Only halved? I thought these things were supposed to have a 70% reduction according to the earlier surveys. Oh wait, those surveys are complete rubbish, as is most data on this sort of thing. The surveys for how much this sort of thing would reduce filesharing are all over the place; according to the IFPI, the French version, Hadopi, would cause 71% reduction in unlawful file-sharing, whereas a ZdNet.fr survey put it at 4%. Then there was a really fun Hollywood-sponsored survey from Australia that found 74% would stop infringing - unfortunately, in the fine detail, it turned out only 11% were actually committing copyright infringement on a regular basis, so at least 15% of people don't infringe regularly, but wouldn't stop even if threatened by their ISP.
This is definitely one of those "detailed-study-complete-with-full-figures-and-methodology or it didn't happen" situations.
However, it is interesting to see that the RIANZ are claiming that half isn't enough, and that more needs to be done. It mirrors my concerns about these laws elsewhere (particularly in the UK, obviously) that they have no criteria for success or failure, nor any real way to measure effectiveness. It means that once implemented the RIAA/Rianz/BPI are free to say "This is working, so we need more!" or "This isn't working, so we need more!" or "We're not sure whether or not this is working, so we need more!" no matter what actually happens, and we're back to copyright enforcement for the sake of copyright enforcement.
Fortunately in the EU these sorts of charges to ISPs were declared unlawful, so copyright owners are being forced to meet most of the bill for the UK three-strikes program (although subscribers will have to pay an arbitrary £20 to appeal allegations made against them).
The one good thing about the UK version, though, is that the government were persuaded that, once the three-strikes law is in force, someone should actually look into whether or not such a law is needed or will do any good, so in a year or so, after over 1m letters being sent (and however many lawsuits and prosecutions), we may actually get some independent and reliable data on this whole "online infringement of copyright" thing.
[Disclaimer: I 'work' as a lobbyist in this area and am currently in the middle of consultation work on the UK version of this sort of thing - so I'm rather biased. For anyone in the UK interested in this, the Ofcom consultation is available here and closes on Thursday.]
However, if there's resistance then he may only get a handful of people before being taken down as opposed to mowing down a crowd before the cops show up.
Of course, making it really hard or near-impossible for him to get hold of firearms and ammunition would have a similar effect, probably limiting the number of people he could kill even further. In fact, he might be restrained by those around without anyone ending up dead - wouldn't that be nice and humane?
"Tough on crime" was directly created from the privatizations of prisons their security.
I think privatised prisons encourage the "tough on crime" aspect, but mainly I think it's a general conservative thing as most conservative-type voters (middle-aged, middle/upper class, rich enough to donate to the cause) think that they are good, and anyone who commits a crime is evil (particularly those dirty, poor people who make up the criminal underclass) - missing the fact that they've probably committed at least one crime before lunch. Thus by playing "tough on crime"*, politicians can help secure that chunk of voters.
Privatisation isn't enough, otherwise places without privatised prisons wouldn't have this problem. Sadly, we do.
*But only some crimes, such as those committed by people who are not decent, upstanding members of societies; so drug dealing, criminal damage, public disorder, but not large scale frauds, tax evasion, bribery and corruption.
Yes, but you'd need that with an elected head of state as well (unless you're proposing not having a head of state at all).
Actually, in the long term, an elected head of state could be more expensive as you would have to re-work your protocols ever 4/5-8-10 years (depending on term limits), plus you'd be starting with more normal houses (well, mansions probably) and fewer castles.
That's like saying you should be able to marry your hand. Or poligimatically marry both hands. You hand can't consent, and can't own land, so the right of "next of kin" is denied to it already. Same as animals. You can form a trust to hold land on behalf of your favorite cat, but the cat can't own land. It's not about marying whoever you want. It's a rights issue about why some people can't enter into a legal contract with others on the same framework as other people.
Agreed, although I prefer the analogy with marrying a table (or plant) as, in many places, non-human animals are generally regarded as property. I don't know about the US, but in English law it is surprisingly hard to leave property on trust to cats (or other pets) as they do not have legal personality to hold even the equitable title in the property. You end up having to create a purpose trust, which leads to all sorts of complications and stuff. Apparently it gives pet-rescue charities no end of problems (as, being charities, they are usually trusts themselves).
Why do corporations and governments have any say in who we love, live with, and raise together?
This sort of thing makes me wonder why we have legal marriage in the first place. Obviously there should not be any reason to stop people having religious (or secular) ceremonies, with fancy clothes, speeches, explicit declarations of love and promises of commitment and so on, but why legal marriage? In most places, legal marriage consists of a bundle of things designed to make it easier for people to live together (presumptions about ownership of property, inheritance stuff, tax breaks, next of kin things - although the specifics vary with jurisdiction). It seems to be the state's way of encouraging and rewarding stable long-term relationships, with the idea that stable long-term relationships are good for society in general. Whether or not marriage does that is another matter, and something that probably needs looking in to.
So, then you have the issue of what sort of marriage to allow... and that is a matter for society to determine (via elected officials), although it seems illogical and inequitable to deny it to certain groups of people simply because of historical/cultural prejudices. [As an aside, it is worth noting that the "marriage = man + woman" idea is fairly limited both geographically and temporally; already in many places "marriage = man/woman + man/woman" and in some "marriage = man + women". Interestingly, some parts of the US still had "marriage = white man + white woman, or non-white man + non-white woman" on the statute books until 2000; however unconstitutional it was. It's amusing to see people in those places complain about same-sex marriage "redefining" a centuries-old definition of marriage...]
Love has nothing to do with legal marriage or what homosexuals want.
