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UK Court: MPAA Not Entitled To Profits From Piracy
jfruh writes "The MPAA and other entertainment industry groups have been locked for years in a legal struggle against Newzbin2, a Usenet-indexing site. Since Newzbin2 profited from making it easier for users to find pirated movies online, the MPAA contends they can sue to take those profits on behalf of members who produced that content in the first place. But a British court has rejected that argument."
Fuck You. Parasitic Bastards.
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
I assume that would be a McLaren F1, cost 0.5M pounds when new, now worth significantly more.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Wouldn't collecting the profits from pirate copies translates into making those copies legit?
Since Newzbin2 profited from making it easier for users to find pirated movies online, the MPAA contends they can sue to take those profits on behalf of members who produced that content in the first place.
This is a bit like saying that asphalt manufacturers profit from making it easier for getaway drivers to whisk bank robbers away from the scene of the crime.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
..with the view to giving those profits *to* those members?
I've been comparing so-called piracy to historic real estate squatting, rather than comparing it to stealing or thievery as has become the propaganda of Big Content. When a court compares it to real estate trespass, it's recognizing the same disingenuous manipulation of Big Content's propaganda.
Well, the judge's argument seems logical to me.
"Suppose, say, that a market trader sells infringing DVDs, among other goods, from a stall he has set up on someone else's land without consent. The owner of the land could not, as I see it, make any proprietary claim to the proceeds of the trading or even the profit from it. There is no evident reason why the owner of the copyright in the DVDs should be in a better position in this respect," he said.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
Since you don't know what profits were from piracy and what was actually legit use of the service can't be determined.
Could be an MP4-12C. Still the F1 is nice and all, but for half a million pounds, you don't even get passenger seats. Obviously my beat up '97 SHO is much better and just as exclusive, being the only Taurus variant to have a V8.
"I assume that would be a McLaren F1"
Why? They have more than one model now?
The world is finally getting sick and tired of hearing stupid shit from the MPAA/RIAA media mafia.
I know i sure am...
On another silly note. I deserve profits for life because i worked on construction of all MPAA buildings. I'll be waiting for my royalty check you deadbeat fucks.
Sounds pretty stupid. But hey. That's what you're arguing on some non physical property. So pay me now. Or forever shut the fuck up.
I also paid taxes that built the roads that the mpaa uses every day. I'll need a kickback on that too. For life.
I also had children. Future mpaa customers. You need to pay me for providing those. If it wasn't for me you'd have less customers in the future.
An exponential number of future customers all because of me... Pay up now.
What? That's all stupid as fuck? Go fuck myself? Well now you know how the world feels about you mpaa assholes....
The F1 has two passenger seats?
Infringement itself is not criminal; it is a civil matter between the infringer and the copyright holder. Under some DMCA legislation in various countries breaking a digital lock makes you a criminal.
From TFA:
[High court judge] Newey ruled that a copyright infringer cannot be compared to a thief who steals a bag of coins, as submitted by the studios' lawyer. "A copyright infringer is more akin to a trespasser" than to a coin thief, Newey said.
Originally, I thought the judge lost his marbles. Of course it's more akin to stealing something rather than just trespass, they are part of stealing/redistributing a product!
But then I realized how the media conglomerates played the whole DRM thing as effectively leasing you (and only you) the rights to listen to the music you purchased (and only in the media format they presented it!). That sure sounds a bit like charging an admission's fee to experience some wonderful scenery to me (a scenery experience that you obviously can't share with anyone else!). In that respect, it really does seem like NZB(2) did was criminally trespass over this entity of music or what-have-you that we are allowed to take part in (but not take a part of).
Seems like the MPAA screwed their own pooch on this one. I hope this sets a precedence (even if Bri'ish) and people can start owning their music again.
