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First person convicted of U.S. Internet piracy
Anonymous Coward writes "A college student who ran a pirate website is the first person in the U.S. to be convicted of felony Internet piracy - max penalty 3 years prison and $250,000 fine. Read all about the
conviction. "
It's called an "out of court settlement." The corporation goes, "We noticed you're using a bunch of our software without a license. Pay the license to us plus a penalty of $____ and we won't prosecute you." Sometimes they take them to court and pay the settlement then, sometimes they take them to court, don't settle, and win there.
Generally, the company agrees with the settlement, not wanting the bad PR or the legal headache. I imagine it's a pretty fairly common practice.
And/or let's set up a 24-hour judiciary board that can expedite the process of granting permission to get that information. I'd suggest an agreement between ISP's that would provide reciprocal assurances that said ISP would provide contact information and assist in tracing spoofed packets (esp. in the case of backbone providers) should an attack be shown to be occurring, but that might be prone to a bit of abuse ("Uhh yah, um I'm with Joe's ISP and we're seeing one of your users attacking us and stuff.. umm.. can we have his phone number?") unless the agreement explicitely spelled out what was considered valid proof of the attack (though I guess if you're calling the source ISP, they should be able to quickly do a packet analysis from that customer and determine if they're performing some sort of attack or not..).
You might be surprised. Poor college kids with campus ethernet connections can be surprisingly resourceful. Without this class of Internet user, I really doubt MP3 would have been as popular as it is today, and I doubt VCD's online would even exist.
No. It. Isn't.
Shrinkwraps are a largely untested legal fiction with absolutely no ethical foundation whatsoever.
The only court case that has ever directly tested shrinkwraps is ProCD vs. Zeidenberg. In that case, sadly, the judge held shrinkwraps to be enforceable. However, the reasoning underlying the judge's decision was, IMHO, rather flimsy, and there are still a ton of unanswered questions as to what's enforeceable and what isn't.
This is why the software and entertainment industries are trying to ram the UCITA through the state legislatures, which would formally legitimize these unethical legal instruments. It is absolutely vital to the future of the citizens and consumers of this country that this must not happen.
Do not take shrinkwrap "agreements" seriously, and challenge their appearance wherever you find them.
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
By "campus ethernet" I mean like a resnet program.. dorm room PC's linked to the Internet via high-speed links. It's fairly commonplace in big universities nowadays.
There's a difference between offering something for sale, and Demanding payment for a product. BIG difference.
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Absolutely correct!
I don't have The Solution. I have, however, heard a very interesting idea which I believe has a lot of promise (I regret I do not know who came up with this idea):
A programmer, or team of programmers, places a piece of software up for bid at an auction site (real or virtual). A certain sum is named by the programmer(s) for the software (say, $250K). The software is placed in escrow with the auction house, and users anywhere may bid any amount toward the software as they deem fit. The bids are also held in escrow.
When the total of received bids meets or exceeds the named price, the software is released into the public domain (or under GPL or other liberal terms), and the programmer(s) get the money. If the sum is not met after a certain time limit expires, the software is not released, and the bids are returned to tbe bidders.
Kinda like Public Television in the US.
I think it's a wonderful idea, and I would love to see it tried.
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
This most definately falls under the idea of cruel and unusual punishment. You distribute $2500 worth of software, and get 3 years in the slammer? Which, by the way, costs the TAXPAYERS about $100,000 to house that person for that amount of time.
You're telling me the punishment is 100x worse than the "crime" committed? That's what it sounds like here - $250,000 / $2500 = 100.
Not only does it fall under the category of unusual, but it's also cruel. This poor kid has no way to make $250,000. He's fresh out of college, and wet behind the years. Kevin Mitnick, who the government claimed caused millions in damage was fined about $5,000 based on his projected earnings. What do you think this kid will get?
This kind of legislation needs to be repealed because it is a clear and present danger to a very important national resource - people. I don't know of a computer geek that doesn't have a harddrive full of MP3s and an illegal copy of windows. What are we going to to - arrest the whole country?
Lastly: Legislators, what were you smoking to pass this law?
