight inconsistency there.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
I'd feel sorry for you if I had a heart.
The new right fascists are bilingual. They speak English and Bullshit.
it takes two to make the thing go right but it takes three to make it out of sight
Sorry, was tired and not very focused, so I was combining a couple discrete concepts in my head and in my post.
For user-specific watermarks, no you can't apply them to pressed discs. Advance copies are usually not pressed, but are instead dye copies. Pressed discs can be watermarked as a means of determining authenticity for authentication mechanisms. Different methods with different goals.
So yes, in relation directly to the post above, no, that type of watermark cannot be applied to a pressed disc.
And please pardon me. I'm rather newish to posting on /., just started this year. I know some ettiquette now about /., though not all. I wasn't feeling my best that day when the story was here. One thing I still need to learn is when I should just read the comments, and not to post. No harm done, have a good one, sir. :-)
For myself, I'm not a pornography viewer. How I feel and how others do is none of my business, as long as no kids are involved, and no one's being forced into anything they object to doing. Porn just really isn't my thing. Have a good day sir.
Let's just forget about porn. Because this case is not about watching porn, it is about file sharing. Point 3 is on topic, the rest isn't.
AFAIK, the story doesn't even tell if the guy actually watched the porn he bought. He probably did but this part is 100% legal, private and irrelevant.
And by the way, the shared movies are gay porn : there is no women debasing there ;)