Ah, perhaps I wasn't as clear there as I could have been.
I'm saying that I'd rather that there was less stuff classified as child porn (and so illegal to possess, or come across even accidentally) that doesn't involve any abuse in its creation and is relatively harmless.
This way, the actual "abuse images" would be a larger subset of "child porn", but because the set of "child porn" would be smaller, not because there were more "abuse images".
The only consent that matters is informed consent. Children cannot provide this.
Now define "children". In many places it is (in this context) "under 18". I'm sorry, but I think some people under 18 can make informed decisions about certain issues (often part of the problem is that they are not given all the relevant information, because gods help us if under 18s are told about one of the fundamental principles of life... but that's another issue). Again, in some places, the age for child porn is higher than the age for marriage. Do you think that someone can make an informed choice about sex and marriage but not about taking their top off in front of a camera?
We are not discussing those cases, are we?
But I think we are; we have to discuss all possibilities that the law could lead to in order to prevent absurdities. And yes, common sense should prevail, but it doesn't (see the infamous Twitter joke trial for one obvious example). In particular with child porn it seems that common sense is sacrificed for the sake of "protecting children". And yes, it can become a case of arguing over age; but again, people don't magically change overnight on their birthdays - nor are all people the same, so one must acknowledge that any age limit in law is arbitrary (one only has to look at the wide range in sex-consent laws now to see this; ranging from 21 to 13 - or in some cases, there is no limit - or historically when it could be even lower).
U.S. law also seems to presume that a child is harmed by the act of involving them in creating this material.
And that is an assumption. It should be backed by logic and science (as should all laws). Otherwise the law becomes meaningless and arbitrary. We could assume that standing on one leg causes earthquakes and use that to justify executing anyone with only one leg... it doesn't make it right. Whether or not you think that is right, it still must be recognised as an assumption.
Remember, all legislation is someone's morality.
This is a sad truth; ideally law should be based on logic, reason and science. Possibly based around a few fundamental rights that could be considered a "moral" issue.
Yes, it must. Actually, the distribution fundamentally makes it possible to exist
Existence is required for distribution, but the desire for distribution does not logically prove existence. Nor does it necessarily encourage. It may do so, but I don't think we can go as far as to say it "must".
In terms of presumptions of legality, there is a subtle distinction you have missed. CAI are defined to be illegal, but not all pictures of children are CAI. Therefore your comparison should be between MP3 files and pictures of under 18s, or between unlicensed MP3s and CAIs. But yes, in the case I brought up, the most likely explanation is "loss of revenue". I would argue that piracy may lead to a decrease in revenue for copyright owners, not (as some claim) that it discourages creativity itself.
That is a twisted logic I assume you came to as justification for your logic otherwise.
It is twisted logic, but logic nonetheless:
We assume that the free (as in freedom) distribution of material discourages creativity - this comes from the argument that copyright infringement discourages creativity - something I think is hard to justify, but is an argument that has been used.
child abuse images require the abuse of children to produce.
the purpose of blocking is to prevent the free distribution of material
the [anti-piracy group] support the blocking of CAI to help justify the blocking of copyrighted material (see
Apparently "defendants lost the right to anonymity in 1988" (source) but I don't have a Statutory or Case law reference for that. Nor does that explicitly state that it applies to all cases. I would imagine, however, that it does.
Also, skimming through case law records (on Bailii), I can't see any anonymised cases after 1988.
But then there's an argument that naming them could lead to more false accusations as well, so it all gets confused again. Of course, in the case of possession of child porn (I hate that phrase; much rather use child abuse images, but sadly that is but a small subset of child porn) this should not be an issue.
It is also worth noting that, in general (although the laws in the UK are getting more relaxed about it these days) a Court is not supposed to be informed of any previous accusations or convictions of a defendant - so why should the "court of public opinion" be any different?
I think you may have misunderstood my question - I know what is illegal (or at least the relevant laws) and why it is (we have reactionary politicians with media- rather than logic-driven policies) illegal - I want to know why it should be illegal.
It's not the viewing of the material, per se, that should be illegal, but the creation of the material.
And I agree with this - in most cases. But that doesn't explain why possession (in some cases, even accidentally) should be illegal.
I also agree that there are consent issues with children; although it is for society to decide. Obviously when someone turns 18 they don't magically become capable of giving consent (after all, in the UK one can get married at 16... but not publish nude photos until 18... how does that make sense?) so like all age-based laws, it is completely arbitrary.
It isn't just a consent issue, though, it is an informed consent thing. The most obvious example of this is with EULAs, where people will consent to handing over their souls - the problem isn't that they weren't old enough to consent but that they weren't informed.
Moving on from consent - it isn't illegal to take pictures of children. It isn't even illegal to take nude pictures (in most places). It is usually considered appropriate (although decreasingly) for parents to take baby photos - or even young-child photos. Going back to the marriage thing, in the UK it is fine to possess pornographic pictures of someone aged 16 or 17 provided you are married to or in a long-term relationship with them - so really this whole area of law is a bit confused and messed up.
