A judge would laugh you out of court in most countries with that argument.
I remember watching one case where the prosecutor's witness (a cop) got his knuckles rapped by the judge for trying to introduce non-fact "evidence" about the defendent by trying to use the defendents' bumper stickers to allude that he was more likely to have committed the offence.
Would you seriously put forward the proposition that someone is more likely to have committed a crime because they have a bumper sticker that says "mother-in-law in trunk"?
The judge properly made it quite clear that the only evidence he wanted to hear was the facts pertinent to the case. Logos and corporate names are not fact evidence showing intent, any more than "Pittsburgh Pirates".
Bringing irrelevancies into a case only shows a judge (or jury) that your case is weak. If this is the only evidence of intent, good luck with your "legal career", because, by introducing the web site into evidence, you've opened the door for allowing equal probitive value for the rest of the site's contents, which make the case that the web site itself is not an infraction of the law, that it contains no copyright material, and that they do not themselves distribute copyrighted material.
They've made it quite clear in their "legal notices" archive, and you can bet that, at any trial, that will be introduced to counter any "intent" argument the police will make, logo, name,or whatever.
My money is on TPB to win.
In fact, TPB has already won where it counts - in showing that the **AA do NOT play by the rules, they've undermined any moral argument that the **AA can make to end users that their rights should be respected. People don't like hypocrisy, especially hypocrisy from rich multinationals.
The same as any other name. cf Shakespeare "a rose by any other name".
Judges have to back up their decisions based on facts relevent to the case at hand (in this case, did a copyright violatoon occur), not on the name of the entity, or a logo. In this case, it will be (in no particular order)
1. Is hosting a torrent file is itself a violation of swedish law?
If not, then that's it - "not guilty."
... or...
2. Has the defense presented any compelling argument (eg other case law, contradictory statutes, etc) that the law isn't directly applicable in this particular case?
If so, then again, "not guilty" (note - "compelling argument", not just an argument, but one sufficient to convince the court).
... or...
3. Has the defence made a compelling argument that the case itself is tainted to the point where trying it is not possible (tainted or questionable evidence, violation of rules of procedure, violaton of suspects legal rights, etc). If so, not guilty.
From what we've already heard, they're going to get a walk on the basis of point #3, as all the evidence in the raid will probably get tossed out.
I think a lot of people here aren't looking at the bigger picture. Whether you like it or not, the vast majority of the international community in the western world does agree on some basic legal principles:...
... and the overarching principle in international law is the sovereignty of nations to govern their own internal affairs, set their own laws, etc. The US getting the Swedes to violate their own laws and procedures is in direct contradiction to this.
Unfortunately, the US seems to think that it can still play the superpower game, when in fact its more of a "first among equals" situation.
Remember, 95% of the planet doesn't live in the US, and isn't governed by US law or practices. With the international flow of information, etc, we can cherrypick our virtual location on a case-by-case basis. For example, want to criticize country A? Set up a server in country B. Want to criticize country B? Set up a server in country A.
Corporations have long been doing the "cherry-pick a jurisdiction" for all sorts of things, from labour to legal venue. They're pissed off because now the average Joe can and is taking the same loopholes.
Being relistic (I know, this is slashdot, so realism may be seen as extremely off topic), the whole **AA problem is the result of an industry that was, historically speaking, for most of its existence, a decentralized cottage industry, that for a short time, thanks to advances in technology over the last century, became a big, "manufacturing-type" business, and is now in danger of returning to being decentralized again thanks to further advances in tech, and people's refusal to let themselves be manipulated the way they used to be.
What are they going to do in 20 years when we don't need singers, actors, key grips, cameramen, etc.... when everything can be simulated by a hobbyist sitting at a keyboard, and when virtual worlds have more grip than a "stupid linear movie"? The answer - they won't do anything - they'll be gone.
TV, movies and music are already losing people to the net, games, etc. This is because there are still only 167 hours in a week, and every hour spent online or playing a game is an hour less to watch TV or see a movie.
On a related note, Nintendo's Wii is probably going to hurt Sony's entertainment business as a whole, as its pitched at the general population, and will drag millions more to spend more time playing rather than watching Sony's library of movie properties. The idea behind blu-ray or an hdtv player in a console is to "tie in" other forms of entertainment. People are going to vote with their wallets.
