Studios Sue Oz ISP Over Allowing Piracy 400
Da Massive writes "Leading Hollywood film studios Village Roadshow, Universal Pictures, Warner Bros Entertainment, Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation and Disney Enterprises are suing Australia's second largest ISP, iiNet, saying it's complicit in the infringement of their copyrighted material. According to a statement of claim, 'the ISP knows that there are a large number of customers who are engaging in continuing infringements of copyright by using BitTorrent file sharing technology.'"
Criminal intent? (Score:5, Insightful)
So they're using the courts correctly (Score:4, Insightful)
They think something is not legal. The opposing party does not agree, so they take it to the court.
This seems to me exactly the situation where you'd want people to use the courts. Australia's a democracy. Everybody has the right to complain, and they may be right when they complain. Even Disney.
Call again when you have a verdict. Then you have actual information to report.
Why not all the +10Mbit/s ISP's in Sweden? (Score:3, Insightful)
Why don't do this to all the ISP's in Sweden?
2.6 Million Swedes apparently pirate software, music and movies every day. That's almost 1/3rd of the populace.
They make huge profits from this but in no way are they trying to hinder the use of p2p, well some try to filter it but that doesn't help very much.
Is USPS liable for mail fraud? (Score:5, Insightful)
More challenging opponent (Score:4, Insightful)
At least they're not suing a 17 year old with a broadband connection for a change. Maybe the ISP will have enough money that they can actually make a proper fight of this. That might mean we can finally have the argument aired carefully enough the general public can hear both sides.
I agree with what somebody else said about hammers, but I don't think most people yet understand that argument. It will be great for the debate when more people do.
Re:Why not all the +10Mbit/s ISP's in Sweden? (Score:5, Insightful)
More carrot, less stick (Score:5, Insightful)
We'd pay to see stuff at the cinema, and own it on DVD / Blu-Ray if they'd just stop suing everybody they can find and put the money into funding good script writers and directors.
I seriously worry about how the American media industry does business nowerdays.
Re:Criminal intent? (Score:5, Insightful)
11 million users downloading patches from Blizzard for WoW, movies too. Many sites sharing demos and trailers also use bittorrent.
Just because they pretend it's a magical piracy device doesn't mean that one set of bits is somehow different then the other set of bits to the programs.
You keep using that word.... (Score:4, Insightful)
"This seems to me exactly the situation where you'd want people to use the courts. Australia's a democracy. Everybody has the right to complain, and they may be right when they complain. Even Disney."
What does being a democracy have to do with taking things to court?
If you wanted to talk about a democracy, you'd say that Disney (et al) would propose a law and allow every person to vote on the merits of that law.
But trying to get a ruling from a Judge instead of working with the legislature strikes me as *undemocratic*.
Re:Criminal intent? (Score:5, Insightful)
They should sue the CD/DVD recorders companies, since they encourage piracy, much more than BitTorrent itself.
Sure, it's useful for doing backups ;-)
And it would probably be like shooting in oneself foot, since Sony sells DVD recorders.
Car analogy! (Score:2, Insightful)
So, for car drug transports we can sue the government for building the roads they use?
Then they wil sue themselves (Score:3, Insightful)
Remember that SONY (grrrr) produces lots of Films./Music through its plethora of subsidiaries but also makes CD & DVD writers.
Now that I come to think of it, don't they also sell a BluRay drive capable of writing content?
They (the RIAA/MPAA/etc) lawyers are being very careful but sooner or later they are going to come a cropper. It looks like they are targetting the carriers outside of the USA who don't have 'common carrier' immunity. All they are going to do is make more and more people pissed off at everything that comes out of the USA.
They can sue me(if they like) for using Bit torrent because in a few days Fedora 10 will be released and I will be seeding it once it is out in the wild but they ain't gonna win.
Re:Criminal intent? (Score:5, Insightful)
Riiiiight, because my client who uses Amazon S3 to originate huge software packages that are distributed over Bittorrent (a feature built into S3) is obviously committing some sort of criminal act by using the Bittorrent protocol.
