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The Courts Government News

First person convicted of U.S. Internet piracy 279

Posted by Hemos from the don't-get-caught dept.
Anonymous Coward writes "A college student who ran a pirate website is the first person in the U.S. to be convicted of felony Internet piracy - max penalty 3 years prison and $250,000 fine. Read all about the conviction. "
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First person convicted of U.S. Internet piracy More

First person convicted of U.S. Internet piracy

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  • How many other "services" do you know of that are, in effect, infinite?

    Telecommunications. An international call doesn't cost on a per-call basis in real terms.

    "Service" is when I call tech support and someone takes the TIME to help me.

    Apparently, you don't consider your long distance telephone service to be a "service" ?

    The "new" work required to handle specific problems or tasks can be billed on an hour by hour or instance by instance basis.

    Don't be silly. Can you afford to pay someone to write MS Word ?

    The previous effort that has gone into building software, because of softwares infinite nature, is worth nothing.

    Again, this is hogwash. If it's really worth nothing, then why is the market willing to pay for the "previous effort" ? ( btw, note that your reasoning implies that you needn't pay long distance telephone bills, since the infrastructure is also there in advance ) Surely, if what you were saying was correct, the market would not be willing to pay for software, and commercial software as we know it would cease to exist.

  • Packet monkies? warez0rz? with the advent of Asdl/boradband/and numerous other internet connections evolving from the blindingly fast 900 baud modem i remember using in my childhood...im not too worried about packet monkies...personaly...the point is moot. Ill tell ya what they need...not ppl...but simple AI's...small protocol programs that monitor the exchange of warez and the like. ill stop my oblivious and irrelevant rant now..but I think it sounds like the matrix...
  • "all to (sic) ready" was a typo, of course :)
  • That's true. However, last I check, MS Office Premium was selling for $675, while Quake 2 went for a scant $28.95. The bottom line is that more time, manpower, R&D, and ultimately, money, goes into office apps. Look at iD Software, probably the premier game shop in the world. They have what, 4 lead coders? 6? I personally know of many a business app worked on by teams of ten, even twenty times that. For game companies, yes piracy is bad, but in the grand scheme of things, the software copyright laws are to protect businesses from other businesses.
  • you people truely have no spine.

    Just as well you posted anonymously, then.
  • Absolutely.

    How long have small shareware vendors who don't cripple their programs been getting abused? Estimates of registration usually come out like 1/6 of the users.

    Maybe like me, you don't like the shareware model much, but why hasn't the government been all over this? The money they failed to get has stifled a market for small independent software vendors who don't wish to use classic distribution channels.

    Clue: large corporations don't market shareware.

    Jim
  • It's called an "out of court settlement." The corporation goes, "We noticed you're using a bunch of our software without a license. Pay the license to us plus a penalty of $____ and we won't prosecute you." Sometimes they take them to court and pay the settlement then, sometimes they take them to court, don't settle, and win there.

    Generally, the company agrees with the settlement, not wanting the bad PR or the legal headache. I imagine it's a pretty fairly common practice.
  • Absolutely, ISPs need to stop pretending that they have any sort of duty to protect the privacy of their paying customers. It would be so much easier if they would just post a log of all their users' activities to their web site. Along with their addresses and phone numbers so that it's easy to stop this sort of hooliganism. America Online should be admired for disclosing confidential information to the Navy about that gay officer, without making them go through all that pointless "due process" drivel. (Yes, that was sarcasm.)
  • While I agree that $250,000 fine and 3 years imprisonment is serious penalty for this kind of thing, there are some points I'd like to contest:

    1) This is a MAXIMUM penalty, not necessarily the penaltly that will be paid. This is written clearly in all commercial software license agreements.

    2) $100,000 is probably a slightly conservative estimate for a 3 year term. That's over $33,000 a year, which is almost the average salary of the American worker.

    3) If the guy had $2500 worth of software on his site, and say (over time) an estimated 10,000 people downloaded the the whole site, that is at least $25,000,000 of commercial software and music software being distributed at no cost.

    4) I'm a geek, and I don't have a pirated copy of Windows. Or any illegal MP3s. All of my MP3s are from CDs I own. And what's the point of pirating software when you can get better for free?

    I hope the judge has some pity on this kid and lets him make it up in a way that he is able. But let's face it, piracy is illegal. Yeah, a little software piracy actually does help make money for Microsoft and other companies, but if there were no laws against it, a lot of people would be out of a job.

    Also, if you're going to pirate software, you should know the consequences in advance. If you know what the penalty is in advance, you can't say it's "cruel." If you don't; well, then you're just plain dumb.

    And it's not unusual; I remember having read these terms of penalty for many years.
  • And/or let's set up a 24-hour judiciary board that can expedite the process of granting permission to get that information. I'd suggest an agreement between ISP's that would provide reciprocal assurances that said ISP would provide contact information and assist in tracing spoofed packets (esp. in the case of backbone providers) should an attack be shown to be occurring, but that might be prone to a bit of abuse ("Uhh yah, um I'm with Joe's ISP and we're seeing one of your users attacking us and stuff.. umm.. can we have his phone number?") unless the agreement explicitely spelled out what was considered valid proof of the attack (though I guess if you're calling the source ISP, they should be able to quickly do a packet analysis from that customer and determine if they're performing some sort of attack or not..).
  • Surely, if what you were saying was correct, the market would not be willing to pay for software, and commercial software as we know it would cease to exist.


    This is exacly what I am saying. With the growth of Linux and a braoder knowledge of OSS, consumers as a whole will NOT be willing to pay for software. I think this is 10-15 years down the road, but I can see it happening. Things just have to get a whole lot easier, which events llke the RHAT IPO will speed right along.

    Apparently, you don't consider your long distance telephone service to be a "service" ?
    Can I make a copy of my long distance service, give it to my friends, and still have my long distance service? There is nothing else the same, sorry. We really are using matter replicators. Actualyly thought replicators, but roughly the same thing.

  • You might be surprised. Poor college kids with campus ethernet connections can be surprisingly resourceful. Without this class of Internet user, I really doubt MP3 would have been as popular as it is today, and I doubt VCD's online would even exist.

  • Can you really stand up and claim that the companies that sell intellectual property are making too little money
    today???

    Microsoft? The record companies? Book publishers? These are the most bloated and rich companies in the world.
    Why? Becase we are giving them ridiculously much power through current IP laws.


    Yes, I can stand up and say that companies that sell software are making too little money. Microsoft is really the exception when it comes to making gobs of money in the software industry. There are a lot of great companies putting out great products ( Be [be.com], for example) that would be out of business immediately if it weren't for copyright laws that allow them to keep people from giving away their stuff for free. Sure, microsoft may be "the big bad evil company" but we as a society shouldn't just throw out all of the laws that allow programmers to get paid just because one "evil" company depends on those laws. Microsoft isn't the only company you're hurting by illegally copying software. You're also hurting a lot of companies that really busted their asses to write good software. If you don't think that's fair, then don't use their software. It's very simple.

  • Once upon a time in China there were very harsh laws. There was only one punishment - death - for nobody would dare break any law at all if it meant they would die, right?

    Well, a small platoon had been held up by the weather. The punishment for being late was death.

    So the men spoke amongst eachother. The punishment for rebellion was also death. Well, since they could only die once, they rebelled.

    End of story? The dynasty with the harsh laws eventually fell, to be replaced with years of anarchy, and finally a new dynasty -sans- harsh laws, the Han dynasty I think.
  • Thanks for the good counter-responses, folks.

    By the way, I personally do not pirate. Heck, I even pay for shareware. The correct response to overpriced proprietary software is what the GNU project does - write a version as or almost as good, and distribute it freely.

    For example, if you ever are tempted to pirate a photo or image editing suite, go download The GIMP [gimp.org] instead.