If Hollywood wants to continue to compete, they're going to have to justify their access to the consumer's most valuable resource - time. So far this year, they haven't - their movies suck to the point where even downloaders don't want to bother, its a waste of bandwidth and disk space and TIME.
Like I said, time is your most precious asset, and what they want. Ask yourself this - will movie theatres even exist 20 years from now, when the average consumer will have a 10-foot wall screen, surround sound and immersive environments where people can meet, party, and play? Or are they going to go the way of the drive-in, bulldozed to make way for housing.
That sounds akin to taking the whole filing cabinet for any filing cabinet that contains any item mentioned in a warrant. Don't see how that's going to play in a good light.
Really? They would be perfectly material here in the US.
You missed two points - one of them being that TPB isn't in the US, and neither is most of the rest of the world (including me). The other one being the choice of "The Police" as an example. Think about it.
Anyway - it no longer matters. The ** AA are now irrelevant. they've been shown to be completely incapable of enforcing their "rights", and that society ahs to move on. the **AAs are going to go the way of the buggy whip manufacturers, and good riddance.
Only 7 days? Come on, even I could drag this out to more than a month of hearings, spread out over, say, 3 years. Never mind the idsocovery, pre-trial motions, etc., without a lawyer.
Of course, with these last couple of paragraphs, we've moved from a general discussion to a discussion of TPB specifically, and US law would not really apply to them.
TPB can ONLY be discussed in relation to swedish law, My comments were made in that context. Swedish law so far says that TPB is legal. The politicians blew it, and more importantly, the **AA have now made it quite clear that the real issue is, and always has been, power and moeny - forget respoect for the law, or even fair use.
So you know something... I'm not going to be a fence-sitter. I'm going to encourage everyone I know to do as much as they can to damage the interests of the **AAs; If its from them, copy, pirate, do whatever you want. Why? Because they're obsolete, and the sooner we move on, the better for society as a whole.
Pointing someone to a computer that has a chunk of a file is indirect. Giving them that chunk is direct.
... and you replied...
Also your example fails, because giving someone a file will not be contributory infringement, it will be direct infringement, in the form of distribution.
The servers at TPB do NOT give anyone a chunk of the file. They are NOT distributing. Perhaps you don't understand how torrents work - they contain NO copyright material; they're an index, like google or yahoo. Unlike either google or yahoo, though, they don't even contain one byte of material from the file in question. So there is no distribution from TPB servers.
Also, you said:
Second, one of the elements of contributory infringement is knowledge of the infringement at the time of the contribution. It is incredibly unlikely that any of those entities will have the slightest idea what you're doing at the time when you download something unlawfully. Therefore they're off the hook.
I agree with you there; since the process is entirely automated, there is no knowledge, same as a telephone network carrying a conversation where two people are plotting a conspiracy.
It will certainly be an interesting case, and it shows how 18th century copyright law can't cope with 21st century technology. Even the mainstream media now is saying that the **AAs went too far, have shown that their tactics are ultimately self-defeating, and they're going to have to find some way to learn to co-exist with the new reality.
The Pirae Bay's logo and name are immaterial... if they called themselves The Police, that wouldn't have any probative value as to their intent.
According to your logic, the Pittsburgh Pirates should all be thrown in jail, since their name would be, in your world, prima facae evidence of their evil intentions...
Ditto the Steelers...
And Shakespeare would be barred from airplanes because his name has connotations of vioence - "shake + spear"
You can't prove intent from a name, only from actions, and they've made it quite clear that they do not have any copyrighted material on their servers. As for the intent, its the downloaders who have the intent - the servers have non, they're machines. Its the same if they were hosting porn. That someone downloads it then goes on a sex+drug-crazed orgy is not their responsibility. Ditto for anyone buying a violent video game and then shooting people.
Helping someone to break a law is in itself illegal.
Contributory infringement has to be direct, not indirect. Pointing someone to a computer that has a chunk of a file is indirect. Giving them that chunk is direct.
