Can torrent sites be prosecuted.

[alanschu]

If you aren't equating the two, then what's the point of asking the question when responding, with a quote, about it?

[Hiro Protagonist]

If you aren't equating the two, then what's the point of asking the question when responding, with a quote, about it?

 

I asked is taping a show from TV the same as stealing. You said 'Ah, so piracy is okay then.'

 

WTF??? People have been taping shows from the TV for at least the last 25 years. Are they all pirates? 15 Years ago, if I gave a VHS copy of something I taped from TV to a friend, does that make me a pirate? Or if 15 years ago, a friend asked me to tape something for him because he wouldn't be home that night and I recorded a TV show for him and gave it to him the next time I saw him, does that make me a pirate?

 

So, you think taping a show from TV is the same as piracy and it's okay??

 

These are questions I'm asking. I'm not saying this is or isn't piracy. And I'm responding to the quote because Hurlshot's quote is a general comment and there are people who think sharing TV shows with other people is piracy. If 25 years ago, say it wasn't considered piracy, but now it is, what's changed?

Edited February 19, 2009 by Hiro Protagonist

[alanschu]

If you aren't equating the two, then what's the point of asking the question when responding, with a quote, about it?

 

I asked is taping a show from TV the same as stealing. You said 'Ah, so piracy is okay then.'

 

WTF???

 

So, you think taping a show from TV is the same as piracy and it's okay??

 

 

I wasn't the one that equated recording a show from television (which is okay) with software piracy.

 

 

By countering Hurlshot's post, which was lambasting pirates, with a question about whether or not recording television (i.e. "copying" television broadcasts) is stealing, you give a strong implication of a perceived implication and connection.

[Hiro Protagonist]

I wasn't the one that equated recording a show from television (which is okay) with software piracy.

 

By countering Hurlshot's post, which was lambasting pirates, with a question about whether or not recording television (i.e. "copying" television broadcasts) is stealing, you give a strong implication of a perceived implication and connection.

 

So you think recording a show from TV is okay and not pirating. Practically every episode of every TV show on torrent sites is recorded from TV. TV Shows are by far the most popular downloads on torrent sites followed by movies. Also, the MPAA would disagree with you and say that taping a show from TV is piracy - especially if you share it with someone. MPAA sues six BitTorrent sites linking to TV shows. I mean, if you have a dvd recorder and tape every episode of the current season of LOST and don't share it with anyone, then effectively, you have the complete season at home. In a way, it was 'downloaded' via the TV and you 'copied' it illegally, and you didn't have to go out and buy the season on dvd.

Edited February 19, 2009 by Hiro Protagonist

[Hurlshort]

There is a GIGANTIC difference between taping a show, or even giving a video game to a friend, and posting the show or game to a bittorrent site for thousands of people to access.

 

I guess you could compare it to having a marijuana joint and having a big bag. Both are illegal, but one will get you a slap on the wrist and one will be considered intent to sell and get you considerably more legal problems. In fact, the laws to need to be rewritten to really distinguish between the two, and I think you will see that happening down the line, possibly in response to this PirateBay legal action. International accountability needs to be taken into account as well.

[Enoch]

Yeah, back in the early '80s, there was a landmark US court case, where hollywood peeps sued Sony, arguing that their Betamax recorders made them an accessory to copyright violation. After lots of litigation, the court ruled in favor of Sony, that recording devices had legitimate uses and were not necessarily intended for piracy (as recording for purely personal use without re-distribution or subsequent sale is an established exception to copyright laws).

 

As Hurl pointed out, the analogy breaks down when you start talking about taking your 'personal use' copy and distributing it to others. The law recognizes this.

[Deadly_Nightshade]

Then how come I can play a LAN game of NWN without an internet connection?

 

 

Humm... That's odd. Maybe I'm having to go through the entire process because I'm on a wireless system and thus the wireless LAN is always on-line.

[Kaftan Barlast]

Sometimes, you just got to pirate. Like in the case of Battlestar Galactica. You cant get the sci-fi channel in sweden and no channel has bought the rights to air season 4, so in order to watch it, I have to download it.

[Purkake]

Sometimes, you just got to pirate. Like in the case of Battlestar Galactica. You cant get the sci-fi channel in sweden and no channel has bought the rights to air season 4, so in order to watch it, I have to download it.

 

Shh! We don't about that stuff here. It's the public secret

Edited February 19, 2009 by Purkake

[Hiro Protagonist]

Yeah, back in the early '80s, there was a landmark US court case, where hollywood peeps sued Sony, arguing that their Betamax recorders made them an accessory to copyright violation. After lots of litigation, the court ruled in favor of Sony, that recording devices had legitimate uses and were not necessarily intended for piracy (as recording for purely personal use without re-distribution or subsequent sale is an established exception to copyright laws).

 

As Hurl pointed out, the analogy breaks down when you start talking about taking your 'personal use' copy and distributing it to others. The law recognizes this.