  • Did any1 notice on the Simpsons when Mulder said 2 Scully... "I hardly think the FBI has time 4 matters like that..." he was referencing to the supposed shipment of drugs. Well I hardly think the real police should even go solving the supposed "warez" problems.. after all there r much more important crimes 2 b solved 1st. The fact that "warez" only really rips off companies who write software 4 a stupid OS like WinDOH's anyway. So who cares if M$ WinDOHz 98 gets ripped of... as if BiggyG needs another $100 bill 2 wipe his a** with! :-)} If companies were really that concerned about money they would put more effort into real security for their software.
  • I'm going to point out something here that may at first seem rather obvious. Because of legal judgements like this, we can never become the Star Trek world.
    Though I don't want to step on any toes, it has always appeared to me that Star Trek 'The Next Generation' was the most ideal of the differing Star Trek television programs. I watched more of that than the others, so I'll speak from what I know here. The Government no longer needed money because people no longer really needed to buy stuff. They could pretty much replicate whatever they wanted from energy. Do you see where I'm going here?
    It may seem obvious that we may never have a commander of a starship who fights aliens bare-handed and gets laid by blue and green chicks every other episode, but has it occurred to anyone that in the evolving world of nanotechnology and replicatable software, it's never going to fly to make free copies of stuff?
    If we ever have replicators, they will infringe on so many patents and copywrites that we will never be able to use them legally. We have already reached that point with software. If we want to make copies of stuff that we purchased(other than copylefted stuff), we are most likely violating the law. We are on our way (or may have already gotten there) to Selfishland. Not to be the proverbial pinko, but isn't this all about sharing? My argument for the illegal copying and distributing of mp3s (which I, of course, would _never_ consider doing myself) is that causing musicians to make less money through music creates less of a commercial, monetary influence, and more of a creative, from the heart influence. I stated this to my father. His comment was that musicians would stop making music if they couldn't make money. I seriously doubt that. Music wouldn't have occured in the first place if it required money as a fuel. So how does this apply to software? If all software is free, will only true artists make software? Will there still be a thriving market for business applications if all business software is pirated?
    In my eyes, what made Star Trek so great was that it was all about artists. People with totally unselfish curiousity doing things because it was in there heart to do so. I guess I'm just talking about the federation here. How would our world change if the only contributions to it came from artists? Are we making a world safe for artists with all this selfishness and greediness, or do we only hear about the 'musicians' who are good businessmen who know what demographic they are playing to? It is my perspective that in a long term view, it is irresponsible and damaging to create a world where piracy is illegal. Theft is wrong... piracy is a good idea.
  • You are the one being silly.
    You don't pay the phone company for building
    the phone system, you pay them for renting
    a line. while you are using the phone, that is
    one less call they can handle at the moment.
    Just because it's a flat montly fee instead of
    minute by minute doesn't change anything. Of course service has value, but me copying software is not the software company doing me a service. The only service was me copying. If they don't want people using their software, they don't have to make and sell it in the first place. Your logic says that copying software is identicle to holding a programmer and gunpoint and forcing him to write something. But of course that isn't what happens. What happens is I spread the usefulness of the programmers service a little farther. It is absolutely wrong to take money for doing nothing! you shouldn't get paid for sitting on your ass. If you want to get paid for coding, find someone to pay you for coding! If you aren't willing to pay someone to write ms word, which will then be available to all, then as a matter of simple economics ms word can't and shouldn't be written.

    Your logic would mean that if by some act of genious you were able to make it rain chocolate syrup every wednesday, then if you want to drink the syrup you should pay. Otherwise, just put out an umbrella and be very careful not to let any fall into your mouth. How can you not think that is absurd? To get paid for service arrange for payment BEFORE you do the service.
  • Eheh. No. What I (and *any* constituitional scholar you might approach on this subject) (oh yeah, and the framers of the constiution) deem 'cruel and unusual' punishment would be something more along the lines of:

    burning in oil and/or at the stake
    being crushed to death under stones
    chinese water torture
    etcetera, etcetera.

    This is about as far from cruel and unusual as it's gonna get. The kid is convicted of a white collar crime, and if somehow he's lucky enough to actually see the inside of a jail cell it will be a minimum security resort, probably with rowing and ping-pong teams. Of course, just when he's getting acclimated they'll paroll his ass to make room for actually dangerous offenders.

    And also, I can name people a lot worse off to have to pay $250k in restituitions than a 'wet behind the ears' college kid who happens to be about to hit the peak of his earning potential, and with a freshly minted CS degree to boot. No, I'd say this punishment is about as far from cruel as it gets.

    Lastly, what *were* these damn lawmakers thinking when they passed laws prohibiting people from stealing the hard work of others. I mean jeez! Listen up. You and all your friends, and maybe every damn citizen in the US could pirate software, and it wouldn't make that much difference to some companies. These laws are in place mainly to guard against corporate piracy. Big corporations spend more on software purchases in a year than you or I combined will in a lifetime. And they always, always do it by the book. I one auto company who is probably more vigorous about rooting out piracy in their organization than the feds would be if they had to do it themselves. With lawsuit weary corporate lawyers on your back, you would be too. My point is that those laws are in place because if they weren't, software piracy would quickly skyrocket to a hundred billion dollar issue. Everyone you know may have an illegal copy of Windows, but that's hardly representative of the software market as a whole; most buyers still go through legal channels (because the bulk of the buyers are businesses.) This is why you can pirate every piece of software you own, yet the companies who make the software still remain in the black. *Somebody* has to be paying for it, and if these laws didn't exist *nobody* would.

  • I've held it in this long, but I'm getting sick of every other post being "Piracy is wrong, he got what he deserved." For all of you "honest" folk, I offer the following question:

    Why are all of you so bitter just because you guys are dumb enough to pay for the same shitty software everyone else gets for free?

    90% of everything is crap, and whoever said that overestimated the quality of software. You could walk into a software store and spend a thousand dollars and not end up with a single game worth playing after a week. On the rare occasion that I find a game I really like, I, and most of the people I know, generally go out and buy it. I'll be damned if I'm going to buy any software before I at least have the opportunity to find out it sucks. As far as applications and utilities go, they profit from the training "pirates" get from using their software at home via their employers purchasing it (You want to talk about piracy, how about the ungodly prices they charge). And finally, I don't understand why the movie companies are in such a huff about the online pirated copies. I've seen these things, they are terrible. I'd rather watch the movie taped off of T.V. (which the movie companies don't seem too bothered by).

    Before you say that none of this matters, it's still wrong, I'll simply say this: no one cares but you.

    -
  • I'm not entirely certain that law was the best course of action, but it is admittedly somewhat more lenient than what they might have come up with. Ultimately, however, if what it implies about copyright law is spread, it could result in some rather disturbing changes.

    It all comes down to whether people can be allowed to retain copies in their brains...a storage medium many would prefer could be cleansed after usage...

  • Interesting that without piracy most copyrighted works wouldn't be popular in the first place. If M$ hadn't shipped ms/pc-dos unprotected, and win 3.1 wasn't freely copyable we wouldn't have a windows-only world right now. M$ spread like a virus. Now the virus and its minions demand their due.
    We know the answer.
    Free software...
    *And* (I'll say this again, so you guys may eventually get it):
    Geek's Day Off.
    We built it, and we can take it back, anytime we like.
    Think about it. A Geek's Guild. Hmmmm....


  • I disagree with the second half of your statement. True, operating systems, and business apps are mostly used by corporations, but just as many games and personal apps are being pirated as MS Office. No company I know of buys copies of Quicken or Quake. When you pirate these, you are tearing away their profit margins. The less money they make, the fewer apps to market. The fewer apps, the less compition. Less compition, higher prices. Now that I look at it like that, it seems the pirates are hurting us as much as the software companies.
  • Possession of a dodgy copy of Win98 would probably be treated with the same indifference as being caught having an eighth in your pocket (slap wrist, don't to it again, here we'll have that for the next police ball -er, because you're not supposed to have it) and owning a website with 1000GB of pirated software will be treated with the same heavyhandedness expected to someone pushing several million worth of crack onto the streets.