You may not be allowed to profit from your own criminal behavior, but the 'criminal' is the person making the copy of the copyrighted material (once upon a time this was a tort, i.e. a wrong against someone that one could be sued for, not a crime against the state or general public; that's what these guys are always trying to do: turn torts into crimes so they can sic the government on you), not the specialized search engine or directory of links. The Usenet-indexers are profiting in the same way that Truman Capote profited when he wrote a book about a notorious murder.
udin
I stopped reading at "the supreme court has emphatically said otherwise"...we are talkung about the US supreme court right?
"Oh boy oh boy, it seems british judges haven't lost their fucking minds."
If so then the US Supreme Court has too, since they long ago similarly ruled that copyright infringement IS NOT THEFT.
This space available.
yep - right and left of the driver
Where we're going, we don't need roads!
The MPAA once again sued on irrational claims and their claim got rejected, of course.
We shouldn't talk about it or make articles about it on Slashdot. It should have been rejected silently. The more we talk about it, the more their claim becomes normal. The MPAA is taken more and more seriously, which is scary. It doesn't deserve all that publicity. Their plea should be ignored like the random pleas from mad people that happen all the time.
Where we're going, we don't need roads!
Push it further: We don't need.
Write boring code, not shiny code!
They brought out a new one in 2011, I believe; they also have some others in planning stages.
Yeah, I had a sig once; I got bored of it.
They wouldn't have far to go; we (the British) used to sarcastically refer to the UK as the USS Great Britain for a reason...
Yeah, I had a sig once; I got bored of it.
It's nothing like stealing something. It's like walking into an art gallery which is open to the public and making a perfect replica of an exhibit for yourself. (If there were DRM, it would be a locked gallery instead of an open one.)
Before there was one piece, and now there are two. The gallery is still in possession of its exhibit, so this is nothing like stealing an exhibit from them. It's more akin to creating new exhibits.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
The McLaren F1 has two passenger seats.
Yes, but no one actually fits in them.
I refer the MPAA to the response given in the case of Arkell v. Pressdram.
I'm quite happy that this Judge thinks it's also a perfectly reasonable statement too.
No, you need to install double doors. That's double the security against illegal entry :)
"After a long battle with the international arm of the MPAA, Usenet indexing site Newzbin2 has called it quits. The site had been operating under adverse conditions, not least almost total censorship by a court-ordered ISP blockade in the UK."
"Add to this a climate of fear driving individuals providing vital services away from the site, plus legal action against PayPal aimed at Newzbin2's UK-based payment provider, and the site's operators have decided to shut down."
AccountKiller
Airstrip One
Yep, one for the wife and one for the mistress.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law
Of course not. Those profits belong to the government.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
That's voted up as "interesting", when it has nothing to do whatsoever with this court case. The court case ruling would have applied to someone selling illegally copied DVDs, which they copied themselves. That's actually what the judge said. The copyright holder may have rights to damages, but not to the profits. Everything you said is totally irrelevant.
All the court has decided, it appears, is that the copyright owners don't have a "proprietary" right to the proceeds of infringement. That's a specific form of legal shortcut to seizing assets. The issue of whether there is a valid claim is still proceeding, just not using that specific legal mechanism. No decision has been made on anyone's entitlement to anything, except the entitlement of a copyright owner to make a particular form of legal submission.
I see...
Another post being marked troll because the overlords don't like the message, Slashdot is becoming unbearable as platform.
I hope somebody with mod points will change this back to at least neutral.
C'mon folks, cough 'em up...with several nzb sites down where are the freshest indexing sites now? Couch Potato isn't going to run itself, you know.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
If you can afford the F1, you can afford the women that will fit into the "seats."
I invite you to go watch Mad Max.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
"Oh boy oh boy, it seems british judges haven't lost their fucking minds."
If so then the US Supreme Court has too, since they long ago similarly ruled that copyright infringement IS NOT THEFT.
I really don't understand why everyone here makes such a big deal out of this. Is theft some special, awful crime in the US? Is being a thief worse than being a rapist, paedophile, mugger of old ladies or card cheat man?
