MPAA Scores First P2P Jury Conviction 335
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.'"
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.
Trickle down theory? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Not "really" P2P (Score:5, Insightful)
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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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A paid Usenet account is the way to go. alt.binaries.* gives you what you want.
If I was going to pay for the content that I download, I would want my money going to the people who made it, not people who maintain a network of stolen goods. But that's just me, I guess...
P2P is going to die unless it can be made more secure.
Illegal P2P may die if it isn't made more secure. Legal P2P doesn't need to do anything. I wouldn't be too worried if the illegal P2P scene died anyway...
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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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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Copyright laws have a huge cost to society, I think they should be abolished then we wouldn't have to deal with this crap.
For those who haven't seen the argument a million times before, I feel compelled to post it again. Copyright law is a benefit to society.
The whole point of IP law is that innovation can be protected for a short period of time (sufficient to guarantee a worthwhile return on investment) and then remove that protection to allow the advancement to be used by society.
In other words, IP laws both reward innovation and encourage openness that wouldn't otherwise be viable. In theory at least. Good principle, shitty
Re:Insanity (Score:5, Insightful)
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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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?
Unfortunately, the eight amendment is rarely used to find whether a crime is comparable to the punishment, but rather on the punishment as such. This is more like the classic eight amendment stuff: "In Wilkerson v. Utah, 99 U.S. 130 (1878) the Supreme Court commented that drawing and quartering, public dissecting, burning alive and disemboweling would constitute cruel and unusual punishment"
Jailtime is not normally cruel or unusual punishment for a crime. In 1983 they found that "life imprisonment without p
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Don't Forget
These companies are also either in, or connected to businesses (Visa, MasterCard, Amex, Honeywell, Wackenhut, etc) that are in the prison business for profit. So, it is in the corporate ruling class interest to criminalize as many people as possible, for l
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A copyright defines rights which are granted to somebody from the government.
Almost true.
A copyright defines a set of rights which is temporarily given up by everybody except one entity, for the benefit of that entity. The giving up of those rights is mandatory, in the sense that the law says you have to, and voluntary in the sense that The People (in theory) chooses what the law says.
I think the generally accepted philosophical POV on /. is that when you're born, you're granted some set of rights. No more rights can come into existence, but they can be taken away or not. The gov
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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
When you can buy the laws, and are called by the house 'the most important industry in this country' what do you expect?
Re:Insanity (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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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So what do you consider the prison industry?
Re:Insanity (Score:5, Insightful)
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!
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.
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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But i'll play along anyways. Lets say this robber stealing your TV, movies, or whatever and got caught in the act. He then says to himself "hmm...i'm gonna get 10 years if this guy catches me and calls the polic
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Goddamn selfish people trying to earn a living producing music, art, software, games, etc! Who do they think they are?
Look, I'm not a huge fan of the MPAA/RIAA tactics. But I AM someone who makes their living making software. Good software. Software I'm proud of. And while I get some satisfaction from my work, I need to make a living here. I work for a company that charges for software. I'm not ashamed of that, and I don't feel I should be. We charge reasonable fees for a superior product and good s
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Someone should point out to you that Free Software is currently produced even *with* copyright law.
This way authors have the freedom to choose. Do I want to give my work away, or do I want to charge for it?
This way users have a choice: is the current open source solution the best choice, or would I like to pony up for a commercial product?
Why should we force everyone down one path, when clearly there is a place for both options?
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Why should we force everyone down one path, when clearly there is a place for both options?
Because copyright laws affect everyone, not just the people who choose to use a copyright-based business model. Web hosts have to police their users' content. Electronics manufacturers have to restrict what their equipment can do. Average folks have to restrict what they say to each other because some pieces of information are off-limits.
A copyright-based business model would be fine if it were opt-in for everyone, not just the copyright holders, but of course then copyright would be toothless.
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Oh please. Most people are not effected by copyright law in the slightest. Sure, someday black helicopters might swoop down every time someone sings "Happy Birthday" at their backyard birthday party, but I personally doubt it. Until that time, please check the histrionics at the door.
The reality of the situation is that you really have to work at it to run afoul of copyright law. This particular individual basically ran a commercial bootlegging operation. He paid for and administered a server and rec
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I suggest you pick a few good games, and a few good movies, and take a good hard look at the complete credits.
It takes millions of dollars to get that many skilled people together for the time it takes to make a game or move. Can you make a concrete suggestion as to where the money for this would come from if every movie and game were immediately available for free to everyone? By concrete I mean an actual mechanism that would lead to anyone being willing to put up the tens of millions of dollars to produ
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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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
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Oh, by the way...
You and your GNUtard friends (and keep in mind, I write open-source code) plainly don't give two shits about the rights of those who are actually making things.
That's funny, because I am one of those people who are "actually making things".
I write software, both open-source and closed-source. I make a living by writing code: not by duplicating code I've already written and selling it in discrete little packages like it's coming off an assembly line, but by exchanging my code-writing labor for money. I don't need to worry about whether people copy the code I write, and neither does my employer, because we're not in the business of selling copies of
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Sorry, Richard Stallin says you're a criminal. Software must be free.
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Look, I'm not a huge fan of the MPAA/RIAA tactics. But I AM someone who makes their living making software. Good software. Software I'm proud of. And while I get some satisfaction from my work, I need to make a living here. I work for a company that charges for software.
Making a living by writing software doesn't mean you have to charge for copies of that software. If copyright didn't exist, you could still make a living as a programmer (or an artist, etc.) by charging for your labor.
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We'll go out of business, and stop making good products for people to use. So will a lot of other small software houses.
Good. Go out of business, and take your culture of victimhood with you. We'll get along fine without you.
