Internet Cafe Fined for Letting Users Burn Downloaded Music 59
prostoalex writes: "EasyInternetCafe, an international operation with cafes in major Western European cities, is fighting the attempts of British Phonographic Industry to fine it for letting customers burn the downloaded music to CD's. It managed to lower the original fine of 1M British pounds to GBP 100,000 so far."
With Power comes responsibility (Score:2, Insightful)
It's like handing a kid some candy and saying, "here, don't eat this".
Re:With Power comes responsibility (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:With Power comes responsibility (Score:1)
Well anyway, you can't regulate handing out a cd-burner, but you can regulate a computer under your control.
And who said anything about breaking into someone's house? Now you're just being provocative.
Re:With Power comes responsibility (Score:1)
lemme see...
linux
game demos
SDKs (java/perl etc) i used to use easyeverything regularly to download and burn lecture notes etc... there are infinite possibilities, including burning NONcopyright mp3s.
iain
Re:With Power comes responsibility (Score:1)
What do you think you're doing right now? I hope Slashdot hasn't started hosting illegal music. I'd like to keep the speed up on Informative posts.
Re:With Power comes responsibility (Score:2)
I see this as a bit different than Starbucks though. Starbucks only gives you a connection. If you bring a laptop with a burner in, Starbucks should not be liable. This place looks like they're providing the entire computer, with a burner installed. If they're going to do that they need to watch themselves.
Re:With Power comes responsibility (Score:3, Insightful)
If you own a gun shop, you don't have to ask why the person wants to buy a gun. (You have to do a background check, but that's the limit of your responsibility.) If you rent cars, you don't have to make sure your car isn't used to violate traffic laws.
In most areas, you're free to conduct business selling merchandise that can be used in an illegal manner, provided you are not advocating illegal usage of your product.
"With power comes responsibility." I agree. The customer has the power, and the responsibility lies with them.
(Now if the cyber cafe was advertising in such a way as to encourage illegal activities, then it's a different story.)
Re:With Power comes responsibility (Score:2)
not quite true. The law may not require you to ask them why they want to buy a gun, but if you sell them a gun that they re-sell to a minor or commit a crime with, you can be held responsible. I know the shop I go to is very strict -- if they even suspect someone may be buying a weapon for an illegal purpose, they refuse to sell to them.
Re:With Power comes responsibility (Score:2)
Is it possible they're just acting like decent human beings?
Re:With Power comes responsibility (Score:1)
Re:With Power comes responsibility (Score:2)
Re:With Power comes responsibility (Score:2)
You picked a very bad example, Crow. For starters, Britain banned private ownership of handguns 5 years ago. Hunting weapons require a license, and the license application asks why you need one [ukgundealer.com].
Remember: USA != EarthRe:With Power comes responsibility (Score:1)
So, you live in a police state. He's using an example. I mean, if we used an example based on gravity, I guess it's be a very bad example, because gravity differs, depending on your location in the universe.
Re:With Power comes responsibility (Score:2)
Re:With Power comes responsibility (Score:2)
While you may not have to ask why someone is buying a gun, or renting a car you must still act in the publics best interest.
If you knowingly sell a weapon to someone who intends to commit a crime with it you can be held responsible.
If you rent a car to someone whom you know will use it irresponsible you could be held responsible (by the authorities, or by your insurance company!).
In this case the store is responsible because they controlled the process. They handled the burning of the discs, not the customer. Had it been done 'Hands off' it is quite possible the issue would have not existed.
Re:With Power comes responsibility (Score:2)
Bloody Brits, I... wait...
--
Evan (no reference here)
Re:With Power comes responsibility (Score:1)
Re:With Power comes responsibility (Score:1)
This is the same as prosecuting an ISP because someone used the bandwidth they bought from the ISP to download a pirated MP3.
Re:With Power comes responsibility (Score:1)
That's why Kinko's and Staples and the others have signs all over the place that say "Duplication of Copyrighted Materials Prohibited" right next to the "We already suspect you of copying plans to make dirty bombs." sign.
Re:With Power comes responsibility (Score:1)
So long as I don't sell it to someone else.
Re:With Power comes responsibility (Score:1)
Re:With Power comes responsibility (Score:1)
Unless you are someones legal guardian you have no legal obligation to prevent them committing a crime. If I see a man with a knife about to stab someone, I have no legal obligation to try and stop them under UK law, so long as I dont actively assist them. I may have a moral obligation, but thats a matter for me and my own sense of self preservation.
Re:With Power comes responsibility (Score:2)
The downloading music function of a computer is totally separate from the CD burning function. If I don't have a fat pipe, an internet cafe is the best place to grab the latest version of my favorite distro. The fact that the BPI (RIAUK?) bullied the cafe into taking away such an incredibly useful feature pisses me off. When you consider how small a dent this puts into music piracy, it is even more contemptible. The cafe's terms and conditions did not allow people to make illegal copies. This is just another example of the litigation and extortion business model. It's pathetic, and I hope that EasyInternetCafe manages to get out from under this.
Pound? (Score:2)
Re:Pound? (Score:1)
1 Pound = 7,000,000 Euros
Bonus Question: How many Euros to the Dollar?