Everyone wastes so much time arguing about an exact physical analogy to copyright infringement that the main issue (without copyright, creators get no financial reward for their work) goes ignored.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
You made my day! Thanks :)
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
Metaphors can be a tool for avoiding deep thought. This isn't necessarily a bad thing; I'm not saying don't use metaphors or use any other heuristics in order to avoid doing work! Sometimes that's a wise approach, especially if you're trying to do something quickly. Sometimes, though, you want people to think harder, and then you want to discourage metaphors. Perhaps you're not in a hurry. Or you want people to not think, so you encourage a default position which works to your own advantage.
If copyright infringement is theft, then instead of wasting time thinking about how you might deal with copyright infringement, you can instead think about how you have in the past dealt with theft. (For the most part, people think theft has been covered fairly well, as societies have had millennia to work on it.) Then, if you implement similar policies with regard to copyright infringement, this is simple conservativism rather than radical new-fangled unproven speculation. It's common sense. It's tried and true strategy. Not thinking can be smart! (?!)
If copyright infringement is not theft, then it's probably dumb to use policies derived from theft. It's going to fail to address the badness in copyright infringement, and it's going to result in collateral damage against innocent non-infringers (i.e. the policy will cause badness of some kind).
In USA, we currently all vote unanimously for politicians who treat copyright infringement as theft; we've either completely bought into the metaphor, or we act like we have. These lawmakers then pass laws which are based on that idea, so, for example, you get a situation where DRM is seen as being much like a "lock" on someone else's property. Of course you don't break someone else's lock, unless you intend to steal their stuff. From this premise, DMCA isn't absurd.
On the other hand...
If you have used a computer for more than a couple weeks, or if you have ever purchased DRMed media and then tried to make use of it, then you start to realize that the "lock" is on something you bought, and keeps you from conveniently making non-infringing use of it. So right off, the metaphor is letting you down, and laws based on it (DMCA) are a kind of injustice. But it gets even worse. You go pirate the thing you already bought, in order to get a DRM-free copy which you're able to play (if the DRM is non-trivial; if the DRM is trivial then you might simply use an illegal player, limiting your "black market" exposure to a single non-recurring instance). Go through this a few times, and you soon get habituated to using the piracy sources routinely, and ..
.. (huh, that's weird, who could have predicted this?) ..
.. eventually you stop seeing any advantage to ever bothering with the initial purchasing step. You never get anything useful out of it except a warm'n'fuzzy feeling, and you always have to pirate anyway, so pretty soon the piracy sources become the primary source ("I'll get around to buying the BluRay that the file was derived from, some day.... even though it'll stay shrink-wrapped since staying up-to-date with the keys and the BD+ scheme du jour is so tedious..")..
.. somehow the lawmakers' metaphor that copyright infringement is theft, not only fails to make a dent in the theft, but is causing creators to get less financial reward. Oops. Instead of the law being a force for justice, it has created an "Everyone loses" situation.
That is the power of a metaphor, when the metaphor has been d
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
It cost 910k to repair Rowan Atkinson's after he drove it into a tree and that was still cheaper for the insurance company than replacing it.
Not really -- I don't see how they are parasitic at all.
... The MPAA are not 'parasitic' in a technical sense but you don't take exception to the assertion that they are 'bastards' in a colloquial descriptive sense?
IMHO 'bastards' is term well used in this context.
'Abominable, hideous and abhorrent agents of cold, manipulative and greedy international corporations' would be more accurate and precise than 'parasitic' but a bit wordy. Given that 'bastards' is a figurative description, 'parasitic' isn't so wrong; matches the tone and meaning of the comment.
Besides, 'parasitic' is not so far off: sucking from the stream of income originating from the people they prosecute is somewhat 'parasitic'.
Just sayin' . . .
8=>
The big reason behind is is theft doesn't have an expiration date. Copyrights expire, and there are some powerful sources who want that to stop. If violation is theft, then it makes no sense to have a type of theft that stops being criminal when the items are still arguably valuable but just get too old. Just as we wouldn't let a thief off because he stole a Queen Anne desk that was an antique, or a vintage Mustang roadster, or an original gold doubloon, we wouldn't let them off just because they had copied something equally old, if violation truly equals theft.
