Slashdot Mirror
Teen Sued for /Linking/ to MP3s
Alex T-B writes "A 17-year old Swede has been
sued by the IFPI for having links to MP3s from his homepage. The tracks weren't actually located on his system. How does this bode for future suing practices - can anybody get sued for just linking to stuff someone somewhere considers to be 'bad'? Der Artikel ist auf Deutsch - use babelfish. " MP3s or not, lawsuits over links scare me.
The only bullshit here was produced by you.
I study law in Sweden and I say without hesitation that the personal freedom in Sweden is by far greater than the freedom in the US. This is of course a hard matter to decide upon (if you have one right in Sweden which you dont have in the US and opposite, how are you going to compare the value of each?).
Secondly, and more importantly, the entire lawsuit is quite bogus, it's the kind of thing where they flex their muscles and hope that others will read and fear (no matter the outcome). He won't be convicted, period.
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Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
Actually (and somewhat surprisingly), it's from a video game(!) Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri -- I like it so much that I've got it committed to memory. I actually use it a lot -- I keep hoping that other people will pick it up. As far as I can tell, it's original to the game. My girlfriend thinks it sounds like Toqueville (you know, the author of Democracy in America), but it's not.
There's one other quote from the game that I like almost as much, on the subject of genome:
To look into the very stuff of life -- to stare into the looking glass and watch a thousand generations march by -- that, friends, is both our greatest curse and our proudest achievement.
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Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
So, who wants to raise a billion from an IPO and use it to set up a real off-shore data haven? Maybe set up in the Cayman Islands or somesuch, run a few fat pipes in, and give the finger to all those in the world who would deny you access to information.
As the Americans learned so painfully in Earth's final century, free access to information is the only safeguard against tyranny. The once-chained people whose leaders at last lose their grip on information flow will soon burst with freedom and vitality, while the free nation gradually constricting its grip on free discourse has begun its rapid slide into despotism.
Beware he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master.
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Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
Actually, the God clause is not traditional. The original pledge of allegiance read as following:
I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
The phrase "under god" was added in the McCarthyist 1950s as an attempt to distinguish the United States from "godless Communism," a convenient excuse for the religious conservatives then in power. It is not part of the original Pledge, and hence does not reflect any opinions our founding fathers may or may not have had. It just reflects the opinions of the McCarthyists.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
The thing I find most objectionable is that people are finding out about the rules by breaking them.
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
There is a similar case in Denmark. No verdict yet though. The lawyers persuing the case has always send threathening letters to participants on the Danish newsgroups, apparently based solely on keywords in the articles. One person who got the letter was simply responding to an offtopic article offering warez, asking the author to use the "forsale" groups instead.
Oh, and it is the same lawyers who in the C64 dayes would claim that a 14 year old boy who collected game warez had cost the software publishers $30.000 in lost profits (the combined value of all the games).
Now I don't actually have any knowledge of sweden so I can't comment on that particular instance, however, I would like to point out some differences between the freedoms offered by the united states and that offered by many european countries.
Many european countries have much less puritanical cultures than the united states hence as a matter of fact they end up allowing many more things than the united states. For instance various sorts of drug use, nudity etc..
However, the united states, despite outlawing many things has much greater protections in the system for those who are extremyl at odds with society than many european countries. Sure, the culture may be much more lax there but if you fall outside (preech hate speech in germany, engage in sadomasochistic homosexual play in england etc..) the line or the will of the country changes in its attitude towards freedom you are much more at risk.
While I would much prefer to live in a liberal culture I must argue that the american system is better *as a political system* not necesserily in the niceness of living there. Sure in the short term freedom is nice b/c it lets you do things but this is not the real point of allowing personal liberties.
Free speech stops the flow of ideas in the society from stagnating due to conformity. It keeps society alive by presenting disenting opionions (hence freedoms which let you digress from the mainstream are much more important than freedoms that let you do things). Secondly freedoms serve their main political purpose when the government/society starts to turn bad. Hence the insulation of freedoms from the will of the majority is also an important system.
It is sort of a free beer/free speech issue. One kind of freedom gives you nice things to do and makes you happy. The other protects you against a rainy day and is better for philosophical reasons.
Marriage is the "pseudo-ethics" that cloaks the messy truth of sexuality in the raiment of propriety -- it's "Don't Ask,
People don't get the point of this lawsuit. Pages that offer free downloads are supported by advertising and partnerships with other sites. If someone links directly to the download, it completely bypasses the site's only mechanism of revenue. What this lawsuit is arguing is that MP3 and GIF are essentially no different.