I imagine quite a few homosexuals want love... however the issue with legal marriage is probably related to the way you have the state very publicly and firmly telling you that you do not have the same rights as other people; that somehow your relationship, your love etc. are not as important or worth as other people's. Given that, I think it is quite understandable that they would want to fix the law. Again, a comparison with the "anti-miscegenation" laws the US used to have is interesting; nowadays in many places it would be unthinkable to have such restrictions on marriage.
As another aside, I imagine that not all people who want same-sex marriage are homosexual, and suggesting so is a bit narrow-minded. There is a good percentage of the population that is bi-, and they should not be ignored or dismissed. Plus then you have issues of gender-reassignment, or unclear gender etc., which is one of the motivations for the proposed change in law in the UK. Under the current law, iirc, gender at birth is the determining factor for marriage, which can cause issues.
They do not want to legalise pedo-love, bestiality, or polygamy.
It's interesting how those three issues polyamoury, paedophilia and bestiality seem to always come up eventually in discussions of same-sex marriage. Of course, one of those things is not like the other, but they are all quite easy to "deal" with:
Polyamoury - I have no problem with this and see it as the next step after legalising same-sex marriage. There are some practical issues with defining it (such as transitivity, does A m B, B m C => A m C?) but on the whole it seems to have the same potential problems as other types of marriage. The only difference with "normal" marriage is the number of people involved. This is obviously different from the other two, in that polyamorous sexual relationships are perfectly legal in many places, unlike paedophilic or beastial ones (again, in most places).
Paedophilia - This is a bit problematic as the definition varies with jurisdiction. Afaik most places do not actually have laws against paedophilic relationships, onl
In English law it is "reasonable grounds" but it is pretty much the same. But yes, there is a strong risk of the IP address being given to law enforcement, who raid the place, carry off all computer equipment and assume that they can sort through things later (there's a case referenced in the document below, at paragraph 82). Obviously this can take months or years, with the computer equipment ending up with the copyright enforcement groups.
For a more detailed look at identifying people online in criminal or civil investigations, Richard Clayton's witness statement to the DEA judicial review is worth a read, particularly paragraphs 49 to 90.
Indeed. My understanding of the situation (having followed some of these cases etc., including attending court hearings) is that the tech companies get paid by the IP. Most other parties involved (the copyright owner, the legal team, the holding company that brings the case) get either a percentage of net profit, or a fixed fee. As such, it's in the tech. groups interests to provide as many IPs as they can, as cheaply as possible.
This is why they have been known to cut corners (such as just scraping a list of IPs from a tracker, rather than checking that any given IP is actually sharing the file at the particular time), or spend too much time actually looking into the technology. Interestingly, an "expert witness" in a recent English case noted that he"did not have [the software he was testifying with regard to] installed on his computer, and did not concern himself with how it worked").
In the ACSLaw leaked emails, one thing that was noted was that around 1 in 4 IP addresses that had been identified as infringing weren't even assigned by the ISP at the time when the alleged infringement occurred. That statistic, to me, suggests that something is pretty screwed up is going on with data gathering.
In some cases, I believe so. However, this would still not necessarily provide immunity from a copyright infringement claim wrt downloading from the investigator (depending on jurisdiction). You probably wouldn't be able to get away with an implied licence, as it could be argued that it is common knowledge much of this stuff is unlicensed. The point might, however, go some way to limiting the damages awarded (and any equitable remedies) if it can be shown that the only person at the other end of the connection was working with the copyright owner; i.e. there'd be no damage caused by uploading it to the investigator. Unless you're in the US, with you're lovely statutory damages...
It cant prove who, but it can prove who's ISP account was used, and you can possibly claim that they are responsible as either they allowed it to happen, or didn't secure their systems properly.
Possibly, possibly not. Being a legal thing, this will vary hugely by jurisdiction, but in general I'm not aware of any contested case where an individual has been found liable, either jointly/vicariously, or through negligence, for the mere actions of another using their Internet connection.
A while back TorrentFreak looked into this, getting a couple of US lawyers to argue for and against this sort of liability. Unfortunately the "for" one only discusses negligence, and the "against" only looks into indirect and vicarious liability, so both could be perfectly correct...
Sort of like if you left your rifle on the front seat of your car, with the doors unlocked, and then it was stolen and used in a crime. You would be partially responsible too.
This is where the tests for "negligence" come in (ignoring any statute law on the handling of firearms; obviously, where I'm from, possessing a rifle would probably be illegal in the first place). In common law negligence generally requires that there be some duty of care owed by the defendant to the claimant/plaintiff, that the defendant fell below the appropriate standard of care, which caused damage to the claimant that wasn't too remote.
Wrt allowing someone to use your Internet (or not securing it), it seems possible that there may not even be a duty in place (due to a lack of proximity, unless children are involved), and it would be easy to argue that the standard wasn't breached by simply having an unsecured or weakly secured network, or letting someone use a computer unsupervised (that would be far too onerous).
It would be an interesting, if pointlessly expensive, case to argue, and afaik, that hasn't been argued either in the US or the UK (the first article references a case, but I have a strong feeling that may be a summary judgment).
Things designed to circumvent DRM are illegal in the EU. In some countries, to a criminal extent. Even if they can also be used to break DRM in order to do something perfectly legal with the stuff.
... but across the EU, video renting is an act restricted by copyright. So you have to pay a licence fee to do so (it's why there's no EU-equivalent of the early Netflix system).
And yes, used games sales are supposedly a major source of lost revenue to game companies, which is why online sales, and now "buy the game, but you need an account-specific code to do anything with it" sales are so popular; they prevent re-sale. And it seems the CJEU is saying that this is wrong, but I haven't read through the judgment yet.