I tend to argue with the people calling copyright violation theft because there are at least six other good legal arguments against it, but some of those have been called nitpicks (hint, when the Supreme Court agrees with you about a legal 'nitpick', it's not just a nitpick, its the LAW!!!!! - anyone arging that SCOTUS doesn't understand the law as well as they do on Slashdot is a troll or an idiot, pure and simple.)*.
But, it's definitely more than a nitpick if the real reason some people are claiming copyright violation is theft is so they can violate the constitution and slip unlimited duration in without having to get an amendment. Anyone trying to get the courts to just ignore part of the constitution is up to serious no goodness.
That's why I think you're wrong to say that the main issue is that "without copyright, creators get no financial reward". Not that that isn't A main issue, and a serious point, but it's not the only main issue if we are talking about losing a fundamental Constitutional right.
* Here's a few - readers, please decide which you think are nitpicks and which you think have real substance:
1. There's no such thing as non-criminal theft - that's an oxymoron. There are types of noncriminal copyright infringment.
2. "Fair Use" is a defense against infringment - how could that even possibly be applied if CV = theft?
3. The original US Copyright law was all in a part of the US code called title 17, and ALL Federal criminal law was in title 18. That shows that people such as Franklin, Madison, Jefferson, John Jay, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Learned Hand, and many others who created or contributed to US copyright law wanted ALL copyright violation to be non-criminal. That's the whole point of the US Titles, to keep such categories seperate.
4. The US Supreme Court has ruled in the 1970s that all copyright law is federal only - if CV = theft, then the federal government has violated the rights of individual states to enforce their laws against theft in any case where the violation is not for profit, since without money involved, the fed cannot invoke the interstate commerce clause to justify its actions. Many states had copyright laws before that time and they are all considered unenforcible now.
5. You can sue over theft as well as petitioning for the state to prosecute it, but the damages are based on actual value - if CV=theft, then we have a special class of theft which is punishable by the same senetences as others PLUS statutory damages that are much higher than the fines for other thefts of similar gravity. You can have high damages in civil law because the 'cruel and unusual' clause only applies to criminal law, but if CV = theft, CV = criminal as in point 1, and that means those penalties arguably violate the 'cruel and unusual punishment' clause in the constitution, because we would be attempting to punish some types of theft more than we do others for the same actual cash value.
6. The Berne convention creates types of copyrighted works which can be duplicated in some developing countries without royalties so that those countries can develop themselves better. These are typically non-fiction that has educational value. If CV is theft, Berne violates the principle of equal protection under law and should be repudiated immediately in congress.
7. Since the US government ISN'T r
Who is John Cabal?
I really don't understand why everyone here makes such a big deal out of this. Is theft some special, awful crime in the US? Is being a thief worse than being a rapist, paedophile, mugger of old ladies or card cheat man?
It doesn't need to be particularly awful, it just needs to be negative.
The thing is that sharing is seen, and has been seen for a large part of human history, as a positive and fantastic thing. Sharing with eachother is why we have democracy, technology, modern health care, an unprecedented peaceful planet, etc. and so forth. It is because past generation chose to share with eachother their thoughts, ideas, plans, suggestions, discovieries, etc. that we have been able to work our way out of dark smoke-filled caves to the cozy brightly lit houses/flats/whatever of today. Sharing is a beautiful and wonderful thing in human history.
So if the media cartels can manage to move the collective idea of sharing from this elevated state down into the slightly negative category of even just petty theft, then this is a monumental victory for them. That is the essence of this war that is being fought over a "mere" word.
sigs are hazardous to your health
Lets make a more accurate analogy. Someone steals my computer, flees to the UK, and then sells it. The UK decides to keep the money. The EU has a debt crisis, and conveniently they start making billions off of foreign companies.
"Sorrow is better than laughter, for by sadness of face the heart is made glad." [Ecclesiastes 7:3]