Swedish Man Fined For Posting Links To Online Video Feeds 252
hcs_$reboot writes with a snippet from TechDirt (citing TorrentFreak): "Over in Sweden, it appears that a guy has been fined for linking to an online broadcast of a hockey game. We've heard stories of people getting in trouble merely for linking to unauthorized content, but this story is even more ridiculous. The guy wasn't linking to unauthorized content. He was linking to an online video feed from the official broadcaster, Canal Plus. The issue was that Canal Plus was apparently technically incompetent in how they set up the feeds, and never intended to make the feeds public."
What constitutes unauthorized access? (Score:5, Funny)
If something is on the internet, then doesn't that implicitly authorize access?
Re:What constitutes unauthorized access? (Score:5, Interesting)
Some even ask you to pay to view their public content, or else they will sue. http://news.slashdot.org/news/10/10/27/2134236.shtml [slashdot.org]
Re:What constitutes unauthorized access? (Score:5, Funny)
Sounds reasonable to me. You're using up their bandwidth, and if you don't give them your money, they are losing out on profit that they could, potentially, have had! Do you enjoy hurting people who would have been better off had you given them all of your money (and since you didn't, you stole their potential profit)?
Re:What constitutes unauthorized access? (Score:5, Funny)
Yes.
Re:What constitutes unauthorized access? (Score:4, Informative)
Ok, exactly what kind of a fucking question is that, really?
Rhetorical. It's a super-sarcastic, tognue-in-cheek rhetorical question with a dash of hyperbole to fill out the redonkulous nature of the entire subject matter.
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A thought on rhetorical questions [tvtropes.org] that seems relevent here.
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Has anyone really been far even as decided to use even go want to do look more like?
Re:What constitutes unauthorized access? (Score:5, Insightful)
I miss the day when computers were for people who could think. I fondly remember that very brief period where businesses hadn't learned how to exploit the web. For the most part, it was a novelty to them and the left it to the nerds. Sure, at that point the web was a lot of top 10 lists and novelty polls, and most pages had a guest book to sign and a view counter, but that's how we liked it. I'm sure it's all through rose colored glasses, but at least I don't believe we had lawsuits like this.
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there was nothing much worth suing for either... certainly no sports video feeds. you can still do your top10 lists and pollsn what are you complaining about ? all the extra, for-pay content ?
Re:What constitutes unauthorized access? (Score:5, Funny)
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Speaking of the early days, you owe someone $ for watching that coffee maker in England for all those years.
Re:Miss the day (Score:2)
In Soviet Russia, whom we are now having a cyber-cold-war with, people are for computers that think!
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you mean, same as publishers make you pay for books with public-domain texts ? Now, why would anyone on earth to that... oh, wait, you mean there's cost associated with publishing stuff ? you don't say !
Way to make the opposite point than you intended (Score:5, Informative)
Absolutely. One of those costs is rent for a bookstore, and the cost of security measures. If they didn't want people accessing it for free, then they should not have made it publicly available. They could have used SSL, and enforced proper authorization and authentication, but they didn't do that. If I leave my stuff out on the street unprotected, how is someone supposed to know that I will consider it stealing if someone picks it up and takes it home? Do you really think that the police will actually take me seriously when I try to file a theft claim?
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you've got to define "make available", because right now, your definition is "if you can take it, it's right to do so", which does not jive.
to me, if the hacker could not possibly have ignored the stuff was not free for all, the case is clear. kinda like it's NOT because my kid nephew's trolley or my bike are unattended in front of a shop that you can/should take them ? and BTW, I do expect police to treat me seriously if ever they get stolen ?
I demand you return the post you stole from me! (Score:3, Interesting)
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so, if i can hack into your bank account, or your bank's systems, and wire myself all your money, it's a case of finders' keepers' ?
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what if your bank security is broken ?
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you win ! nice, convincing argument !
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Re:What constitutes unauthorized access? (Score:5, Insightful)
The provider didn't seem to take steps to ensure that their streams couldn't be gotten at by unpaid subscribers--I'd guess that a party so inclined could probably brute-forced URL attempts if they even had a blink at the structure, and gotten in--and got bitten a little bit. Honestly, more their fault, than his.
This begs a second question...was the party who brought suit merely someone who had license to broadcast, or the rights holder for the broadcast? If the former, then I would think this just a farce, because the rights-holder could come around on the license-holder for being incompetent...if the latter, then this is a problem of their own creation; if he found a URL, without ever having been made aware of the Terms of Service or whatnot, it's innocent infringment...in my opinion.