The difference is important - otherwise, your electical company, your landlord if you rent/your bank if you have a mortgage, the company that made your computer, the chair you sit your ass in to type, and the boss who pays your salary so yo can afford all the shiny toys, would all be guilty of contributing to infringement, since without them you wouldn't be able to infringe the copyright. Oh, and the government as well, since they regulate the telecom industry and provide the environment that allows you to do all these things.
Oh come on... the video from the surveillance cameras shows they took their sweet time checking out the server racks. They didn't have to take all the hardware they took (and who the fuck needs to wear camo on a raid of a server room anyway?).
The warrant was for seizing the servers hosting TPB; any seizure exceeding that was outside the scope of the warrant, and that's why they (the police and the minister of justice) are in the crapper - taking something that's outside the scope of the warrant is theft. That they covered the security cameras with garbage bags partway through just makes them look guiltier.
So - either:
the police couldn't properly identify the hardware in question, in which case they were incompetent, and should have called in someone with more expertise, or
they could, but over-reached.
they purposefully grabbed more than they were entitled to, hoping for a backlash against TPB for causing the inconvenience
Those are the only options. How much you want to bet it was #3, seeing as politicians and the **AA were involved? This is a very public cluster-fuck, and someone will have to pay, both politically and financially.
The systems that get a signal from the stellite depend on each box having a unique ID. Clone the ID of another box, and you can unplug yuurs from the wall, and as long as the other box is paid up, you'll watch as much as you like for free, and the other box's account is unaffected.
Disney (please don't let Mickey Mouse into the public domain - give us a copyright extension), Intel (Chipzilla) and Cisco (consumers? bwahahaah!) think they can make money selling old movies for a couple of bucks? There's a bunch of independent $1 a night dvd rental places cropping up.
The way the Buck-a-night dvd rental place work it is simple - when the movie's new, they rent it for $3 bucks a night. Once the disk has made enough to pay for itself, plus a small profit, it goes down to $1 a night. Its pure profit at that point, and people are lkely to snag a couple along with a new movie - and nobody bitches about the late fees if they're a day late.
It's also only a matter of time before someone figures out the protocol for it to get authorization from the server over dialup and writes code to let a dial-up modem talk to the set-top box and say "account is good, authorized for another 2 weeks".
Nah, I'm a Kanuckistani... beer with a decent alcohol content doesn't freeze solid in the freezer, and since its nicely chilled, its not as prone to foam up, either.
When it's 100 degrees outside (and it gets that here in Montréal quite a lot in the summer) there's something to be said about putting a nice cold bottle on the back of your neck for a few seconds to cool off, then popping the top, watching the first inch turn into slush, and slowly *enjoying* it.
... because slashdot editors don't know that the surest way to ruin a beer is to pour it into a glass... and that the best way is to put the bottle into the freezer a half-hour before opening it, so that it's decently chilled (you know you've done it just right when the brew in the neck turns to ice as you relieve the pressure by opening it).
Pouring beer into a glass! What next, eating pizza with a knife and fork?
The "Turbo Pascal for Windows" product was a woebegone POS that never did much, and wasn't missed.
Also, its VERY easy to translate pascal's much simpler syntax to something a c compiler can handle. Consider: no need for multiple inheritance, friend functions, etc.
In the case of Delphi, where pointers are all hidden away from you, the task is even easier.
Now if you want to see something REALLY interesting, look at what the gnu guys are doing with gcc - making a java compiler that compile - not just to java class files/bytecode, but the whole program directly to a native binary (not just native methods). http://gcc.gnu.org/java/
That task is a LOT harder than supporting a somewhat limited subset of pascal.
Not quite! The correct analogy would be cops raiding Bell because the Yellow pages lists the phone number of a paper mill under the section "For help writing harassing letters". Its about the *intent*.
Another bad analogy. Check out your newspapers' classified section - lots of ads for escorts a.k.a. prostitutes.
So why aren't they shutting down the newspapers if its all about "intent"? Oh, right, the **AAs don't mind people sharing a bit of crack*...
* For those who don't get the "sharing a bit of crack" reference...
