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Four Year Sentence For Running Piracy Streaming Site
An anonymous reader writes: A 29-year-old man from Northern Ireland has been sentenced to two years in jail and another two "on license" for running a website from his bedroom that streamed pirated content. (Being on license is similar to a strict parole in the U.S.) Police say the man made over £280,000 from ads on the site . Law enforcement was put on the case by an anti-piracy group in the UK. Between 2008 and 2013, users of the site streamed approximately 12 million movies, which prosecutors say caused £12 million in damages. The judge in the case said time in jail was necessary "to show that behavior of this nature does not go unpunished."
hmmmm unusual, the punishment, estimate of damages/losses actually seem reasonable for a change
Prison is never 'reasonable' for petty shit like this.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Is he a danger to society? If not, he shouldn't be in prison.
I never defend piracy. And if a person isn't dangerous, you don't lock him up!
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
While in theory I agree, in practice, what else can we do? Someone commits a crime, they need to be punished. Sure, we can levy fines, but if the person is rich, they just pay them and it doesn't matter to them. If they are poor they can't pay them anyway so what do we do then? If someone steals a car, we can try and get them to pay for the car, but they probably don't have enough to do it. Sure, we can garnish wages for the future, but that is just a sure fire way of keeping the poor committing crimes because even when they do make money legally afterward, they won't get it.
"Information wants to be expensive" - Stewart Brand, the same guy who said "Information wants to be free"
(it's not actually piracy, it's copyright infringement)
Yes, it is piracy. And it's also copyright infringement. Because piracy in this case is basically a (somewhat) more colloquial term for the copyright infringement. If you don't believe me, look it up: there are TONS of citations going back to the 1600's.
Or maybe making a major movie that cost millions of dollars (and employed hundreds or even thousands of people) IS creating something, and the investors would to make back their investment from the people who consume their content for entertainment.
IMO in this case the "entitled" are not the studios wanting payment for watching their movies, it's the people who think that watching those movies is somehow their inherent right and they shouldn't have to pay for it.
Copyright infringement is not really, not morally a crime, just contractual infringement based upon a very questionable law. However, crime was the individuals choice and the likelihood is, if streaming content and promoting the worst likely products was not available, alternate criminal activity would have been undertaken. The question is though, what kind of bandwidth did the individual have to make those numbers real, bandwidth going to his bedroom presumably in a residential area. How accurate was the number of streams and was it hugely inflated. So did they actually measure them all or did they just do statistical non evidenciary bullshit, so you should only get convicted for the crimes you did do and not the crimes you might have done. So I would have to call bullshit 12 million movies streamed.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
"He's shown a willingness to harm others for profit."
Who was harmed, then?
Please note that I'm not asked who *claimed* to be harmed but who was *actually* harmed.
The people who saw the films? I don't think so.
The advertisers that voluntarily for showing their ads? I don't think so.
The companies that produced the films under distribution? Well, they claim to be damaged but, how? Can they show that anybody stopped paying a ticket or a licensed streamer because of that? I don't think so. And then, even if that could be demonstrated, what about the pub I went this evening? Me being at the pub certainly avoided me going to the cinema and paying them a ticket. Maybe we should also fine the pub.
"I assume you think the same thing for patents?"
Of course yes: both patents and copyrights work under the same asumptions.
"Once it's "public" anyone should be able to copy it?"
Non sequitur. I never said anything like that about copyright.
What I said is that once it's public anyone *can* copy and that this is the natural affair of things and that in order for the people *not* to copy, you need to restrict their natural rights by means of force of law.
"Inherent rights? Are you serious? You could just as easily argue that you have an "inherent right" to your neighbor's stuff as long as you have the power to take it and keep it."
You have set yourself the very and most basic notion of proprietorship. Which is exactly the things someone can retain on his own power and will. Everything else builds upon this notion.
And that rises a very interesting point about intellectual and physical properties and it is that they work in exactly opposite ways. How do you know I'm the owner of something (physical)? Because it's already under my reach so, in order to retain it I don't need to do anything and in order to transfer ownership against my will you will need to employ violence beyond my own capacity.
On the other hand, look at intellectual property: for an already published work (work of art, idea, patent...) I get access to it without any violence (that's the very definition of "publishing"): you sing, and I hear, once I hear, I remember, once I remember, I can also sing that song. But then, in order for you to claim ownership of that piece of work I already know so I can't sing it, it is *you*, not me, the one that needs to employ violence against me, not the other way around!
This makes clear that "intellectual property" is not property at all but a government-granted privilege. But, then, on a free society, government-granted anything needs to answer to their social contract value. It is not that I'm against government-granted anythings, but that given they are violence against the natural state of affairs, they need to be under continous scrutiny to see if they still respond to the goal they were granted for and as soon as they don't, be immediately redefined or even outright revoked.
You are copying content. You are not denying anything to anyone, you are not brutalising anyone, you are not taking anything. The distinction is arbitrary based upon the majority if instances nothing but greed and the corruption of government by the greedy. You deserve absolutely no payment, none at all, create what you wish you have zero right to demand anything from anyone because of it. You paint a picture, you keep it, some one else copies yours, that is their labour and material, you still have your picture. The idea is create works of public worth and be rewarded for it and not the feeding of narcissistic greed. Copytheft is the arbitrary privilege of stealing and destroying copies legally made by other people, no material stolen, no slave labour, they made a copy. To be honest, right now, it causes far more harm than good in promoting socially destructive content in order to vainly attempt to feed insatiable greed, morally, correctly, the industries involved in such acts should be destroyed (so beware your claims of morality else they will bite you).
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
schnell:
I don't think there is a victim of copying (assuming it does not involve invasion of privacy or misattribution), as I don't think there is any harm caused by it. Imagine for a second that we discovered life on Mars... and they were copying our movies. Would you consider us on Earth to have been victims suffering harm all this time, but simply unaware of it?
If offered to do something for someone, and they accepted, but I didn't receive anything for my efforts, I may believe I did not get what I deserved, although I probably wouldn't feel resentful if I had made the decision freely, without the expectation of receiving anything. If I had expected to receive something I might well feel not just that I didn't get what I deserved, but that they had treated me unfairly. Even then, though, I can honestly say that I do not think I would consider myself entitled to forcibly take what I believed I deserved and had been expecting. I think there is a significant difference between deserving something and having a right to take it. (Further, in the case of copying, I think it is copyright law that creates the expectation, and copyright law has been created, and repeatedly expanded, due to pressure from people who benefit from it, making the expectation, and therefore claimed unfair treatment, seem kind of self-inflicted.)
What I think I would do, is stop offering to do things for the person who did not return the favour. I certainly can't imagine myself continuing to offer to do things for that person in the future, and subsequently claiming to have been stolen from each time.