It would appear the fate of the tvshack founder is now sealed.
Aside from his appeal to the High Court at the end of this month, or the potential appeal to the Supreme Court, CJEU or ECrtHR after that... There are two sides to extradition from the UK; one is the political side (the government saying he can go, although they tend to need a good reason for refusing) and the legal side (a court finding that the legal requirements for extradition have been satisfied). If either fails, extradition doesn't happen.
why does digital distribution need to run on scarcity economics? It's not scarce, so it's not valuable? Why, just because it's trivial to copy music digitally, is digital music now considered to have little-to-no value?
You're confusing (digital) music and its creation with digital music files. Digital music files (mp3s, flacs etc.) have virtually no value; they're just information and can be copied, deleted, shared (almost) effortlessly (and supply and demand comes in). The music itself is a little more complex; mainly because it doesn't really exist, without being expressed. The "valuable" part of music is the creation (and first recording) of it. Unfortunately that only happens once, so can't really be re-sold. Even then, there is so much music available now (having already been created) that there is an argument (based on supply and demand) that new music of itself is of little value.
I am not an economist, but scarcity is important because if something isn't scarce, it is hard to get people to pay for it (as in "have a nice jar of air, only $10"). Either you have something that is of itself scarce (gold being a fairly good example), you add scarcity by introducing an extra component ("this is a jar of air that's come from [somewhere important], one of only 5 in existence"), or you add scarcity by introducing a service element ("this is a tank of air, but highly compressed, and prepared especially so you can use it to go diving"). Or you use the law to impose some sort of artificial scarcity ("here's a jar of air; note that it's currently illegal to breath air from anywhere else, and we can sue you/have you locked up if you dare to do so").
So given this, how do we apply these to music? Well, music isn't scarce, so you're going to have trouble selling music in general. Can an extra component be added? Yes. That's where the CD comes in, or the "extended, improved, special limited edition" CD, with fancy artwork, bonus features, signed etc. (where the valueless digital files are bundled with something that can be made scarce). Can a service element be added? Yes, that's your live performance, signing, getting fans involved with the creation process and interacting with them, or providing a service for accessing the valueless music files (i.e. what iTunes, Spotify and all those others do). Or you try to enforce copyright, or convince people that they shouldn't share music on their own (which seems to go against the point of music?).
Of course, the real world isn't quite as straightforward as that, as "perceived value" is more important than actual value (hence a CD with a handful of songs can cost the same as a DVD box-set which took considerably more money to create). And this is where a lot of the media/marketing campaigns come in, with interested groups trying to convince us that there is something special or magical about music (or a particular musician's work). Or people such as the original author, suggesting that artists should be entitled to extra stuff, beyond the rest of us, because they're special. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.
As for the underlying issue of this activity "devastating the music industry", as someone who has been studying this in depth for a few years now, reading accounts from various people, watching the numbers (those of which are available), I'm yet to be convinced that there's sufficient evidence to come to any conclusion (other than this one, obviously).
Onto the specific articles, the NPR blog post struck me as a typical "intern, just starting the job, and writing a few words in a quiet corner about thoughts on the music business from a radio perspective." The response seems to be typical of someone who has a lot to say (and wants to say it strongly), and is going to say it whether relevant or not (somewhat like this post... but meh, it's a free internet). It's well-written and sounds convincing, but most of the content is rather thin (such as the cherry-picked statistics that don't say anything, anecdotes, a
Two points. Firstly, they have to explain it to the UK Supreme Court first, since the UDHR is incorporated into UK law (though I forget as which Act). Secondly, it's the Home Office: they can't explain shit to anyone.
That said, they've got another problem: implementing the proposed act is going to require a lot of money at a time when the Treasury is exceptionally keen on departments cutting their spending and the public disinclined to be keen on further security restrictions. Getting the Act through Parliament without significant neutering is going to be very hard, and articles like TFA are going to encourage the emasculation process.
Firstly, the UDHR isn't the ECHR. The UDHR has the effect of a treaty, so is only binding on the Government, and governments are perfectly happy to ignore it, with little interference from the UN. The ECHR is sort of binding on the UK via the Human Rights Act, and yes, the UK Supreme Court (or even the English High Court) would be within its power to declare this law incompatible with the ECHR, or overturn any order issued by the Home Secretary under it. However, for that to happen, orders have to be issued, then challenged, then appealed.... compare it with the illegal s44 Terrorist Act stop-and-search powers; they were used for 10 years before finally repealed (in 2010 alone, used on some 28,000 people). The law itself is primary legislation, so can't be struck down even if it breaches the ECHR, although the European Court of Human Rights could issue fines over it, but that would take even longer than going through UK courts.
As to the cost; the UK budget is about £700bn, this is "estimated" to cost £1.8bn over 10 years; that's about 1/40 of 1% of the annual budget. For a law described as being a "criminal's nightmare" to help capture "criminals, terrorists and paedophiles", the cost is not going to be an issue. Of course, it will spiral out of control, but then it's too late.
But, if you are using say, Gmail over a https connection, how would UK find out the headers in that case? Your connection to GMail is encrypted, Gmail to destination(say, Hotmail) could happen outside UK, and destination(Hotmail) can be viewed over an encrypted connection again.
They can find them out either by doing man-in-the-middle attacks on the traffic, or by compelling Google (or Microsoft) to give them access anyway. While these companies may have their main offices outside the UK, while they have assets in the UK they can still be sued.