The next question is "what harm does it do?" - and this is a tricky one - partly because taboos make it very hard to do unbiased scientific research on the issue. Now, I want to make one thing very clear I am fully against any sort of abuse of children (or anyone else, for that matter). No compromises there. But how exactly does possessing a picture (or drawing) count as abuse?
This is where the change in definition comes in: In some circles some child porn is now being referred to as "child abuse images" to make the distinction between "images of children being abused, or who were abused to obtain them" and "images (including drawings) of children taken innocently but being used in a sexual context". The trouble is that it can be hard to tell these apart some time.
It is also worth remembering that some images of naked children are perfectly acceptable - particularly in art (a classic example being this - although it is worth noting that apparently female equivalents have caused issues) - so what if someone takes such art and uses it for sexual purposes, is that ok? Do we have to ban all art involving nudity of anyone who might be under 18?
Now, those are just some thoughts that I felt like throwing out there - but I hope it makes it clear that this issue is very complicated and not thought through by most people, including politicians. Unfortunately, (as you pointed out) it is very hard to fight against it without being demonised because "think of the children" is a very powerful motivator. I'm not saying we should legalise all child porn or CAIs, but I am saying that we shouldn't pretend that the issue has been properly thought through and is anything other than a reactionary impulse.
One last thought;
distribution is generally held, it seems, to encourage this material
It always amuses me when the anti-piracy lobby, when campaigning for Internet filters to block access to copyrighted material, hold up the success of the filters already being used to block child porn. According to them, the distribution of their content (for free) discourages the production of material, but in the case of child porn the distribution (potentially for free) enc
Caution: massive generalisation - do not take too seriously
The two are intricately linked, though. The Mob are pushed on by the Media who write to please the Mob. Mob-behaviour is part of human nature (it seems), so the only want to stop it is to discourage the Media from egging them on.
When there's a mob, there's usually a guy at the back encouraging everyone, shouting out how evil whatever is - but as soon as anything goes wrong he steps back and says "nothing to do with me, I didn't touch anything" - that's the (bad) Media, in my opinion.
Recently there was a big stir caused here over proposed plans to make the defendants in rape cases anonymous. For some reason it was decided that this would be terrible, as anyone accused of rape is obviously guilty and so deserves no protections... Something about this strikes me as simply wrong - and it applies in this case as well.
The way our society is geared up we don't just have trial by court, but trial by media; if the media decides someone is guilty, then it doesn't matter what the court decides, the defendant is screwed. In my opinion, defendants should have the right to anonymity especially in "socially disgusting" cases such as most sex-based crimes.
Of course, these days child porn over here could consist of stick figures, so the actual laws themselves could do with a serious overhaul - remind me again why mere viewing of material should be illegal?
At no point does anything in the Digital Economy Act require ISPs to monitor their users. In fact, if not done anonymously that could well be illegal under European Law (see the Phorm case). The only people that ISPs are obliged to notify of anything under the DEA are subscribers when the ISP has received a Copyright Infringement Report about it.
If you're going to bring up the DEA, I suggest you read up on it first. As it happens, I've spent most of the last few days writing up a guide to the relevant parts of the DEA; the first couple of parts are in my journal and everything written so far is on the PPUK website.
There is a lot of misinformation going around about the DEA, and it is hard to effectively fight it when the people you are fighting alongside keep getting things wrong.
Before people comment on the McKinnon case, I really think they should be required to read the excellent series of posts on the subject by Jack of Kent - an English lawyer (of both kinds at one point) and award-winning "leading law blogger". It may be a bit legally technical in places, but is very informative and quickly cuts through a lot of the misinformation spewed out by the media on this case.
It should be noted that the "less than 400k subscribers" loophole isn't actually in the law but the draft code. It is subject to being changed at the whim of Ofcom. Also, all that means currently is that those with fewer than 400k don't have to implement things right now, but Ofcom is required to re-evaluate things regularly and can drop that number if they feel it is needed. There's a lot of misinformation going around about what is actually in the Digital Economy Act, and I hope some upcoming posts on the PPUK website should help clarify some of it (as Ofcom aren't doing a particularly good job themselves).
Unfortunately I am not an expert in US law, but I would imagine that Freedom of Speech issues (the first amendment to the US constitution iirc) could be raised by the government taking control of domain names.
If they had just taken them down (i.e. ICANN had confirmed that they were breaching the T&Cs of their registration and therefore, contractually, they could remove them) that might not have been so much of an issue, but with the various government departments seizing the domains and putting their own stamp on them, that is another issues. Other rules of laws (such as being proportionate, balanced, fair, open and all that) may also be being violated. Again, I do not know if they are enshrined in US legislation.
Of course, the OP wasn't particularly specific about what he was referring to; it may be that the law as it stands is dead; i.e. copyright law - given that very few people seem to follow it (on either "side") it could quite easily be considered "dead".