    Punishment to fit crime. No-one is seriously going to care much about the odd dodgy copy of Win98, Office etc. that a friend burned for you, but Microsoft would have an absolute fit if someone went and posted the ISO image on a public site, and you can expect to be prosecuted.

    "Cake or death!" (E. Izzard)
  • So this is the first person to be actually convicted of doing wrong for running a pirate website? They must've tuned up the legal system to actually convict someone of piracy after, what, 5 years of public knowledge of the internet. I'm guessing we can expect the second conviction around 2001, if we're lucky.

    The funny thing is, pirate webpages are often not working, and real pirates tend to use FTP servers.
  • "If I use a CD-ROM drive to make a copy of Quake, you can still play your original. Since you haven't been deprived of anything, you can't claim theft."

    this is nitpicking but actually, the English language might be more at fault than the law:

    see http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Diction ary&va=theft

    the definition of the word 'theft' still relates to physical property. the language hasn't caught up to how to handle software (the ubiquitous copyability of it) just yet.

    there is an ethical issue (and, quite likely, a criminal issue once that becomes law) involved in copying someone's work without their permission, but it sure ain't theft.

    hmm... newspeak .... thoughtcrime? copycrime? hehe....
  • I am a poor uni student, but 500 meg would cost me way more than just hiring the movie (or even buying it). Uni would probably kick me out if I did 500 meg of downloading. (Plus i have nowhere to store that much stuff at uni, 10 meg quotas don't cut it!)
  • With laws like this is they assume damages to the company that the software is from in the amount of the retail value of the software, when in fact most of the people receiving it wouldn't buy it anyways if it weren't available through piracy.

    I'm not saying that piracy is good, it's bad, but perhaps they should calculate 10% of retail value for the damage to the software and movie companies, since no actual physical property was removed.

    I bet they claimed the production cost of the movies/software * the number of times pirated to calculate damage done. At least that's the kind of thing they did with Mitnick, don't see why they wouldn't do it here, considering according to this article [cnn.com], they pushed this mostly to make an example out of the guy. To quote: " Mr. Levy's case should serve as a notice that the Justice Department has made prosecution of Internet piracy one of its priorities".

    Does anyone else think that a legal system where cases are prosecuted to different extents depending on whether or not the case is needed to make an example (i.e. in a first case) is absurdly injust?

  • Well, its only been possible to convict someone of piracy about a year... Prior the new law put on the books last year, piracy was only a civil offense, not a criminal one. (IOW, you could get sued for piracy, but not put in jail over it.)

  • Scenerio time:

    10 years ago, you bought the latest greatest game for your new 386 with EGA graphics. It came on 5 5.25" floppies, which you just found today and you _really_ want to play that thing again.

    Of course, the dogs have eaten the disks, the cats have pissed on them, and they've been struck by several meteorites. The game company doesn't exist anymore, or if they do they certainly don't carry the old game anymore. Well, you paid $50 for these things 10 years ago...

    That's what I find pirate sites useful for anyway... old games that you bought a long time ago and can't get anymore. Doesn't seem that bad to me...
  • You have to be a moron to post pirated software/movies/music on a public web page. Thats just kind of screaming "arrest me, I don't have a living brain cell in my head".

    I have no pity on this guy for what he did.
  • I enjoy reading Jon Katz;I bought his book, VR and have saved dozens of keeper articles. That said, your posting cracked me up. Thanks for the laugh.

  • Stealing a car does directly impact someone. The owner of the car will no longer have use of it, it may be an insurance writeoff (if the thief, who is usually a kid, busts it up). In the best case, the owner still goes through a big hassle to get the car back.

    Stealing software is more indirect. It affects the bottom line of the software companies and to some extent indirectly the salaries of the programmers (although the programmers' salaries/wages aren't going to go up necessarily if more copies are sold).

    Both are wrong, but calling theft of software the same as car theft is, in my opinion, a bad comparison.
  • BWAHAHAHAHA!
    OK real case I have a LEGAL copy of MASM 6.11 have had it for years. Have used it on various computers I have owned over the years. Made backups of the floppies, didn't use it for a while. One day decided to give it a spin again. All disk number 2's were shot. The software failed to load on my system. In essence it was like I suddenly lost something that I had paid a lot of hard earned money for.

    So I found a phone number in one of the manuals that came with the package. Called it. Played phone tree for a bit. NEVER did talk to a human EVER. It simply was not an option. Eventually the phone tree hungup on me. Went to M$'s website, never did find an email address. Filled out some stupid form I found there. NEVER did hear from the bastards.

    Oh the story does have a happy ending though. I found the complete tree of the stuff in a tarball on one of my Linux systems. I decompressed that and burned it to a CD. Who's gonna copyright 1 and 0 now? Service, don't make me laugh. Me going and cutting your lawn is a service. Commercial software retail publishers are not! They put out that code to snag a bunch of rube's money. And hey, I got to hand them a lot of credit because it works great! (the snagging of money, not any "service" that they provide).

    If it's this "service" that I am really paying for with commercial software, well I say bootleg away! Oh, and I just love reading those EULAs they basically all boil down to this, We own you, you own nothing, you gave us money, but have really bought nothing, if anything bad happens we take no responsibility, you're on your own.

    Hey, save yourself the hassle of dialing this fabled tech support next time I'll give ya all the tech support you'll ever need for that commercial crap right here and now. Wait for the upgrade it will contain bug fixes. Reboot your system, if all else fails reload the entire system and wait for the upgrade. Please have your credit card ready when a representitive talks to you. Each incident costs $35...

    Would it be legal to give one of these "if you break this seal..." packages to a blind man, let him open it, drop it in a burner, then guide his finger to the Enter button? :) I mean what has he agreed to? Just a thought.

    TuX saves
  • I guess this crackdown is going to be really effective, like the current police / FBI efforts against drugs.

    In this case, IIRC the kid wasn't making money off it, but in general profit from piracy outweighs the rewards. In most small computer stores in European countries you can buy a beautiful shrinkwrapped copy of Office 97 for 1/3 to 1/2 of Microsoft's price, complete with a unique license number which MS will provide phone support against - and it's a pirate copy, of course.

    This sort of business is worth hundreds of millions of dollars annually, and like the drug industry the only way to prevent it will be to make it unprofitable.

    The solution to both problems is obvious - legalise soft drugs, and ship PC's with Linux preloaded :-)

    Dave
  • Best for the state? Try best for said lawyer/statesman's career. All these people care about is making this "example" a success in the eyes of their superiors, so they can get a promotion. It really sickens me as to the motiviational forces for people.
  • they pay a fee to use the story. It's a valid use --no piRACY
  • The "max penalty" for this is 3 years in prison. However, this is a violation of copyright laws, not drug dealing. Nobody goes to prison for violating copyright laws.

    Years ago, when the dry-toner xerography process first appears, lots of "photocopy shops" appeared around every college campus. They would duplicate any book you wanted, and nobody asked questions about whether you had the right to repro the book. Eventually publishers pushed Congress to do something about it, and some copy shops got raided. A pattern of sentencing quickly emerged: the "pirate" loses the equipment used for the copying, and pays a per-copy fee for each work duplicated. (This was stiff--a high-speed Xerox duplicator could run more than $20,000.) If sentencing for this guy is any different, his attorney will have an automatic appeal issue. By rights he'll lose the computer, router, CSU/DSU, etc., and he'll pay a fine. But the feds are just as cognizant of the cost of housing a prisoner as anybody else, and they aren't likely to want to pay the money to put this guy up in the Big House.

    That said, there's an interesting quesion: why *this* guy? Of the zillions of web sites out there with MP3s of 'N Sync and videos of Pamela & Tommy Lee, what did this particular guy do to appear on the federal radar screen?

    If this signals the start of a Justice Department crackdown on bootleg software, then a number of people on the Internet might want to worry (or at least move to a server co-hosted offshore). But this might also be a case like Al Capone's--he was not sent to prison for racketeering, murder, smuggling, or even tax evasion. He was sent to prison for *mailing a false tax return*. The feds nailed him with both barrels for a trivial offense, because the feds had decided to nail him, and just needed an excuse. (The civil liberties questions here, of course, are legion.)