Get over yourself. Next you'll outlaw fire extinguishers because I can beat someone over the head with them. Go after the crime not the tool.
Disclaimer: Personally, I think media companies have perpetrated a copyright land grab long enough. Fuck 'em.
Re:I had the same attitude from EA.. (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem is, you purchased the disks, and knew they where protected.
Speak with your wallet. It's all corporate understands.
No, if they put copy protection on the CD/DVD, then you cannot circumvent it, it's illegal. Don't like it, don't purchase that companies games.
Simple, really. A company has the RIGHT to put out a product they want to. They also have the right to protect that product in as much as they legally can.
Just because you don't like the delivery mechanism is no shame on them, it's more shame on you for bitching about it, instead of actually doing something about it (like taking the games back, sending a copy of the return receipt to EA, organizing a thousand other people to do the same).
That's how you organize something, not sit on the internet bitching about it and writing nocd cracks for your personal game library. Game companies don't UNDERSTAND that, cuz they can't SEE the direct results of it. Vote with thine wallet, and things get put in a LOT bigger perspective for shareholders.
--Toll_Free
Re:Criminal intent? (Score:2, Insightful)
Even though guns are used for killing 90% of the time, that doesn't change the fact they are still useful. Like when I deterred a thief from stealing my car (last week) or when I rescued my girlfriend from a Philadelphia mugger (about ten years ago). Guns can save lives as well.
Same logic applies to bittorrent. Or blank tapes. Or blank CDs. Yes they are mostly used for piracy, but they also have useful purposes as well, and that's why they remain legal.
Re:Criminal intent? (Score:3, Insightful)
For Bittorrent, use of the technology to do legal things like download Linux ISOs is statistically negligible.
Show me your numbers. Provide a link so that I can look at these stats too please...
Re:Criminal intent? (Score:1, Insightful)
And films, music, and e-books are statistically negligible when compared to, say... porn. What's your point??
Re:Criminal intent? (Score:3, Insightful)
People dont get convicted of crimes because its statistically likely that they did it.
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Criminal intent? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I had the same attitude from EA.. (Score:5, Insightful)
But try excersizing that license if your disc breaks. You can't, because it wasn't a "license," it was a copy of a game you purchased.
But you couldn't back it up? Oh, yes, because the corporation is just being legally dilligent. That must be it.
Re:As frightningly evil... (Score:1, Insightful)
Excuse me?
apt based distros can use apt-p2p.
Debian:
http://www.debian.org/CD/torrent-cd/
RedHat's Fedora:
http://torrent.fedoraproject.org/
Ubuntu:
http://torrent.ubuntu.com:6969/
Slackware:
http://isohunt.com/torrent_details/41880700/Slackware?tab=summary
I suppose my legal use of Bittorrent isn't an anomaly after all.
Re:Criminal intent? (Score:5, Insightful)
It hasn't even been proven that all of the music / programs / movies getting downloaded are truly being pirated. Tons of people bought Spore and then downloaded cracked versions to avoid activation issues. When I used file sharing apps to get music I already owned about 90% of the stuff I was downloading. I was just too lazy to bring my CDs to work to rip them. It was easier to just DL it. Same with movies. How many people have DVD ripping software compared to how many people have bittorrent?
Re:So What? (Score:1, Insightful)
Ah, but when they do that, the public goes all up in arms against that too, because they go after children, or the elderly, or handicapped.
They sue the uploaders not for the money but to scare people into thinking its not worth it. They know they'll never stop every file-sharer, they just want people to think the rewards arent worth the risk. They are engaged in a publicity war. Thats why they keep quoting those made-up figures about all the billions lost to piracy, making links between piracy & terrorism and anything else that helps their cause.
One big problem with this is that their method of catching people (joining p2p networks and logging IP addresses) is full of problems. Its barely proof of anything and any progress they've made has been by bullshitting the judges in court. Their investigators are inept at best (breaking laws in some areas) and they are getting a lot of false positives because of this. To my knowledge they've had one victory in court and it looks like that is going to get overturned soon.
