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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.
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.
Exactly. If "pirates" didn't exist, the MAFIAA would have to invent them. They are not making as much money as they think they should, and the reason can't possibly be their own failure to produce a salable product.
When all Internet access is filtered and monitored to a fare-thee-well, you get kicked off for so much as saying "Aaaarrrrr," the possession of uncrippled computing devices is a felony, and the MAFIAA are still complaining about their huge profits being not quite huge enough, then what will they do?
Ooh, moderator points! Five more idjits go to Minus One Hell!
Delendae sunt RIAA, MPAA et Windoze
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 inherent part of a free market whenever you are pricing a product significantly higher than the cost to produce it.
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This is possible actually. They could make a law where Internet users pay a fee to "cover" all of their losses due to piracy. Similar to the the blank CD tax in some countries.
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 don't do movies, the studios do.
What MPAA do is to act like basically norton anti virus and constantly keep the studios scared of the EVIL pirates, so they can keep grabbing cash off the studios to "combat" that EVIL thing.
Basically alarmist scammers of the highest degree.
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.
I have conflicted feeling about this idea, on one had I really really want to do things legally. I subscribe to netflix, amazon prime, hulu and own hundreds of cd's dvd and bluerays. etc. I don't mind paying for ad-free content. but I'm currently in a situation where we will be traveling half-way around the world where our netflix subscription will not work, with a 2 and a 4 year old who insist on/have favorite movies. So, even though I'm paying for like 3 streaming services, I'm basically forced to pirate their favorite stuff thats unavailable on physical, purchasable media, because I need it off line, and in different regions. I guess that I *could* buy a 20 dollar dvd and rip it but then I will be paying a fourth time for something that I feel I've already paid for. Some things are simply unavailable legally.
It's too much, they're too greedy.
Piracy is the easiest (and coincidentally the cheapest) way to consume content. I can put it on any device I own, time shift, format shift and region shift without worrying if it'll work because I changed location, device or format for something I paid for already. The alternative is you can sit next to hysterical children on a 12 hour flight.
s/Persistent Pirates/Repeatedly Accused Pirates/
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
You'd think that, but no. The old adage about giving someone and inch and them taking a mile is still as true as it ever was.
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.
How about the MAFIAA stop producing crap and expecting people to pay through the nose to see and hear it?
And stop making it difficult to access content that we do pay for. Why in hell should movies that have gone to stream "expire?" Leave the movie on Netflix/ Amazon/ Hulu, so you can keep making money on 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....
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.