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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.
...STOP using bittorrent to break the law, ASSHOLES!!!
This doesn't make sense. Or maybe it does. Given that having access to Internet is considered basic human right nowadays it seems kinda like a powergrab, essentially they're seeking a power to disconnect any people they want from society.
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.
How about we disconnect copyright abusers from the right to enforce their copyright?
No? Then fuck you.
And since we are on the topic of the anti-pirate collective. Let's see the credibility and morality of the collective through some historical examples of its operation:
a. Drug trafficking (Vytas Simanavicius case[http://torrentfreak.com/anti-piracy-chief-pleads-guilty-to-drug-trafficking-130421/])
b. Defamation (Prenda/Malibu)
[http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/01/porn-troll-prenda-law-sanctioned-in-defamation-lawsuit/]
[http://torrentfreak.com/accused-movie-pirate-sues-for-defamation-120723/]
c. Uploading torrents and copyright material themselves unlawfully (Megaupload case, file-lockers, and honeypot schemes).
http://www.brutalattack.org/index.php/2013/08/15/copyright-troll-ran-pirate-bay-honeypot-comcast-confirms/
[https://torrentfreak.com/voltage-pictures-sued-for-copyright-infringement-150520/]
This leads to hypocrisy.
d. Breaking the 8th Amendment of the USA under the justification of example making. (Fining people hundreds of thousands per song or movie, instead of fair fines of the exact price of the pirated products + 20-30% of the cost as the fine at most, Aaron Swartz case)
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz]
e. Actual cybercrime of spreading malware and trojans on the Internet (https://torrentfreak.com/30000-pirates-receive-fake-fines-with-trojans-attached-140708)
f. Unwarranted and unlawful incarceration beyond what the law regards as a legal period (Piratebay founder Gottfrid Svartholm), or in other words subversion and undermining of the justice system and causing the loss of trust in the system and the twisting of the term "justice" itself into a worthless term.
g. Bribery, blackmail and perversion of the justice system (Piratebay founder, KimDotCom, Prenda, [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/12/19/google-internet-censorship_n_6354518.html])
h. Wasting more tax-payer money than artists lose to piracy over unlawful use of police forces (KimDotCom case, [http://torrentfreak.com/can-pirate-bay-make-comeback-141210/] and many more) when the police could be saving actual lives...
So anti-pirates are also potentially indirectly responsible for civilian deaths due to siphoning police reserves.
i. Filing millions of false DMCA notices and taking down many legitimate sites while hurting many businesses in the process. Censorship.
[https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20071010/162619.shtml]
j. Creating money out of thin air by making up piracy/download numbers, exaggerating them vastly, and thus undermining the economic system. Using this fraudulent way of getting money and passing it off as legal also constitutes money laundering. There's also the issue of false advertisement in the digital economy not being punished [see gaming, EA and Ubisoft just for some examples], digital products by nature not being capable of being ostensibly evaluated by an individual like material tangible products, and the attempt at monopolizing this "blindness" by scamming with rigged demos, paying up reviews and attacking negative reviews [see 4. bellow], paying up let's play videos and using the DMCA to take down any negative critique that may appear, and generally trying to monopolize the ability of people to know what they may pay for and scam on a massive scale, and removing the ability of consumers to have a return guarantee on products in any way possible. All summed up, piracy is the only tool currently in existence that gives power to consumers over the corporations trying to scam them in full scale, and trying to destroy the "consumer is always right" principle that existed as long as the "rights" mantra did.
k. Fraud and embezzlement [SMAIS scandal and Snæbjörn Steingrímsson admission of guilt]
l. Misappropriation of funds and being worse at lying than a 12 year old [Pedro Farré (SGAE) case scandal in Spain]
m. Falsifying statements and signatures of various artists in order to gain support for several anti-piracy measures including a pirate-levy
[http://abertoatedemadrugada.com/2012/01/spa-falsifica-abaixo-assinado-de.h
I love posts like these.
Bit Torrent sucks! There are lots of alternatives but I won't actually name any because I don't want the Bit Torrent retards poisoning our new well since mass popularity brings crackdowns! But I just wanted to engage in some self-congratulatory masturbation and let you know you're all idiots except me!
Well thanks for sharing.