...(unless the ISPs start doing man-in-the-middle attacks on SSL traffic)
This law gives the government the power to order ISPs to do this, and to order any UK certificate authorities to co-operate. Oh, and this can be done secretly, with only a couple of government thingamies needing to be consulted.
If you read the bill document, there's a chunk dedicated to explaining why this doesn't breach Article 8.
That may not convince the ECrtHR though, but the government is also trying to drive back the scope of article 8, so they may get away with it. Even if they don't, if it goes anything like the illegal stop-and-search powers under s44 Terrorism Act 2000, the powers could be in place for a decade before it gets fixed.
The Lib Dem leadership is supporting this, due to the addition of certain "safeguards" (although I haven't been able to spot them yet). I was at an event a few weeks ago when one of their junior ministers explained their position, he spoke for a good 5 minutes without actually saying anything. It's the backbench Lib Dems and Conservatives (the ones who don't get the weekly security briefings scaring them as to all the evil terrorists out there) that are trying to fight this.
Only reason why police found out about it was that one of them forgot his laptop at his brother's place, police raided it for some other reason, and found the laptop. If the criminals also had added truecrypt to the mix, police still wouldn't have any clue. And facebook support HTTPS, so can't log which profile and which data goes through there. If the guy also have a normal FB account, there's no way a 3rd party monitoring system can pick it up (except for some massive SSL root cert abuse)
1) The UK already has a law that can lock someone up for failing to decrypt data when asked to by a court, so Truecrypt won't help. 2) This law gives the Home Secretary the power to do anything she wants to ensure access to communications data. That includes ordering website providers (including Facebook, while it has assets in the jurisdiction) to comply, so connecting securely to Facebook, Google etc. won't help you if they just roll over (which they have in the past to UK orders). 3) This law would also give them the power to force any UK certificate authority to give the government what they need to perform man-in-the-middle attacks on encrypted traffic (combined with black boxes at all ISPs), so SSL won't help either. There are hints they already have such a thing lined up.
Oh, and this doesn't just cover the Internet, but also phones and the post. Oh, and the police etc. can access this data without a warrant.
While this may be a case of politicians not knowing what they're talking about, the people behind this *do*. That's the really scary part.
Actually, this defamation stuff is about websites not allowing people to post things unless they can be identified by readers, rather than anything to do with the website being able to identify them via IP addresses.
But it's not your fault you misunderstood, most of the media (and many MPs) have completely screwed this story up, conflating it with a completely separate issue from last week of criminal harassment. See my comment below for more details.
You all just got trolled by the media and Ken Clarke. This is not about forcing anyone to hand over any information, websites aren't automatically liable for all the content on them, and is nothing to do with last week's Facebook case (although some MPs debating the Bill still think it was).
This story is about the Defamation Bill, currently going through the UK Parliament. For the most part, it simply codifies existing case law (but with enough pointless changes in terminology and detail to cause headaches for lawyers and courts for a few years). However, clause 5 creates a new defence to defamation specifically for operators of websites. However, it can be defeated if it is "not possible for the claimant to identify the person who posted the statement" (although no definition on "identify" is given). This doesn't force websites to do anything, nor does it remove any of the multitude of existing defences or limits to defamation claims against them (see, for example, a recent case involving Google, which has been ignored by the government due to happening after they decided what to put in the bill, where Google was (a) not a publisher, so not liable, (b) protected by the Defamation Act 1996 defences, and (c) protected by the Electronic-Commerce Directive defences), or even the new ones created in this bill, particularly Clause 10.
In practice, the aim behind the limit on anonymous authors seems to be part of a deliberate attack by the UK government on anonymous speech and the Internet in general. Website operators won't be aware of the intricacies of English defamation law, and so are likely to be scared into banning anonymous comments. In that regard, it is a very bad clause, plus it is limited to "websites" only, not the rest of the internet, or even anything in the offline world.
The Facebook case from last week was over a private prosecution for harassment, public order offences or malicious communications (or something). Nothing to do with defamation. In order to bring her prosecution, the victim had to get a standard order from the court compelling Facebook to hand over whatever details they had (IP addresses, account names, email addresses) that would help identify the posters. This type of order comes from a 1970s case (Norwich Pharmacal) and has been used mainly against ISPs for copyright infringement. Nothing new to see here. Other than the press, and MPs using it to conflate defamation with "trolling" and "cyber-bullying", to fight anonymity and the Internet.
Personally I find "entitlement" too strong a word. I imagine for the majority of those who pirate (whether legally or illegally, depending on jurisdiction), they don't feel that they have some fundamental right or entitlement to watch a particular film - they just want to, and they can, so they do. And there are plenty of moral grounds for justifying such actions - just have a look elsewhere in this thread. Whether or not you accept them as sufficient is another matter.
That said, what's wrong with a consumer feeling entitled? Knowing what they want, how they want it and for what price they are willing to pay; in the case of Game of Thrones, that they want to watch it, whenever and wherever they want to, and without paying $1000ish a year for 10 hours of video. I know that "consumer rights" is treated as a dirty phrase in some places, but the job of a consumer-facing business is to provide consumers with what they want - if they don't, they tend not to last long. In many ways, the fact that certain copyright businesses have managed to survive for so long despite repeatedly refusing to give in to consumers demands (and in some cases, actively opposing them - see the hassle with drm-free music a few years ago), demonstrates just how strong these businesses are.
As to the bad business decision - the main one that the big copyright owners seem to be making is based on forgetting that pirates are consumers. Those high up the chain seem to see pirates as evil criminals who just want stuff for free regardless of the consequences, rather than seeing them as, in this case, 4 million people who are willing to go out of their way to watch the show - which, considering the amount of entertainment content available is pretty impressive alone - but don't, or can't watch it through the limited legal means.