    If this guy gets a Kevin Mitnick sentence, rest assured--the feds think he's responsible for something else but don't want to (or can't) make the charge stick.
  • I'm glad someone finally brought up the fact that we are fighting over the stealing of luxuries. Does anyone here who pirates software actually rely upon it for a living? Hmm...methinks that Americans are lazy F***ing ba****ds.

  • I don't know of a computer geek that doesn't have a harddrive full of MP3s and an illegal copy of windows.

    Well, I don't have an illegal copy of Windows (I run Linux and it isn't possible to have an illegal copy of Linux, at least last time I checked :-)

    As for the MP3s, I plead the fifth...

    Legislators, what were you smoking to pass this law

    I dunno, but I'll bet it was even more illegal than those MP3s and illegal "warez". :-)

  • Theres such things as reviews, you know. I know they aren't the same as pirating the game, but the impulse is to keep the game on your computer even afterwards. On a side not, I pirate games too-sometimes I buy, sometimes I don't. Typically depends on the financial situation I'm in (car insurance comes before games)
  • hello folks, my name is jeff levy, i was the one who has now been convicted of the net act, i thought this would be the best website for me to offer up my side of the story to the internet community, so i made myself an account and am gonna post this up, first of all i was NOT running any sort of direct download website, they found a LIST on a website, it had no links, to get something from me you had to know me and have me put my ftp server up, which was small, and not open 24/7 by any means, i was very little time, the fbi was upset at how little a guy i was, they though i was gonna be a kingpin but i ended up being small potatoes.....i accepted the conviction because i didnt think that the whole ordeal is worth the tax dollars and time and effort a public defender would end up having to put into defending me when in the end i could end up worse off after a trial...i am already offered a reasonable plea which i accepted that i personally feel is a symbolic kind of win for the gov because the teeth of it is the felony conviction, while i am not guarateed, i think i will most likely get no restution and a probationary sentance, which will both most likely be recommended, the plea keeps me from any real financial, incarceration danger by letting them brand me a felon...so i will write more if people like, i havent read everything people have said yet but i will, feel free to email me at terrapin@televar.com or you can sometimes find me still on efnet in #uoregon
    take it easy people!
    -jeff
  • You don't pay the phone company for building the phone system,

    Imagine that it cost them twice as much to build and maintain the infrastructure. Do you believe that this would have no effect on pricing ?

    you pay them for renting a line.

    This is not true with long distance service. You don't "rent" the line.

    Of course service has value, but me copying software is not the software company doing me a service.

    Using the software is the programmer doing you a service.

    If you want to get paid for coding, find someone to pay you for coding!

    The programmers do that. The software company pays them, and in turn, the software company recovers the money by enterring into contractual agreements with customers.

    If you aren't willing to pay someone to write ms word, which will then be available to all, then as a matter of simple economics ms word can't and shouldn't be written.

    "Simple economics" says that MS word can and should be written if there are people willing to enter into an agreement with MS to use MS Word under certain terms and conditions. These terms and conditions include not redistributing the software. If you don't agree to the terms of the license, simple contract law says you can't and shouldn't use the software.

    By the way, if you really believe that commercial software shouldn't exist, why not put your money where your mouth is, and instead of pirating commerical software, just use free software.

  • I have seen quite a bit of distateful sites that claim to be "warez" sites and these look like pirate software sites. Why is it that nobody can be busted very easily these days? Just go to yahoo.com and search for "warez" and you get zillions of illegal sites with pirated software posted all over them. Is this not the oddest thing? So many people just freely posting this stuff without a care in the world of what could ever happen to them. But what I would like to know is, what does it take to get busted?

    Like to you have to be selling pirated software to get busted, or is it just that fact that if you have a warez site that you can get busted? These are unclear to me, but if so, there will be a lot of people who will have to change what they have been doing in the past and clear out their warez sites...
  • This is exacly what I am saying. With the growth of Linux and a braoder knowledge of OSS, consumers as a whole will NOT be willing to pay for software.

    Not true. At present, people are willing to pay, including linux users. Your claim is purely unfounded conjecture at this point.

    Can I make a copy of my long distance service, give it to my friends, and still have my long distance service?

    You are not really "replicating" either service: the service is there to begin with ( ie the software or the telecommunications infrastructure ) and you are paying for the right to use it. Just because dishonesty is easier with software doesn't make it more ethical.

    But in anser to your question, yes, there are ways you can defraud the long distance companies, and get long distance calls for the price of a local call. You can teach all your friends how to do it, hence "duplicate" the service.

  • I guess if you don't run any kind of a website and don't post anything about yourself, but just trade with others, you won't get caught?? I wonder
  • o i read some of these more now and want to reply some...if you didnt read my earlier one, i am jeffrey gerard levy, first off...
    some people have asked, why him? well first off all i was using ALOT of bandwith on my universities network, sometimes sustaining 500 kbps overnight, sometimes nothing, but i was using a lot and they noticed at the computer center, then they found an excel list of some mp3s and warez that was on my shell but not with no links to it from my webpage, they obliviously were monitoring every file i sent to my shell and when they found that, they overeacted and called the fbi instead of being reasonable and calling me up and telling me to cut it out (which i would have done immediatly and permanently), so instead the U of O has cost the taxpayers of oregon an unecessary costs associated with my legal journey...also, i was NOT selling anything, i was trading and one of the reasons i got caught also is that i was trading vcd's and isos which took up a lot of bandwith, i had many cds of warez as well as mp3 and vcd and isos burned to cd, that evidence would have done me in in court, so i accepted the plea//....another thing...this is not a wake up call to everyone to be paranoid, if anything it is my opinion that this would end up being a wake-up call to people that "gee, i guess not all that many people are being busted after all" they never asked me to help them bust people, so, make whatever inferences you want from that...personally i believe all software should be free, its inherantly flawed
    by the way, WE ALL NEED TO HELP SHOOT DOWN THE B-2 LEGISLATION!!!
    thanks all for this forum, i'll write some more later today
  • By "stealing" windows, I cheat M$ out of $190.00.


    By using Linux I cheat M$ out of $190.00.

  • Not only is it a very valid point that most of these people would never have purchased the product, but a lot of the time, that kind of pirating eventually turns into a profit. I pulled thousands of programs off of the BBS's and from friends when I was in high school, and now I use many of those companies tools on a regular basis. And my copies are legit.
  • At 10Mbps Ethernet, and given access to CD burners, it pretty much *will* happen. It certainly happens here, where students have occasionally attracted the attention of our sysadmins for serving extreme amounts of traffic -- full-length movies (e.g. _SW:TPM_), applications, and so forth.
  • HEH!!! The developer owns it? What are you smoking man?

    The developer of ANY copyrighted work doesn't own the work at all, the only thing they posess is an exclusive 'right to copy'. Without this right, anyone would be free to copy. The ONLY thing being broken is the law stating that the developer has the exclusive right to duplicate his work.

  • When you purchase a product, you agree to a license agreement, like it or not. It is a legal binding contract which says you can such and such with this product. YOU do not OWN the product, it is merely being made available for your use, subject to the terms of the license agreement.

    Now, that is the fact of the matter. Technically, it is illegal, bootlegs have been around for years and years of all sorts (back in the thriving days of vinyl they existed) and most likely will forever, and I have nothing against it either, as we all drive over the speed limit, and you don't see any big organizations out there trying to stop that now do you?

    My point is, that it IS illegal. Read a licensing agreement, by using the product you agree to it. Most people choose to break these licensing agreement, which is definetly a crime. The only question is, is it a criminal offense, or are the software companies allowed to sue each individual which pirates their software?

  • Hmmmm. Two particular areas.

    * Office applications. Off-hand, are there any GPL/BSD/etc-licensed [including free for *commercial use*] office suites that provide both easy migration, and full functionality?