In fact, given how brief the OP was, your first response - calling them stupid and criticising any anti-[whatever] movement - would seem a little presumptuous. Particularly given that you then went on to make posts suggesting that you didn't understand the law (even if you have subsequently corrected that).
Copyrights are not property, and copyright infringement is not theft and is clearly distinguishable from theft.
As I said - semantics. The punishments are similar, as is the reasoning. Call it whatever you like, the result is the same.
Actually, the punishments aren't similar (at least, in the UK). In fact, there isn't a "punishment" as such for a normal breach of copyright in the UK, merely the payment of damages if a (civil) court finds them to have occurred. On the other hand, theft is a criminal offence and can result in a prison sentence (up to 7 years, I believe).
The result is not the same either; theft deprives someone of something they have. Copyright infringement doesn't. You can talk about "substitution rates" and "lost sales" and so on, but nothing is being taken.
Personally I don't agree with much of current copyright law, but I disagree even more with the no-such-thing-as-intellectual-property crowd. If I have to pick between no copyright/patent laws at all, and the laws we currently have, it's an easy choice, even if it means that I'll break the law myself on occasion.
Ah, but it isn't an "all-or-nothing" thing. You don't have to choose between wanting no copyright law, or the current copyright law (or what evils we will end up with under ACTA or the latest EU regulations) - that is the whole point of "reform". Making it better without getting rid of it all.
As for the phrase intellectual property - that originated in the 1850s and gained popularity in the 80s (during the "home taping is killing whatever" craze, iirc). It is merely a collective for referring to copyrights, trademarks and patents. It is just a name.
Calling something property doesn't make it property legally (which is why copyright infringement isn't theft). Ideas and information aren't property in the UK and there is case law to support that.
It strikes me that you are merely demonstrating his point that many people do not understand the law.
You can argue as much as you like that copyright infringement is "semantically" theft (personally, I don't think it is), but legally it isn't (not in the US, not in the UK). That is why we have copyright laws as well as theft laws (in the UK that's the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 and the Theft Act 1968).
Many people (including some self-styled "intellectual property lawyers" - i.e. people with law degrees) do not understand the full extend of copyright law. It is an unfortunate consequence of having hundred+ page long copyright laws.
Incidentally, authorisation isn't required (as a default) for copying; remember, copyright is temporary.
any time that a death penalty is suggested for anything less than homicide, there's something terribly wrong with the picture.
Quite a lot of people are also of the opinion that any time the death penalty is suggested for anything, there is something wrong with the picture. Something like 95 countries worth of people (including both my country and I).
We already have time travel. It goes with space travel; or moving. That's where all the (special or general) relativity stuff comes in - spacetime and all that (I prefer timespace, personally).
The tricks to travelling through time at a different rate would be: a) travelling through time at a different rate without having to bother travelling in space; b) managing to go faster than the speed of light and hence travel back in time (my understanding is that light sort of.. stays stopped in time) c) managing to slow down the relative speed you are travelling at so as to travel relatively faster through time.
The other way involves wormholes; or tunnelling directly from one part of spacetime to another; but that would possibly be rather hit-and-miss and you would likely want some sort of gates at the endpoints; if anything, that is more likely to come out of the Higgs-particle experiments, due to being around bending spacetime via gravity. Personally, the most likely sort of technologies I hope to see come out of this research is the ability to manipulate gravity, but that could be decades, if not centuries away - what we really need is a good power source first.
Or rather, that if I post something on Facebook from the UK, the FBI may scan it, check to see if there are any potential threats and then notify my local police about it. Fortunately, in this case, it seems that the local police didn't overreact by shutting down the school and arresting everyone (although apparently some parents would have rather they had).
So, what next? If this Written Declaration 29 thing makes it through Europe, we could be in a position where everything you enter into a search box will be picked up by an FBI-like organisation, filtered to see if there is anything remotely suspicious and then forwarded to the local police. Given that in the UK you can already be arrested and given a criminal record for making a dodgy joke on Twitter, I think we are right to be concerned by this level of monitoring and the reaction to it.
It's not just that they were actively scanning and searching what we assume (and hope) was publicly-available information but that they then felt it necessary to report a school-person's activity to the local police in another country possibly resulting in an arrest.
In this case, I regret somewhat that the ludicrously-high numbers would seem to have been made up by P2PNet, not by the RIAA.
P2PNet got that number by taking the $750-$150,000 per infringement damages that are entitled for copyright infringement under US law, and multiplying the lowest figure by the 200 million downloads also mentioned in the legal document they linked to. That only comes to $150bn, rather than $1.5tr, but as the upper bound would be $30tr, I guess that is acceptable.
