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MPAA Scores First P2P Jury Conviction
Posted by
Soulskill
on Fri Jun 27, 2008 05:59 PM
from the connection-reset-by-jury-of-peers dept.
from the connection-reset-by-jury-of-peers dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The MPAA must be celebrating. According to the BitTorrent news site Slyck.com, the Department of Justice is proclaiming their first P2P criminal copyright conviction, against an Elite Torrents administrator. The press release notes, 'The jury was presented with evidence that Dove was an administrator of a small group of Elite Torrents members known as "Uploaders," who were responsible for supplying pirated content to the group. At sentencing, which is scheduled for Sept. 9, 2008, Dove faces a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison.'"
Related Stories
[+]
Your Rights Online: Feds Shut Down Elite Torrents 738 comments
honkimon writes "Cnn Money reports,
"Government agents said the onslaught included 10 search warrants and
the shut down of a central Web site used to coordinate all file-sharing
activity on the Elite Torrents network. That Web site,
Elitetorrents.org, had a selection of copyrighted works
that government officials described as virtually unlimited.""
Submission: MPAA Scores First P2P Jury Conviction by Anonymous Coward
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Not "really" P2P (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Not "really" P2P (Score:4, Informative)
No he was not. As far as I can understand it he leaked material from the warez scene onto P2P.
Most (except probably a few unrespected crap groups) do not upload their material to P2P networks and don't want their material getting there. It is a security risk and it is exposing the scene.
These so called Uploaders on P2P torrent trackers are mostly people who have access to scene material in one way or another. Maybe just a crappy courier that isn't contributing or maybe someone who pays for leech or is hosting a server. Anyhow they are usually not respected individuals within the scene and upload things to P2P for either ideological reasons or just to get a bigger epenis.
Sorry for my rant but someone had to say it.
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Trickle down theory? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Not "really" P2P (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
How easy for the **AA's to stretch this win to make it P2P itself to be the crime?
Re:Not "really" P2P (Score:4, Informative)
Seems like quite a stretch, considering that rounding them up en masse [wikipedia.org] didn't have such an effect. Also, I can't be the only one disturbed that so many resources went to that.
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Insanity (Score:5, Insightful)
10 years in prison? I realize that's a maximum, but the reality is he's done nothing that should be even closely considered to being a danger to society.
This hangup about defending our bullshit economy which truly only services the "haves" in the first place is being taken to extremes and I'm getting tired of it.
I say pirate everything, convince your friends, family, etc. Let's see what they do when EVERYONE is downloading their shit. Are they going to throw us all in jail? Then where will they be?
Fuckers.
Re:Insanity (Score:5, Insightful)
I can see how you got the flambait mod, mainly for the last sentence.
However, you do have a valid point about just what danger to society this person poses and whether or not 10 years is a punishment that fits the crime.
It would certainly seem that the powerful in this country are pushing for stronger and stronger criminal punishments for what would otherwise be a civil matter between 2 entities.
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Re:Insanity (Score:5, Insightful)
A stiff fine would seem to be in order, and civil damages. Jail time is pretty harsh for this kind of IP crime though.
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Re:Insanity (Score:5, Interesting)
Jail time is pretty harsh for any kind of IP crime. That's just it though; It's INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY crime. It's not tangible.
A copyright defines rights which are granted to somebody from the government. They use these rights to diminish competition and allow them to have an advantage to collect profits for a reasonable period of time. The period of time is certainly no longer reasonable IMO, but that is up for debate.
What is not really up for debate, is that violating these rights falls within the jurisdiction of the civil courts. It was never supposed to be a matter for criminal courts. The GP of your post tried pointing out that seemingly corrupt government entities have been responsible for turning into a criminal matter, what has always been a civil matter. Simply to give them the upper hand. They don't need to spend money in the court systems defending their intellectual property against minor violations.
I recently watched a special about prison systems. I am 32 years old right now. I can remember being 22 years old, but that seems to be as far away from me now as being 11 years old. 10 YEARS is a very LONG time. Assuming that you get 60 years of adult life in this world, 1/6th of that being taken away is a huge punishment.
It's easy to forget that. I'm all for the death penalty and harsh criminal convictions, but only for violent crime. IP infringement is not a crime that we need to take 10 years from somebody for. Let's not forget that we will spend anywhere between 300K and 400K as taxpayers to do it too. Is is really that cost effective for us to do this? To protect big media companies? To protect society, or our values?
I just don't think so. Maybe huge fines and 6 months in jail or prison might be adequate.
I am more concerned by the fact that turning this into a criminal matter has provided government and corporations the impetus to do away with our privacy and rights altogether simply to provide protection for a few companies profit margins.
