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Cameron's IP Advisor: Throw Persistent Copyright Infringers In Jail
An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from TorrentFreak: "During a debate on the UK's Intellectual Property Bill, the Prime Minister's Intellectual Property Adviser has again called for a tougher approach to online file-sharing. In addition to recommending 'withdrawing Internet rights from lawbreakers,' Mike Weatherley MP significantly raised the bar by stating that the government must now consider 'some sort of custodial sentence for persistent offenders.' Google also got a bashing – again."
The article goes on to say "Weatherley noted that the Bill does not currently match penalties for online infringement with those available to punish infringers in the physical world. The point was detailed by John Leech MP, who called for the maximum penalty for digital infringement to be increased to 10 years’ imprisonment instead of the current two years."
You seem awfully confident it couldn't get passed into law.
I'm less certain of that. The copyright owners and their lobbyists are working to chip away at our rights to make them secondary to theirs -- because they essentially want all digital technology to be controlled and used as they allow us.
I fear this could be something which happens eventually. And I fear that they will be pushing this exact same agenda elsewhere.
Case in point, the FBI gets called in because someone was wearing Google Glasses in a movie theater, even though he wasn't recording. And ICE and DHS do domain takedowns of places suspected of violating copyright (or facilitating it).
Governments are increasingly becoming tools of corporations to enforce their wishes on us.
So what you and I is becoming irrelevant, it's what the big corporations can pay for. And they have far more money than we do.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
And add to that no DRM.
Yeah they love the DRM for some reason I can't quite work out. But basically it makes the product crap. It's either "streaming" in which case you need a decent, wired internet connection (how's your 3G data usage doing...?) or it's locked to some device in some way which means playing it on a decent screen or another portable device will suck.
The problem is not competing with "free" it's competing with "better".
Of course, most people don't really know about DRM. But that doesn't matter because they are at least vaguely aware of the effects. The pirate bay is better because:
* Excellent search engine.
* Nice one stop place for all media.
* Excellent choice in download clients (can prioitise, batch up, etc)
* You can use your favourite media player.
* You can play on any devices you own.
* You can copy from your laptop to your phone, tablet, other laptop, builtin player in TV
* You can transcode to a smaller file for your phone
* You can shove it on a USB stick and go to a friend's house for movie night
* You can play on any screen you own.
* Generally good download speeds, excellent for popular stuff.
* Generally a good choice of different size/quality
* Available in your country right now.
The fact that's is free is at worst icing and best actually a minor disincentive since a good number of people don't like the idea of being a freeloader.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Is it possible to make lots of money from copyright infringement w/o breaking lots of other laws?
If that's not the case, why do we need more?
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
No, he's still pretty much an asshole, but he was also the victim of some fairly serious abuse of process, involving governments across at least two continents. As with many laws, you have to defend people you don't like.
Now, consider that the citizens can withdraw the government's right to imprison them.
Once you've done that enough times you'll soon see that freedom does exist in the absence of punishment or laws or 'rights', but laws do not exist without punishment -- application of force against another's will.
In the natural lawless state we have the freedom to do whatever our moral compass allows. Not all laws are immoral, but history is full of examples. It's better to err on the side of caution and have as few laws as possible, and thus the most freedom.
In the age of information Copyright is artificial scarcity of infinitely reproducible information -- It's propping up a business model akin to selling ice to Eskimos. There is no evidence that Copyrights are beneficial for society. It's terribly dangerous to run the world on untested hypotheses. We should do the experiment and see if the laws that grant 'rights holders' monopoly of information should exist. There is only evidence to support the null hypothesis: That copyrights and patents are not required for innovation or social benefit. The fashion and automotive industries sell primarily on design, are very profitable, and have no copyrights or design patents.
Information is not scarce. Market that which is scarce: The ability to create new information. Sell the labour to create new information instead, and you'll get more art. If you get paid once for your work to build a home, fix a car, make a song, etc. then you have to do more work to make more money.