--
That's the popular excuse they use. They are in some kind of warped denial, because they don't want to admit they are stealing, so they make up some bogus "noble cause" as to why they do what they do.
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There's a difference between sharing the same copy of Win95 between two PC's you own at home and serving up several gigabytes of movies and CD's for the *public* to download. To apply the same penalties to both offenses seems a bit silly, yes?
I just wish the feds would start after the lame-o IRC packet kiddies next. They probably cost ISP's and network providers more money with their smurf attacks and whatever other DoS/flood of the week than the copyright holders of those movies and songs lost as a result of FTP sites like this...
The law specifies a MAXIMUM punishment an offender should receive. That does NOT mean he will receive the full fine/prison sentence. He'll probably be fined a modest amount and placed on probation.
I'm not "applauding" it because "it's the law". I'm applauding the law because it seems quite fair.
Just because a company has money means it shouldn't defend its rights and property? I hope like hell that such a law is in place if I ever copyright something I create and some stupid kid starts pirating it.
So what if this kid lives in his parent's basement or whatever crappy apartment. He's still breaking the law and distributing hundreds of megabytes of data illegally.
And who ever said his sentence rivals that of murderers and rapists. The law simply puts a cap on the maximum amount of punishment allowed for the crime. Nobody ever said his actual sentence would even be REMOTELY near that cap. As I said earlier, he'll probably be fined modestly and put on probation for a while.
If you have a problem with a law, WRITE A FUCKING LETTER. Stop whining on slashdot about how us "mindless sheep" (ha!) go praising laws because they are laws. Get a clue. Think for yourself, and more importantly, ACT.
But legally, that's not your decision to make. A software vendor sells his software without offering a demo because that's how he wants to sell his wares. You don't have the legal right to change his practices.
And believe it or not, most major software packages DO have demos available. They may not be downloadable, and some even cost a bit of money, but they do exist.
Downloaded movies are an awkward piracy issue.
I believe the major loss here is not necessarily the theatre showings, but in the VHS/DVD rentals and sales, much like MP3's have been feared to reduce CD sales (which I believe, based on what a lot of my friends say about their own MP3 collections, though I don't share their habits).
Yep. A felony. For at least 10 counts of copyright infringement. I'd say that's pretty fair, myself. If you think that's fascist, try writing a letter to your congressmen. I myself will probably write them one and applaud them for their efforts.
Making examples of people is most certainly injustice. Punishment should be solely determined by the crime committed. If you are trying to make an example of somebody, you are admitting that the punishment is in part determined by your desire for a certain public image, not entirely by the crime actually committed. This is an injustice to the person who receives a greater punishment, not because of what he did, but because of your desire for some PR.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
I agree with your comment about mitigating circumstances. These is something that are a result of the person's actions. They, in effect, give the person some sort of excuse for their actions.
However, making an example of somebody has nothing to do with their actions. Two people who committed identical crimes, with identical sets of mitigating circumstances, should receive the same sentences. If one receives a greater sentence because of a desire to make an example of that person, then that is an injustice.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Can you really stand up and claim that the companies that sell intellectual property are making too little money today???
Microsoft? The record companies? Book publishers? These are the most bloated and rich companies in the world. Why? Becase we are giving them ridiculously much power through current IP laws.
And the result is, surprise surprise, not as IP advocates always claim, that people doing truly innovative and new stuff can do so, but rather the creation of tons of crappy software, crappy music, and crappy books.
There has to be a shift of the scale here, and I'll be damned if that shift is towards giving MORE power to the companies.
The majority of the VCD piracy is done by us here in Europe because we get curious about movies that won't come out here for another six months. Phantom Menace came out here this week, of fucking course people pirated it back in May.
Before the Internet, I didn't used to give a damn about the late releases, but now it burns like fuck to hear everyone discussing BWP and knowing that I won't be able to see it here until in October.
If the movie companies would just get that, 90% of the current problem would go away.
Okay, everyone, get this through your skulls (and I say this as a professional software engineer of over 20 years experience):
Bitlegging is NOT theft.
The SPA has done an excellent job of getting people to misconceptualize the economic reality of digital media.