 

So, it's okay to copy tv shows from the tv, whether they be free to air or cable (even the cable tv channels like Foxtel encourage this) for personal use. But you're not allowed to copy the same show from the internet for your own personal use - unless it's from their own TV website such as a podcast. If a tv channel has a podcast, is it still illegal to download it from a torrent site?

Edited February 19, 2009 by Hiro Protagonist

[alanschu]

I think the issue there is that the places that share the links make money through advertisements. They are profiting from the distribution of the TV shows without permission.

[Enoch]

Yeah, back in the early '80s, there was a landmark US court case, where hollywood peeps sued Sony, arguing that their Betamax recorders made them an accessory to copyright violation. After lots of litigation, the court ruled in favor of Sony, that recording devices had legitimate uses and were not necessarily intended for piracy (as recording for purely personal use without re-distribution or subsequent sale is an established exception to copyright laws).

 

As Hurl pointed out, the analogy breaks down when you start talking about taking your 'personal use' copy and distributing it to others. The law recognizes this.

 

So, it's okay to copy tv shows from the tv, whether they be free to air or cable (even the cable tv channels like Foxtel encourage this) for personal use. But you're not allowed to copy the same show from the internet for your own personal use - unless it's from their own TV website such as a podcast. If a tv channel has a podcast, is it still illegal to download it from a torrent site?

Exactly, because the source you're accessing is beyond the control of the people who own the copyright (assuming that they haven't granted a blanket public license to re-distribute). Although the greater liability will attach to the person who is providing the torrent, the end users in that example are violating the law.

[Meshugger]

How about the record/movie companies setting up their own torrent tracker(s) and gather income from the ads/extra merchandise and whatnot? Also, they could have extra offers for special packaging and other goodies for the collectors as well.

 

Is that a terrible businessidea? Wouldn't it be profitable?

[Calax]

How about the record/movie companies setting up their own torrent tracker(s) and gather income from the ads/extra merchandise and whatnot? Also, they could have extra offers for special packaging and other goodies for the collectors as well.

 

Is that a terrible businessidea? Wouldn't it be profitable?

I think this might work, but they'd also probably start doing microtransactions for each movie downloaded (similar to Itunes). I think that the biggest thing in terms of movie and TV downloads is that often it's less of a hassle to download it in a night and keep it till you're hard drive is reformatted (or burn it to a DVD) than to go to the video store and rent it for 7 bucks for only seven days. If the movie companies brought down the rental prices you'd probably see more people using them. As it is people would prefer something like Netflix (and game wise, gamefly/gametap) so they can stay home and watch on a whim rather than go to a store to either buy the movie (which they might only watch this one time) or rent it at half the price of the purchase.

 

Of course the movie industry would NEVER want to see their cash cow die (rental places and DVD purchases) nor would they want to cut revenue by dropping prices. I don't know if they'd be able to keep the same amount of overall profit in microtransactions for a lower prices (because I don't know how much the materials cost for the DVD/Blu-ray nor the box) but if they could they could probably cut the amount of piracy simply by having movies available for download for a smaller amount of money.

 

On the TV side of things, I think that one of the bigger things that shoots TV shows in the foot is that not all of them are on DVD. Also people who don't catch things in the first run will often be unable to get that first season in chronological order so they'd have no clue what's going on (in stuff like heroes, Prison Break, 24) which is probably one of the reasons that they are pirated so much. Now TV is probably the least impacted by pirating from an economical stand point, because they don't earn NEARLY as much money selling the DVD sets as they due from ad revenue from the ratings. Basically their economic model isn't easily impacted as other media.

[Tigranes]

It would also be a lot less profitable.

[Meshugger]

'lo and behold, the local court where the jury was made out of laymen, found the pirate bay guys guilty. The juicy parts:

 

1) This is just a local court, it will be going to a higher instance, most likely the supreme court. There's even talks about getting to the highest possible: The European Court; but in order to do that, there has to be a foundation that the court decisions in Sweden have violated European laws in their procedure, something which i highly doubt myself.

 

2) The judge was suprised that there were non-swedish media interested in the case. Jurymembers were also noted to have slept throughout the proceedings.

 

3) The attourny dropped the case of trying to find them guilty of copyright-theft. Thus, no one was found guilty of the crime itself, rather everyone was found guilty of making it possible for people to commit a crime.

 

4) Everyone involved (four of them) got 1 year in prison and fined for 30 million swedish kronors (about 3 million euro, 2.4 million punds etc, etc...)

 

5) They got the same sentences as one under swedish law would get for aggrivated assault, rape or even manslaughter. No case as i am aware of in Sweden has been sentenced to a fine 8 figures. 5 or 6 are more common.

 

This is interesting. According to swedish law, if someone makes it possible for others, or gives them information on how to commit a crime, it is viewed that same as rapist or a killer.

 

Personally, i don't know. They are of course guilty of making it easier for pirates to get their material, but taking into consideration on how the swedish law is written, i can't help thinking that there were some backroom political reasons behind all this.

[Walsingham]

Didn't someone already make the point that this is like saying a guy who owns a nightclub is guilty if drug dealing occurs on the premises? Bound to get thrown out due to the implications, assuming they get a hot lawyer.