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Re:Insanity (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, if someone steals the secret designs for the new Widget(tm) that a company has then they should get jail time and that is an IP crime, although you could argue it's industrial espionage. We agree on this matter though. I would think probation would be enough even (plus a fine), not even six months. Six months in jail can totally ruin a person's life, whereas if they get probation they might just be able to keep their job/house, etc.
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Re:Insanity (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, if someone steals the secret designs for the new Widget(tm) that a company has then they should get jail time
I disagree. If they are in jail they are costing society money. If they are given a massive fine that won't go away with bankruptcy then their life will be dedicated to contributing money back into society in one way or another. They might not like it, but it sure beats jail time, and it's not like they are at a high risk of hurting anyone.
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Re:Insanity (Score:4, Insightful)
It's easy to forget that. I'm all for the death penalty and harsh criminal convictions, but only for violent crime. IP infringement is not a crime that we need to take 10 years from somebody for. Let's not forget that we will spend anywhere between 300K and 400K as taxpayers to do it too. Is is really that cost effective for us to do this? To protect big media companies? To protect society, or our values?
Copyright laws have a huge cost to society, I think they should be abolished then we wouldn't have to deal with this crap.
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Re:Insanity (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Insanity (Score:5, Insightful)
Now don't you think that getting the kind of sentence that a rapist might get is a tad bit CRUEL AND UNUSUAL for downloading or uploading some worthless garbage?
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Re:Insanity (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Insanity (Score:4, Funny)
Sounds nice.. if it was people versus people... this is corporations versus people though, I'm surprised they don't have roving death squads.
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Re:Insanity (Score:5, Funny)
Clearly it already is in that category -- as "pirates" are regarded to have committed "assault with a deadly modem".
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Re:Insanity (Score:5, Interesting)
First, someone uploading a copyrighted item is NOT the same as "turning someones life upside down". Sorry, it is just not even close. Can you tell me that one high-paid exec of the RIAA/MPAA has had their "life turned into hell" because someone uploaded "Spiderman 3"? No.
Please get some perspective.
Oh, and spare me the "little artist" crap. The MPAA/RIAA take away the copyrights of those "little artist" and then do "creative accounting" to basically pay them shit for their works of art while trying to maximize their profits.
I have an idea, how about no corp can buy a copyrighted work from someone, they can only exclusively lease it for a period of no more then 5 years. This way the TRUE artist still holds the copyright. If the work is great and makes great money, THEN the real ARTIST has the corps by the balls after 5 years and can get a real fair deal for their work.
Not this "creative accounting" deal where a popular artist seems to have made NEGATIVE money in the first few years.
Yeah, this will never happen as long as the MPAA/RIAA are allowed to bribe our "representatives". Mickey Mouse needs another 200 years!
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Re:Insanity (Score:4, Insightful)
Ever hear of Tower Records? What happened to them? What happened to most of their big competitors? They've pretty much vanished within the last ten years, didn't they?
Wal-Mart happened to the big record chains. Tower and all those other bastards sold CDs at list price. Tower also expanded over aggressively in the 90's. High-volume, low-margin discount sellers is what killed the record chains, not piracy.
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Re:Insanity (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Insanity (Score:5, Interesting)
If someone COPIES Spider man 3, guess what, no physical property was taken. Someone copying spider man 3 doesn't take away the ability for other copies of spider man 3 to be sold.
I am not saying it is right. However, there is a HUGE difference and it should be treated as such. Maybe the cost of the movie/video/game/etc X 10?
So illegally upload/download spider man 3, and get fined $20 X 10 = $200. Sounds fair. The copyright holder would not have gotten a sale so now they get 10 sales! How more freaking fair can you be?
Oh, wait. Yeah, lets charge $1,000's for that copy AND put the person in jail for a long ass time.
Ah, the laws bought by Corporate America!
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
he's done nothing that should be even closely considered to being a danger to society
Ah, but you forget piracy funds terrorism...
I say pirate everything, convince your friends, family, etc. Let's see what they do when EVERYONE is downloading their shit. Are they going to throw us all in jail? Then where will they be?
The government would love this, as the entire populace could be stripped of most their constitutional rights and be easily controlled and turned in to virtual serfs as 'restitution'.
Re:Insanity (Score:4, Insightful)
But anything large-scale that isn't infrastructural (meaning recreational software) is going to essentially die in your sick little fantasyland.
No, it'll just need to be paid for differently: by charging for the programmers' labor instead of charging for copies of the files they produce.
How dare those people expect to make a living out of their work. It should all be free for you to use, and god [i]damn[/i] the whole "making enough money to eat" thing.
More like god damn the people who are too blind, or too attached to a broken business model, to realize that you don't need copyright to get paid for working. People in most other industries manage to get paid for their work without any special monopoly protections like copyright.
