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LucasFilms suing 'net Pirates
Tony Garcia writes "Apparently, LucasFilms was not happy to find out that PM videos were being distributed over the 'net; they hired a mean team of badass lawyers to take care. The story at SiliconValley News. "
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Episode I (part b)
THE NET MENACETurmoil has engulfed the Internet. The wholesale pirating of MP3s and lousy movies on outlying websites is in dispute.
Hoping to resolve the matter with a blockade of deadly lawsuits, the greedy LucasFilm Federation has stopped all Internet traffic to the small ISPs....
- Richie
Did anyone else find this article particularly lame? I mean, this quote:
"But these were no ordinary lawyers. They had a second whole computer system ready to press their case. The bootlegger ran to another Web site, and the lawyers followed. Then the Internet Service Provider stepped in and shut the bootlegger down."
Gives me an oddly unsettling picture of caped-crusader 'net-savvy, cyber-clued geeky lawyers out to save the world (wide web) from the bad ol' Internet pirates in thier skull&crossbones black matte t-shirts. Jezzum. Makes me want to retch.
"shop smart:shop s-mart" ash
toward the masses. It seems to want to provide a convenient security blanket for those who want to believe that the flow of information can truly be controlled on the net. The fact is that it can be controlled somewhat on the web, but certainly not on the net as a whole. The people sending things back and forth just need to practice a little more ingenuity than setting up a public web page. :). ) Yes life can be made more inconvenient for the less clever of the ripper kids out there, but information will still be tranferred.
From what I read, said lawyers were not monitoring DCC bots on IRC nor FTP sites that act as online dumping grounds for such files (should I say FiLeZ
>Why not have a `Cyber Patrol` which is constantly vigilant, watching the World Wide Web?
Because the internet is not a US only entity, fool! I'm sure it's just totally shocking to imagine, but US laws are not applicable outside the US, and what's more is that the US concept of legal and illegal on certain issues may be totally the reverse in other soverign nations. An example:Son May Records. This is a company in Taiwan that sells CDs, DVDs, VCDs (MPEG1 movies on CD), etc. They sell 'The Matrix' and probably PM by now too. All of their merchandise is copied from elsewhere. No money is paid to the copyright holders. No 'rights' were obtained in any way. And... hold on to your enchiladas...THIS IS 100% LEGAL in Taiwan. Son May is not an underground company. They are locally licensed, pay taxes, and follow all local rules and regulations. They are following the law! IP law is simply non-existant in Taiwan. It's a different philosophy in the East. It's not "backward" or "wrong", it's just different and as equally valid as we hold out own perceptions of copyrights/patents to be (gasp!). Deal with it. The 'net, however, brings radically different cultures and ideas together in a way that's never been done before. There's no "right side" and "wrong side" here. Some people just happened to believe that knowledge or art can't be "owned". This just freaks some people out. Accept it. And cutting off chunks of the world that don't play ball your way won't work either. Isolationism ultimately hurts more than it helps. One must look at the big picture. Cutting off Taiwan for piracy would do far more economic harm to US businesses than the piracy it sought to stop. Recognizing and accepting each other's differences will lead to a better world and a more propserous society.And before anyone laughs saying I'm just taking advantage of Taiwan's "errant lawlessness" let's look at a quick counter example: PORNOGRAPHY is illegal in many nations (not just "backward and oppressive" ones). Many hardcore sex videos are illegal in the UK. This porn is LEGAL in the US and there are countless porn sites on the web up and running in the US. They are legal, the owners are taxed. They follow local laws and regulations. Should they be shut down by the UK because guys in London are downloading porn MPEGs? Should their laws apply here? Should the US shut down these legal businesses for violating forwign laws? How would Americans react if MI6 agents from the British Isles raided local porn web sites operating on US soil? We'd be outraged!Now tell me again that "pirates" worldwide must be stopped because it is "the right thing to do" or "the law". We may not agree with it. I don't agree with Taiwan's stance on IP law, but we must tolerate the world so long as we expect the world to tolerate us.
Copyright violation is copyright violation. George Lucas is using legal means to slap the wrists of little kiddies who distribute property he holds a copyright on. Good for him. It won't really work but its amazing so many people hold it against him.
If I tomorrow grab the source tree for Linux, strip out all that nasty copyright information and redistribute it sans license (or maybe under my own license) hoards of screaming Free Software zealots would beat down my door bearing torches and rightfully so.
The success or lack of success of the object who's copyright is being violated doesn't make a difference except in the minds of the deadbeats who think everything everywhere should be free regardless of the authors intent.
Is violating the GPL on Linux any more ethical now than it was say 4 years ago when it was less successful?
Once again it all comes down to the money, I heard Lucas in a previous interview say "If I could do it for free I would, but the other people want their money". How noble. If Lucas really cared more about the art and less about the money he would want the movie to spread so more people could see it.
You mean emotions like disgust at having paid $6 to see the movie? :)
I do agree with you though, the people who are willing to find and download the entire movie are probably the ones who saw it on day 1.
I don't agree that everone who downloaded it was disappointed with the poor quality/emotional feel of the video and then went to see it on the big screen. It seems more likely to me that they were disappointed in the movie itself and didn't go to see it on the big screen.
I read the internet for the articles.
And the ISP community at large laughed them back into the shadows. Some even sent back forms to the lawyers describing their hourly consulting rates for finding and deleting said content, and included an application to start consulting service.
Why not have a `Cyber Patrol` which is constantly vigilant, watching the World Wide Web?
Because you're on crack? A good portion of trading happens independent of the public, and independent of the World Wide Web. Policing those means would be a breach of privacy for the traders, and therefore would be unacceptable.
Does the world really have a right to our home address and telephone number?
Of course they do.
So, the next time someone tells you -- `You just can't stop information from being passed around the Internet!` -- think twice. We can stop most of it with a little determination.
No you can't. 99.99995% of the time, it'll be mirrored somewhere. That's the good thing about digital media. Providing you have the space to store it, there's really no cost for materials to reproduce it, aside from possible bandwidth costs.
And you can't track it. Most of the best stuff is being traded on the inside, you are only privy to the stuff that bubbles to the surface.
Truthfully, most of the crap that comes out of the big studios isn't even worth the disk space it occupies. Especially the Phantom Menace.