Unfortunately, that 200m figure is the number of downloads of Lime Wire, not the number of copyright infringements the RIAA are claiming, so there is no real reason to multiply those numbers together. Even the RIAA accepts such a large amount as ludicrous and if you read the actual document, they only claim that "LimeWire’s liability undoubtedly will run into the hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars." Note that the RIAA can only get damages for infringements of material covered by their members, that aren't exempt under fair use, aren't done in other jurisdictions and that they can actually "prove" - so this also limits the scope of the damages.
Obviously this is still rather silly as LimeWire should not be liable for anything, but please try to avoid making up numbers - leave that to the professionals at the IFPI, MPA etc.
I think this just about highlights one of the two major problems with any sort of "crime reporting" system like this. The general public have very little idea what is actually a crime. Most of us have some vague idea what is illegal and what isn't, but actually tuning that into a criminal offence is probably beyond the majority. Personally, I've seen this particularly clearly with copyright stuffs (particularly when it comes to piracy, I am a Pirate, after all); I have some legal training (and have actually read our main copyright law here) and what the public seem to think is and isn't lawful is often quite different from what is actually the case.
The second problem is, obviously, that of knowingly-false use; you're just giving the less pleasant section of the Internet another thing to abuse.
PACE (updated by the Section 110 of the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2003 iirc) not only requires reasonable grounds for suspecting that the arrest is needed (which a pretty strong checklist of circumstantial requirements), it also requires some sort of offence to have been committed (or reasonable suspicion of one). Under PACE, a police officer can't just arrest anyone (in theory).
But again, under the various bits of terrorism legislation (not anti-terrorism legislation, note; terrorism in that it is designed to terrify the people) all this is rather academic.
Am I incorrect in thinking that it does require "Reasonable Suspicion" - random searches are not permitted (apart from under terrorism legislation)?
I think the key phrase there is "apart from under terrorism legislation". When you've got stop and search powers that can be used "whether or not the constable has grounds for suspecting" anything at all (from Section 45(1)(b) of the Terrorism Act 200 - note the year) it doesn't really matter if other laws require suspicion. Of course, in theory the police officer needs to have authorisation for each specific area where this takes place (either written or oral confirmed in writing), which runs out after 28 days, but that authorisation (from a senior police officer) can be renewed, so I think the entirety of Greater London has been an "area of high terrorist risk" or whatever for years.
Actually, there was a very similar law passed just last month that is similarly designed to restrict new technologies to help prop up the old guard. Wouldn't be at all surprised if it gets warped into something Messrs Murdoch can use to maintain their position.
So, some people* essentially made up a load of numbers to generate a catchy headline, throwing in some "back of the envelope" calculations to make it look real. That's never happened before...
But, oh look, it worked. Even the BBC bought the story and they generally try to be factually accurate. So, before long it will probably be included as an amusing anecdote in every story about loss-of-productivity-at-work, or the dangers-of-being-on-the-Internet and that sort of rubbish.
It is amazing how far one made-up number can go. How long before some company sues Google for loss of productivity? That could be fun to watch.
*not just anyone, people from a company that specialises in "Time Management, Productivity & Project Tracking software"... but no, they can't have any ulterior motive in exaggerating the "time lost" due to a website...
and (though not yet fully implemented) the United Kingdom
There is also a good chance that the new coalition government will look at stopping ours in its tracks, though that's by no means certain.
The current thought is that they'll only stop the web-blocking/censorship parts; and they won't actually stop it, they just won't implement it properly for now. As soon as the Lib Dems have been caught up (i.e. paid enough by the media corps) then that will likely be implemented as well.
The rest of the copyright-related parts are going ahead as planned with Ofcom working on the code of practice (or rather, asking the BPI nicely to do it all for them) and there is an open government consultation (closing tomorrow - 25/5) on the allocation of costs. The DEA is going to be pushed through whatever happens but it will take a few more months as it needs to be approved by Europe first.
Remember, the Tory front-bench voted for the Digital Economy Act, not against it.
They can be charged with some sort of offence against the mother (up to and including attempted murder, depending on the circumstances) but nothing against the foetus.
The really interesting part is that if the foetus is then born alive and dies (after a short period), it then counts as a person for that brief time, so it would be murder. Or if it is permanently damaged etc., the person who damaged it would be liable. But if it was stillborn, there could be no liability because it was never alive.
This means that if one is going to attack a pregnant woman and think the foetus might be damaged, (iirc) it is better (in terms of legal consequences) to ensure that the foetus is "killed". Sometimes the law works out in odd ways.
[Again, IANALmals, and this is under English&Welsh law]
Which means that while Cliff Richard could continue to collect royalties from anyone wanting to do a cover of his early work (assuming he wrote it), a radio station could set up playing recordings of his early work and not pay him a thing.
That highlighted bit should be "assuming he owns the copyright". Since the Copyright Act 1842 (an evil piece of legislation, to blame for much of our copyright problems today) copyright has counted as property and so can be bought and sold.
If someone else owns the copyright, it is them you must pay royalties to, no matter who wrote it. This is why, for example, EMI can refuse to publish the Beatles collection on iTunes or any other download service even though both the remaining Beatles would quite like this to happen.