I don't know about Sweden, but under English law (which is what was relevant for the extradition), having sex with someone without their consent is usually rape (depending on the way the sex happens), and the person must have the freedom and capacity to give that consent. In the condom case, the allegation is that the complainant only consented to sex *with* a condom, so sex without one would be non-consensual, thus rape (or similar).
In one of the other Assange situations, the complainant was allegedly asleep - which has special sub-laws about, presuming a lack of consent unless Assange can suggest otherwise. However, extradition hearings only cover whether or not the alleged offence is sufficient for extradition (and procedural stuff), and are not a proper trial - that is for the Swedes to do.
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Only halved? I thought these things were supposed to have a 70% reduction according to the earlier surveys. Oh wait, those surveys are complete rubbish, as is most data on this sort of thing. The surveys for how much this sort of thing would reduce filesharing are all over the place; according to the IFPI, the French version, Hadopi, would cause 71% reduction in unlawful file-sharing, whereas a ZdNet.fr survey put it at 4%. Then there was a really fun Hollywood-sponsored survey from Australia that found 74% would stop infringing - unfortunately, in the fine detail, it turned out only 11% were actually committing copyright infringement on a regular basis, so at least 15% of people don't infringe regularly, but wouldn't stop even if threatened by their ISP.
This is definitely one of those "detailed-study-complete-with-full-figures-and-methodology or it didn't happen" situations.
However, it is interesting to see that the RIANZ are claiming that half isn't enough, and that more needs to be done. It mirrors my concerns about these laws elsewhere (particularly in the UK, obviously) that they have no criteria for success or failure, nor any real way to measure effectiveness. It means that once implemented the RIAA/Rianz/BPI are free to say "This is working, so we need more!" or "This isn't working, so we need more!" or "We're not sure whether or not this is working, so we need more!" no matter what actually happens, and we're back to copyright enforcement for the sake of copyright enforcement.
Fortunately in the EU these sorts of charges to ISPs were declared unlawful, so copyright owners are being forced to meet most of the bill for the UK three-strikes program (although subscribers will have to pay an arbitrary £20 to appeal allegations made against them).
The one good thing about the UK version, though, is that the government were persuaded that, once the three-strikes law is in force, someone should actually look into whether or not such a law is needed or will do any good, so in a year or so, after over 1m letters being sent (and however many lawsuits and prosecutions), we may actually get some independent and reliable data on this whole "online infringement of copyright" thing.
[Disclaimer: I 'work' as a lobbyist in this area and am currently in the middle of consultation work on the UK version of this sort of thing - so I'm rather biased. For anyone in the UK interested in this, the Ofcom consultation is available here and closes on Thursday.]
Of course, making it really hard or near-impossible for him to get hold of firearms and ammunition would have a similar effect, probably limiting the number of people he could kill even further. In fact, he might be restrained by those around without anyone ending up dead - wouldn't that be nice and humane?
"Tough on crime" was directly created from the privatizations of prisons their security.
I think privatised prisons encourage the "tough on crime" aspect, but mainly I think it's a general conservative thing as most conservative-type voters (middle-aged, middle/upper class, rich enough to donate to the cause) think that they are good, and anyone who commits a crime is evil (particularly those dirty, poor people who make up the criminal underclass) - missing the fact that they've probably committed at least one crime before lunch. Thus by playing "tough on crime"*, politicians can help secure that chunk of voters.
Privatisation isn't enough, otherwise places without privatised prisons wouldn't have this problem. Sadly, we do.
*But only some crimes, such as those committed by people who are not decent, upstanding members of societies; so drug dealing, criminal damage, public disorder, but not large scale frauds, tax evasion, bribery and corruption.
Yes, but you'd need that with an elected head of state as well (unless you're proposing not having a head of state at all).
Actually, in the long term, an elected head of state could be more expensive as you would have to re-work your protocols ever 4/5-8-10 years (depending on term limits), plus you'd be starting with more normal houses (well, mansions probably) and fewer castles.
Agreed, although I prefer the analogy with marrying a table (or plant) as, in many places, non-human animals are generally regarded as property. I don't know about the US, but in English law it is surprisingly hard to leave property on trust to cats (or other pets) as they do not have legal personality to hold even the equitable title in the property. You end up having to create a purpose trust, which leads to all sorts of complications and stuff. Apparently it gives pet-rescue charities no end of problems (as, being charities, they are usually trusts themselves).
This sort of thing makes me wonder why we have legal marriage in the first place. Obviously there should not be any reason to stop people having religious (or secular) ceremonies, with fancy clothes, speeches, explicit declarations of love and promises of commitment and so on, but why legal marriage? In most places, legal marriage consists of a bundle of things designed to make it easier for people to live together (presumptions about ownership of property, inheritance stuff, tax breaks, next of kin things - although the specifics vary with jurisdiction). It seems to be the state's way of encouraging and rewarding stable long-term relationships, with the idea that stable long-term relationships are good for society in general. Whether or not marriage does that is another matter, and something that probably needs looking in to.
So, then you have the issue of what sort of marriage to allow... and that is a matter for society to determine (via elected officials), although it seems illogical and inequitable to deny it to certain groups of people simply because of historical/cultural prejudices. [As an aside, it is worth noting that the "marriage = man + woman" idea is fairly limited both geographically and temporally; already in many places "marriage = man/woman + man/woman" and in some "marriage = man + women". Interestingly, some parts of the US still had "marriage = white man + white woman, or non-white man + non-white woman" on the statute books until 2000; however unconstitutional it was. It's amusing to see people in those places complain about same-sex marriage "redefining" a centuries-old definition of marriage...]