    * Game development -- not so much as engines, but data. There are projects that take a LONG time to develop and write, and potentially a LOT of resources.
  • i was actually very stealthy compared to others, and also relativly small time, after all i only had a 5 gig drive, how much can u do with that?
    the reason i got caught is because my school called the fbi instead of me to resolve this, thuis costing you the taxpayer, more money, i wasnt being stupid, i was being as stealthy as i could for what i knew, using a strange port, not up 24/7 and NOTHING could ever at any point be downloaded from anywhere except a secure non anonymous ftp server, and no the address of it was not on my website, there was nothing on my website, there was an excel list on my shell

  • 1) using software is taking advantage
    of a service already provided. There is no additional service no matter how many people use it.

    2) If many people want to enter into a contract under which they will use ms word under certain conditions, then of course that is their business. But if that were the case copyright law wouldn't be needed, ordinary contract law could take care of it. Paying for software, then having the option of either agreeing to the license and using the software under unnacceptable terms, or not accepting the license and being unable to use the software, is not acceptable. many stores will not except returns or exchanges on software. And we've seen how taking it to microsoft doesn't do any better. I would have no problem with copyright if it always took the form of a WRITTEN contract. At the time of payment, the salesperson presents you with a contract, which you must sign, NOT click. The difference is if I signed such a contract, and a thief stole my copy, and the thief distributed copies, the recipients of those copies would not be under the contract. Copyright law prevents copying without permission, whether or not you agreed not to copy in the first place.


    3) I do use free software instead of pirating proprietary software. I am commenting on how the proprietary model is a flawed and evil system.
  • in retrospect that what i should have been doing, i was getting off on the whole robin hood aspect of warez, and prolly left my site open more often that i should have
  • Check your license agreements. Some explicitly allowed you to make a single copy for backup/archival purposes; others do not, and implement methods to stop you (such as the old EA schemes involving burning a specific sector, et cetera) while usually offering a set of backup media for $10.00.
  • Another possible factor: Was the U of Oregon getting any heat from the software or music companies? Rumor says that the music industry has been in occasional contact with people at my own, because the local Windows share network happens to be pretty rife with illegal MP3s, and so forth. If an industry contacts the U's legal people, they might have had more motivation than to just say something like, "We've investigated you because of the unusual network load to your machine. Please cease and desist, or else we may have to enact additional penalties ranging from loss of network connection to expulsion."
  • No artistic work can be owned, ever. No patented idea is owned either.

    The government doesn't and cannot grant ownership of an artistic work or an idea. They grant something different.

    A Copyright is the exclusive right to copy a work, it makes duplication by anyone not sanctioned by the artist illegal. It is not ownership of the artistic work, but ownership of the [exclusive] right to duplicate. There is a huge difference between the two. That is SPA/RIAA speak, that silliness that any type of intellectual 'work' can be owned or stolen.

    Patents likewise aren't ownership of an invention, but the granting of an exclusive (and transferable) right for the inventor being the only one to use that invention. That same difference applies here.

    The RIAA/SPA has already won, even their enemies are calling ideas and artistic works what the RIAA/SPA wish to have them called: 'property'. 'Copy' has become a synonym for 'theft', or 'piracy'.

    Compare the two sentences following:

    XYZ was convicted of theft for pirating intellectual property for use in his small, barely surviving business.

    XYZ was convicted of copyright violation for duplicating software [artistic works] for use in his small, barely surviving business.


  • ok so it was originally posted anonymously
    well, i agree with it, and seeing as it isnt COPYRIGHTED, i will post it here in direct response and not from a coward

    The very nature of computers is to make copies, you stupid ***holes! Are we going to have speech licences next? "Sorry you are not allowed to repeat anything that anyone else has said because someone holds the copyright on that thought. Off to the concentration camp with you." That's THIER wet dream isn't it.... Total criminilization for all TODAY! Make all "crimes" a federal offense, punishable by 10 years in prison. Create laws so that everyone no matter how young, old, or lazy can become and endentured servant to the system forever. I don't know what irks me more, the feds and lawmakers for doing what they do OR people on here that disagree with thier actions, yet are willing to give lip services and puss out by saying, "well he was dumb and deserves what he got since he got caught." you people truely have no spine
  • Wrong wrong wrong!
    When you use the long distance service you are taking up resources on their physical hardware, which means at the time when you are making a call they can now handle one less call at that time. You are paying for the right to use their scarce hardware.

    With software you are paying for the right to use YOUR OWN hardware with their non-scarce software. Using long distance with out paying is ripping them off because you are hogging their systems without permission. When you are using it they can't sell that service you are taking up, nor can they use it themselves. That I might call theft of service. Using software without paying, even if you think is bad, is not the same thing, and isn't even related. When you use software without paying you are enjoying the benefits of a service already performed. If I priate 1000 copies of 3dsmax, kinnetix has just as many copies as they had before. Assuming the people I gave copies to wouldn't have bought it anyway, kinnetix experiences no change in ability to use, sell, or distribute their product.
    You seem to believe that if something benefits you, you are obligated to pay for whoever is responsible. Why should I have to pay for the development of 3dsmax? I never asked anyone to write it. I never entered a contract under which I would pay for it to be written, nor would kinnetix be doing any additional work nor would i be typing up their hardware if I were to pirate it.

    If you want to argue that information is property, go ahead and do it. That is a matter of philosophy.

    But there is a fundamental difference between the 'crime' of pirating software and the crimes of stealing cars, or phreaking the phone company. Confusing those issues only makes you sound brainwashed and stupid.
  • And we've seen how taking it to microsoft doesn't do any better. I would have no problem with copyright if it always took the form of a WRITTEN contract. At the time of payment, the salesperson presents you with a contract, which you must sign, NOT click.

    This would be impractical. However, I agree that it should be possible to obtain a refund if you don't accept the terms of the license.

  • Here, I'm going to shit in a bottle. This is art, I demand a return on my investment, you have to buy it from me for $1000 as a beautiful artistic work. You have to do this because no one else is fool enough to, and I have a right for return on investment.

    Send me email and/or a credit card number so that we may finish the sale.

    Artists aren't obligated any more than executives, programmers, or lazy bums for getting a return on investment.

  • You have already lost, see my other comments, you are using RIAA/SPA-speak for talking about artistic works. Calling something with the words 'Intellectual Property' imply that you believe that intellectual products can be owned, which is opposite from patent law and copyright law.

    Copyright law is the ownership of the RIGHT TO COPY, Patent law is the ownership of the RIGHT TO USE an invention.

    There is a huge step from this to OWNERSHIP OF THE IDEA. You, and most others, have taken it, your words give you away.

    See my other comments.
  • BTW, have you noticed that the way it works is fascinatingly doublespeak.

    Freedom is Slavery, Duplication is Theft, Words are Property.

  • The _REAL_ issue is that software shouldn't be sold the way it is. If I want to do something with a high-end program just once, I obviously can't justify purchasing it for hundreds or thousands of dollars. The problem is that most of the high-end apps are priced for someone who will use them 40+ hours a week.

    The solution is, once you have a fast line, to run applications remotely. I think the ideal would be somewhat like signing up for cable or satellite service, where you would maybe for $20+ a month get a broad selection of apps you can use (and the companies who created the apps would get revenues based on use, the way radio stations pay musicians for airplay of songs). This would let computer illiterates use computers too, since apps wouldn't have to be installed and maintained locally.

    To access the really high-end apps, you would pay a larger monthly fee. Obviously some apps (e.g. real-time video editing) would take more bandwidth than anybody has, but applications could be local (self-installing from the web) and require a connection to the web to function for a session (like how Starcraft asks for the CD to start it up).
  • If everybody would pay for his/her commercial software, OSS would be much more important. Nowadays people just `get' MS Office and co. from `a friend'.

    MS knows that, and that's why the BSA is targeted at business users only. Private persons must get used (addicted?) to MS software, whether they pay for the software or not.

    OSses is a different thing. It's nice for them they can make sure it's very difficult to buy a PC without their OS.

  • When you purchase a product, you agree to a license agreement, like it or not. It is a legal binding contract [ ... ]

    No. It. Isn't.