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Ah, perhaps I wasn't as clear there as I could have been.
I'm saying that I'd rather that there was less stuff classified as child porn (and so illegal to possess, or come across even accidentally) that doesn't involve any abuse in its creation and is relatively harmless.
This way, the actual "abuse images" would be a larger subset of "child porn", but because the set of "child porn" would be smaller, not because there were more "abuse images".
The only consent that matters is informed consent. Children cannot provide this.
Now define "children". In many places it is (in this context) "under 18". I'm sorry, but I think some people under 18 can make informed decisions about certain issues (often part of the problem is that they are not given all the relevant information, because gods help us if under 18s are told about one of the fundamental principles of life... but that's another issue). Again, in some places, the age for child porn is higher than the age for marriage. Do you think that someone can make an informed choice about sex and marriage but not about taking their top off in front of a camera?
We are not discussing those cases, are we?
But I think we are; we have to discuss all possibilities that the law could lead to in order to prevent absurdities. And yes, common sense should prevail, but it doesn't (see the infamous Twitter joke trial for one obvious example). In particular with child porn it seems that common sense is sacrificed for the sake of "protecting children". And yes, it can become a case of arguing over age; but again, people don't magically change overnight on their birthdays - nor are all people the same, so one must acknowledge that any age limit in law is arbitrary (one only has to look at the wide range in sex-consent laws now to see this; ranging from 21 to 13 - or in some cases, there is no limit - or historically when it could be even lower).
U.S. law also seems to presume that a child is harmed by the act of involving them in creating this material.
And that is an assumption. It should be backed by logic and science (as should all laws). Otherwise the law becomes meaningless and arbitrary. We could assume that standing on one leg causes earthquakes and use that to justify executing anyone with only one leg... it doesn't make it right. Whether or not you think that is right, it still must be recognised as an assumption.
Remember, all legislation is someone's morality.
This is a sad truth; ideally law should be based on logic, reason and science. Possibly based around a few fundamental rights that could be considered a "moral" issue.
Yes, it must. Actually, the distribution fundamentally makes it possible to exist
Existence is required for distribution, but the desire for distribution does not logically prove existence. Nor does it necessarily encourage. It may do so, but I don't think we can go as far as to say it "must".
In terms of presumptions of legality, there is a subtle distinction you have missed. CAI are defined to be illegal, but not all pictures of children are CAI. Therefore your comparison should be between MP3 files and pictures of under 18s, or between unlicensed MP3s and CAIs. But yes, in the case I brought up, the most likely explanation is "loss of revenue". I would argue that piracy may lead to a decrease in revenue for copyright owners, not (as some claim) that it discourages creativity itself.
That is a twisted logic I assume you came to as justification for your logic otherwise.
It is twisted logic, but logic nonetheless:
- this comes from the argument that copyright infringement discourages creativity - something I think is hard to justify, but is an argument that has been used.
No.
Apparently "defendants lost the right to anonymity in 1988" (source) but I don't have a Statutory or Case law reference for that. Nor does that explicitly state that it applies to all cases. I would imagine, however, that it does.
Also, skimming through case law records (on Bailii), I can't see any anonymised cases after 1988.
I could be wrong, however - I'm not a lawyer.
But then there's an argument that naming them could lead to more false accusations as well, so it all gets confused again. Of course, in the case of possession of child porn (I hate that phrase; much rather use child abuse images, but sadly that is but a small subset of child porn) this should not be an issue.
It is also worth noting that, in general (although the laws in the UK are getting more relaxed about it these days) a Court is not supposed to be informed of any previous accusations or convictions of a defendant - so why should the "court of public opinion" be any different?
I think you may have misunderstood my question - I know what is illegal (or at least the relevant laws) and why it is (we have reactionary politicians with media- rather than logic-driven policies) illegal - I want to know why it should be illegal.
It's not the viewing of the material, per se, that should be illegal, but the creation of the material.
And I agree with this - in most cases. But that doesn't explain why possession (in some cases, even accidentally) should be illegal.
I also agree that there are consent issues with children; although it is for society to decide. Obviously when someone turns 18 they don't magically become capable of giving consent (after all, in the UK one can get married at 16... but not publish nude photos until 18... how does that make sense?) so like all age-based laws, it is completely arbitrary.
It isn't just a consent issue, though, it is an informed consent thing. The most obvious example of this is with EULAs, where people will consent to handing over their souls - the problem isn't that they weren't old enough to consent but that they weren't informed.
Moving on from consent - it isn't illegal to take pictures of children. It isn't even illegal to take nude pictures (in most places). It is usually considered appropriate (although decreasingly) for parents to take baby photos - or even young-child photos. Going back to the marriage thing, in the UK it is fine to possess pornographic pictures of someone aged 16 or 17 provided you are married to or in a long-term relationship with them - so really this whole area of law is a bit confused and messed up.