I imagine quite a few homosexuals want love... however the issue with legal marriage is probably related to the way you have the state very publicly and firmly telling you that you do not have the same rights as other people; that somehow your relationship, your love etc. are not as important or worth as other people's. Given that, I think it is quite understandable that they would want to fix the law. Again, a comparison with the "anti-miscegenation" laws the US used to have is interesting; nowadays in many places it would be unthinkable to have such restrictions on marriage.
As another aside, I imagine that not all people who want same-sex marriage are homosexual, and suggesting so is a bit narrow-minded. There is a good percentage of the population that is bi-, and they should not be ignored or dismissed. Plus then you have issues of gender-reassignment, or unclear gender etc., which is one of the motivations for the proposed change in law in the UK. Under the current law, iirc, gender at birth is the determining factor for marriage, which can cause issues.
It's interesting how those three issues polyamoury, paedophilia and bestiality seem to always come up eventually in discussions of same-sex marriage. Of course, one of those things is not like the other, but they are all quite easy to "deal" with:
Polyamoury - I have no problem with this and see it as the next step after legalising same-sex marriage. There are some practical issues with defining it (such as transitivity, does A m B, B m C => A m C?) but on the whole it seems to have the same potential problems as other types of marriage. The only difference with "normal" marriage is the number of people involved. This is obviously different from the other two, in that polyamorous sexual relationships are perfectly legal in many places, unlike paedophilic or beastial ones (again, in most places).
Paedophilia - This is a bit problematic as the definition varies with jurisdiction. Afaik most places do not actually have laws against paedophilic relationships, onl
In English law it is "reasonable grounds" but it is pretty much the same. But yes, there is a strong risk of the IP address being given to law enforcement, who raid the place, carry off all computer equipment and assume that they can sort through things later (there's a case referenced in the document below, at paragraph 82). Obviously this can take months or years, with the computer equipment ending up with the copyright enforcement groups.
For a more detailed look at identifying people online in criminal or civil investigations, Richard Clayton's witness statement to the DEA judicial review is worth a read, particularly paragraphs 49 to 90.
Indeed. My understanding of the situation (having followed some of these cases etc., including attending court hearings) is that the tech companies get paid by the IP. Most other parties involved (the copyright owner, the legal team, the holding company that brings the case) get either a percentage of net profit, or a fixed fee. As such, it's in the tech. groups interests to provide as many IPs as they can, as cheaply as possible.
This is why they have been known to cut corners (such as just scraping a list of IPs from a tracker, rather than checking that any given IP is actually sharing the file at the particular time), or spend too much time actually looking into the technology. Interestingly, an "expert witness" in a recent English case noted that he"did not have [the software he was testifying with regard to] installed on his computer, and did not concern himself with how it worked").
In the ACSLaw leaked emails, one thing that was noted was that around 1 in 4 IP addresses that had been identified as infringing weren't even assigned by the ISP at the time when the alleged infringement occurred. That statistic, to me, suggests that something is pretty screwed up is going on with data gathering.
In some cases, I believe so. However, this would still not necessarily provide immunity from a copyright infringement claim wrt downloading from the investigator (depending on jurisdiction). You probably wouldn't be able to get away with an implied licence, as it could be argued that it is common knowledge much of this stuff is unlicensed. The point might, however, go some way to limiting the damages awarded (and any equitable remedies) if it can be shown that the only person at the other end of the connection was working with the copyright owner; i.e. there'd be no damage caused by uploading it to the investigator. Unless you're in the US, with you're lovely statutory damages...
Possibly, possibly not. Being a legal thing, this will vary hugely by jurisdiction, but in general I'm not aware of any contested case where an individual has been found liable, either jointly/vicariously, or through negligence, for the mere actions of another using their Internet connection.
A while back TorrentFreak looked into this, getting a couple of US lawyers to argue for and against this sort of liability. Unfortunately the "for" one only discusses negligence, and the "against" only looks into indirect and vicarious liability, so both could be perfectly correct...
This is where the tests for "negligence" come in (ignoring any statute law on the handling of firearms; obviously, where I'm from, possessing a rifle would probably be illegal in the first place). In common law negligence generally requires that there be some duty of care owed by the defendant to the claimant/plaintiff, that the defendant fell below the appropriate standard of care, which caused damage to the claimant that wasn't too remote.
Wrt allowing someone to use your Internet (or not securing it), it seems possible that there may not even be a duty in place (due to a lack of proximity, unless children are involved), and it would be easy to argue that the standard wasn't breached by simply having an unsecured or weakly secured network, or letting someone use a computer unsupervised (that would be far too onerous).
It would be an interesting, if pointlessly expensive, case to argue, and afaik, that hasn't been argued either in the US or the UK (the first article references a case, but I have a strong feeling that may be a summary judgment).
Things designed to circumvent DRM are illegal in the EU. In some countries, to a criminal extent. Even if they can also be used to break DRM in order to do something perfectly legal with the stuff.
... but across the EU, video renting is an act restricted by copyright. So you have to pay a licence fee to do so (it's why there's no EU-equivalent of the early Netflix system).
And yes, used games sales are supposedly a major source of lost revenue to game companies, which is why online sales, and now "buy the game, but you need an account-specific code to do anything with it" sales are so popular; they prevent re-sale. And it seems the CJEU is saying that this is wrong, but I haven't read through the judgment yet.
Aside from his appeal to the High Court at the end of this month, or the potential appeal to the Supreme Court, CJEU or ECrtHR after that... There are two sides to extradition from the UK; one is the political side (the government saying he can go, although they tend to need a good reason for refusing) and the legal side (a court finding that the legal requirements for extradition have been satisfied). If either fails, extradition doesn't happen.