Q. What's the difference between a drug dealer and a hooker?
A. The hooker can always wash her crack and resell it
- If you can make a bad analogy, I can make a worse joke... and no, the torrent files themselves are not theft, any more than the escort ads are themselves prostitution. Both just tell you where to get what you're looking for.
Delphi the language is based on Turbo pascal. However, the back-end of the Windows delphi program was borland's c compiler, not the dos-based pascal compiler, which they didn't port to windows. If you care to look, Delphi supports compiling c++ programs.
Nope - I saw the same thing, and it was that the INTERFACE was written entirely in Delphi. The compiler at the back end was Borland's c compiler.
When Delphi first came out, a lot of us bitched and moaned because we wanted a C version instead. Borlands explanation was that it was a lot more complex to support the whole C language, as opposed to the pascal language (and the single-inheritance model of pascal, which btw sux).
If you think of the keywords and features in pascal, its not that hard to "support" pascal with a c compiler.
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A judge would laugh you out of court in most countries with that argument.
I remember watching one case where the prosecutor's witness (a cop) got his knuckles rapped by the judge for trying to introduce non-fact "evidence" about the defendent by trying to use the defendents' bumper stickers to allude that he was more likely to have committed the offence.
Would you seriously put forward the proposition that someone is more likely to have committed a crime because they have a bumper sticker that says "mother-in-law in trunk"?
The judge properly made it quite clear that the only evidence he wanted to hear was the facts pertinent to the case. Logos and corporate names are not fact evidence showing intent, any more than "Pittsburgh Pirates".
Bringing irrelevancies into a case only shows a judge (or jury) that your case is weak. If this is the only evidence of intent, good luck with your "legal career", because, by introducing the web site into evidence, you've opened the door for allowing equal probitive value for the rest of the site's contents, which make the case that the web site itself is not an infraction of the law, that it contains no copyright material, and that they do not themselves distribute copyrighted material.
They've made it quite clear in their "legal notices" archive, and you can bet that, at any trial, that will be introduced to counter any "intent" argument the police will make, logo, name,or whatever.
My money is on TPB to win.
In fact, TPB has already won where it counts - in showing that the **AA do NOT play by the rules, they've undermined any moral argument that the **AA can make to end users that their rights should be respected. People don't like hypocrisy, especially hypocrisy from rich multinationals.
The same as any other name. cf Shakespeare "a rose by any other name".
Judges have to back up their decisions based on facts relevent to the case at hand (in this case, did a copyright violatoon occur), not on the name of the entity, or a logo. In this case, it will be (in no particular order)
1. Is hosting a torrent file is itself a violation of swedish law?
If not, then that's it - "not guilty."
2. Has the defense presented any compelling argument (eg other case law, contradictory statutes, etc) that the law isn't directly applicable in this particular case?
If so, then again, "not guilty" (note - "compelling argument", not just an argument, but one sufficient to convince the court).
3. Has the defence made a compelling argument that the case itself is tainted to the point where trying it is not possible (tainted or questionable evidence, violation of rules of procedure, violaton of suspects legal rights, etc). If so, not guilty.
From what we've already heard, they're going to get a walk on the basis of point #3, as all the evidence in the raid will probably get tossed out.
Unfortunately, the US seems to think that it can still play the superpower game, when in fact its more of a "first among equals" situation.
Remember, 95% of the planet doesn't live in the US, and isn't governed by US law or practices. With the international flow of information, etc, we can cherrypick our virtual location on a case-by-case basis. For example, want to criticize country A? Set up a server in country B. Want to criticize country B? Set up a server in country A.
Corporations have long been doing the "cherry-pick a jurisdiction" for all sorts of things, from labour to legal venue. They're pissed off because now the average Joe can and is taking the same loopholes.
Being relistic (I know, this is slashdot, so realism may be seen as extremely off topic), the whole **AA problem is the result of an industry that was, historically speaking, for most of its existence, a decentralized cottage industry, that for a short time, thanks to advances in technology over the last century, became a big, "manufacturing-type" business, and is now in danger of returning to being decentralized again thanks to further advances in tech, and people's refusal to let themselves be manipulated the way they used to be.