This seem's counter-intuitive, but it's a good point. If a person used the Slashdot logo on their page and they linked directly to the GIF residing on Slashdot's servers, do you think Rob would be very happy? Maybe that would be cool with him, but I doubt it. This is essentially what is happening with a direct link to MP3. The host is being bogged down by extra traffic from people who don't even know where they are. This is the real issue here. Does that justify lawsuits against 17 year old hobbyists? Make your own mind on that, I've already put my Karma in enough risk.
PS - The stuff about this opening Slashdot to suits of the same kind is sheer nonsense. It's not about links, it's about fake content.
LoaderThe difference is that a printed bibliography does not give you access to the material (of course, this is one of the benefits of an electronic bibliography). As an example, suppose "Huckleberry Finn" (or "Origin of Species") is outlawed in your state. Including "Huckleberry Finn" in your bibliography is fine, but including contact information for the underground library is another matter.
But this brings up an interesting thought. If it's illegal to include a hyperlink to (hypothetically) http://joes_music.com/like_a_virgin.mp3, then can you get around this problem by printing the URL as plain text?
Christopher A. Bohn
cb
Oooh! What does this button do!?
17-year old Swede sued
A Swedish teenager has to go to court because his website contains links to copyright-protected music. The Swedish recording industry is trying to create a precedent with this suit.
Stockholm - The 17-year old Swede Tommy Olsson is being accused of providing copyright-protected music for free download on his webpage. The suit has been brought by the Swedish branch of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) consisting of 53 record companies. Olssons webpage contained links to the music files. His attorney Per Olof Almer argued that Olsson didn't create, copy or transfer the files himself. "He only spread the information on where to find them".
This is the first case of its kind in Europe said the attorney for the recording industry, Magnus Maartenson. The Swedish IFPI has moved against approximately 1000 websites for copyright violations in the last two years. Tommy Olsson though is the first person who has to appear in court because of his website. The music industry quite obviously is trying to create a legal precedent with this case: "It's not about the whole recording industry pushing on one 17-year old" emphasized Maartensson.
Olsson made only a few hundred dollars from advertisements on his webpage said Maartensson. If found guilty, he will have to pay a fine of 150 to 250 Dollars. This amount will not be enough to deter others said Maartensson. "But if he is found guilty, we can sue him for damages and that will be a much bigger amount." The sentence is expected for next Wednesday.
Will "Der Spiegel" now sue me for copyright infringement ? Things are getting crazy on the web
Ok, so no one took me to court, sued me, or tried to bring civil charges against me. But my original college hosted web site was unfairly banned because of a link.
I was one of (if not the) first person to have a web page at Ohio University. My page was up before the guy who setup our first web server had his up. So to try and show what was possible I created a site (on OU's first linux box) to host local area artists. I had a few of my photos, a few of my bosses paintings, and a link to a CS student's "body art" page.
On his body art page he had photos of his..."Prince Albert" go look it up if you don't know, all I'll say is ouch! So my homepage linked to my art site which in turn linked to the "Body art" page which linked to its creators photos of his own personal body art.
Well finally my college within the university (Visual Communications) gets with the program and creates their own website including a list of links to student created pages. (A bunch done for a "web design" class that taught to create large imagemaps in photoshop and called them webpages, and a few independly created pages). I asked for months to get listed on the indepent student pages.
Finally after nearly a year I got an answer why. Apparantly the head of VisCom and visited my site and declared that it contained pornography. Amazed I scheduled an appointment with him to find out where he found porn on my site!
He then explained how he found the photos of the "Prince Albert". Needless to say I was amazed. After nearly two hours of arguing he finally agreed to link to my site only because the linux box that hosted the art site was being taken down because the CS department coulden't find anyone in their college to take over as sysadmin once the original sysadmin graduated and went to work for a local ISP.
Ain't college great?
--- Juggle juggle@hitesman.com
Seriously, what are the limits? If I create a Geocities site and put some "illegal" content on there, and link to it from my site, I think most people would realize that it's part of the same logical site. But what if I link to a site run by someone else?
Remember that in most countries it's illegal to give someone help in breaking the law. If I link to a site where someone can break the law, isn't that the same as helping them break the law?
The real issue here is that the courts don't understand the technology, and as such will make stupid rulings.
Gates' Law: Every 18 months, the speed of software halves.
In U.S. intellectual property law there is this notion of "contributory infringement," which means that even if you are not actively and immediately responsible for a copyright infringement, you may share some of the responsibility if you helped it happen.