Between the incredible amounts of money they hoard and the iron fist they exert for control, the MPAA strikes me as far closer to something resembling a pirate than the loner in his basement who downloads a movie on Friday nights. Honestly, I think the MPAA should be forced to prove their victim would have bought the material otherwise, if they didn't have the opportunity to pirate it. That's the say, I don't think it's illegal to pirate a movie that's unavailable legitimately, because then there's no loss or damage that occurs, and somebody who's on minimum wage wouldn't even be worth extorting by law anyway. Between the idiotic DMCA appeals in which they steal other people's money with no obligation to return it, this stupid game of trying to blackmail ISPs, and the outright moronic way they calculate damages and laws, I regard the MPAA as far more of a villain than the end users they're targeting, and I say this as both a content creator and as someone who dislikes piracy.
The internet is regarded as a utility in some places, and it's being considered as a possibility inside the United States; would the MPAA be interested in cutting off people's phone service next? Their electricity, perhaps?
"Set a man a fire, he'll be warm for the rest of the night. Set a man afire, he'll be warm for the rest of his life."
And now you are an idiot telling other idiots what to do. If you knew what irony was, I'd make reference to it. You just think irony is what people do to their shirties to get rid of wrinkles.
Learn to love Alaska
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.
As I understand they are they ones with the problem that they need to address. I can quite happily live without watching any more films. In fact I did for many years before downloading became possible. Then I developed an interest in films and even started visiting the cinema once in a while. Based on my own experience piracy = promotion. They should be grateful.
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/...
MPAA - Your action will lead to another company losing revenue.
Using your maths, each customer lost thanks to your rule is a multiple of the actual loss.
So, again using your rules, how about you compensate the ISP for each customer you terminate to the tune of $250,000?
I mean that is the number you use right? And it is all about lost revenue so I am sure you can appreciate the revenue the ISP has lost and want to compensate them just as you expect to be compensated for your "losses".
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.
That's about right. That's pretty much what the average customer could have paid for his internet access to the ISP in the next 70 or so years.
That's actually a pretty conservative estimate, considering that it's 70 years from now, not, like with copyright, lifetime + 70 years.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Al Capone went to jail for less than that...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I don't get posts like this.
So someone is prosecuting people doing crime A while the poster is doing crime B. Crime A is well known and published and everyone knows how to do it, crime B is occult and only a few people who are "in it" know how to do it.
Why the FUCK would I want to draw attention away from crime A if I did crime B?
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,
It causes no harm, and anything that causes no harm should not be illegal. If you don't like that, please point out the error in it.
It causes no harm as long as the work has already been created.
It causes great harm if the deal between society and creators, as set out through copyright, is that the creators have to invest whatever is necessary to create a work that will benefit others, but then they have a mechanism to generate revenue in return by controlling distribution for a while. Allowing creators to create as part of this deal, but then failing to effectively enforce the copyright protections, is failing to hold up the other side of the bargain, pure and simple. The harm is then whatever it cost the creators to create and share the work in the first place plus the opportunity cost for them because they didn't invest their resources into something else useful instead.
If society feels that the current bargain is not appropriate for today's world, that's fine, it can change the laws. If society collectively wants to do away with copyright because "information wants to be free" or whatever, fine, do it. 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 high school math textbooks with thousands of carefully constructed exercises and matching answer books for teachers any more. Nor should it complain when other business models that are less reliant on simply paying for something you find valuable -- things like blatant product placement throughout TV shows and movies, or subscription-only on-line software -- become the norm, even though a lot of consumers don't like them.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
.
There also needs to be significant penalties if the MPAA mis-identifies someone as a pirate. I'm thinking a proper penalty for mis-identifying a pirate would be that the MPAA's Internet access be terminated.
The MPAA isn't the judicial branch, they don't get to be a judge and jury in these cases, they are the plaintiff. Nor are they the legislative branch, if they want to write a law, they need to buy off their congressman like they always have before. And the ISP isn't a police force, they are a witness and vendor to the defendant. If the MPAA wants to enforce penalties like this, use the legal system that already exists rather than acting like the mafia and enforcing their own laws with their own judge and their own police force.
Regardless, I don't see what reason the ISPs would have to work with the MPAA, it's against their financial best interest to eliminate consumers. And it's against the better interest of society to have laws that permanently cut off individuals from the internet, this has become a basic necessity in modern life, not unlike electricity made its transition to necessity in the last century. Anyone that cannot legally use the internet would be much more likely to be unemployed, possibly homeless and a burden on the local society.