 

I mean good lawyer. er...

 

Anyway, if this sort of thing is to be taken seriously then why not use the same approach as that towards pubs and clubs. Running a server requires a license, the license gets reviewed on automatic renewal unless there is a case aginst you on specific behaviours. You have to make a reasonable effort to halt illegal activity. If you fail then you are banned from owning or operating a server for ten years. Bish bosh, surely?

[mkreku]

This verdict will not stand.

[Enoch]

No case as i am aware of in Sweden has been sentenced to a fine 8 figures. 5 or 6 are more common.

 

This is interesting. According to swedish law, if someone makes it possible for others, or gives them information on how to commit a crime, it is viewed that same as rapist or a killer.

 

Personally, i don't know. They are of course guilty of making it easier for pirates to get their material, but taking into consideration on how the swedish law is written, i can't help thinking that there were some backroom political reasons behind all this.

I'd guess that a large part of that fine is a confiscation of the revenues that their illegal activity gained them, rather than a fine with punitive intent. I don't know anything about Swedish law, I'd bet that the 'seriousness' of a crime doesn't matter-- if someone somehow made millions via jaywalking, a court could confiscate it. The whole point is to make sure that "crime doesn't pay."

 

Also, the accessory liability stuff isn't uncommon. At common law in Anglo-American jurisprudence, all accessories were exactly as liable as the person committing the crime. With an economic crime like an intellectual property violation, I think there's a pretty good logical case for arguing that someone who profits by making it possible/easier for others to commit a criminal act should be just as liable as those others. The whole point of the IP statutes is to prevent people who aren't the owners of the copyrights from profiting off of the products-- whether a particular person happens to be the end user or not doesn't really matter under that logic.

 

Didn't someone already make the point that this is like saying a guy who owns a nightclub is guilty if drug dealing occurs on the premises? Bound to get thrown out due to the implications, assuming they get a hot lawyer.

 

I mean good lawyer. er...

 

Anyway, if this sort of thing is to be taken seriously then why not use the same approach as that towards pubs and clubs. Running a server requires a license, the license gets reviewed on automatic renewal unless there is a case aginst you on specific behaviours. You have to make a reasonable effort to halt illegal activity. If you fail then you are banned from owning or operating a server for ten years. Bish bosh, surely?

It's a weak analogy. Running a nightclub is a completely legitimate business plan, even absent any illegal activity by patrons/employees. If the defendants here were running a website with an arguably legal purpose, where users just happened to be referring others to means to violate the law, it might work. But the site is called "The Pirate Bay," ferchrissakes! To make the analogy work, you'd have to name the club "The Drugs Place" and have the bouncer at the door referring people to the correct table to get the particular fix they want.

Edited April 17, 2009 by Enoch

[Walsingham]

Yes, but how does a court of law draw the distinction? There are advertising hoardings overlooking a car park near me where drug users congregate. Does that make the owner of the signs complicit?

 

I'm not saying they are innocent, and I don't condone what they did. But my personal conviction is as much use as a paper fart.

[Enoch]

Yes, but how does a court of law draw the distinction? There are advertising hoardings overlooking a car park near me where drug users congregate. Does that make the owner of the signs complicit?

 

I'm not saying they are innocent, and I don't condone what they did. But my personal conviction is as much use as a paper fart.

Mens rea.

 

Criminal law has always been largely about establishing what the defendant's state of mind was when the criminal act was committed. The finder of fact (i.e., the jury) has to conclude that they intended to do something that is illegal. In your examples, the business owners simply intended to run their legitimate business, selling advertising/booze. In this case, the business owners intended to facilitate the violation of copyright laws.

[Walsingham]

I see.

[Hurlshort]

5) They got the same sentences as one under swedish law would get for aggrivated assault, rape or even manslaughter. No case as i am aware of in Sweden has been sentenced to a fine 8 figures. 5 or 6 are more common.

 

This is interesting. According to swedish law, if someone makes it possible for others, or gives them information on how to commit a crime, it is viewed that same as rapist or a killer.

 

Personally, i don't know. They are of course guilty of making it easier for pirates to get their material, but taking into consideration on how the swedish law is written, i can't help thinking that there were some backroom political reasons behind all this.

 

Their crime was a financially based one. The jail time is rather short, but the fine makes total sense. I'd say it's a pretty fair verdict, to be honest. Hopefully it stands up.

[alanschu]

Didn't someone already make the point that this is like saying a guy who owns a nightclub is guilty if drug dealing occurs on the premises? Bound to get thrown out due to the implications, assuming they get a hot lawyer.

 

Again I don't buy this analogy.

 

This isn't just some bar where some people happen to deal drugs there without the proprietors knowing. This is a bar where the proprietors tell you where to get your drugs.

[alanschu]

We heard this claim during the trial when John Kennedy of music trade group IFPI flew up from London and talked about his antipiracy team and how they are in daily communication with Google. The Pirate Bay, on the other hand, famously posted (and then ridiculed) the letters it received from rights-holders asking for material to be removed from the site.

 

/facepalm

 

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/20...s-are-legal.ars