    Shrinkwraps are a largely untested legal fiction with absolutely no ethical foundation whatsoever.

    The only court case that has ever directly tested shrinkwraps is ProCD vs. Zeidenberg. In that case, sadly, the judge held shrinkwraps to be enforceable. However, the reasoning underlying the judge's decision was, IMHO, rather flimsy, and there are still a ton of unanswered questions as to what's enforeceable and what isn't.

    This is why the software and entertainment industries are trying to ram the UCITA through the state legislatures, which would formally legitimize these unethical legal instruments. It is absolutely vital to the future of the citizens and consumers of this country that this must not happen.

    Do not take shrinkwrap "agreements" seriously, and challenge their appearance wherever you find them.

    Schwab

  • By "campus ethernet" I mean like a resnet program.. dorm room PC's linked to the Internet via high-speed links. It's fairly commonplace in big universities nowadays.
  • there are many reasons to protect piracy in its current form:

    once again america is not the whole world and if you compare the prices of windows and office with the average wages in , say, russia or poland or china. now it is fucking ridiculous to try to enforce people to spend they 1-2 months worth of salary on os.

    the second reason is (and i know it for the fact) that the ability to try out and play with software benefits a lot to the community. the ability to get pirate versions of hundreds of titles of software is incredibly beneficial because you are exposed to the products and technologiews that you would never otherwise be able to use.

    i would never buy $4000 3dsmax just to try it out or i would never buy corel office or os2 just to try them out. and being a student i cannot spend the money on software that my university doesn't provide.

    people in america compared with the rest of the world have a significantly smaller experience with various software titles just because they have access to a much less pirate software (as opposed to going to a flea market in easter europe or china and buying cd-rs)

    once again, the software piracy is one of those things that up until now was implied that only big corporations get slapped by lawsuits while the small fish like students are told a "no-no" only if they become to obvious.

    so let's keep it that way. don't be stupid and obvious and let the governmnet police the big corporations not the students. and finally the free software effort should continue and grow.

  • Your logic would mean that if by some act of genious you were able to make it rain chocolate syrup every wednesday, then if you want to drink the syrup you should pay. Otherwise, just put out an umbrella and be very careful not to let any fall into your mouth. How can you not think that is absurd?

    Right! It's about time we exposed these antipiracy people for what they are: greedy chocolate syrup rain hoarders.

    Free the chocolate rain!

  • There's one essential problem with your view here - your statement that the purchase price of a piece of software has " has nothing whatsoever to do with its development costs."

    This is a fallacy - there are several ways of determining a price per unit:
    • Pick a run size, divide the total cost of producing the software (and packaging and CDs and etc...) by the size of the run and that gives you the price per unit.
    • Add in a percentage profit to the above calculation.
    • Add in a cost of development, maintenance and support of that product.
    • Add in a cost for developing and producing another piece of software which is the next product you will sell...
    • Increase or decrease the run size based on the size of the expected market for the product, what that market thinks is an appropriate value for that product, and so on.

    This is the way most companies have to think of these things, because most people still buy software on a unit-by-unit basis (even a license fee for registering a free download is still a unit, and not an ongoing rental cost, for instance).

    This is not to say I disagree with the rest of what you say - in fact I totally agree with your conclusions. The fact that I can take a copy of your data or programs and you won't know and won't lose your original fundamentally changes the way people have to look at ownership as a whole.

    Once on-line distribution becomes commonplace (instead of the rarity it is now) we can hope that the price of software goes down. However, you cannot avoid the fact that you as a software programmer want to be paid for your work, simply because you no software programmer lives a fully money-independant lifestyle (do you grow your own food? Produce your own power? Own your own cost-free connection to the Internet? Etc...) As practically everyone else on this planet earns money by working, you probably think you should get the same deal. So software does cost money to produce (even if you then give it away - this sort of charity has put the FSF and Linux where it is today, don't forget).

    So if data is copiable at negligable cost, how do I get paid for it? This is where software licenses come in. You buy a license from me to run a copy of my software - and plenty of shareware programs do this already. What's the cost? Well, significantly less than the traditional cost for software, because you haven't had to shell out for the production of multiple copies of physical media. But it still costs money, because you as the programmer still want to be reimbursed for your time.

    Though I agree with the bulk of your arguments, Schwab, there are several fallacies in your reasoning. Fortunately, this doesn't change your intent, which is that we have to come up with a better paradigm of paying programmers and companies to produce the software we use than the one we currently have.

    Good luck. The future of software may depend on it.
  • I never said the end user was OBLIGATED, I simply said that it's not unreasonable to expect a return on something you put on the market.

    There's a difference between offering something for sale, and Demanding payment for a product. BIG difference.

    -- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?

  • I agree (Score:1)

    by Musc ( 10581 )
    I agree with you completely. It is amazing how many people have been brainwashed to believe that programmers and artists have the 'right' to tell their customers what they can and can't do with a product they have paid for. Extracting royalties is extortion, plain and simple. currently copyright is a fashionable, legal, and sometimes very profitable way of enabling organized crime. Civil disobedience combined with Free Software is the way to reduce the impact of these unethical laws. It's amazing how this kind of debate usually goes. Supporters of intellectual property always repeatedly make the same logical mistakes. Even if you think copyright is a good idea, violating it is still something very very different from theft. Absolutely no monetary loss can be placed on such a violation because it is unknown whether the software would have been bought if it wasn't copied. Another logical mistake often made is that it has something to do with keeping your word or breaking a contract. Well I don't know about you, but I wasn't presented with any contract last time I bought a book. Nor will I accept that just because the cat jumped on the keyboard and pressed ENTER before I had a chance to read the EULA that I have sold my sole to microsoft. Copyright law says that the author controls duplication. This does not involve any contract or licensing. You don't need a license to read a book. You simply need permission to copy it. Same with software. While it is nice to get the author's permission before copying his work, If you were able to legally obtain a copy without SIGNING (not clicking) a nondisclosure agreement, it is obscene that legal action can be taken for using a copy machine or disk drive in the privacy of your own home, perhaps helping out some friends in the process.
  • I did always wonder how I could be involved in some sort of legally binding contract without signing my name or having any say in it all. Perhaps we should be pushing for some kind of legislature on shrinkwrap "agreements", and either do away with them, or regulate them or something. I apologize to all you anarchists out there, but it would probably help.

  • "This most definately falls under the idea of cruel and unusual punishment"

    I don't have a law degree, but in order for it to be unconstitutional doesn't it have to be both cruel and unusual at the same time? There be nothing cruel or unusual in this instance.
  • yeh.. i know exactly what you mean. i'm an internet pirate, and people confuse me with a "software pirate" all the time.

    Some of you may not totally understand what being an internet pirate entails, but it's actually quite simple; i portscan up alongside their packet stream, slam a plank with exposed nails onto their IP adress so they can't get away, then board the computer and take any gold or women who may be on the hard drive. Then as i leave i set their CPU to overclock itself, so it bursts into flames destroying the victim and any knowledge of my crime. If someone never gets home, everyone just assumes a storm got them.

    I try to stay away from any heavily armed script kiddies; i just go after the defenseless windows users without any DOS cannons, and i have yet to have any problems. The Cservice Navy may be looking for me, but they'll never find me. Although i now have a peg leg since i got my real leg bitten off in an attack by a viscious Ping of Death several years ago..

    arr, me mateys!
  • THis is comparable to organising a car theft ring. This guy didn't pirate one package, he was the "pirate king". The amount of software pirated from his site vastly outwieghs the cost of a car.
  • It's for the companies to set appropriate pricing schemes to get their software into the hands of users. You don't have any right to use a service that you aren't prepared to pay for. In some sense, the piraters are taking a free ride (it's comparable to sneaking into the cinema without paying ). It's definitely true that *SOMEONE* loses because of the pirates, though it's admittedly difficult to place hard numbers on the actual amount.

  • As another poster noted, it's the scarcity of programmers that dictates what they get. That is to say, if there were a gross oversupply of programmers, they would earn about as much as your local school teacher.