What are they going to do in 20 years when we don't need singers, actors, key grips, cameramen, etc. ... when everything can be simulated by a hobbyist sitting at a keyboard, and when virtual worlds have more grip than a "stupid linear movie"? The answer - they won't do anything - they'll be gone.
TV, movies and music are already losing people to the net, games, etc. This is because there are still only 167 hours in a week, and every hour spent online or playing a game is an hour less to watch TV or see a movie.
On a related note, Nintendo's Wii is probably going to hurt Sony's entertainment business as a whole, as its pitched at the general population, and will drag millions more to spend more time playing rather than watching Sony's library of movie properties. The idea behind blu-ray or an hdtv player in a console is to "tie in" other forms of entertainment. People are going to vote with their wallets.
If Hollywood wants to continue to compete, they're going to have to justify their access to the consumer's most valuable resource - time. So far this year, they haven't - their movies suck to the point where even downloaders don't want to bother, its a waste of bandwidth and disk space and TIME.
Like I said, time is your most precious asset, and what they want. Ask yourself this - will movie theatres even exist 20 years from now, when the average consumer will have a 10-foot wall screen, surround sound and immersive environments where people can meet, party, and play? Or are they going to go the way of the drive-in, bulldozed to make way for housing.
That sounds akin to taking the whole filing cabinet for any filing cabinet that contains any item mentioned in a warrant. Don't see how that's going to play in a good light.
You missed two points - one of them being that TPB isn't in the US, and neither is most of the rest of the world (including me). The other one being the choice of "The Police" as an example. Think about it.
Anyway - it no longer matters. The ** AA are now irrelevant. they've been shown to be completely incapable of enforcing their "rights", and that society ahs to move on. the **AAs are going to go the way of the buggy whip manufacturers, and good riddance.
Only 7 days? Come on, even I could drag this out to more than a month of hearings, spread out over, say, 3 years. Never mind the idsocovery, pre-trial motions, etc., without a lawyer.
So you know something ... I'm not going to be a fence-sitter. I'm going to encourage everyone I know to do as much as they can to damage the interests of the **AAs; If its from them, copy, pirate, do whatever you want. Why? Because they're obsolete, and the sooner we move on, the better for society as a whole.
Cop: Which servers are for The Pirate Bay site?
Hosting Co: Arrrghhh, what you be looking fore, mate?
Cop: Which servers are for The Pirate Bay site?
Hosting Co: You be lookin' to abscound with the treasure, eh, matey? Cop: That's it - just grab everything!
I said:
The servers at TPB do NOT give anyone a chunk of the file. They are NOT distributing. Perhaps you don't understand how torrents work - they contain NO copyright material; they're an index, like google or yahoo. Unlike either google or yahoo, though, they don't even contain one byte of material from the file in question. So there is no distribution from TPB servers.
Also, you said:
I agree with you there; since the process is entirely automated, there is no knowledge, same as a telephone network carrying a conversation where two people are plotting a conspiracy.
It will certainly be an interesting case, and it shows how 18th century copyright law can't cope with 21st century technology. Even the mainstream media now is saying that the **AAs went too far, have shown that their tactics are ultimately self-defeating, and they're going to have to find some way to learn to co-exist with the new reality.
The Pirae Bay's logo and name are immaterial ... if they called themselves The Police, that wouldn't have any probative value as to their intent.
According to your logic, the Pittsburgh Pirates should all be thrown in jail, since their name would be, in your world, prima facae evidence of their evil intentions ...
Ditto the Steelers ...
And Shakespeare would be barred from airplanes because his name has connotations of vioence - "shake + spear"
You can't prove intent from a name, only from actions, and they've made it quite clear that they do not have any copyrighted material on their servers. As for the intent, its the downloaders who have the intent - the servers have non, they're machines. Its the same if they were hosting porn. That someone downloads it then goes on a sex+drug-crazed orgy is not their responsibility. Ditto for anyone buying a violent video game and then shooting people.
Contributory infringement has to be direct, not indirect. Pointing someone to a computer that has a chunk of a file is indirect. Giving them that chunk is direct.