I'm sure this will come as a great shock to you, but you're not somehow magically ENTITLED to enjoy whatever you want whenever you are for free.
You have the gall to accuse file-sharers of a sense of entitlement, when your entire business model is based on government-granted monopolies?
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Ten years for copying a fucking movie, well a bunch of fucking movies? Sounds like a good excuse to become a citizen of Canada to me.
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Clinton signed in a law making copyright infringement a felony. He also passed the DMCA, and a bill that withheld all federal funding to any group working on embryonic stem cell research. He also fucked a 19 year old in the Oval Office when he was supposed to be working on his presidential duties -- which is legal, but we got a bitch match over it and then he lied in court and almost got impeached for perjury.
Clinton is a remarkable man as president; he seems to have caused all kinds of economic and legis
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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...
Umm. the "haves" are the ones bribing our so called "representatives", until that changes, nothing else will. Your preaching to the quire brother!
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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.
Thats twice the penalty for murder.
Shows where our priorities are.
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Thats twice the penalty for murder.
Must depend on where you live.
Around we have the death penalty or life imprisonment for murder.
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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'.
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10 years? We should be so lucky.
We'd get sent to a white-collar, minimum security resort!
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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?
How about we start voting for people who are more concerned with citizens than lobbyists for big corporations? With the economy in the dumps, states are going to be looking for new ways of getting people in jail for the nearly free labor (as far as state budgets are concerned) they provide at taxpayer expense.
Not that bad... (Score:4, Interesting)
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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.
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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.
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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?
Both of those though are inherently dangerous. Would I cut someone some slack if they were say, jaywalking? Yes. What about not having a penny needed to buy something if you have a penny on you. Yes. What about a guy who comes back for another free sample? Yes. Downloading things illegally is much like my situations I just gave, it isn't harming anyone really and therefore shouldn't be tried in criminal court and really, all the *AA's fines are excessive, $1 per song max. Any more and it should be consi
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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We established 30 years ago that you can freely distribute designs for nuclear weapons. There's books out on how to build an atomic bomb, come on.
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That's not how the law, or precedent, works. This was not a civil infraction.
Judges cannot impose criminal penalties for civil infraction. And if one did, it would not stand. Furthermore, it would not be precedent, since district courts do not set precedent.
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I'm an average person who was a member of the uploader team
Then you aren't average. You were admin. My post was about the average people who download Limewire or hunt on TPB and download warez not the creators of Limewire or the admins of TPB.
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.
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Re:It might be a good idea... (Score:4, Insightful)
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maybe everyone should just have the title "ascii art guy".
that'll show em.
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123 Fake Street
Springfield, Oh-hiya-Maude 90210
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ROFL, seriously? Link please!
(...I miss TechTV. :( )
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.)
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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Ah yes, the classic counter arguement. I was waiting for this.
Your arguement is entirely irrelevant to the topic at hand. Prerelease stuff is entirely different to already released material. You are, in effect, committing a form of industrial espionage by releasing a product before its release date. The fact that they used p2p as the medium to distribute it does not suddenly make it a p2p arguement.
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Could you come with me to the Ferrari dealer? Please? I'd like to convince them that since in no way am I ever going to actually purchase a Ferrari they shouldn't mind if I take one of their extras. It wouldn't be a lost sale, because with the gas mileage they get nobody in their right mind is going to buy one today anyway. I don't have the money, so they should just give me one.
Right?
Re:Those types of people legitimise the MPAA effor (Score:5, Insightful)
:-)
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Actually, copyright is as much about control of the copyrighted material as it is about anything else. A perfect example is the GPL which uses copyright to guarantee source access to end users. There's no money involved, but the lawyers still get excited when someone distributes GPLed software illegally.
The movie industry doesn't have to claim that they are losing money. They simply have to point out that someone else is distributing their copyrighted material illegally.
Now, I'm not a fan of the MPAA
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.
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I've seen cases of murderers getting less than this.
Got any tips?
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: (Score:2)
Money.valueOf() > Life.valueOf()
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:2)
I've seen cases of murderers getting less than this.
This is the United States of Corporate Tool America here. Exactly what did you expect?
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.
10 years (Score:2, Informative)
One of my buddies, who was in Fastlight, got a year in the slammer for running one of the central ftps. 10 years is sorta overkill.
P2PJury? (Score:3, Funny)
I thought all juries were supposed to be composed of peers.
Re: (Score:2)
They aren't in France. Many nations have professional jurists. "Jury of peers" is an English idea.
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.
The cynic in me says... (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Funny calling someone a pussy while posting Anonymously. I bet you don't get the irony in that do you.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Wait, since when is copyright violations punishable by prison?
I could see this going to civil court and this guy being sued. But prison? Was he actually getting money for these? Or was it just sharing over the internet for free?
Again, how did this go from a civil matter to a criminal one?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Wait, since when is copyright violations punishable by prison?
If the summary is accurate (I know, I know), the person convicted was responsible for large-scale distribution. There is a threshold where copyright violations become a criminal offense.
Re: (Score:2)
Originality will be drowned at birth because it might be either offensive
South Park says you can suck my fucking balls.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Well they are involved with organised crime groups such as "Media Defender".
Re: (Score:2)
Is it possible that they paid the jury and/or judge?
I'd like to think so, but I think it's more likely they paid a fancy lawyer while the defendant couldn't possibly come close to matching their investment in the expensive machinery of "justice.". Juries are easily swayed by such, and judges are part of a corrupt system, even if they are not personally corrupt in the sense of having a hand out.
Re:Intellectuals (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree,
Theft of imaginary property should be served in an imaginary jail.