    The scarcity of their skills obviously determines their pay. However, if there is an oversupply of programmers, people capable enough to become programmers will enter other career paths, since they are capable of learning other skills. In this sense, the numbers of programmers in the industry is self regulating.

    Your post seems to presume that a programmer's wage is calculated as some proportion of his or her company's profit. That is rare compared to the main thing that happens, *especially* in the software industry: profit margins are high, and those profits circulate in the hands of a relatively small group of investors.

    The programmers pay will be proportional to the market value of his labour ( if it wasn't, he could leave and found his own company, which some programmers actually do ) The profits aren't kept to the investors - the programmers typically get equity in their company as part of their package deal. Of course the profit is shared between others, but to say that a programmers pay is not proportional to the market value of their work is absurd.

  • but all the companies I know of pay programmers strictly on cost/availability basis

    Not quite. A lot of companies include stock options as part of the employees package.

    only what the market will bear for the talent they need

    And presumabely, if their software brings more money to the table, the market will bear more for their services.

  • So this is a little off topic.
    Some individuals I've spoken to, which run pirate or warez sites like that guy, all give me the same crap as an excuse: "D00D, those companies charge too much for the games, they shouldnt be able to do that! We're just fighting the power, man!"
    I ask of you, how the hell are they supposed to make a living? You want them to sell you games and such cheaper, and lighten your burden of paying for a LUXURY by losing his hard earned money? Write your own damned games and you'll see how easy it is ( sarcasm ) . Don't give me that freedom of information crap, what about the freedom to make a f****** living?

    ---------------------------
  • Please note that the coward who posted this is a complete moron who should really look up the meaning of a word before he throws it out the net. I am guessing here, but I'll bet my linux distribution that this guy probably gets a government grant to go to school, a government handout to help with his rent, unemployment benifits, AND belongs to every anti-government group on his politically correct college campus. God I hate it when people try to use scary sounding words in interesting ways to grab the attention of those morons willing enough to listen because, jeez, he sounds like he knows what he's talking about! Bite me, and quit pretending to be passionate about something you are obviously judging by the headlines.
  • ...we have to come up with a better paradigm of paying programmers and companies to produce the software we use than the one we currently have.

    Absolutely correct!

    I don't have The Solution. I have, however, heard a very interesting idea which I believe has a lot of promise (I regret I do not know who came up with this idea):

    A programmer, or team of programmers, places a piece of software up for bid at an auction site (real or virtual). A certain sum is named by the programmer(s) for the software (say, $250K). The software is placed in escrow with the auction house, and users anywhere may bid any amount toward the software as they deem fit. The bids are also held in escrow.

    When the total of received bids meets or exceeds the named price, the software is released into the public domain (or under GPL or other liberal terms), and the programmer(s) get the money. If the sum is not met after a certain time limit expires, the software is not released, and the bids are returned to tbe bidders.

    Kinda like Public Television in the US.

    I think it's a wonderful idea, and I would love to see it tried.

    Schwab

  • This most definately falls under the idea of cruel and unusual punishment. You distribute $2500 worth of software, and get 3 years in the slammer? Which, by the way, costs the TAXPAYERS about $100,000 to house that person for that amount of time.

    You're telling me the punishment is 100x worse than the "crime" committed? That's what it sounds like here - $250,000 / $2500 = 100.

    Not only does it fall under the category of unusual, but it's also cruel. This poor kid has no way to make $250,000. He's fresh out of college, and wet behind the years. Kevin Mitnick, who the government claimed caused millions in damage was fined about $5,000 based on his projected earnings. What do you think this kid will get?

    This kind of legislation needs to be repealed because it is a clear and present danger to a very important national resource - people. I don't know of a computer geek that doesn't have a harddrive full of MP3s and an illegal copy of windows. What are we going to to - arrest the whole country?

    Lastly: Legislators, what were you smoking to pass this law?

    --

  • "D00D, those companies charge too much for the games, they shouldnt be able to do that! We're just fighting the power, man!"

    That's the popular excuse they use. They are in some kind of warped denial, because they don't want to admit they are stealing, so they make up some bogus "noble cause" as to why they do what they do.

    -- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?

  • There's a difference between sharing the same copy of Win95 between two PC's you own at home and serving up several gigabytes of movies and CD's for the *public* to download. To apply the same penalties to both offenses seems a bit silly, yes?
  • I just wish the feds would start after the lame-o IRC packet kiddies next. They probably cost ISP's and network providers more money with their smurf attacks and whatever other DoS/flood of the week than the copyright holders of those movies and songs lost as a result of FTP sites like this...
  • The law specifies a MAXIMUM punishment an offender should receive. That does NOT mean he will receive the full fine/prison sentence. He'll probably be fined a modest amount and placed on probation.
  • I'm not "applauding" it because "it's the law". I'm applauding the law because it seems quite fair.

    Just because a company has money means it shouldn't defend its rights and property? I hope like hell that such a law is in place if I ever copyright something I create and some stupid kid starts pirating it.

    So what if this kid lives in his parent's basement or whatever crappy apartment. He's still breaking the law and distributing hundreds of megabytes of data illegally.

    And who ever said his sentence rivals that of murderers and rapists. The law simply puts a cap on the maximum amount of punishment allowed for the crime. Nobody ever said his actual sentence would even be REMOTELY near that cap. As I said earlier, he'll probably be fined modestly and put on probation for a while.

    If you have a problem with a law, WRITE A FUCKING LETTER. Stop whining on slashdot about how us "mindless sheep" (ha!) go praising laws because they are laws. Get a clue. Think for yourself, and more importantly, ACT.
  • But legally, that's not your decision to make. A software vendor sells his software without offering a demo because that's how he wants to sell his wares. You don't have the legal right to change his practices.

    And believe it or not, most major software packages DO have demos available. They may not be downloadable, and some even cost a bit of money, but they do exist.
  • Downloaded movies are an awkward piracy issue.

    I believe the major loss here is not necessarily the theatre showings, but in the VHS/DVD rentals and sales, much like MP3's have been feared to reduce CD sales (which I believe, based on what a lot of my friends say about their own MP3 collections, though I don't share their habits).
  • Yep. A felony. For at least 10 counts of copyright infringement. I'd say that's pretty fair, myself. If you think that's fascist, try writing a letter to your congressmen. I myself will probably write them one and applaud them for their efforts.
  • Making examples of people is most certainly injustice. Punishment should be solely determined by the crime committed. If you are trying to make an example of somebody, you are admitting that the punishment is in part determined by your desire for a certain public image, not entirely by the crime actually committed. This is an injustice to the person who receives a greater punishment, not because of what he did, but because of your desire for some PR.
  • I agree with your comment about mitigating circumstances. These is something that are a result of the person's actions. They, in effect, give the person some sort of excuse for their actions.

    However, making an example of somebody has nothing to do with their actions. Two people who committed identical crimes, with identical sets of mitigating circumstances, should receive the same sentences. If one receives a greater sentence because of a desire to make an example of that person, then that is an injustice.
  • Can you really stand up and claim that the companies that sell intellectual property are making too little money today???

    Microsoft? The record companies? Book publishers? These are the most bloated and rich companies in the world. Why? Becase we are giving them ridiculously much power through current IP laws.

    And the result is, surprise surprise, not as IP advocates always claim, that people doing truly innovative and new stuff can do so, but rather the creation of tons of crappy software, crappy music, and crappy books.

    There has to be a shift of the scale here, and I'll be damned if that shift is towards giving MORE power to the companies.
  • The majority of the VCD piracy is done by us here in Europe because we get curious about movies that won't come out here for another six months. Phantom Menace came out here this week, of fucking course people pirated it back in May.

    Before the Internet, I didn't used to give a damn about the late releases, but now it burns like fuck to hear everyone discussing BWP and knowing that I won't be able to see it here until in October.

    If the movie companies would just get that, 90% of the current problem would go away.