Contributory infringement is most often applied to, say, publishers who reprint a copyrighted work submitted by a third party with no rights to that work. But I believe that it has also been applied to people who knowingly provided resources (e.g. a postage meter, a CD burner or a Xerox machine) for the purpose of large-scale copyright infringement, even though they never actively took part in the copying.
Depending on the context of the original web site, there may be a strong argument to make that the teenager in this case was a contributory infringer. For example, if the links on his web site said "Here are good places to get free MP3s of the latest N'Sync tunes!" then it's pretty clear that he was directing people to the MP3s with the expectation that they would download the pirated material, i.e. he's deliberately helping the copying happen. But say that his site was a technical exposition of the MP3 standard, with links to technical specs, ripping libraries, compression algorithms, and also happened to include links to sites which happened to include some illegally-ripped songs. In such a case it's much harder to demonstrate infringement.
Last point: I do not much agree with traditional intellectual property theory and do not in general care for the notion of copyright. Within that framework, however, this does not seem like a really outrageous case.
Lets all chip in and buy an Island, then we could start our own country, The last free country in the world!!!
Homer -"I call President!"
Mr. Burns -"Vice President!"
Smithers -"Aww crap..."
Opinionated Law Student Strikes Again!
http ://www.techserver.com/noframes/story/0,2294,91180- 144345-1010275-0,00.html
The best remedy to this type of harassment suit has been debated for years, and (IIRC) the current suggestions are:
With an affirmative defense, the suit is dismissed immediately once the defendent objects and claims this defense. You don't like the fact that my personal car is red instead of blue? You even filed a suit against me, claiming it's against the neighborhood covenents? Tough, that's not something the courts will enforce. (They might enforce restrictions on *where* I park the car, especially if it's a business vehicle, but not the details of any personal vehicle.)
This idea isn't without controvery. What happens to a homeowner who files suit over a legitimate grievance, but who simply can't afford to push the case against a multi-million dollar company?
In this case, I am 100% certain that the suit will be quietly dropped within a short time because there is no fscking way they could win. (Their worst nightmare is actually *winning* the case and facing the backlash of their affluent, young market.) However they will consider it a victory since it will put a bit of doubt into the back of the minds of other people who may want to put up links or content.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
Personal freedom isnt dead in Sweden. There hasnt been a verdict yet (he'll be freed, imho), only a report in a german mag. where they probably dont know anything about swedish law.
/. is like a steer's horns, a point here, a point there and a lot of bull in between.
Either you don't live here or you are blind. Bar the far east, Sweden has one of the most collective value systems in the world. There has never been individual freedom here, which is why we thrived for a while (50s-60s-70s) and then went right to the shitter today. Same reason places like SIngapore can thrive now, but are heading straight for the shitter tomorrow.
Say what you want about the American regime, but until now America has had better individual freedom then we do - by a long run. American kids may be forced to say the pledge of allegance in the morning, but that is nothing compared to silent indoctrination into the social (-ist) system that goes on from the the very start here.
Since my childhood was split evenly between the two countries, for once I do know what I am talking about.
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I'm not sure how they can sue someone for having a link to some resource on the web. Wouldn't it be like suing people for having bibliographies in their book/articles?
I can understand the issues with embedding someone else content in your own frames, or using someone else artwork (gif, mov, etc.)
But just suing for just giving a pointer to it, that doesn't seem realistic. I wonder how what's their rationale.
or could there be another motive in this, such as setting an example for people, since *many* more people link tp mp3s than produce them, and maybe that would reduce mp3 usage even more?
-DAVEO
Slashdot links to alot of web sites, which link to lots of web sites, which link to lots of web sites. In all everyone is only 19 clicks away from any point on the web. Does that mean we are all guilty.
I am sorry but as we would all agree, this is a lame lawsuit.
Hmmm. Lots of pages generate links, and many allow links to be added by others. Search engines tend to be in this category... does that mean that they are liable, since they'll spit out pages with links to pirated material? Personal auction/trading sites also tend to be of this category, although sites like E-bay are trying to clamp down on people offering anything they consider contraband or controversial.
If it's restricted to obvious, conscious intent (like specifically describing the content. Were one to link to a free hosted page, ala Geocities, and then that page lapsed and the address got re-used for somebody brazenly and stupidly distributing "w4r3z"... that doesn't seem like it should be prosecuted as long as ignorance is plausible.
Since the person in question was specifically and knowingly pointing to pirated content, however, that's more like a go-between faciltating a transaction between a junkie and a dealer. He might not touch the drugs himself, ever, nor necessarily the money, but he's certainly a willing accomplice, and part of the racket; and I'm pretty sure most places would bust 'im.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.