The next question is "what harm does it do?" - and this is a tricky one - partly because taboos make it very hard to do unbiased scientific research on the issue. Now, I want to make one thing very clear I am fully against any sort of abuse of children (or anyone else, for that matter). No compromises there. But how exactly does possessing a picture (or drawing) count as abuse?
This is where the change in definition comes in: In some circles some child porn is now being referred to as "child abuse images" to make the distinction between "images of children being abused, or who were abused to obtain them" and "images (including drawings) of children taken innocently but being used in a sexual context". The trouble is that it can be hard to tell these apart some time.
It is also worth remembering that some images of naked children are perfectly acceptable - particularly in art (a classic example being this - although it is worth noting that apparently female equivalents have caused issues) - so what if someone takes such art and uses it for sexual purposes, is that ok? Do we have to ban all art involving nudity of anyone who might be under 18?
Now, those are just some thoughts that I felt like throwing out there - but I hope it makes it clear that this issue is very complicated and not thought through by most people, including politicians. Unfortunately, (as you pointed out) it is very hard to fight against it without being demonised because "think of the children" is a very powerful motivator. I'm not saying we should legalise all child porn or CAIs, but I am saying that we shouldn't pretend that the issue has been properly thought through and is anything other than a reactionary impulse.
One last thought;
distribution is generally held, it seems, to encourage this material
It always amuses me when the anti-piracy lobby, when campaigning for Internet filters to block access to copyrighted material, hold up the success of the filters already being used to block child porn. According to them, the distribution of their content (for free) discourages the production of material, but in the case of child porn the distribution (potentially for free) enc
Caution: massive generalisation - do not take too seriously
The two are intricately linked, though. The Mob are pushed on by the Media who write to please the Mob. Mob-behaviour is part of human nature (it seems), so the only want to stop it is to discourage the Media from egging them on.
When there's a mob, there's usually a guy at the back encouraging everyone, shouting out how evil whatever is - but as soon as anything goes wrong he steps back and says "nothing to do with me, I didn't touch anything" - that's the (bad) Media, in my opinion.
Recently there was a big stir caused here over proposed plans to make the defendants in rape cases anonymous. For some reason it was decided that this would be terrible, as anyone accused of rape is obviously guilty and so deserves no protections... Something about this strikes me as simply wrong - and it applies in this case as well.
The way our society is geared up we don't just have trial by court, but trial by media; if the media decides someone is guilty, then it doesn't matter what the court decides, the defendant is screwed. In my opinion, defendants should have the right to anonymity especially in "socially disgusting" cases such as most sex-based crimes.
Of course, these days child porn over here could consist of stick figures, so the actual laws themselves could do with a serious overhaul - remind me again why mere viewing of material should be illegal?
No!
At no point does anything in the Digital Economy Act require ISPs to monitor their users. In fact, if not done anonymously that could well be illegal under European Law (see the Phorm case). The only people that ISPs are obliged to notify of anything under the DEA are subscribers when the ISP has received a Copyright Infringement Report about it.
If you're going to bring up the DEA, I suggest you read up on it first. As it happens, I've spent most of the last few days writing up a guide to the relevant parts of the DEA; the first couple of parts are in my journal and everything written so far is on the PPUK website.
There is a lot of misinformation going around about the DEA, and it is hard to effectively fight it when the people you are fighting alongside keep getting things wrong.
Before people comment on the McKinnon case, I really think they should be required to read the excellent series of posts on the subject by Jack of Kent - an English lawyer (of both kinds at one point) and award-winning "leading law blogger". It may be a bit legally technical in places, but is very informative and quickly cuts through a lot of the misinformation spewed out by the media on this case.
It should be noted that the "less than 400k subscribers" loophole isn't actually in the law but the draft code. It is subject to being changed at the whim of Ofcom. Also, all that means currently is that those with fewer than 400k don't have to implement things right now, but Ofcom is required to re-evaluate things regularly and can drop that number if they feel it is needed. There's a lot of misinformation going around about what is actually in the Digital Economy Act, and I hope some upcoming posts on the PPUK website should help clarify some of it (as Ofcom aren't doing a particularly good job themselves).
Unfortunately I am not an expert in US law, but I would imagine that Freedom of Speech issues (the first amendment to the US constitution iirc) could be raised by the government taking control of domain names.
If they had just taken them down (i.e. ICANN had confirmed that they were breaching the T&Cs of their registration and therefore, contractually, they could remove them) that might not have been so much of an issue, but with the various government departments seizing the domains and putting their own stamp on them, that is another issues. Other rules of laws (such as being proportionate, balanced, fair, open and all that) may also be being violated. Again, I do not know if they are enshrined in US legislation.
Of course, the OP wasn't particularly specific about what he was referring to; it may be that the law as it stands is dead; i.e. copyright law - given that very few people seem to follow it (on either "side") it could quite easily be considered "dead".
