BitTorrent User Guilty Of Piracy 470
DIY News writes "A Hong Kong man has been convicted of movie internet piracy in what is believed to be the first case involving BitTorrent file-sharing software. The man was found guilty of copyright infringement for distributing three Hollywood blockbusters using BitTorrent."
This isn't the deterrent. Price is! (Score:3, Interesting)
"This ruling means a lot," said Hong Kong Commerce Secretary John Tsang, explaining that it would deter other possible file-sharers.
What deters me is simply that it's more worth it to just buy the movie in the store. I don't have to waste bandwidth downloading it, the time to burn it to DVD, and my drive space while I do that. Most movies (especially real suck ass ones like Dardevil) are available for $7.50 at Target all the time. Hell, I just got Season 1 of Nip/Tuck for $18.88 two weekends ago!
well.. (Score:1, Interesting)
the guy was seeding the films.
the customs and excise agents tracked him down by monitoring local torrent sites and then following up with his ISP from his IP address.
it looks like they downloaded the films(or started to anyway) themselves in order to get his IP address
this is a major deterrent to the endemic problem here of pirated DVD's. The pirates download them via bit torrent and then burn them and sell them on the street or in dodgy DVD shops in certain computer malls here.
It's already been stated here in the press that since this guy got arrested, P2P downloads have dropped by 50% from within the territory, it's a short term thing..once a suitable alternative comes out, the pirates will start to use it.
Guilty by knowledge? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Well, duh... (Score:3, Interesting)
A better analogy would be if you had access to a replicating machine, and little kids allowed you to use it to make copies of their candy. Still, even that analogy breaks down when you consider that movies, unlike candy, are not consumable.
Perhaps a better analogy would be going into a library and photocopying one of the books so that you could take it home and read it at your leisure. If you saw someone walking out of the library with such a copy, would you point and shout "Thief! Thief!", in the same manner which you might if you saw a shoplifter shove a dozen DVDs down their pants and try to leave the store? No? Then it's not stealing.
Re:Selection... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:This isn't the deterrent. Price is! (Score:3, Interesting)
I think that was exactly the point of the lawsuit; they (the media industry) want to give *all* who use bit-torrent for illegal distribution of copyrighted materials pause. Not just the seeder, but all those who consequently share the bandwidth of it as well (i.e., the leechers).
I would imagine that the only difference beween being a seeder or a leecher might possibly be the penalty the prosecutor asked for; unauthorized seeder or leecher - it's illegal just the same.
I'm not saying I like what happened, and I too would like to know if he was the original seeder, but I guess what I'm trying to say is - I don't think the media industry cares too much. I agree that going after leechers has more chilling implications, but that's probably what they're aiming for.
Re:This isn't the deterrent. Price is! (Score:3, Interesting)
Note: I'm going to be using "you" to mean "people in general", not "you in particular".
Now, I'm not familiar with Chinese copyright law as it stands, but I have a feeling he's guilty either way. If you want to glamorize this and call it "civil disobedience", then be ready to go down for your actions. If not, just admit that as the law stands now, regardless of whether that is morally right or wrong, the action is illegal, and that he is being punished for what he did.
I'm more likely to laugh at every person- downloading, uploading, sharing, seeding, whatever- that gets caught and whines about "their rights" than I am to feel sorry for any of them.
No, I do not buy movies or CDs often- a few here and there, and most likely at a band's show for a CD- but I also don't bother downloading a bunch of stuff and then whining that I got caught. You seem to be in a similar boat to me. If you enjoy it, you buy it when it gets cheaper. Save yourself the money and the hassle of downloading.
And if all of it sucks so much, why do people want it in the first place?
Re:Next Gen p2p (Score:3, Interesting)
No, they also have an advantage when distributing stuff legitimately that you don't want people to know about, like fetish porn.
Same as in the USA (Score:4, Interesting)
them because very few books were written in the USA. All their books were written by English authors
like Dickens - so not having copyright laws mean that US printers could print British books without
paying any royalty & sell them for pennies.
Charles Dickens saw this on his visit to the USA & tried to fight against this.
However, USA started having copyright laws on books only after there were enough American authors
whose rights needed to be protected. By that time the book industry was jumpstarted by having a
good business of seeling cheap pirated books & they could build on it.
Every country starts respecting copyrights/patents only when they have more things to
protect than to steal.
Re:Selection... (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm always a little perplexed by this line of reasoning. If it's not good enough to enjoy... why bother obtaining and watching it?
It's not that it's not good enough to enjoy, just that it's not good enough to purchase. Can you honestly tell me that you've never watched or participated in any event that, had you been asked to pay money (or more money) prior to participating you wouldn't have?
The logic of your average pirater who thinks this way runs like so:
1) I would never be willing to pay money for that content because its cost/value ratio is too low
2) I do not consume the producer's resources by obtaining this product (i.e., if you swipe a candy bar, the company is out the production costs, but if you pirate a movie, the company only loses potential revenue that you have already stated you never would have provided)
3) The value level is high enough that it can entertain me
4) Hence, if I download this content no one loses anything they had not already lost, but I get mindless entertainment
This logic, in different forms, is what explains why people eat free food that tastes like mutilated carcasses, go to free concerts by artists they don't care about, see movie screenings in the park for movies they would never rent, or are willing to be hassled by advertisers to get free promotional goodies that they never really wanted (equivalent to the hassle of finding this junk on the Internet).
Ask them to pay for the food, concert, movie, or crappy t-shirt, and no one shows up anymore. That doesn't mean they wouldn't have enjoyed themselves, only that they're not willing to shell out their cash to support the producers.
Honestly, I find this logic interesting as it also points out that piracy disseminates the material to a wider audience than would have otherwise received it. The amount it impacts sales is up for debate, because it is simply false that everyone who downloads the movie would have bought it and that everyone who downloads the movie doesn't buy it.
I would venture a guess that a significant portion of the piraters fall into the segment of the market that never would have purchased, so the 'lost sales' are mythical in nature. The troubled portion of the market contains those that would have paid for the content if they couldn't get it another way, but they found piracy to be a suitable solution.
With apologies to Ayn Rand... (Score:2, Interesting)