Let's decompose the economics of software development:
Substitute for the variable $(PRODUCT) any tangible object, like "washing machine." Once you have developed and built $(PRODUCT), it is yours to dispose of as you see fit. You may choose to sell it, or you may choose to give it away. We may question how the developer arrived at the price, but the decision is ultimately up to the guy(s) who created $(PRODUCT). Therefore, the price assigned to $(PRODUCT) is arbitrary and has nothing whatsoever to do with its development costs. The consequence of this is that there is no entitlement to recover development costs, since there is no direct rational connection between development costs and retail costs.
You may think that's specious, disingenuous, or even insane reasoning. Ordinarily, I might agree with you, except that there's a little concept of "reasonable expectation of return." If you put $10 on number 22 on the roulette wheel, do you realistically expect a return from that investment? Of course not; the odds are stacked against you. Same deal with spending a lot of money digging a hole in the ground: You may strike oil/gold/uranium, but more than likely you won't. (A lot of people are about to learn this lesson very harshly when the Internet stock boom falls apart.)
How do you mitigate against wasting your money? By doing research on your target investment. In this case, people heavily invested in software development have not done their homework. It is an incontrovertible fact that digital information -- software, images, sounds -- can be copied easily, and this fact is not about to change. That's what it was designed to do. So, how stupid do you have to be before you stand there proclaiming that you have an inalienable right to expect people won't copy your stuff, when the medium is fundamentally designed to behave otherwise?
Okay, say you don't buy that line of reasoning. Try this out:
Note that this is true no matter what the value of the variable $(PRODUCT) is. If I use a matter replicator to make a copy of your washing machine, you still have yours with which to clean your clothes. If I use a CD-ROM drive to make a copy of Quake, you can still play your original. Since you haven't been deprived of anything, you can't claim theft.
Final point:
Result: No sale.
Result: No sale.
Thus, the argument that bitlegging results in lost revenue largely falls apart, since the outcome of both situations is the same: No sale.
You may argue that you have lost "potential revenue," since your potential customer base has been reduced by the number of unsanctioned copies. Guess what: This isn't theft, either. Anyone who has held common stock in a public company knows that one of the hazards of stock ownership is a thing called "dilution." Dilution is what happens when the company issues more shares; the potential market for the shares you own is reduced. Nobody in the stock market labors under the delusion that this is "theft". And although a lot of people grumble about it when it happens, it's not even illegal (unless fraud is involved). Unsanctioned copying of software results in the same economic dynamic which, if you've done your homework, should not come as a surprise to anybody.
So, what have we established?
Now, you can make an ethical argument against copying software, and I would in fact, in large part, agree with you. But software publishers (and anyone else who can't think beyond their own pocketbook) are asking us to criminalize this activity.
Sorry, but that idea is rock-stupid. It's like passing a law forbidding gravity from applying to certain objects: it illustrates a fundamental misunderstanding of how the medium operates. Digital bits are and forever will be easily copied, and you must live in that reality, or you're just setting yourself up for one heck of an ulcer.
But that's not what irritates me most about this. No. It's the fact that they picked on a guy who had no hope of defending himself against the charges. The N.E.T. Act must have the SPA giggling with glee since, because of the way the law is written, they're never going to encounter a defendant who can actually put up a fight. Which, from their track record, is about par for the course for the SPA.
Start changing the way you think about this stuff, or you are all going to be serious fscked when matter replicators show up.
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
Joe goes to the store and buys Windows 95. Joe takes it home, opens the box, and takes out the CD. Joe sets the CD on the table, and goes out for some chinese food. Joe's dog goes for some dinner of his own, and eats the CD. Joe gets home, sees the broken CD bits on the floor, and shoots his dog. Does Joe need to buy another copy of Windows? No. Joe already owns a valid License to his copy of Windows. Joe can go on the internet, download a copy of Windows, and use his unique License number. (It works the same for software that doesn't use license keys too.)
When you buy a software title, you are not buying the software. You are purchasing the Media that holds the software, as well as a single user license to legally use one copy of that title. If your media gets damaged, you still have a valid license.
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?
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