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MPAA Wants ISPs to Disconnect Persistent Pirates (torrentfreak.com)
Ernesto Van der Sar, reporting for TorrentFreak: The MPAA wants Internet providers and services to take stronger actions against persistent copyright infringers. Ideally, the most egregious pirates should lose their accounts permanently, the group says. To accomplish this ISPs should be required to track the number of notices they receive for each account. In recent weeks, many groups and individuals have voiced their opinions about the future of the DMCA, responding to a U.S. Copyright Office consultation. This includes the MPAA, which acts on behalf of the major Hollywood studios. In a 71-page submission the group outlines many problems with the current law, asking for drastic reforms. Ideally, the group would like search engines to enforce a "stay down" policy ensuring that content can't reappear under different URLs. In addition, it would like registrars to suspend domain names of pirate sites, such as The Pirate Bay.The problem is that ISPs don't necessarily see this abuse as a problem.
How about the MAFIAA stop producing crap and expecting people to pay through the nose to see and hear it?
Ooh, moderator points! Five more idjits go to Minus One Hell!
Delendae sunt RIAA, MPAA et Windoze
Why is it the ISP's responsibility to enforce copyright laws? Piracy is only a problem for the ISP if excessive bandwidth is consumed and it results in degraded network performance. But that doesn't really have anything to do with copyright laws.
There need to be different penalties depending on the type of infringement. The person who downloads a couple of movies on bittorrent and doesn't realize they're also uploading is very different from a person who is collecting money for access to a site with a massive collection of movies. In short, to collect a large settlement, it should be shown that there's an intent to distribute and/or the person infringing upon copyrights is profiting from doing so. This would probably render it unprofitable to pursue individuals who download a few movies but don't intend to share them.
The focus needs to be on people who are making the movies available to begin with, those who are sharing massive amounts of content, and those who are making a profit from piracy.
Unlike what seems like a large portion of Slashdot, I don't think there's an ethical defense for piracy. However, the punishment ought to be proportional to the egregiousness of the offense committed. The massive settlements against people who weren't infringing a lot of content is absurd. And there's no reason to disconnect people from internet access for piracy, either temporarily or permanently. That's ridiculous.
I'd suggest that for the casual offender, the maximum settlement should be the larger of 1.3*(retail price)*(number of proven downloads) or, 10*(retail price). Let the much larger settlements only apply to the most egregious offenders.
Lol, also like the ISP's are gonna bend over and willingly lose money on behalf of somebody else.
The MPAA doesn't want ISP to take stronger actions, the really don't want ISP's at all. There own fantasy world, without internet, where they transport there product using ships, trains and lorries to brick stores which they can tell to put any competitor on the bottom shelve. That is what the want.
then they need to respect copyright (and most especially the responsibilities) themselves.
When they steal works from the public (by extending copyright), they disrespect copyright. When they destroy works before it gets to public domain, they disrespect copyright. When they make claims asserting copy right but are lying about it, they disrespect copyright. When they make claims of a work for hire (so the performers don't get residuals) but claim a creative work (which isn't a work for hire) so they can get the copy rights that works for hire do not accrue, they disrespect copyrights.
When they have spend 50-80 years breaking their end of the copy right bargain, why the hell should I or anyone else still obey the restrictions on us?
If the law also allows DMCA abusers to be shut down too, I have less of a problem with this law (by which I mean, companies which send out DMCA notices incorrectly). And by shut down, I mean, being unable to send out notices in the future, and disconnected from the internet entirely (including their company website)
It wouldn't surprise me if all members of the MPAA have incorrectly sent out DMCA notices before, for media they had no rights too (a news station for instance shut down a video of a Mars landing uploaded by NASA).
So, if laws were put in place to allow companies to be shut down, if they abuse the DMCA, or make a mistake, I wouldn't have a problem with this, because it would ensure that notices were only sent in cases that they were warranted.
But the way it stands, it just opens the system up to more bullying and abuse.
Piracy is an act of robbery or criminal violence at sea.
We should not tolerate marine thuggery.
Copyright infringement, however, can't be easily equated to piracy or theft.
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy...
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/...
You want me to disconnect my customer, who will then burden and pester me and my support about it, I will lose that customer and potentially others, if word gets around that I randomly disconnect my customers based on nothing more but hearsay from you and your whims? You want me to risk my common carrier status and insanely bad press and PR? Without any kind of compensation whatsoever?
You find the door yourself or should I just toss you out the window?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Correlation =! causation. A lot of people stopped downloading movies and at the same time they stopped going to the movies, that is true. Hence the conclusion that downloading means people go to the movies more.
The fallacy is that they stopped going to the movies 'cause they stopped downloading. Closer to the truth is simply that they stopped both because the junk produced today ain't even worth the bandwidth, let alone money.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
s/Persistent Pirates/Repeatedly Accused Pirates/
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
So that silly myth that they teach in schools, the one that suggests "society's" in charge... you actually believed that shit?!
I know, right? I have no problem with copyright being issued for a limited time and yet somehow the copyright period gets longer and longer and when was the last time something ended up in the public domain? Someone has unilaterally altered the bargain and we shouldn't need to pray that they don't alter it further.
Some people will still create new content and no doubt some people will still find ways to do so commercially. But society shouldn't complain if it makes that change and then finds that, lacking the same incentive to create and share new works, hardly anyone is making big summer blockbusters or original AAA quality computer games or well-produced studio albums or....
People were creating art long before there was such a thing as copyright.
The world before copyright gave us Shakespeare and Beethoven. The world now gives us Justin Bieber and Sharknado.
Nuff said.