First Three-Strikes Copyright Court Case In NZ Falls Over 80
Bismillah writes "The 'Skynet' anti-filesharing law introduced last year in New Zealand is starting to bite, with people being hauled in front of the Copyright Tribunal by the music industry after receiving three notices. Of the three Copyright Tribunal cases to be heard currently, the first one's just been dropped. Why? Nobody knows. RIANZ isn't saying. Interesting things: the accused was the ISP account holder, a student sharing a place with others who also used the Internet connection. The cost of the five songs downloaded is NZ$11.95 but RIANZ wanted NZ$1,075.50 because it estimated the music was shared/downloaded 90 times in total. A high deterrent penalty of NZ$1,250 was also asked for."
"Making available" is faulty logic (Score:5, Insightful)
That line of reasoning only works if this one guy is the only person they're going to punish for the filesharing. i.e. Once he's fined, the other 90 people who downloaded songs are free and clear, since the punishment for sharing 90 songs has already been meted out.
If instead they're also planning to go after the 90 others who downloaded the song, and slap them with fines for it being downloaded 90 times, then they're effectively fining for 90*90 = 8100 songs being illegally downloaded. Clearly erroneous since it was only downloaded 90 times.
That's what this boils down to. Either fine each filesharer for a single download (the copy the downloaded for themselves). Or fine one filesharer for all the downloads, but in the process give up your rights to prosecute the other filesharers. The "making available" argument is so mathematically nonsensical it can fabricate fines for billions of downloads when there were in fact fewer than 100,000 downloads.
Estimated? (Score:3, Insightful)
Gee, yeah we only caught him stealing one apple, but we estimate he took a bag of gold - that we can't proof ever existed.
Re:"Making available" is faulty logic (Score:0, Insightful)
Damn. I almost thought you were the submitter/editor on this one, based on your typos and the typos in the summary...
Re:"Making available" is faulty logic (Score:2, Insightful)
You're applying logic to greed. Don't bother.
I blame all the greed in this case on RIANZ, what I don't understand, is how a court justifies using those logs as evidence. The technology simply doesn't exist to track things like that reliably. Especially when you're trying to legally cheat someone out of their life savings.
Even DNA based evidence isn't always accurate, and when it's used, it's for something like rape or murder.
I think these judges, should be rotated, once in a while to have all kinds of cases, because, it seems they've lost touch with reality.
Re:"Making available" is faulty logic (Score:4, Insightful)
Even if they were going to go after this one person, how many casual torrenters have a ratio of 90:1?
Missing the point(s) (Score:5, Insightful)
why does this conversation look like a bunch of chickens discussing the finer points on the morality of being fricasseed?
Let's get this straight. The recording industry is interested in the executives of the recording industry. All others can snack on feces and die.
They will make money in the process if they can, but that's not important and its not the point.
The point is to make huge public example of a few people who will be so horribly mauled by the corporation that nobody will ever think of making that mistake.
The intention is to create a system that allows a vanishing few to own and control most or all IP to the point that you will have no freedom to hum to yourself without an executive somewhere getting paid.
This is about control, and ultimately the control of thought. This is about an entitled few who believe its their birthright to milk the entire human race dry.
Are we now clear about what is actually happening?
Re:"Making available" is faulty logic (Score:5, Insightful)
Double dipping is nothing.
This is exponential dipping.