Maybe it's because they don't actually have to govern or anything.
Or get elected, which involves raising huge amounts of money, and [tricking] persuading the public that you're worth voting for.
why does digital distribution need to run on scarcity economics? It's not scarce, so it's not valuable? Why, just because it's trivial to copy music digitally, is digital music now considered to have little-to-no value?
You're confusing (digital) music and its creation with digital music files. Digital music files (mp3s, flacs etc.) have virtually no value; they're just information and can be copied, deleted, shared (almost) effortlessly (and supply and demand comes in). The music itself is a little more complex; mainly because it doesn't really exist, without being expressed. The "valuable" part of music is the creation (and first recording) of it. Unfortunately that only happens once, so can't really be re-sold. Even then, there is so much music available now (having already been created) that there is an argument (based on supply and demand) that new music of itself is of little value.
I am not an economist, but scarcity is important because if something isn't scarce, it is hard to get people to pay for it (as in "have a nice jar of air, only $10"). Either you have something that is of itself scarce (gold being a fairly good example), you add scarcity by introducing an extra component ("this is a jar of air that's come from [somewhere important], one of only 5 in existence"), or you add scarcity by introducing a service element ("this is a tank of air, but highly compressed, and prepared especially so you can use it to go diving"). Or you use the law to impose some sort of artificial scarcity ("here's a jar of air; note that it's currently illegal to breath air from anywhere else, and we can sue you/have you locked up if you dare to do so").
So given this, how do we apply these to music? Well, music isn't scarce, so you're going to have trouble selling music in general. Can an extra component be added? Yes. That's where the CD comes in, or the "extended, improved, special limited edition" CD, with fancy artwork, bonus features, signed etc. (where the valueless digital files are bundled with something that can be made scarce). Can a service element be added? Yes, that's your live performance, signing, getting fans involved with the creation process and interacting with them, or providing a service for accessing the valueless music files (i.e. what iTunes, Spotify and all those others do). Or you try to enforce copyright, or convince people that they shouldn't share music on their own (which seems to go against the point of music?).
Of course, the real world isn't quite as straightforward as that, as "perceived value" is more important than actual value (hence a CD with a handful of songs can cost the same as a DVD box-set which took considerably more money to create). And this is where a lot of the media/marketing campaigns come in, with interested groups trying to convince us that there is something special or magical about music (or a particular musician's work). Or people such as the original author, suggesting that artists should be entitled to extra stuff, beyond the rest of us, because they're special. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.
As for the underlying issue of this activity "devastating the music industry", as someone who has been studying this in depth for a few years now, reading accounts from various people, watching the numbers (those of which are available), I'm yet to be convinced that there's sufficient evidence to come to any conclusion (other than this one, obviously).
Onto the specific articles, the NPR blog post struck me as a typical "intern, just starting the job, and writing a few words in a quiet corner about thoughts on the music business from a radio perspective." The response seems to be typical of someone who has a lot to say (and wants to say it strongly), and is going to say it whether relevant or not (somewhat like this post... but meh, it's a free internet). It's well-written and sounds convincing, but most of the content is rather thin (such as the cherry-picked statistics that don't say anything, anecdotes, a
Two points. Firstly, they have to explain it to the UK Supreme Court first, since the UDHR is incorporated into UK law (though I forget as which Act). Secondly, it's the Home Office: they can't explain shit to anyone.
That said, they've got another problem: implementing the proposed act is going to require a lot of money at a time when the Treasury is exceptionally keen on departments cutting their spending and the public disinclined to be keen on further security restrictions. Getting the Act through Parliament without significant neutering is going to be very hard, and articles like TFA are going to encourage the emasculation process.
Firstly, the UDHR isn't the ECHR. The UDHR has the effect of a treaty, so is only binding on the Government, and governments are perfectly happy to ignore it, with little interference from the UN. The ECHR is sort of binding on the UK via the Human Rights Act, and yes, the UK Supreme Court (or even the English High Court) would be within its power to declare this law incompatible with the ECHR, or overturn any order issued by the Home Secretary under it. However, for that to happen, orders have to be issued, then challenged, then appealed.... compare it with the illegal s44 Terrorist Act stop-and-search powers; they were used for 10 years before finally repealed (in 2010 alone, used on some 28,000 people). The law itself is primary legislation, so can't be struck down even if it breaches the ECHR, although the European Court of Human Rights could issue fines over it, but that would take even longer than going through UK courts.
As to the cost; the UK budget is about £700bn, this is "estimated" to cost £1.8bn over 10 years; that's about 1/40 of 1% of the annual budget. For a law described as being a "criminal's nightmare" to help capture "criminals, terrorists and paedophiles", the cost is not going to be an issue. Of course, it will spiral out of control, but then it's too late.
But, if you are using say, Gmail over a https connection, how would UK find out the headers in that case?
Your connection to GMail is encrypted, Gmail to destination(say, Hotmail) could happen outside UK, and destination(Hotmail) can be viewed over an encrypted connection again.
They can find them out either by doing man-in-the-middle attacks on the traffic, or by compelling Google (or Microsoft) to give them access anyway. While these companies may have their main offices outside the UK, while they have assets in the UK they can still be sued.
This law gives the government the power to order ISPs to do this, and to order any UK certificate authorities to co-operate. Oh, and this can be done secretly, with only a couple of government thingamies needing to be consulted.
If you read the bill document, there's a chunk dedicated to explaining why this doesn't breach Article 8.