In fact, given how brief the OP was, your first response - calling them stupid and criticising any anti-[whatever] movement - would seem a little presumptuous. Particularly given that you then went on to make posts suggesting that you didn't understand the law (even if you have subsequently corrected that).
Copyrights are not property, and copyright infringement is not theft and is clearly distinguishable from theft.
As I said - semantics. The punishments are similar, as is the reasoning. Call it whatever you like, the result is the same.
Actually, the punishments aren't similar (at least, in the UK). In fact, there isn't a "punishment" as such for a normal breach of copyright in the UK, merely the payment of damages if a (civil) court finds them to have occurred. On the other hand, theft is a criminal offence and can result in a prison sentence (up to 7 years, I believe).
The result is not the same either; theft deprives someone of something they have. Copyright infringement doesn't. You can talk about "substitution rates" and "lost sales" and so on, but nothing is being taken.
Personally I don't agree with much of current copyright law, but I disagree even more with the no-such-thing-as-intellectual-property crowd. If I have to pick between no copyright/patent laws at all, and the laws we currently have, it's an easy choice, even if it means that I'll break the law myself on occasion.
Ah, but it isn't an "all-or-nothing" thing. You don't have to choose between wanting no copyright law, or the current copyright law (or what evils we will end up with under ACTA or the latest EU regulations) - that is the whole point of "reform". Making it better without getting rid of it all.
As for the phrase intellectual property - that originated in the 1850s and gained popularity in the 80s (during the "home taping is killing whatever" craze, iirc). It is merely a collective for referring to copyrights, trademarks and patents. It is just a name.
Calling something property doesn't make it property legally (which is why copyright infringement isn't theft). Ideas and information aren't property in the UK and there is case law to support that.
It strikes me that you are merely demonstrating his point that many people do not understand the law.
You can argue as much as you like that copyright infringement is "semantically" theft (personally, I don't think it is), but legally it isn't (not in the US, not in the UK). That is why we have copyright laws as well as theft laws (in the UK that's the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 and the Theft Act 1968).
Many people (including some self-styled "intellectual property lawyers" - i.e. people with law degrees) do not understand the full extend of copyright law. It is an unfortunate consequence of having hundred+ page long copyright laws.
Incidentally, authorisation isn't required (as a default) for copying; remember, copyright is temporary.
any time that a death penalty is suggested for anything less than homicide, there's something terribly wrong with the picture.
Quite a lot of people are also of the opinion that any time the death penalty is suggested for anything, there is something wrong with the picture. Something like 95 countries worth of people (including both my country and I).
We already have time travel. It goes with space travel; or moving. That's where all the (special or general) relativity stuff comes in - spacetime and all that (I prefer timespace, personally).
The tricks to travelling through time at a different rate would be:
a) travelling through time at a different rate without having to bother travelling in space;
b) managing to go faster than the speed of light and hence travel back in time (my understanding is that light sort of.. stays stopped in time)
c) managing to slow down the relative speed you are travelling at so as to travel relatively faster through time.
The other way involves wormholes; or tunnelling directly from one part of spacetime to another; but that would possibly be rather hit-and-miss and you would likely want some sort of gates at the endpoints; if anything, that is more likely to come out of the Higgs-particle experiments, due to being around bending spacetime via gravity. Personally, the most likely sort of technologies I hope to see come out of this research is the ability to manipulate gravity, but that could be decades, if not centuries away - what we really need is a good power source first.
Or rather, that if I post something on Facebook from the UK, the FBI may scan it, check to see if there are any potential threats and then notify my local police about it. Fortunately, in this case, it seems that the local police didn't overreact by shutting down the school and arresting everyone (although apparently some parents would have rather they had).
So, what next? If this Written Declaration 29 thing makes it through Europe, we could be in a position where everything you enter into a search box will be picked up by an FBI-like organisation, filtered to see if there is anything remotely suspicious and then forwarded to the local police. Given that in the UK you can already be arrested and given a criminal record for making a dodgy joke on Twitter, I think we are right to be concerned by this level of monitoring and the reaction to it.
It's not just that they were actively scanning and searching what we assume (and hope) was publicly-available information but that they then felt it necessary to report a school-person's activity to the local police in another country possibly resulting in an arrest.
In this case, I regret somewhat that the ludicrously-high numbers would seem to have been made up by P2PNet, not by the RIAA.
P2PNet got that number by taking the $750-$150,000 per infringement damages that are entitled for copyright infringement under US law, and multiplying the lowest figure by the 200 million downloads also mentioned in the legal document they linked to. That only comes to $150bn, rather than $1.5tr, but as the upper bound would be $30tr, I guess that is acceptable.
Unfortunately, that 200m figure is the number of downloads of Lime Wire, not the number of copyright infringements the RIAA are claiming, so there is no real reason to multiply those numbers together. Even the RIAA accepts such a large amount as ludicrous and if you read the actual document, they only claim that "LimeWire’s liability undoubtedly will run into the hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars." Note that the RIAA can only get damages for infringements of material covered by their members, that aren't exempt under fair use, aren't done in other jurisdictions and that they can actually "prove" - so this also limits the scope of the damages.
