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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.
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.
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.
If you don't want people to torrent your stuff, STOP PRODUCING it, assholes!
See? I can be unreasonable, too.
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.
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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.
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.
"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...