Convicted by the Movie Cops 454
Reckless Visionary writes "Salon has a great article about what it's like to get on the MPAA's bad side. It's a first hand account of what happens when you are accused of violating the DMCA and commentary on the "guilty until proven innocent" nature of today's copyright laws." Pirate movies. Lose access. You are guilty. And this guy was on vacation when it happened, so there's no need for accountability. Hope you don't depend on your net access.
Why did this happen? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Honestly (Score:2, Insightful)
right?
J'accuse! (Score:3, Insightful)
If we are accused again of distributing copyrighted material, we lose our accounts for two weeks instead of one, and face banishment from our ISP.
McCarthyism is alive and well in America. A little finger pointing is all it takes, and you are discredited forever.
Re:Guilty until proven innocent? Gimme a break (Score:5, Insightful)
Not having the ability to surf for pr0n is one thing. However, lots of people use their connections for business uses. It supports their livelihood. When you consider that, it sounds a little more important.
The last point is that the idea of being innocent until being proven guilty by a jury of your peers is one of the tenents of the US, where this action occured. A lot of people jumped on boats and sailed across the see to avoid this sort of behavior. Without that, this sounds could be the Salem Witch Hunt, the Red Scare, or the Inquisition.
Right now it's just being able to check your email. But as we depend on bandwidth more and more in the future it becomes more important. Consider that.
This is getting out of control (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Guilty until proven innocent? Gimme a break (Score:2, Insightful)
The MPAA and the ISP did not admit any wrong doing or mistake on their part. The made the guy sign a document stating he would not traffic copywrited materials. As far as they are concerned he did it.
Suppose your cable tv was disconnected because the cable company was told that you were making illegal copies of movies and selling them? What would you do? You are accused of being a pirate and the only way you can get your cable service back is to promise not to do it again. But, you never did it in the first place.
Is that just an invoncenience? How would you feel?
Re:Guilty until proven innocent? Gimme a break (Score:3, Insightful)
While Internet access will never be as "critical" a service as heat or water, some of us would suffer very real economic damages if our net access was interrupted, and this is only going to get more and more common.
Re:Quick (legal) question... (Score:3, Insightful)
I have no legal experience but I am pretty sure most ISP service agreements include clauses like, "...can terminate service at anytime, with or without notifying the user, for any reason deemed appropriate." or some such garbage. Take a look at your ISP's agreement, just what did you agree to???
Re:Honestly (Score:2, Insightful)
What's really broken is the fact that most broadband providers have a virtual monopoly. Back in the days of 56K modems, ISPs were a dime a dozen, and if you were dropped by one, it was no big deal to sign up with another. This situation has changed drastically now that people are dependent on broadband access. DSL is not available everywhere which means many people are dependent on cable modems for broadband, and in most cities there is only one choice of provider.
I'm not saying cable companies should be forced to allow competitors to use their lines, but we should be careful that when fiber optics are installed, that whichever company is given the government granted monopoly to dig trenches on public land to lay cables, that this company must, in return, allow other ISPs to hook up to the other end, giving consumers choice. Then if you are dropped by one, it's no big deal to sign up with another.
In the New Digital Millennium..... (Score:1, Insightful)
Fair use, freedom of speech and expression....gone.
You are guilty. Period. An accusation is all it takes.
The government works against the people. Congress and the President are lackeys for corporate America.
You pay. And pay. And pay. If you want a CD. you pay. If you want a cassette of the same CD you pay again. An MP3 for your Rio? Take out your wallet!
The rich get MUCH richer while the rest of us....?
Privacy doesn't exist. Mail is randomly opened and read. ALL email is scanned and read. Phone calls are randomly listened to. TV viewing is monitored. Radio listening too. 'Net access is monitored down to the keystroke.
Think this can't happen? Think again. Much of it already does happen.
The rest?
Give them 10 years.....
Re:Quick (legal) question... (Score:2, Insightful)
The DMCA has an explicit provision (section 512(g)(1) stating that if an ISP, in good faith, takes down or blocks access to material for which a notice of infringement was received, the ISP can not be held liable for the action. There are some caveats, but I think you would be hard pressed to prove that they had violated these very liberal caveats.
The interesting piece is that ISPs are responding to claims of infringement by taking advantage of the 512(c) safe harbor. A better safe harbor, for the ISP, would be to invoke section 512(a) which limits an ISP's liability for conduit activities, i.e. when the material is not on a computer they do now own (e.g. a gnutella client on your home machine). Presumably if an ISP invoked 512(a), the MPAA/RIAA/SBA would have to go after the user individually. Whether this is a better or worse solution for the end user is a matter for debate