Obviously this is still rather silly as LimeWire should not be liable for anything, but please try to avoid making up numbers - leave that to the professionals at the IFPI, MPA etc.
I think this just about highlights one of the two major problems with any sort of "crime reporting" system like this.
The general public have very little idea what is actually a crime. Most of us have some vague idea what is illegal and what isn't, but actually tuning that into a criminal offence is probably beyond the majority. Personally, I've seen this particularly clearly with copyright stuffs (particularly when it comes to piracy, I am a Pirate, after all); I have some legal training (and have actually read our main copyright law here) and what the public seem to think is and isn't lawful is often quite different from what is actually the case.
The second problem is, obviously, that of knowingly-false use; you're just giving the less pleasant section of the Internet another thing to abuse.
PACE (updated by the Section 110 of the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2003 iirc) not only requires reasonable grounds for suspecting that the arrest is needed (which a pretty strong checklist of circumstantial requirements), it also requires some sort of offence to have been committed (or reasonable suspicion of one). Under PACE, a police officer can't just arrest anyone (in theory).
But again, under the various bits of terrorism legislation (not anti-terrorism legislation, note; terrorism in that it is designed to terrify the people) all this is rather academic.
Am I incorrect in thinking that it does require "Reasonable Suspicion" - random searches are not permitted (apart from under terrorism legislation)?
I think the key phrase there is "apart from under terrorism legislation". When you've got stop and search powers that can be used "whether or not the constable has grounds for suspecting" anything at all (from Section 45(1)(b) of the Terrorism Act 200 - note the year) it doesn't really matter if other laws require suspicion. Of course, in theory the police officer needs to have authorisation for each specific area where this takes place (either written or oral confirmed in writing), which runs out after 28 days, but that authorisation (from a senior police officer) can be renewed, so I think the entirety of Greater London has been an "area of high terrorist risk" or whatever for years.
Actually, there was a very similar law passed just last month that is similarly designed to restrict new technologies to help prop up the old guard. Wouldn't be at all surprised if it gets warped into something Messrs Murdoch can use to maintain their position.
So, some people* essentially made up a load of numbers to generate a catchy headline, throwing in some "back of the envelope" calculations to make it look real. That's never happened before...
But, oh look, it worked. Even the BBC bought the story and they generally try to be factually accurate. So, before long it will probably be included as an amusing anecdote in every story about loss-of-productivity-at-work, or the dangers-of-being-on-the-Internet and that sort of rubbish.
It is amazing how far one made-up number can go. How long before some company sues Google for loss of productivity? That could be fun to watch.
*not just anyone, people from a company that specialises in "Time Management, Productivity & Project Tracking software"... but no, they can't have any ulterior motive in exaggerating the "time lost" due to a website...
and (though not yet fully implemented) the United Kingdom
There is also a good chance that the new coalition government will look at stopping ours in its tracks, though that's by no means certain.
The current thought is that they'll only stop the web-blocking/censorship parts; and they won't actually stop it, they just won't implement it properly for now. As soon as the Lib Dems have been caught up (i.e. paid enough by the media corps) then that will likely be implemented as well.
The rest of the copyright-related parts are going ahead as planned with Ofcom working on the code of practice (or rather, asking the BPI nicely to do it all for them) and there is an open government consultation (closing tomorrow - 25/5) on the allocation of costs. The DEA is going to be pushed through whatever happens but it will take a few more months as it needs to be approved by Europe first.
Remember, the Tory front-bench voted for the Digital Economy Act, not against it.
They can be charged with some sort of offence against the mother (up to and including attempted murder, depending on the circumstances) but nothing against the foetus.
The really interesting part is that if the foetus is then born alive and dies (after a short period), it then counts as a person for that brief time, so it would be murder. Or if it is permanently damaged etc., the person who damaged it would be liable. But if it was stillborn, there could be no liability because it was never alive.
This means that if one is going to attack a pregnant woman and think the foetus might be damaged, (iirc) it is better (in terms of legal consequences) to ensure that the foetus is "killed". Sometimes the law works out in odd ways.
[Again, IANALmals, and this is under English&Welsh law]
Very nearly right, but just to be picky;
Which means that while Cliff Richard could continue to collect royalties from anyone wanting to do a cover of his early work (assuming he wrote it), a radio station could set up playing recordings of his early work and not pay him a thing.
That highlighted bit should be "assuming he owns the copyright". Since the Copyright Act 1842 (an evil piece of legislation, to blame for much of our copyright problems today) copyright has counted as property and so can be bought and sold.
If someone else owns the copyright, it is them you must pay royalties to, no matter who wrote it. This is why, for example, EMI can refuse to publish the Beatles collection on iTunes or any other download service even though both the remaining Beatles would quite like this to happen.