Also... dont forget, they are being sued by a number of bands & artists themselves for not sharing the money they made from all the filesharing lawsuits so far.
Establishing legal precedent, backdoor edition? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Criminal intent? (Score:3, Insightful)
People dont get convicted of crimes because its statistically likely that they did it.
I wonder what DNA profiling is then.
Re:Criminal intent? (Score:5, Insightful)
The media-entertainment sellers have made the same argument against just about every recordable media format invented. The old cassette tape almost never made it to market and several formats of digital tape never made or were relegated to professional use only applications.
For most people, the rule is that they fear what they don't understand... in media-entertainment, they fear what they can't control and that [especially] includes the consumer.
The media industry has not only been crossing the line, but they stepped over, built their homes and are living comfortably over the line. They need to be put back into their places starting with extreme copyright reform restoring the duration of copyright to something reasonable and re-establishing fair use.
Could you imagine how much more motivated the software, music and video industries would be to create better and more varied content when their old cash cows are killed off? Just the range of old software that would become public domain by itself would reveal some very useful things that could then be modified for imbedded and other uses... other uses that could also include providing access to ancient data formats that public data has been encoded in for example.
And what would prevent people from wanting to use the old stuff? Simple! Make newer and better stuff! Forget small incremental changes, not fixing ALL the bugs and all that stuff... marketing broken software as a business model [I am looking at you Microsoft] will then be defeated...or at least deterred a bit.
Re:Criminal intent? (Score:5, Insightful)
Bittorrent has a plethora of legal uses.
You know that and I know that, and I'm sure the studios actually know that, but reality clashes with their desires, so they pretend loudly that their desires ARE reality.
Truth doesn't matter in a court of law. Only what you can convince the judge and jury is truth is what matters, whether your "truths" are actually true or not.
Re:Criminal intent? (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't know about american law, but atleast in Swedish law the right to Self-Defense does not extend to the right to kill. You're only allowed to use the force necessary to keep yourself safe and it's really hard to argue that killing or maiming is necessary.
The best defense is a good offense?
Kidding aside, in a fight where you need to keep yourself safe, typically the only recourse IS to kill or maim. People are animals, and if it comes down to your safety if you are in a fair fight then you are doing something wrong.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Criminal intent? (Score:5, Insightful)
Excuse my Godwin, but wanting to kill the "stupid" was one of the things Hitler wanted to do....
I agree that the current "less then lethal" weapons are not terribly good at anything, they're both lethal and hard to use properly.
I'm not going to excuse that Godwin. Don't be absurd. He in no way advocated killing the stupid because they were stupid.
He said someone making the decision to steal and murder was stupid based on that decision, and the condition of being stupid wasn't why he was advocating defending himself with the most appropriate tool.
He is defending himself, that requires no further justification.
Re:Criminal intent? (Score:4, Insightful)
It depends. If you kill the murderer or thief who is engaged in the act of attacking you or endangering your safety, so be it.
But if you hold him at gunpoint, put him on his knees, and then shoot him afterward, then you, my friend, are a murderer.
This, to me, is not self defense. Self defense is you being inside your home, with a robber breaking in and trying to break down a door to get at you and your family. In which case, let him have it with both barrels, as they say.
But to force people into a submission position, train a gun
Re:Criminal intent? (Score:5, Insightful)
As an Australian, I find it depressing that we are now apparently perceived by the rest of the world as one of those "overly conservative nations".
What happened to our traditional spirit of rebelion? What would those who took a stand in the Eureka Stockade [wikipedia.org] think of us now?
Re:As frightningly evil... (Score:3, Insightful)
You might want to keep up with current events. Saving a buck is just one of the reasons to violate copyright. DRM is getting to the one of the big ones, maybe even the biggest one. For example, if you buy movies, you can't play them on the most recent MacBooks. When content providers use DRM, piracy is the only way to make stuff Just Work.
When the choice is between "I can watch the movie" and "I can't watch the movie" then the issue of which choice involves payment and which one doesn't, is a distant second priority.