This message is in jest to all the goofy countries that thought the Euro was going to ADD value to their currency.
Re:Pound? (Score:1)
Of course, if you didn't want to take it in jest, I could pose this ACCURATE reading. As of August 10, 2002:
Currency Conversion:
1 USD = 0.656297 GBP
1 GBP = 1.57050 EURO
1 USD = 1.03072 EURO
There, are you happy, Mr. European who can't take a joke?
Now,
If you = satisfied,
end rant
Where's the Crime? (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh, I see, this is one of those, "punish the tool maker because the tool can be used to comit a crime".... On that note, I demand that the courts have everyone else executed because they might otherwise murder me -- people can do that, ya know.
In a similar vein, I noticed my local Target store offering a service to copy video tapes to DVD. Since I have a lot of VHS tapes taking up a bunch of space, this would be a great thing for me were it not for the fact that they charge some US$35/tape for the service. But, what burned me was their note that "copying copyright material" is illegal. Ever hear of "fair use" dweebs? Even the DMCA doesn't apply here since there is no access protection on a videocassette (macrovision is part of the VCR).
Macrovision IS on the tape (Score:1)
Re:Macrovision IS on the tape (Score:2)
Still, since the recorded signal is analog, and not digital (ignoring digital video tapes), he DMCA probably still does not apply.
Re:Macrovision IS on the tape (Score:1)
Re:Macrovision IS on the tape (Score:2)
Re:Macrovision IS on the tape (Score:1)
Re:Where's the Crime? (Score:3, Interesting)
What burns me is their obliteration of the past perfect tense. "Copyright material" means material on copyrights. "Copyrighted material" is material protected by copyright. There's a critical difference between the two expressions--copyright material can be freely copied but copyrighted material has restrictions on copying. English has a multitude of tenses because they allow an idea to be expressed unambiguously.
We've already seen so many problems with ambiguously worded laws being misinterpreted by judicial activists of all three flavors (liberal/conservative/aristocratic). Throw an increasingly misused language into the mix and we'll see much more confusion regarding the rights that people have or don't have.
Back to the topic at hand, I think it should be illegal for a corporation such as Target--which likely has a small army of litigators--to make official statements which are untrue. Their notice should state that "copying copyrighted material without express permission of the copyright owner is illegal" and should also mention the classic exclusion for a single backup copy. Also I think it is quite sad that permission has to be obtained from the copyright owner and not the creator of the copyrighted work.
Re:Where's the Crime? (Score:2)
Still, your point about the dangers of ambiguous wording in laws is noted.
Re:Where's the Crime? (Score:1)
Are they intending to copy copyrighted material to DVD or is this service intended for transferring home videos and the such to DVD for archiving?
hrmm (Score:1)
nwp
Liable no more than Kinko's is (Score:2)
Re:Liable no more than Kinko's is (Score:2, Informative)
You saved your files to a network drive then took your ticket to the front desk. The orange sweat-top clad wage slave on the till would have a look at how much data you had and offer to delete some to make it fit on one CD. It would be equivalent to going to kinko's and asking the staff to photocopy a book for you.
When they charged UKP1 (E1.5) to burn a CD the 4 writers per store were often all in use. I stopped going when they put the price up to E7.5 including a supplied blank.
Their system was fairly crap, on several ocassions I descided to leave when the trains started around 6am sunday morning having been there
for a couple of days (no toilets!) and would still be there at noon after ftping my files to a different computer because the till computer could not see the network share of the original one.
I'm told the security is improved now but an aquantance of mine figured out how to install linux on the machines, the staff had no computer knowlege and never noticed us using bash on the console and the lack of the annoying banner ad bar. The firewall meant giving shells to people on IRC meant using cron and netcat to make an outgoing connection with a shell attached. They reboot all the machines every few days which copys a fresh image over the entire harddrive.
Re:Liable no more than Kinko's is (Score:1)
the glasgow store reboots each machine when you log off, wiping the disk (and any data you haven't copied onto the burning machine)
s/present tense/past tense
iain
Re:Liable no more than Kinko's is (Score:1)
I know, that was the case in all the stores when I used them two years ago.
I was refering to the two day cycle. Around 3am every day they get everyone in half the store to move to a PC in the other half then reboot all the machines including the 25% which are frozen, displaying BIOS error messages or "Slackware linux Login:"
Since nobody ever had a pen we used the handle of a Mcdonalds plastic spoon to poke through the hole in the underside of the bench to prod the power button and restart crashed machines ourselves. Unless there was a woman in a skirt on the other side of the wooden partition, in which case we got the staff to crawl on the floor for us.
A bit confused at first (Score:1)
playboy sues lots of people (Score:1)
Re:playboy sues lots of people (Score:1)
the question is... (Score:2)
Re:the question is... (Score:1)
old technology? (Score:2, Funny)
A Phonograph?
So, they're still unaware of USB pocket drives...HEHE
i misread it ... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:i misread it ... (Score:2)
Don't feel bad. The first time I read it, I thought it said, "pornographic," not "phonographic."
Cake Pictures. (Score:1)