Re:What constitutes unauthorized access? (Score:5, Insightful)
If it's unprotected, as seems to be the case here, then that would be the reasonable assumption.
To play devil's advocate: the fact that I didn't lock my front door is not a reasonable assumption that I am inviting you to enter my apartment.
Re:What constitutes unauthorized access? (Score:5, Insightful)
no, but it's a reason why your insurance claim won't be paid.
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sure, but the person who took the stuff will be fined or jailed for stealing.
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and, in most cases, you will still not have your stuff back.
Re:What constitutes unauthorized access? (Score:5, Insightful)
1) the door isint there in the first place, you are allowing people to come to your site freely, if anything it would be allowing people onto your walkway so they could come ring your doorbell, but can freely look around your yard as they approach. 2) even if the person were to stand in your front yard and videotape an earthworm coming out of the ground: you can only ask him to leave. they committed NO crime.
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Re:What constitutes unauthorized access? (Score:5, Insightful)
Client/Server works this way. Client requests data, server can grant or not grant access to said data. It's like having a stranger coming up to you and nicely asking(without malice or threats) if you'd like to give them something(money, cellphone, newspaper, the time, etc..) you can say "yes or no". The server granted these people access without them breaking the law. The server could almost be viewed as an extension of the company or under license from the company to make these decisions to stream or not stream. If they had a password on the stream and people cracked it or multiple people were sharing an account authorized for only one stream, then yes that would be against the rules. If it is a public stream going out to anyone who asks, it's pretty much fair game.
Re:What constitutes unauthorized access? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What constitutes unauthorized access? (Score:4, Interesting)
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If they had a password on the stream and people cracked it or multiple people were sharing an account authorized for only one stream, then yes that would be against the rules.
So in your interpretation "the rules" are whatever a non-governmental organization says they are? We need legal vs. illegal to be clearly defined by government, not ad-hoc rules by each server operator.
The technology makes a few rules simple, clear and universal:
* Anyone can request any URL.
* It's the server's responsibility to secure content.
* Any content served is public, unless it has restrictions in-force.
I think people want to say something like "if you break a lock or do anything tricky, then that's
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BUT, if you leave your garden hose (Score:5, Insightful)
BUT if you leave your garden hose running and pooring out into the street, you can't expect the police to arrest the walker by who lets his dog drink from it.
This guy did NOT break in or walk in to your house.
If you have the windows open, then you can't expect people walking by not to look in.
Re:What constitutes unauthorized access? (Score:4, Insightful)
If it's unprotected, as seems to be the case here, then that would be the reasonable assumption.
To play devil's advocate: the fact that I didn't lock my front door is not a reasonable assumption that I am inviting you to enter my apartment.
If you left your curtains open and someone saw a video playing on your TV, should he be fined for letting his friends know they could see it through your window?
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And don't forget that the sports broadcasters think they have the right to restrict viewing to TVs of a certain size and own the rights to the scores and accounts of the games beyond just the specific recordings.
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The Internet is like a public park, you are free to wander anywhere unless it is locked down or a notice posted saying "Keep out the grass."
It sounds like they not only didn't lock the door, they forgot to put a door in the first place.
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You analogy is flawed. Websites by default grant access, and is largely unrestricted at least in terms of visiting. I mean, you don't second guess coming onto Slashdot or click on any link, and thinking "omg, this is a for pay site that I'm getting free!" I certainly don't.
The correct analogy is:
You invited the guest in and said, "Hey, feel free to take a look around." Then the guy goes into your master bedroom and rummages through your box of vibrators and other sex toys.
Then you sue him for invading
modifying your analogy (Score:2)
the invited guest is in the living room, and spins in a circle slowly looking at everything he can see.
he takes out a laser pointer, and shows the other guests in the party, if you look right HERE
you can see people having sex off the reflection of that mirror on that wall.
they are in the living room, and it's visible from there-- you just need to know how to be observant, or have someone show you the way.
BadAnalogyGuy? Is that you? (Score:4, Interesting)
If your "house" is a website on the net, and the stuff they "took" is still there when they are done, than it absolutely should be expected. For some reason when I "break in" and "take stuff" from millions of other websites, they don't even notice or care (save that they encourage it in most cases.)
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Opening a closed door to enter someone else's residence is breaking and entering whether or not the door was locked. A closed door means, ask before entering, and even if you ask to enter and are given permission it doesn't mean you can walk out with the family silver.
if the door is open it's simply trespassing.
