Warner Brothers Hiring Undercover Anti-Pirates 443
An anonymous reader writes "TorrentFreak reports that Warner Brothers UK is hiring college students with an IT background to participate in an internship that will pit them against pirates on the Web in an effort to crack down on illegal digital distribution. The intern will literally be on the front-lines of the epic battle against pirated content, ensnaring users in incriminating transactions, issuing takedown requests, and causing general frustration amongst the file-sharing population on the Internet."
Keep going (Score:3, Interesting)
I want some serious action to encourage the development of the completely anonymous protocols.
Keep pushing, studios.
Could be worse (Score:1, Interesting)
I think I prefer this sort of activity rather than forcing ISPs to do their bidding for no cost to the copyright holder. Or intensive lobbying that hurts everyone. Yeah, it may be a foolish quest to combat copyright infringement, but at least this way of going about it makes some modicum of sense.
So? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:My only question is... (Score:5, Interesting)
It's not a competition. What they should do is offer Spotify [wikipedia.org] like service for movies all around the world, not just in US, and either ad-supported version or $10-$19 per month paid subscription with perks like PS3 and mobile streaming and so on. After Spotify came around 1.5 years ago people haven't had a need to pirate MP3's anymore. It's actually nicer to use than P2P - that's something that movie industry needs to have to combat piracy (hopefully Voddler [wikipedia.org] will get there). When the service works good and is reasonably priced, you win a lot of customers.
Re:My only question is... (Score:3, Interesting)
Spotify is not available in most of the world. Only 6 countries and no linux client. I would rather just buy non-drmed music.
Re:Could be worse (Score:1, Interesting)
I think I prefer this sort of activity rather than forcing ISPs to do their bidding for no cost to the copyright holder.
Who says they'll stop doing that?
Or intensive lobbying that hurts everyone.
What makes you think they're going to stop lobbying? Its the only tactic they use
that actually seems to work.
From TFA:
The intern will literally be on the front-lines of the epic battle against pirated content, ensnaring users in incriminating transactions, issuing takedown requests, and causing general frustration amongst the file-sharing population on the Internet."
I'm betting these interns will be a way of issuing mass takedowns of everything they dont like once ACTA passes.
They'll just blame any wrongful takedowns on a few overzealous interns. Someone is far less likely to sue a 'poor student'
tan a rich company for improper takedowns.
Re:My only question is... (Score:5, Interesting)
those would be the interns that end up posting information from these companies on wikileaks showing that they are doing illegal things... ah to the companies that think us geeks care about company loyalty... yeah you pay their cheques... and yeah, we can get cheques elsewhere
Re:My only question is... (Score:3, Interesting)
They are hypocrites who believe in copyright when it is good for them and not when it does not suit them.
But are they much worse than the major motion picture studios, which moved to Hollywood just to be out of range of Thomas Edison's patent goons?
Re:My only question is... (Score:3, Interesting)
Where are all the anti-anti-pirates?
On 4chan. May as well give them something productive to do.
Re:Interesting tactic, won't work. (Score:5, Interesting)
Start by offering 700MB XVID downloads for about USD$5 from fast servers with fantastic bandwidth.
In the movie file, show one add for an upcoming movie, then show the credit card details and user account information for about 5 seconds. "this copy of $movie is licenced to $name $address $credit_card_number" . The customer will protect your movies with the same level of care as their card information, and will share it at their own risk or have to go to the hassle of editing the information out before putting it on p2p.
As parent said, only by competing with the product (p2p) will the movie companies win. And they have a chance to make some big money off that 'long tail'. Apply suitable methods to discourage sharing, and consumption will increase. Using this method, the movie industry would kill TV and make Billions.
Does this remind anybody of anything else...? (Score:3, Interesting)
Why does this remind me a lot of "war on drugs" that USA is presently still losing (as it escalates to neighboring countries as well.)
Re:What a bunch of pussies (Score:4, Interesting)
If the papers they sign state that they are responsible for their own actions, it would get WB out of any counter-lawsuits for thing done.
Curiously, this would leave the WB "employee" liable for any sharing of WB material that they participate in while attempting to entrap others. Let me think, how could that be useful to WB... I see, wait six months after you hire your tranche of stooges, fire and then sue them using the evidence they supplied (thinking this was about others). Win the cases and then point to the stack of precedent you have amassed when you go after future cases. Sweet ;)
Re:Keep going (Score:5, Interesting)
Oddly enough, the most exclusive of the darknets are considerably more dangerous to be members of than being part of a large and very public crowd. I personally know one person who went to a halfway house, two who went to jail, and one who plea-bargained out of cell time because they were running servers for an extremely small and exclusive group of copyright infringers. They got taken out so hard because the FBI took an interest based solely on their reputation, and not on any possible damage done to rights holders. It was very much a case of flies and sledgehammers.
Personally, I recommend avoiding invitation-only darknets. First, because they encourage law enforcement to see it as a challenge, and second because that's not how to win the dispute. The only way the assertion that copyright powers are wildly out of control and out of proportion will carry the day is if it's a cultural movement. The entire population has to be involved, and has to stick to it even when some of its members go down.
That's what's happening now. The current situation is basically civil disobedience on an epic scale, despite the resounding lack of large crowds and firehoses. If you retreat to hidden darknets, you're losing.
The rights holders still think they can preserve their rights, and even expand them, and with them their revenues. They're doomed. I've seen what the 11-17 year old crowd is doing, and I've heard how they think. They share. A lot. They're barely aware that the proverbial powers that be don't like it, and they get grumpy when their favorite Youtube video gets taken down because it used copyrighted background music, but they don't for a minute believe there was any justification in the takedown. They literally don't recognize the rights being claimed. I don't see that attitude going away because it's almost completely passive. They are not taking a principled stand. They're not aggressively standing up and demanding the distribution restrictions on Steamboat Willie be rescinded. The decision happens much more subtly than that. Each one of them is just a little snowflake in an avalanche: the avalanche is not their intention - it's their very nature.
Re:Won't work (Score:1, Interesting)
> Information is free. Period.
By your argument, how then is anyone ever to be compensated for work that is anything other than physical labor?
Invent the cure for the common cold -- information -- free (sorry, no paycheck)
Run the plant that makes the pill -- physical product -- get paid
Does your "free information" model include a method to financially support those with the capability to advance medicine, science and the arts? Or were you planning on letting them all stay at your place? Last time I checked, patrons were few and far between, at least in the US.
w
Re:Won't work (Score:1, Interesting)
If I give you an apple and you give me an apple we both have one apple.
If I share my information with you and you share your information with me we both have more information.
I guess nobody really taught us the difference between apples and oranges.
Re:Shouldn't that be ... (Score:3, Interesting)
What is funny for me is that I have never ever seen anything from that show.
The only way I know that it is from some Rocky and Bullwinkle thing is because of all the references to that show from other american media over all the years.