You tell those "fucking GNUtards" to "get a job in the real world", but maybe you should follow that advice yourself. You'll find that in the real world (i.e. industries that haven't become addicted to copyright), people don't do the work first, for free, and then spend months or years trying to get people to pay them for the work they've already done. They find customers first, and do the work once those customers have agreed to pay them for it.
Or is it just that now they've [i]already[/i] made the games, it's okay in your entitlement-based mind to say "oh, fuck you, we're going to take it and make it free for everyone, and too bad for you if you relied on it for income"?
If your income depends on people not being allowed to share information with each other, then you're doing it wrong.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Because the people in other industries are producing physical objects.
Look a little harder. Open the yellow pages and you'll find hundreds of businesses that don't produce physical objects - they perform services.
Writing software is a service too, and you can get paid for performing it, just like a barber gets paid for cutting hair and an accountant gets paid for balancing books. Just because copyright encourages you to think of a program as a thing that you create and sell doesn't mean that's the natural way to treat it, and certainly doesn't mean that's the only way to trea
Not that bad... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Now if they won for a downloader or innocent uploader
Define "innocent" uploader. Do you mean "uploader of copyrighted content who has not been arrested, given a jury trial, and convicted?" Or do you mean "uploader of uncopyrighted content"? Because there's a lot of legal difference between the two.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
While I dislike the **AA's tactics as much as the next guy...you wouldn't cut somebody slack for not realizing that, say, carrying a concealed weapon without a permit is illegal, would you? Or that going 105 MPH in a 55 MPH zone was illegal?
Ignorance isn't an excuse.
Worst idea evar!!!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
No this is horribly bad. First, it is a basic travesty of justice. Prison time for P2P? Unless he was putting nuclear weapon designs on P2P, there is no reason for this. lets put people in jail for twenty years if they steal a loaf of bread. That's progressive thinking!
Second, the legal system loves basing later decisions on prior landmark cases. this has just told every judge for the next fifty years that criminal punishment id ok for civil infractions.
Third, the economy is in the dumps, and every peerson we imprision for piddly ass crap like this is costing taxpayers $$$. Ten years is not cheap. The people responsable should be dragged into the street and tarred and feathered for such frivilious use of taxpayer money.
Finally, bad laws erode respect for good laws. The more people become acoustom to breaking laws that are poorly written, the more acoustom they become to breaking laws in general.
Very bad ruling.
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It might be a good idea... (Score:5, Insightful)
...to NOT name your group on a torrent site something that allows information about structure to be gleaned.
Sure, uploaders may be only uploading only legal content blah blah blah, but there's no reason to publicize your role in the organization unless you can sure as hell sheild yourself while these lawsuits are bounding about.
Even the mob knows to call people "freinds of ours", not money launderers, assasins, gun runners etc. Please don't flame me because this is "security through obscurity".... because sometimes it works i.e, I still don't know where angelina jolie lives. Well played angelina, you hot little baby collector.
Re:It might be a good idea... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:It might be a good idea... (Score:4, Informative)
TechTV.com did a full write-up, only to give in to a request to delete it by the cops. CNET's coverage was gone the next day too. MSNBC mentioned the situation on their station as well, pulled in because they had two former TechTVer's on-air. (One was at the anchor desk, and a former host of CyberCrime was working at the Laci Peterson trial.)
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Re:It might be a good idea... (Score:5, Funny)
Please don't flame me because this is "security through obscurity".... because sometimes it works i.e, I still don't know where angelina jolie lives.
Ok, I won't flame you. However I will mock you mercilessly.
If you want to give an example of security through obscurity working, next time you might want to go with something that's obscure, or maybe something that's working, or better yet maybe even go with something that is obscure AND working. LOL.
Château Miraval. 83570 Correns, France.
Google Maps Satellite Photo. [google.com]
Article with close aerial photo. [hollywoodgrind.com]
The WIKIPEDIA page for Château Miraval. [wikipedia.org]
Château Miraval's own website. [miraval.com]
And no, don't even think of suggesting what is Angelina Jolie's bra size? [google.com] as a better example of obscurity than her address. 36-C.
Ahhhh... yeah.... the next time you want to say security through obscurity sometimes works, you might want to go with a slightly different example. In fact never ever ever again attempt to use Angelina Jolie in the same sentence with the word obscurity. You're punished. Go sit in the corner.
And no, you can't take pictures of Angelina with you. You're punished means you're supposed to sit in the corner thinking about how bad you've been, not thinking about her being a naughty naughty girl.
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Those types of people legitimise the MPAA efforts (Score:4, Informative)
Sadly, when you are pushing prerelease stuff, you cross a very firm line into illegal territory. There is no grey area. They *are* costing the studios money, and they *are* violating both the spirit and word of copyright law. The maximum possible sentence is definately overkill, but I can't really argue with the conviction itself.