This sounds like neither to me. The guy's computer asked if it could come in, the server said yes, come on in. THe guy's computer asked if it could please stream the content, the server said yes a
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While I agree with your conclusion, the guy's computer can't ask any relevent question about access, as it's not a moral entity. All that matters is "would a reasonable person believe this data was meant for public consumption". The technical details don't enter in to it, only the common web user's perceptions of normal access.
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It's like this. A web server is like an (android) shopkeeper at your door. People can ask it for all kinds of things, and the keepr will give it to them or not. It can answer things like:
"404, sorry, I don't have that sir"
"403, sorry, that's not for sale"
"30X, try the store down the road!"
or even
"200 OK, here you go sir!"
If I ask the shopkeeper to give me something, and the shopkeeper says "200 OK, here you go" and actually gives me that thing, how the heck am I supposed to know any better?
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A commenter in the original article has it right.
It's like a paid swimming pool having a back door that's completely open where you could walk in and have a free swim.
The guy who is being sued in this case is not the guy who had a free swim, but the guy who said, "Hey, the back door is open at that swimming pool."
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are you sure the people clicking the links knew they were hacked ? If I sneak into a pool via the back door, I know I'm cheating. If I click on a link... not so clear, depends on context.
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It's really what you think. He made an assumption that it was a suit rather than a complaint to a regulatory agency. Hence rather than suit he should've said complaint, but the logic isn't a case of begging the question. It's insufficient for that fallacy for the words "begging the question" to appear in the argument.
It is very relevant to the situation a
Re:What constitutes unauthorized access? (Score:5, Interesting)
No.
If they linked it from their front page, and said "View the game here", that's implicitly authorising access. If it was hidden behind a badly done pay wall, I think it fairly clearly implies you should be paying first, even if the technical side is a debacle.
Leaving something unprotected is no more implying access than leaving your front door open. It's bloody stupid, but that's another matter entirely...
Re:If it is on the internet it is public (Score:3, Interesting)
If it was hidden behind a badly done pay wall, I think it fairly clearly implies you should be paying first, even if the technical side is a debacle.... leaving something unprotected is no more implying access than leaving your front door open. It's bloody stupid, but that's another matter entirely...
Anything on the internet that is reachable without security is public by definition. Doesn't matter if it was also 'behind' a paywall; it it could be reached by a straightforward url without going through the paywall, then it was public. And it is a false analogy to compare it to the front door of a private house; it was a business website that invited access, even if it only wanted paying access. Using the locked door analogy, it is as if a pay to view facility (a cinema or museum say) had a pay counter o
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62.8.65.3 - - [24/Aug/2010:09:47:41 +0100] "GET
62.8.65.3 - - [24/Aug/2010:09:47:43 +0100] "GET
62.8.65.3 - - [24/Aug/2010:09:47:44 +0100] "GET
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No.
If they linked it from their front page, and said "View the game here", that's implicitly authorising access. If it was hidden behind a badly done pay wall, I think it fairly clearly implies you should be paying first, even if the technical side is a debacle.
Leaving something unprotected is no more implying access than leaving your front door open. It's bloody stupid, but that's another matter entirely...
It's not really another matter entirely, but one of crucial importance to the case. Did the guy that posted the link pay for access to it? What was he allowed to do with that information? Did they explicitly state in their terms somewhere that he can't post the link, which is open to the internet, once he paid to get access to it? There has to be some rational burden put on the content owners to protect their content from unauthorized access.
This guy didn't subvert the system by "hacking" or "stealing
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"invitation of theft" and is a crime in itself.
That's kind of stupid. What is the difference then between "invitation of theft" which you say is a crime, and "invitation of rape" if a young girl wears provocative clothing while drunk in a bar?
Leaving your car running and unattended does not justify someone stealing it, and any legislation to that effect is seriously fucked up.
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"Well officer, he locked the door to his car, but I had this jimmy here and he didn't have anything to stop that, so it's his fault. He wanted me to steal it."
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Any reference for that? Googling the term primarily brings back references to here...
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If something is on the internet, then doesn't that implicitly authorize access?
I hope not, my girlfriend is on the internet in the evenings.
Re:What constitutes unauthorized access? (Score:5, Insightful)
[...] For example, if you can only get to something by IP Address, it can be implied that it is not "intended" to be public as it was not added to a public facing DNS Server. [...]