  • Suckage Factor Off the Scale, Captain... (Score:4)

    by ewhac ( 5844 ) on Friday August 20, 1999 @09:12PM (#1734383) Homepage Journal

    Okay, everyone, get this through your skulls (and I say this as a professional software engineer of over 20 years experience):

    Bitlegging is NOT theft.

    The SPA has done an excellent job of getting people to misconceptualize the economic reality of digital media.

    Let's decompose the economics of software development:

    • $(PRODUCT) development requires people to spend time and effort to create a program.
    • At the cusp of the 21st century, we currently motivate people to part with their time and effort by offering them money.
    • Therefore, $(PRODUCT) development costs money.

    Substitute for the variable $(PRODUCT) any tangible object, like "washing machine." Once you have developed and built $(PRODUCT), it is yours to dispose of as you see fit. You may choose to sell it, or you may choose to give it away. We may question how the developer arrived at the price, but the decision is ultimately up to the guy(s) who created $(PRODUCT). Therefore, the price assigned to $(PRODUCT) is arbitrary and has nothing whatsoever to do with its development costs. The consequence of this is that there is no entitlement to recover development costs, since there is no direct rational connection between development costs and retail costs.

    You may think that's specious, disingenuous, or even insane reasoning. Ordinarily, I might agree with you, except that there's a little concept of "reasonable expectation of return." If you put $10 on number 22 on the roulette wheel, do you realistically expect a return from that investment? Of course not; the odds are stacked against you. Same deal with spending a lot of money digging a hole in the ground: You may strike oil/gold/uranium, but more than likely you won't. (A lot of people are about to learn this lesson very harshly when the Internet stock boom falls apart.)

    How do you mitigate against wasting your money? By doing research on your target investment. In this case, people heavily invested in software development have not done their homework. It is an incontrovertible fact that digital information -- software, images, sounds -- can be copied easily, and this fact is not about to change. That's what it was designed to do. So, how stupid do you have to be before you stand there proclaiming that you have an inalienable right to expect people won't copy your stuff, when the medium is fundamentally designed to behave otherwise?

    Okay, say you don't buy that line of reasoning. Try this out:

    • If I take away your $(PRODUCT), I have deprived you of the ability to exchange it for the price you have assigned it. (This is true whether I purchased it from you or shoplifted it; the end result is that you don't have it anymore.)
    • If I make a copy of your $(PRODUCT), you still have the original. You still have the ability to exchange it for your chosen price.

    Note that this is true no matter what the value of the variable $(PRODUCT) is. If I use a matter replicator to make a copy of your washing machine, you still have yours with which to clean your clothes. If I use a CD-ROM drive to make a copy of Quake, you can still play your original. Since you haven't been deprived of anything, you can't claim theft.

    Final point:

    • You offer $(PRODUCT) for sale. I think your price is too high, and walk away.
      Result: No sale.
    • You offer $(PRODUCT) for sale. I make a copy of it and take the copy home.
      Result: No sale.

    Thus, the argument that bitlegging results in lost revenue largely falls apart, since the outcome of both situations is the same: No sale.

    You may argue that you have lost "potential revenue," since your potential customer base has been reduced by the number of unsanctioned copies. Guess what: This isn't theft, either. Anyone who has held common stock in a public company knows that one of the hazards of stock ownership is a thing called "dilution." Dilution is what happens when the company issues more shares; the potential market for the shares you own is reduced. Nobody in the stock market labors under the delusion that this is "theft". And although a lot of people grumble about it when it happens, it's not even illegal (unless fraud is involved). Unsanctioned copying of software results in the same economic dynamic which, if you've done your homework, should not come as a surprise to anybody.

    So, what have we established?

    • You'd have to be a complete moron to be surprised that software is copyable, and that people are copying it.
    • Making copies of things, no matter what they may be, is not theft. Period, end of chapter.
    • There is no direct correlation between unsanctioned copies and "lost revenue."

    Now, you can make an ethical argument against copying software, and I would in fact, in large part, agree with you. But software publishers (and anyone else who can't think beyond their own pocketbook) are asking us to criminalize this activity.

    Sorry, but that idea is rock-stupid. It's like passing a law forbidding gravity from applying to certain objects: it illustrates a fundamental misunderstanding of how the medium operates. Digital bits are and forever will be easily copied, and you must live in that reality, or you're just setting yourself up for one heck of an ulcer.

    But that's not what irritates me most about this. No. It's the fact that they picked on a guy who had no hope of defending himself against the charges. The N.E.T. Act must have the SPA giggling with glee since, because of the way the law is written, they're never going to encounter a defendant who can actually put up a fight. Which, from their track record, is about par for the course for the SPA.

    Start changing the way you think about this stuff, or you are all going to be serious fscked when matter replicators show up.

    Schwab

  • What you describe is not piracy, and actually, is quite legal.

    Joe goes to the store and buys Windows 95. Joe takes it home, opens the box, and takes out the CD. Joe sets the CD on the table, and goes out for some chinese food. Joe's dog goes for some dinner of his own, and eats the CD. Joe gets home, sees the broken CD bits on the floor, and shoots his dog. Does Joe need to buy another copy of Windows? No. Joe already owns a valid License to his copy of Windows. Joe can go on the internet, download a copy of Windows, and use his unique License number. (It works the same for software that doesn't use license keys too.)

    When you buy a software title, you are not buying the software. You are purchasing the Media that holds the software, as well as a single user license to legally use one copy of that title. If your media gets damaged, you still have a valid license.

    -- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?

  • You bring up some very good points, but I disagree with you.

    Substitute for the variable $(PRODUCT) any tangible object, like "washing machine." Once you have developed and built $(PRODUCT), it is yours to dispose of as you see fit. You may choose to sell it, or you may choose to give it away. We may question how the developer arrived at the price, but the decision is ultimately up to the guy(s) who created $(PRODUCT).

    Correct. So, if that person chooses to sell their product, what gives the end user the right to change that mode of distribution? By putting a price tag on his product, he made an obvious decision as to how that product will be fed to the end users. What you are saying, is that it is reasonable for one copy of that game to be purchased, and then he can make copies of that game for everyone so they don't have to buy it.

    ...there's a little concept of "reasonable expectation of return."

    I don't believe that it is unreasonable to expect a return on an investment such as game development. If you put a game out there for sale, the chances that someone will buy it are a HELL of a lot better than landing on #22 on that roulette wheel. That's how business works. It's called supply and demand. The software industry is not based on chance. (while it's not based on chance, there is a certain amount in chance which decides the product's success.)


    If I take away your $(PRODUCT), I have deprived you of the ability to exchange it for the price you have assigned it. (This is true whether I purchased it from you or shoplifted it; the end result is that you don't have it anymore.)
    If I make a copy of your $(PRODUCT), you still have the original. You still have the ability to exchange it for your chosen price.


    Copying a software title does the same thing. If you take a copy of (PRODUCT) and give it to your friend, you have deprived the software manufacturer the price your friend would have paid for the product. (Unless your friend buys it anyway, which would be doubtful.)


    You offer $(PRODUCT) for sale. I think your price is too high, and walk away.
    Result: No sale.

    You offer $(PRODUCT) for sale. I make a copy of it and take the copy home.
    Result: No sale.


    Wrong. For you to be able to make a copy of that product, an exchange must have taken place somewhere on the line. (Unless the store you go to allows copies to be made of their non-sold items on site...) The only possible way the second one can be true is if someone buys (PRODUCT), goes home, makes a copy of it, then returns it to the store. Fortunately, most stores are strict about returned software which has been opened.

    Now, you can make an ethical argument against copying software, and I would in fact, in large part, agree with you. But software publishers (and anyone else who can't think beyond their own pocketbook) are asking us to criminalize this activity.

    Because it IS a criminal activity. You are obtaining a product without paying for it, and without approval from the manufacturer. (That's what those license agreements are for!) That license agreement is a contract between YOU and the MANUFACTURER. By making a copy of that software, you have broken the contract. Breaking a contract leaves you open for legal action, and it makes you a criminal. It's very simple.



    -- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?

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