European Pirates Arrested in Massive Police Operation 278
freedumb2000 writes "Europe just witnessed one of the largest piracy-related busts in history with the raid of the popular movie streaming portal Kino.to. More than a dozen people connected to the site were arrested after police officers in Germany, Spain, France and the Netherlands raided several residential addresses and data centers. Kino.to hosted no illicit content itself, but indexed material stored on file-hosters and other streaming services."
Re:Summary incomplete (Score:4, Informative)
"Kino.to hosted no illicit content itself, but indexed material stored on file-hosters and other streaming services." Copying and pasting the first paragraphn is 1) misleading 2) an extremely poor way to do a SUMMARY. This is what is missing "GVU states that Kino.to was working closely with the sites that hosted the copyrighted films, and that they profited from commercial partnerships with these companies." So it was not a SIMPLE linking as the first paragraph make seem to believe.
Even still, why not go after those sites that hosted the films instead?
Because in Russia films host you... No seriously - it is obvious that those sites are in "uncooperative" jurisdictions. So they go for the closer target to get some press. Kino.ru/so/ir/kp will likely be available any day now.
Re:Summary incomplete (Score:4, Informative)
They did... according to most German tech sites, the same people who owned the file hosting sites also happened to be the owners of kino.to. Or something like that...
Anyway, they took the hosting sites down too.
Re:Summary incomplete (Score:5, Informative)
Copying and pasting the first paragraphn is 1) misleading 2) an extremely poor way to do a SUMMARY. This is what is missing "GVU states that Kino.to was working closely with the sites that hosted the copyrighted films, and that they profited from commercial partnerships with these companies."
So it was not a SIMPLE linking as the first paragraph make seem to believe.
Good point. Also stated in these articles here: (sorry could not find anything in english) http://heise.de/-1257486/ [heise.de] and http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/netzpolitik/0,1518,767375,00.html/ [spiegel.de]
Basically what was stated is that not only was kino.to taken down but also the filehosting and portal sites behind it. The people running these sites (kino.to and others) are not explicitly being charged for linking copyrighted material(ASFAIK this is still somewhat of a grayzone in Germany) But rather for building an organized criminal organization. If prosecuted in a German criminal court this could lead to a 5 year jail sentence.
Bad headline? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Download and raw DVD tax (Score:5, Informative)
We got that joke running here as well (as do most countries afaik). The gag in it all is the combination of various little bits that make the whole "media tax" very fishy.
1. Allegedly, the reason for that levy on blank media is that you, the consumer, will use them to record copyrighted material, e.g. by making a copy of a record on a blank tape, or in today's word, a copy of the DVD that you borrowed from a friend. Our law even has a section that explicitly allows you to borrow legally bought media from personal friends (nobody on the internet is your friend, btw, that's established in court, so any internet sources are not part of the deal) and create a copy of it for your personal use.
2. Every single commercial DVD and BluRay (that would be subject to the grounds established in the first bullet point) now comes with copy protection.
3. The law now explicitly also disallows circumventing protection of any sort.
Question for 100: How am I supposed to execute my right to a copy if copy protection prevents me from copying and I must not disable this protection (even if it's trivial)?
Re:Cool... so (Score:4, Informative)
Can someone who didn't post yet hand that guy a few mod points? This is pretty much dead on the problem.
I have money and I would gladly spend it on content. If it was offered to me, and offered in an acceptable way.
It takes AGES (years, literally) before a new season of whatever show I'd like to watch gets available in my country. Of course, dubbing and all takes time, but I'd be happy to have it in plain ol' English. And not only because the dubbing stinks for 9 out of 10 shows, where jokes get mutilated to the point where you can't even understand why it was supposedly funny. We're at least one-two seasons behind on our networks. Writer's guild strike? Some actor going bonkers? We won't feel it at least another year or two, and by then they certainly compensated with something. Hey, what a blast!
Then there's my pet peeve about anime. Some of the dubbing is just atrocious if you understand at least a few words of Japanese. They often get butchered with cuts that change the whole story, not to mention that certain animes won't ever make it here since, hey, comics are for kids and these things aren't suitable for our kids! Think I'll ever get to see a German dub of Hellsing OVA? Doubt it. Not only 'cause of the Nazis.
So let me buy what I want to have and I'll gladly throw my money at you! But please refrain from casting it in a package that I cannot accept as a licensee. If you force me to sit through half an hour of unskipable ads, I'm not going to buy. I paid for the content! If you want to litter it with ads, show it to me for free on private TV!
Re:Of all places.... (Score:2, Informative)
Why is this tired and meaningless argument that " a pirate has a boat and a wooden leg" trotted out again and again?
Um, possibly because the original usage of "pirate" is still valid and [smh.com.au] in [smh.com.au] everyday [smh.com.au] use [smh.com.au]? You see, that's the problem with hijacking existing language for emotional manipulation - it prevents clear communication because people have to derive from context whether you mean nasty-copying-without-permission-pirate, or shoot-up-boats-and-kidnap-people-pirate. When the context is as short as a headline, sometimes there is not enough of it to correctly gauge the meaning.