If an ISP chooses to enforce these policies, they should immediately lose any local monopoly on providing internet service, open up the area to competition, possibly municipal internet. And ISPs should become liable for denial of service for any reason that is not legally recognized and where an individual was never convicted of a crime. It would be nice if the government found a few laws that the MPAA violated just for attempting to get a policy like this through, discrimination against individuals, anti-trust, extortion, etc.
I'm fine with the courts restricting someones internet access due to excessive piracy, or other internet related crimes. I'm not so fine with someone doing that with outside of Due Process. The MPAA, and other has send DMCA take down notices to the IP address of Printers.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
they are going to object to their own bypass of due process when they suddenly find themselves booted off the internet.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
That's a problem of consumer law and business practice. On quite a few occasions, I've bought a book for my Kindle and requested a refund a few days later because I decided/felt the book was no good. Amazon has always come through. They are of course able to remove the book from my Kindle. Having said that, they have also refunded me MP3 albums when I've decided I don't like them. So it CAN be done.
Maybe. But probably not.
Pirates use the internet because it's currently the easiest way to do things.
But if it was impossible to spread "unapproved" media through the internet, people would just go back to sneaker-net.
I can buy 32 gig on portable media for under 10 bucks.
Swapping drives with just two people 5 days a week is yields a respectable 4.2 Mbps "sneaker-net a bandwidth".
You might have to wait a month for content to saturate the network, but everybody would have access to everything.
And that's close to the minimum a sneaker-net would be.
Most people have more than 2 friends they could swap with, and 128 gig drives are pretty cheap.
Things are going great, and it's only getting better - Moore's law FTW.
You dolt. Piracy has referred to copyright infringement for hundreds of years. The GNU philosophy statement is disingenuous in that sense, and cannot support a factual argument. Semantic, sure, but not factual.
The case you linked to has a footnote clarifying what a pirated work is, and how that differs from bootlegs.
Take your links, add a dictionary, and your support actually does not support you.
My understanding is: VPNs are not that expensive. I think some are actually free.
So what is the problem?
"MPAA Wants ISPs to Disconnect Persistent Pirates"....and they went on to say, "and we want a pony! And a 60-ft red yacht with gold handrails! And we want the letter "E" removed from the dictionary!"
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Let's first ban all forms of DRM so that I can easily just watch my BluRay disks or copy them to harddisk without having to go through dubious providers.
Once DRM is gone and piracy therefore has dropped considerably as you can simply pay for DRM-free copies on the Internet, we can talk about hunting "pirates".
The MPAA has to understand that their 1970s business models of "renting cartivision tapes" just can't coexist with a computerized digital world where making copies is trivial.
Can you explain what "That" you are referring to in the previous post is? This is a problem of people and people have many avenues of dealing with the problem. You are probably one of those people who agree with the statement "No one is above the law", but the relationship between people, the law, and society is very different from that. Saying, " acting outside or within the boundaries of the law is an improvement from my perspective, but not by much.
Until campaign donations are are control, what do you expect?
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
The ISP's won't disconnect pirates because those people pay to have an internet connection. Why should the ISP's willingly stop a revenue source just to appease the MPAA?
It shouldn't. Policing pirates isn't the job of the ISP. It isn't their responsibility.
Posting Persistent Stories.
The powers that be are acting through the MPAA to express the want for the people who are most addicted to the media to have to get jobs and leave the comfort of their parents' homes.
MPAA has been found multiple times pirating movies and issuing illegal DMCA take down notices. Thus I agree, that pirates, meaning all MPAA members, should automatically have their Internet terminated.
This includes any company filing a DMCA take down notice, that turns out to be false.
Microsoft, Apple, Google, Amazon what's the difference? All steal money from devs and control with walled gardens.
How about the MPAA update their business model to match todays technology?
How coincidental.
Most of us want to disconnect the MPAA.
one of the reasons the ISP's have no interest in the MPAA and their delusions of grandeur is that the ISP's have a better understanding of the concept of " Due Process ".
They also understand that anyone who is wrongfully accused and disconnected sans hard evidence is just a very pricy lawsuit landmine just itching to be stepped on.
I would let the MPAA / RIAA fund their own crusade and catch the inevitable blowback when it happens.