That may not convince the ECrtHR though, but the government is also trying to drive back the scope of article 8, so they may get away with it. Even if they don't, if it goes anything like the illegal stop-and-search powers under s44 Terrorism Act 2000, the powers could be in place for a decade before it gets fixed.
The Lib Dem leadership is supporting this, due to the addition of certain "safeguards" (although I haven't been able to spot them yet). I was at an event a few weeks ago when one of their junior ministers explained their position, he spoke for a good 5 minutes without actually saying anything. It's the backbench Lib Dems and Conservatives (the ones who don't get the weekly security briefings scaring them as to all the evil terrorists out there) that are trying to fight this.
1) The UK already has a law that can lock someone up for failing to decrypt data when asked to by a court, so Truecrypt won't help.
2) This law gives the Home Secretary the power to do anything she wants to ensure access to communications data. That includes ordering website providers (including Facebook, while it has assets in the jurisdiction) to comply, so connecting securely to Facebook, Google etc. won't help you if they just roll over (which they have in the past to UK orders).
3) This law would also give them the power to force any UK certificate authority to give the government what they need to perform man-in-the-middle attacks on encrypted traffic (combined with black boxes at all ISPs), so SSL won't help either. There are hints they already have such a thing lined up.
Oh, and this doesn't just cover the Internet, but also phones and the post. Oh, and the police etc. can access this data without a warrant.
While this may be a case of politicians not knowing what they're talking about, the people behind this *do*. That's the really scary part.
Actually, this defamation stuff is about websites not allowing people to post things unless they can be identified by readers, rather than anything to do with the website being able to identify them via IP addresses.
But it's not your fault you misunderstood, most of the media (and many MPs) have completely screwed this story up, conflating it with a completely separate issue from last week of criminal harassment. See my comment below for more details.
You all just got trolled by the media and Ken Clarke. This is not about forcing anyone to hand over any information, websites aren't automatically liable for all the content on them, and is nothing to do with last week's Facebook case (although some MPs debating the Bill still think it was).
This story is about the Defamation Bill, currently going through the UK Parliament. For the most part, it simply codifies existing case law (but with enough pointless changes in terminology and detail to cause headaches for lawyers and courts for a few years). However, clause 5 creates a new defence to defamation specifically for operators of websites. However, it can be defeated if it is "not possible for the claimant to identify the person who posted the statement" (although no definition on "identify" is given). This doesn't force websites to do anything, nor does it remove any of the multitude of existing defences or limits to defamation claims against them (see, for example, a recent case involving Google, which has been ignored by the government due to happening after they decided what to put in the bill, where Google was (a) not a publisher, so not liable, (b) protected by the Defamation Act 1996 defences, and (c) protected by the Electronic-Commerce Directive defences), or even the new ones created in this bill, particularly Clause 10.
In practice, the aim behind the limit on anonymous authors seems to be part of a deliberate attack by the UK government on anonymous speech and the Internet in general. Website operators won't be aware of the intricacies of English defamation law, and so are likely to be scared into banning anonymous comments. In that regard, it is a very bad clause, plus it is limited to "websites" only, not the rest of the internet, or even anything in the offline world.
The Facebook case from last week was over a private prosecution for harassment, public order offences or malicious communications (or something). Nothing to do with defamation. In order to bring her prosecution, the victim had to get a standard order from the court compelling Facebook to hand over whatever details they had (IP addresses, account names, email addresses) that would help identify the posters. This type of order comes from a 1970s case (Norwich Pharmacal) and has been used mainly against ISPs for copyright infringement. Nothing new to see here. Other than the press, and MPs using it to conflate defamation with "trolling" and "cyber-bullying", to fight anonymity and the Internet.
Personally I find "entitlement" too strong a word. I imagine for the majority of those who pirate (whether legally or illegally, depending on jurisdiction), they don't feel that they have some fundamental right or entitlement to watch a particular film - they just want to, and they can, so they do. And there are plenty of moral grounds for justifying such actions - just have a look elsewhere in this thread. Whether or not you accept them as sufficient is another matter.
That said, what's wrong with a consumer feeling entitled? Knowing what they want, how they want it and for what price they are willing to pay; in the case of Game of Thrones, that they want to watch it, whenever and wherever they want to, and without paying $1000ish a year for 10 hours of video. I know that "consumer rights" is treated as a dirty phrase in some places, but the job of a consumer-facing business is to provide consumers with what they want - if they don't, they tend not to last long. In many ways, the fact that certain copyright businesses have managed to survive for so long despite repeatedly refusing to give in to consumers demands (and in some cases, actively opposing them - see the hassle with drm-free music a few years ago), demonstrates just how strong these businesses are.
As to the bad business decision - the main one that the big copyright owners seem to be making is based on forgetting that pirates are consumers. Those high up the chain seem to see pirates as evil criminals who just want stuff for free regardless of the consequences, rather than seeing them as, in this case, 4 million people who are willing to go out of their way to watch the show - which, considering the amount of entertainment content available is pretty impressive alone - but don't, or can't watch it through the limited legal means.
I don't know about Sweden, but under English law (which is what was relevant for the extradition), having sex with someone without their consent is usually rape (depending on the way the sex happens), and the person must have the freedom and capacity to give that consent. In the condom case, the allegation is that the complainant only consented to sex *with* a condom, so sex without one would be non-consensual, thus rape (or similar).
In one of the other Assange situations, the complainant was allegedly asleep - which has special sub-laws about, presuming a lack of consent unless Assange can suggest otherwise. However, extradition hearings only cover whether or not the alleged offence is sufficient for extradition (and procedural stuff), and are not a proper trial - that is for the Swedes to do.