Simple way to fix this... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Criminal intent? (Score:3, Insightful)
While I agree with your sentiments, the analogy doesn't really hold up.
The hammer shop has no way of knowing what the hammer is used for, after it leaves the shop.
The ISP on the otherhand, does have the ability to know what an account is being used for, or what type of data is being sent.
A better analogy would be an airline being held responsible for the cocaine that a passenger is carrying, or a tollway operator being charged because a car on its road network is carrying illegal firearms - in effect, you're making the service operator criminally responsible for the actions of its patrons.
Who came up with that? (Score:2, Insightful)
"We have a problem, people are copying our movies without paying, and litigating individual cases is such a bother"
"I know, lets sue The Internet!!"
*standing ovation*
Re:You keep using that word.... (Score:3, Insightful)
I think what the poster parent was trying to say (perhaps unclearly) was that the fact that Australia is a democratic republic has nothing to do with a court case. Perhaps what was meant was "thank heavens Australia is a country of laws where cases are based on law and not some autocratic ruler's opinion".
Re:More challenging opponent (Score:3, Insightful)
The reason they're not suing the 17 year old, is because iiNet has refused to pass on the infrindgement notices.
Its a civil law matter in australia, Its not up to AFAICT(our version of the MPAA/RIAA) or the ISP to determine that someone is downloading copyrighted material, The studio's need to goto the police, File a court case against the individual, Only once they're actually considered to be doing something illegal by the court can the ISP hand over personal details about the individual.
The ISP is *not* required to do anything by law, they're not a content provider, mearly a tunnel, Regardless of if they were to filter the material, under australian law that doesnt make them a content provider.
The law clearly states that the ISP is exempt from lawsuits over copyright infrindgement by customers under the safe-harbour clauses.
The ISP in question (iiNet) has passed all copyright infrindgement notices to the Authorities(WA Police in this case), AFAICT has chosen to not deal with the legal authorities.
So, Its not the ISP's choice to legally say that someone has commited a crime, Nor can the studio's. As soon as they take people to court(As anonymous internet users) and present their evidence, have it checked out, and determined that the users belonging to those IP addresses at the time were indeed commiting a crime, THAT is when the ISP needs to pass on the courts decision, and give the court the names assoc. with the internet accounts, Not before.
The larger ISP's in austrlia ignore the notices too, Telstra(#1) activly ignores them, they've got something like 50% broadband hold right now. Optus(#2) doesnt pass them onto customers, But has in the past used multiple complains as a reason for terminating someones account. Exetel is the only isp *I* know of who activly passes on the notices, with a client base of 160,000 people IIRC, the user only needs to acknoledge they received the notice and they continue to download whatever they want.. (after 6 months some peoples contracts will be terminated if they get too many notices - ie. waste the isp's time in dealing with the notices, they're a minimal-margins isp, if a user doesnt make them a profit, you're out the door once your contract is up)
Re:Then they wil sue themselves (Score:3, Insightful)
The argument is that safe harbour doesn't apply anymore because filtering is possible(a couple of schmucks from both sides of kazaa are selling a hash based filtering system and the government is buying it or at least pretending to). This is the general gist of the lawsuit, the guys from the kazaa case say that filtering is possible(with their filter of course) and so the ISP's are legally required to filter.
The ISPs say that it's not possible(iiNet has been pretty open about the fact that they are only joining the trial to break it, and no one else has volunteered).
It probably won't come to anything only the australian film industry is actually suing(not the record industry) and they don't really have a case because no one would actually want to download or watch any of the depressing crap they make in the first place. The industry only survives because the government gives big tax breaks for investing in local film. Anyone with any talent leaves for the US where they can make more money and with rare exceptions(Kenny was good) everything they make is grim and depressing.
It's more than likely most of it is just revenge because iiNet keeps saying that this filtering system won't work and will slow the internet to more of a crawl than it already is down here and the guys making the software know it won't work but want to make a few hundred million dollars selling it anyway.