Sorry, I have to disagree. If something does not tell me "Not for you!" or require authentication, it is open to the public. Whether that is by intent or accident is the provider's problem. Your example is even more problematic: Every machine (directly) on the internet has a publicly reachable IP address simply by virtue of being on the fucking Internet. Whether it also is reachable via a DNS entry - or even only offers certain content under specific domains - is entirely arbitrary (as far as the visitor is concerned). In essence you suggest that people ought to only use the internet through an "authorised" channel, the DNS. Sorry, that is neither realistic nor particularly desirable.
Re:I hope there's a sign on your front door (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, and if you don't have a sign on your front door which says, "You can't come in unless I invite you" then any Tom, Dick and Harry is free to come in and take what they like.
Are you nuts?
Unless Tom, Dick or Harry are vampires. Then they'd have to wait to be explicitly invited in ;-)
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Similar thing in Germany (Score:5, Informative)
A map provider sold subscriptions. However their system was a joke. After logging in you would get a URL to the map you wanted. You could pass this URL to non-subscribers and it would work. The map company then sued some real estate company that gave those links to its clients for copyright infringement ... and won.
Security-by-law-suit is the new security-by-obscurity.
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I'm surprised that the map company won a case on infringement. If I protected my website like the map company did ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbWg-mozGsU [youtube.com] ), I'd expect my website to be pwn3d rather quickly.
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isn't that the nerd equivalent of "might makes right" ? To me the question is not whether you can hack something, but whether you can do the hack, or just use an existing hack, entirely without knowing you're stealing stuff. Rarely the case for hackers, sometimes the case for users.
I see nothing wrong with having to pay for maps ? actually, I see a lot wrong with wanting to watch sports broadcasts, but that's another issue ^^
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except that according to your article it kinda work
Swedish judge (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Swedish judge (Score:4, Funny)
I think you're thinking of the judge who was rejected for the U.S. Supreme Court, Robert Bork Bork Bork.
Damn it Sweden! (Score:5, Insightful)
There used to be a time when you'd be able to read a story like this, shake your head, smirk and say/think to yourself: "Only in America".
Now, unfortunately, it's no-longer the case you can make that generalization. The whole world's gone crazy...
Re:Damn it Sweden! (Score:4, Interesting)
I guess the whole Pirate Bay issue introduced them to the wonderful world of corporate bribery.
We got a suitable saying around here, along the lines of: once your reputation is ruined, you might as well lose all restraint.
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I guess the whole Pirate Bay issue introduced them to the wonderful world of corporate bribery.
I like many aspects of US culture, but I do wish the US would stop spreading all aspects of its culture to the rest of the world.
(That's meant as a joke, not flamebait. Well, perhaps it's not entirely a joke...)
Re:Damn it Sweden! (Score:5, Insightful)
As a swede I'm pretty certain I'm not alone in noticing how our politicians and our legal system did a full 180 turn on the TPB issue, at first they actually concluded that it wouldn't be possible to do anything about TPB, then there were a few meetings between members of our government and representatives of the US government as well as the regular lobbyists and all of a sudden TPB was raided...
Not to mention how they've been stretching and bending the law to even make it possible to prosecute the TPB founders, clearly something or someone convinced them that whether or not there was a law broken there had to be convictions.
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Sounds like it's time for a Coup. Have fun!
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The Swedish government gets a few tips on how to take them down,
Yeah, good thing TPB got taken down and has been offline for years... oh wait
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Yeah...Big win. The US of A says "Jump!", Sweden asks "How high?". Big win, big win...
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At which point Sweden would've been required to enact a law banning it or face WTO sanctions.
I don't like the WTO, for the very reason that it undermines national sovereignty and fails to provide nations with the ability to prevent multinational corporations
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It seems to me that treating people who are quite obviously operating within the law as criminal and issuing legal threats at them without any grounds or jurisdiction is pretty damn disrespectful.
TPB was WELL within their rights to give back what they were getting in the form of disrespect from those that were THREATENING them without any grounds to do so..
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Well, the pirate party would probably have fared better in the last election if the media and all other parties hadn't gone completely silent on their issues the last couple of months before the election.
And then we have all the parties that had their representatives claim that they agreed with the pirate party only to completely ignore their "promises" once the election was over...
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Re:Damn it Sweden! (Score:5, Informative)
the United States was the first country to concertedly undertake compulsory sterilization programs for the purpose of eugenics.
In general, most sterilizations were performed under eugenic statutes, in state-run psychiatric hospitals and homes for the mentally disabled.
over 65,000 individuals were sterilized in 33 states under state compulsory sterilization programs in the United States
though a significant number of sterilizations continued in a few states until the early 1960s
The Oregon Board of Eugenics, later renamed the Board of Social Protection, existed until 1983, with the last forcible sterilization occurring in 1981.