Re:Those types of people legitimise the MPAA effor (Score:5, Interesting)
Sadly, when you are pushing prerelease stuff, you cross a very firm line into illegal territory. There is no grey area. They *are* costing the studios money,
I don't agree that distribution of pre-release content costs the studios any more than distribution of post-release content. The MAFIAA do not have a business plan that is significantly based on release of content. I.e. they do not use something like the "ransom" model where they charge money for the release of content rather than the distribution of content. Thus illegal distribution of pre-release content is not significantly any more costly to the MAFIAA than illegal distribution of post-release content.
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Re:Those types of people legitimise the MPAA effor (Score:5, Insightful)
:-)
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A tradeoff (Score:4, Funny)
Ten years? That could be fair if they show movies to the inmates sans FBI warnings. That way I don't think he would be losing any more of his life than the rest of us.
Darknet, GO! (Score:5, Interesting)
Quite possibly things may evolve to the point where you aren't allowed to join without proving your identity and uploading something illegally. Compare Russian Business Network, who do this for the same purpose: you won't betray the group if they have the dirt on you also.
Mix that with segmentation among darknets to prevent inevitable compromises from taking everything down and you're golden once you set up trusted peers between different subdarknets to diffuse data between them.
NOT P2P (Score:5, Insightful)
You gotta love these people. They are trying to make it sound like P2P itself is criminal, or certainly criminal by association.
This piracy group merely chose P2P as a medium to transfer it's files.
That would be like government catching a bunch of whatchamacallit smugglers on bicycles and then announcing "the first bicycle whatchamacallit criminal conviction". Ummm, yeah right. What the hell does bicycles have to do it?
It's not surprising that piracy groups have chose P2P to transfer their files. It is most efficient transfer medium with the highest market share. It used to IRC DCC transfer, and then before that it was FTP. A long time before that, it was file transfers through BBS. Bootleg copies used to be made on cassette tapes as well. Did that mean cassette tapes were also inherently "evil" and predisposed towards piracy? I think not.
Sorry, I guess I just can't get over how completely full of shit some people are. We can argue about piracy and intellectual copyrights all day long. That's fine. Let's just not be intellectually dishonest doing it.
10 years? Please USA, get a grip (Score:5, Informative)
I've seen cases of murderers getting less than this.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
10 years is just the maximum possible penalty. In a few extreme cases, such as, say, the head of a large-scale commercial piracy ring, I could see it occasionally being appropriate.
You've seen murders getting much more than that, too, however.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
How about the 8th Amendment? Or am I going overboard with the interpretation of "cruel and unusual punishments"? It seems 10 years for copy infringement and piracy seems to be overboard in my books.
I've also seen murders get less then this, so yes. I think 8th might apply.
Re:10 years? Please USA, get a grip (Score:4, Insightful)
It's the maximum sentence, dumbass.
You're the dumbass. It's immoral, stupid, hateful, vindictive, corrupt, and absurd to even have the option for a penalty this severe in a case like this. Under any sane legal system, this would be a CIVIL case, not a criminal one.
Death was "only the maximum" sentence for witchcraft too at one time, dumbass.
Excuse the language, guys, but I'm replying to a witless anonymous coward. Anything goes in this case.
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P2PJury? (Score:3, Funny)
I thought all juries were supposed to be composed of peers.
p2p yeah u know me (Score:5, Funny)
banner ads from eharmony
Dave drop a load on 'em
P2P, how can I explain it
I'll take you packet by packet
To have y'all nattin' while we be seedin' it
P is for peer, 2 is l33t for "to"
The last P...well...that's kinda simple
It's sorta like another way to call a client an equal
It's the server that be missin' here
You get on a torrent and be leechin' from the swarm
And your movies and shows appear gotta start to explainin'
Bust it
Hosting movies direct will get the feds to say hello
They get your IP and address and your knees fee like jello
And if not for feds, the hosting costs will eatcha alive
There's gotta be a better way to distribute and survive
Imagine there's no hardware, hosting or bandwith fees
just a torrent to download and and trackers to see
Every peer has a piece to share with every other peer
Reducing the burden and increasing redundancy without fear
Who thinks it's wrong 'cos I'm downloadin' and uploadin' at
Well if you do, that's P2P and you're not down with it
But if you don't, here's your membership
Chorus:
You down with P2P (Yeah you know me) 3X
Who's down with P2P (Every last IP)
You down with P2P (Yeah you know me) 3X
Who's down with P2P (All the IP's)
10 years? (Score:4, Insightful)
So, some pirates can get 10 years, yet we have Massachusetts' representative James Fagan calling a 10 year mandatory sentence for 3 time offending child predators 'draconian'. Ridiculous.
-Bradley H.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Well they are involved with organised crime groups such as "Media Defender".
Re:Intellectuals (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree,
Theft of imaginary property should be served in an imaginary jail.
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