Aussie Students Face Jail Over Music Sharing Site 448
An anonymous reader writes "SMH this morning is reporting that three uni students may be jailed for their creation of a music sharing web site. Ok, piracy is not a good thing, but jail is just a tad extreme, don't you think? I hope ARIA (Australian version of RIAA) are pleased with themselves. What burns me about this article is the quote: 'Counsel for the Commonwealth, Paul Roberts, SC, said Ng was well aware he was acting illegally. Not only was the site camouflaged - the web space had been let to him by a teenage boy in Perth - but Ng had co-written an essay for his information technology law course on "open source software licensing."'
Not entirely sure what OS licensing has to do with music piracy."
Screw it (Score:3, Interesting)
Anyone ever seen "Born Yesterday"? Great line from that movie that applies here:
"I want EVERYONE to be smart. A world full of
ignorance is too dangerous to live in."
I hate stupid people.
Obvious (Score:5, Interesting)
Obviously anyone that chooses to write an essay for an information technology law course on "open source software licensing" knows at least SOMETHING about copyright. Such as, for instance, the fact that there is a such a thing as copyright law and that freely trading copyrighted material might violate it.
That quote had nothing to do with insulting your precious open source sensitivities. It was about an information technology law student obviously knowing when he's breaking copyright laws on a computer.
About time! (Score:2, Interesting)
Piracy advocates used to say that there is no alternative to piracy, that there is nowhere else to get music online. Thats not true now; with the success of anti-piracy enforcement, there is a flourishing legal online music marketplace, and everyone should realize that if this new business horizon is to be truly successful, the illegal alternative must be suppressed.
Jail over an indexing service? Again? (Score:3, Interesting)
It may seem off-topic, but it isn't, really. A movie was filmed consensually. It's being distributed - with disregard to any possible copyright - by one of the involved parties. And the other party involved is threatening lawsuits six ways from Sunday. Pot, kettle, black... You performed a work, you knew it was being recorded, you're well aware of this whole new-fangled "internet" thing, why is it someone else's fault when things start getting distributed? To be honest, the parallel between the Hilton tape and every MP3 out there is quite clear.
I'm disappointed to see that yet more college kids are facing punishment for writing what amounts to essentially an indexing service, but here in the US, that seems to be the status quo. As in, he who has the status, has the quo.
The RIAA is winning because they have money. The ARIA will win for the same reasons. It sucks, really.
Re:Hmmm.... (Score:3, Interesting)
If you friend says to you "could you lend me that Cd you just bought". would you say "no, its against the law, you criminal"? I dont think he would be your friend if you did say that often.
The point i am trying to make is that, he may not have seen it as a breach of the law. Music pirates are often seen as people who copy CDs and music and sell them on at a profit.
"These guys didnt make a penny (or so i believe), so they cannot be criminals."
they were surely sitting ducks (Score:2, Interesting)
I have as big a chip on my shoulder as the next
Jail is over the top, but if you wanted to get away with doing dodgy things, these guys failed miserably.
The music industry alleges... (Score:5, Interesting)
> it at least $60 million
That's one f*ck of a lot of Kylie!
Let's do a bit of maths on this. A CD in Australia costs around $20-25. Let's round this up to $30, to give ARIA the benefit of the doubt.
An average CD contains about 10 tracks.
I'm going to assume that ARIA used something resembling base-10 mathematics... $60 mill equates to 2 million CDs, or 20 million tracks worth of downloads.
That's one track for every person in Australia.
Let's further assume that each track was a 3Mb MP3 file, which is probably a bit on the low side. The 20 million tracks that were downloaded works out to about 60Tb of data.
Are we supposed to believe that these guys, using a site running from a suburban bedroom, managed to share 60Tb of data? **Maybe** ARIA's lawyer is assuming that each track that was downloaded from this site was copied to another 10 sites, and from each of these to another 10,
Does anyone have any more info on this case? Preferably, something a bit more credible?
Well it shouldn't be a damn crime! (Score:1, Interesting)
remember it is only a 'crime' because it is a threat to a huge corporations outmoded business model. These kids should be lauded for making a stand against our greedy oppressors.
and dont go on with any shit about protection of the 'artists' - they could make a lot more money by using the technology to distribute direct and taking the whole cut rather than a miniscule percentage.
If all musicians made their music easily and cheaply available, 'piracy' would disappear - there is no money in it after all. The artists and the consumers would be better off - the only losers would be the record companies.
and to the guy who compared it to software - you can usually make more money out of being the guy who wrote the software that everyone uses because its good and free than the software that no one uses because, although its good, it costs $500.
Re:Mixed Feelings (Score:1, Interesting)
Communism wasn't a bad idea. Capitalism is just a means to the end of communism. The violent communist though aren't willing to let nature take its course. And equitable sharing with an incentive to work towards it (prisoner's dilema) can happen.
Re:Good (Score:4, Interesting)
In my county, you might be the only inmate.
A friend of mine spent 30 days in jail once back in the late 70s.
When his father needed him to drive a tractor, the sheriff would turn him loose for the day in the custody of his father. At the end of the day, his father would take him back.
They'd also let him out to rake the leaves of the courthouse lawn or to run down to the drugstore for a hamburger or a book to read.
One Saturday night, someone booked for drinking and driving, public intoxication, or something like that broke his tv set. He was a bit ticked off that the sheriff wouldn't let him out for a little while on Monday to go buy another tv set.
Re:About time! (Score:1, Interesting)
How about because copyright infringement is a civil issue, not a criminal issue. Jail is not a penalty for civil cases, only criminal cases. Joe blow cannot send me to jail, only the government, be it city, county, state, or federal.
BTW, narcotics laws result in criminal penalties. Distribution in drugs is not the same thing as distribution in a copy of a song.
Get a clue.
Re:Punishment fitting the crime (Score:2, Interesting)
Testing: US dollar: '$$$$$'
Testing: UK pound: ''
Re:Hmmm.... (Score:1, Interesting)
Is our judgement so clouded by all this meaningless legal mumbo jumbo and greedy capitalistic bullshit that we no longer even notice that the laws of copyright and patent are just PLAIN WRONG and a serious detriment to the advancement of our society?
Piece by piece, day by day I am comitted to taking apart this monstrosity we call 'intellectual property', I will die a happy man when there is no longer any formal concept of copyright, patent or trademark in this world, I truly beleive it is ALL WRONG.
So once again I will make it my mission to break the law today, maybe pirate a piece of software and give it to a total stranger in the street, maybe just rip a few CDs, whatever.
Every time I read another piece of news like the article quoted I strenghen my resolve to fight this menace.
Re:Punishment fitting the crime (Score:2, Interesting)
Your statement that there are 1000$ worth of "pirated" pieces of music on their computer is correct. But assume that 1000 people (illegally!) download 100 of those songs each. What is the theoretical damage to the music industry?
1000x100x1$ = 100000$, so we are theoretically not talking about petty crimes here.
Re:Obvious (Score:2, Interesting)
Not at all.
I'm simply pointing out (not so clearly) that the same crime carries different punishments depending on if one is computer-knowledgeable or not.
Shoplift a few CDs from HMV? $250 fine [masscriminal-lawyers.com].
Download them from Kazaa [foxnews.com]? Only god can save you now.
Brianna and the others sued yesterday under federal copyright law could face penalties of up to $150,000 per song, but the RIAA has already settled some cases for as little as $3,000.
Why the huge discrepancy when, arguably, far less harm is caused to the victim by illicit downloading?