And on a related note the US as late as 1972 poor black men were used in a completely crazy experiment to see how bad their symptoms would get if they weren't told they had syphilis and weren't treated.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuskegee_syphilis_experiment [wikipedia.org]
As late as the 1950's the UK still chemically castrated gay people.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing [wikipedia.org]
Re:Damn it Sweden! (Score:4, Interesting)
Of course, the funny thing about that?
It largely worked - They have one of the happiest, healthiest, most attractive nations on the frickin' planet (the present fallout of US bullying notwithstanding).
When trying to make eugenics look like a monstrosity, you'd do better not to point out its successes.
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ADHD doesn't make people "a bit slow". ADHD makes people poorly focused. People with ADHD daydream, fidget, and sometimes fail to pay attention at important moments. Typically, someone with ADHD has an average to very high IQ. Someone who is "a bit slow" likely has mild mental retardation or just happens to be on the wrong slope of the bell curve. Plenty of people with ADHD learn and remember concepts and facts very quickly and test well over those facts, but forget to do busywork or are caught daydreaming
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There used to be a time when you'd be able to read a story like this, shake your head, smirk and say/think to yourself: "Only in America".
Stupid laws are one of our biggest exports here in the States. When it comes to generating laws that protect corporations at the expense of consumers, the US is the world leader.
Arrggh! (Score:4, Informative)
It's things like this which will make it so much more likely that I would bother to post such a link in the future --- after firing up Tor, of course!
Without the constant whining of Big Content getting on my nerves (and ruining the legal system), I probably wouldn't bother.
Bad legal arguments (Score:2, Insightful)
The only way the court could reach such a poor decision would be through bad legal arguments and a lack of understanding of how the world wide web works. Hopefully he'll get a better lawyer who can explain the culture of link sharing on the internet, how the system relies on it (pagerank etc) and how every other content provider as a matter of course will put a paywall in front of a link so that when he shares it with his friends its more revenue for them. Something about chilling effects would probably not
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Well, since it's Tingsrätten (the lowest "local" court, mainly staffed by career politicians) I wouldn't be surprised if they came up with a verdict that didn't make sense or even contradicted swedish law, it happens all the time. For cases that involve any legal complexity beyond "The defendant punched the victim in the face after drinking twelve beers and is thus guilty of assaulting the victim" tingsrätten's verdict isn't really considered all that important, it's not until the case makes it to
Never visit Sweden (Score:2)
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It's not the laws that are flawed, it's our judges in the courts.
A good lawyer can tweak any country's law to prove anything, it's the judges role to keep em in control.
The Swedish judges have over the last year broken the constitution over and over and over, and no one care.
It has gone so far that yes I do think they are bribed. Either with money or power (fast track to higher positions).
But the worst thing is that no one (almost no one) cares. If I tell people that the judges break the constitution they d
The orginal reply to the complaint (Score:4, Funny)
But honestly Canal Plus, the web is considered “public domain” and you should be happy we just didn’t “lift” your whole hockey game and put some other team's name on it!
So Google can be fined as well as they do the same (Score:2)
So Google can be fined as well as they do the same thing give you links.
What about a concert? (Score:2, Interesting)
I don't really want to defend this, but it brought up another situation in my mind that seems similar.
Lets say there is a concert at on private property. There is a gate where tickets are sold for entry. They have a barbed wire fence around the area to keep non paying people from entering, but a section has fallen over. Would it be illegal to guide people though the hole in the fence to watch the concert without paying?
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You're misinformed about how the internet works. The requesting browser _asks_ for content based on a URL. The server provides that content based on the permissions set in the server.
Imagine if you hired a security firm to work the gate at your private party, and told them that you had a bunch of people coming the party, but to only let those people in who came to the gate and asked to come in.
People you didn't know came to the gate, asked to get in, and YOUR security firm let them in based on your instru
Re:What is the link? (Score:5, Informative)
RTFA, FFS.
It was a sports broadcast, three years ago.
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sweden (Score:4, Insightful)
Ah, Sweden, that bastion of freedom that has the US's dick so far up its collective ass that they trump up a charge on Julian Assange to make him become a fugitive while discrediting him (regardless of Assange's reportedly crappy personality), where the media is now tripping over its collective feet to be even more draconian than the US with regard to IP laws. It's a shame, used to be a nice country before it became a little banana republic police state that will do anything the US tells it to.