The difference is important - otherwise, your electical company, your landlord if you rent/your bank if you have a mortgage, the company that made your computer, the chair you sit your ass in to type, and the boss who pays your salary so yo can afford all the shiny toys, would all be guilty of contributing to infringement, since without them you wouldn't be able to infringe the copyright. Oh, and the government as well, since they regulate the telecom industry and provide the environment that allows you to do all these things.
Oh come on ... the video from the surveillance cameras shows they took their sweet time checking out the server racks. They didn't have to take all the hardware they took (and who the fuck needs to wear camo on a raid of a server room anyway?).
The warrant was for seizing the servers hosting TPB; any seizure exceeding that was outside the scope of the warrant, and that's why they (the police and the minister of justice) are in the crapper - taking something that's outside the scope of the warrant is theft. That they covered the security cameras with garbage bags partway through just makes them look guiltier.
So - either:
- the police couldn't properly identify the hardware in question, in which case they were incompetent, and should have called in someone with more expertise, or
- they could, but over-reached.
- they purposefully grabbed more than they were entitled to, hoping for a backlash against TPB for causing the inconvenience
Those are the only options. How much you want to bet it was #3, seeing as politicians and the **AA were involved? This is a very public cluster-fuck, and someone will have to pay, both politically and financially.Their plan is DOA.
The systems that get a signal from the stellite depend on each box having a unique ID. Clone the ID of another box, and you can unplug yuurs from the wall, and as long as the other box is paid up, you'll watch as much as you like for free, and the other box's account is unaffected.
The way the Buck-a-night dvd rental place work it is simple - when the movie's new, they rent it for $3 bucks a night. Once the disk has made enough to pay for itself, plus a small profit, it goes down to $1 a night. Its pure profit at that point, and people are lkely to snag a couple along with a new movie - and nobody bitches about the late fees if they're a day late.
Heck, next thing you know, they'll be announcing songs over the radio!
Hey, wait a second ... the time machine worked, but it put me in 2006, not 1906. Wait until Doc and John Titor hear about this!!!
It's also only a matter of time before someone figures out the protocol for it to get authorization from the server over dialup and writes code to let a dial-up modem talk to the set-top box and say "account is good, authorized for another 2 weeks".
Three reasons to prefer bottles over glasses:
(* yes, I've done that to people, and yes, I'm evil :-)
When it's 100 degrees outside (and it gets that here in Montréal quite a lot in the summer) there's something to be said about putting a nice cold bottle on the back of your neck for a few seconds to cool off, then popping the top, watching the first inch turn into slush, and slowly *enjoying* it.
Pouring beer into a glass! What next, eating pizza with a knife and fork?
The "Turbo Pascal for Windows" product was a woebegone POS that never did much, and wasn't missed.
Also, its VERY easy to translate pascal's much simpler syntax to something a c compiler can handle. Consider: no need for multiple inheritance, friend functions, etc.
In the case of Delphi, where pointers are all hidden away from you, the task is even easier.
Now if you want to see something REALLY interesting, look at what the gnu guys are doing with gcc - making a java compiler that compile - not just to java class files/bytecode, but the whole program directly to a native binary (not just native methods). http://gcc.gnu.org/java/
That task is a LOT harder than supporting a somewhat limited subset of pascal.
So why aren't they shutting down the newspapers if its all about "intent"? Oh, right, the **AAs don't mind people sharing a bit of crack* ...
* For those who don't get the "sharing a bit of crack" reference ...
- If you can make a bad analogy, I can make a worse joke ... and no, the torrent files themselves are not theft, any more than the escort ads are themselves prostitution. Both just tell you where to get what you're looking for.
Delphi the language is based on Turbo pascal. However, the back-end of the Windows delphi program was borland's c compiler, not the dos-based pascal compiler, which they didn't port to windows. If you care to look, Delphi supports compiling c++ programs.
Nope - I saw the same thing, and it was that the INTERFACE was written entirely in Delphi. The compiler at the back end was Borland's c compiler.
When Delphi first came out, a lot of us bitched and moaned because we wanted a C version instead. Borlands explanation was that it was a lot more complex to support the whole C language, as opposed to the pascal language (and the single-inheritance model of pascal, which btw sux).
If you think of the keywords and features in pascal, its not that hard to "support" pascal with a c compiler.