MPAA Sues Hotfile for 'Staggering' Copyright Infringement 213
The lawsuit, filed by the MPAA against Hotfile, is on behalf of 20th Century Fox, Universal Studios, Columbia Pictures, and Warner Brothers. "The MPAA argues that Hotfile not only encourages its users to upload illegal content, but actively discourages them from uploading files for personal use, because the site offers incentives for users to upload the most popular files (which invariably end up being copyrighted movies). And because the site charges membership fees before people can download the content uploaded by others, the MPAA says Hotfile 'profits richly while paying nothing to the studios' for the bootleg files."
Ergh. I hate this. (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't want to support what you're doing but, charging to download other people's IP that you have no rights to is so horribly stupid.
What the hell was HotFile thinking? At least no one's profiting off of P2P(well, as far as I know, the developers behind Bittorrent and clients aren't) of IP.
Re:Ergh. I hate this. (Score:5, Informative)
Eh, isn't your ISP profiting off P2P, especially if you have some form of usage-based billing, or are paying extra for higher speed and/or transfer cap?
As for the "must pay to download", it's blatant bullshit -- all these sites (hotfile, rapidshare, megaupload, and a host of others) offer basic service for free and charge more for premium -- typically free users get something like 1 download at a time, 30-60 seconds staring at ads before you can start a download, and maybe a 1GB/hour download limit. If you pay for a membership, you get fewer or no ads, no delays, and greatly relaxed limits on downloading.
Using bittorrent, where your download bandwidth is provided by some other bittorrent user's upload bandwidth, everyone only sees bandwidth on the order of one file. Here you're downloading from a server farm, which sees the aggregate load of all downloaders -- and that has to be paid for somehow. You're not paying for the content, you're paying for (or watching ads to pay for) transport -- all the "xxxx should be treated like a common carrier" arguments apply here.
And, like bittorrent, there are legitimate uses -- I've seen some open-source software distributed this way (little scripts where the author didn't have a web server), and one Android tablet has even got official firmware updates from the manufacturer via rapidshare.
Re:Ergh. I hate this. (Score:4, Insightful)
I've also seen more than one open source software distributed this way, but it's not really relevant, unless they only make a profit on open-source software.
My ISP isn't directly profiting by this, any more than AT&T, my telephone provider (protected monopolist) is. Any use that I might have for Hotfile is indirect, in respect to my ISP, or AT&T. If I download a movie (I won't and wouldn't) any profits or the phone company or my ISP are distinctly indirect. Hotfile, however, is making a direct profit, assuming that they're profitable.
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What's your definition of "direct" and "indirect" profit, exactly? they certainly aren't selling you the files or access to them, so that definition goes right out the window.
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Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
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Of course, they can easily turn the reward argument around. Simply suggest that the uploaders they are encouraging are say, indie film makers or dj's wanting to spread their work. Make a good indie film, get it popular, get some benefits from the site as well as benefits from all the people talking about your project, and with luck you can see profit. And as of yet, such an indie film maker hasn't done anything illegal.
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"Eh, isn't your ISP profiting off P2P, especially if you have some form of usage-based billing, or are paying extra for higher speed and/or transfer cap?"
This also occurred to me. I discount this theory for one reason--my own P2P tracking.
While I am sure there is some bias as a result of language, the vast majority of torrents I download have a high quantity of peers from Comcast, my own ISP. It is not unusual to see as much as 40%-50% of my peers resolve to Comcast. And, very surprisingly, they also seem t
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Depends on how many people have a faster plan just to speed P2P up.
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Comcast got in trouble for throttling P2P before, so now regard it as a 'necessary evil'; a service that costs them bandwidth (and thus money) but that their users demand.
As such it's potentially cheaper for them to keep P2P traffic on their own network rather than pay the interconnect fees for traffic to external ISP's.
Any network engineers care to comm
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your argument is not even remotely on center. Hotfile is a storage locker. They are paying for the bandwidth in advance and just charging users to use it.
This has nothing to do with IP or even copyright infringement for that matter. Additionally, the lawsuit here is another of MPAA's "we hope the judge is a technology moron" lawsuit. [techdirt.com]
It's not Hotfile's job to give two shits what is on their website, and it's also not their job to watch or monitor it for illegal or other activities. Section 230 among others
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when did I ever say there were no other reasonable views? The only one that has said that is you, and just shows your post makes no sense. Again, hotfile doesn't charge to download people's IP, this is a gross misstatement and subverts focus on actual facts of the situation. If you look at the rapidshare lawsuit I believe it was (or was it megaupload), there's plenty of precedence in my comments.
There are plenty of reasonable views, the OP just doesn't happen to be one of them.
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ISPs make money selling bandwidth, file hosts make money from advertising, most usenet servers charge a subscription fee. There's nothing inherently wrong about offering a commercial service, even if you know a significant portion of your users will pirate.
What you don't get to do is cater specifically to that use or encourage piracy, which is what they may run afoul of here. That said the arguments aren't exactly watertight. For example imagine if YouTube had a profit split model where the uploaders got pa
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No doubt they're in the gray area of the law, but as long as there's money in it companies will test those limits. What we do know is that RapidShare is legal and Grokster was illegal. Hotfile is floating somewhere in between, either way we're likely to see another precision of what you can do and not.
I've used the free versions of both RapidShare and Hotfiles and they seemed pretty much the same to me. Are the paid versions so different that Hotfiles is breaking the law but RapidShare isn't? I just assumed that all of these sites operated the same way...
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For example imagine if YouTube had a profit split model where the uploaders got part of the ad revenue.
They do. [wsj.com]
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Yes indeed. There's fair use, there's blatant copyright violation, and then there's just taking the piss. This falls squarely into the latter camp.
Maybe if the **AA concentrated on things like this instead of taking 9-year-olds and 90-year-olds to court, we'd take them more seriously.
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That's not what was happening. Hotfile sells a tiered cyberlocker service. Most use it for free. Only when you want more do you have to purchase a better plan. Not an uncommon business practice. It's like Yahoo.com's mail. You can use their mail service for free but if you want more space or the ability to connect via 3rd party mail clients you pay a fee. If you send emails with copyrighted content that's not Yahoo's business. The same goes for the online cloud storage. You generally get a few gigs
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I think you're confusing profit with income. Dealing with the volume of traffic they get is very expensive, and while the website has ads, the tracker doesn't, so I doubt they see much profit, if any.
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So Pirate Bay is registered as a non-profit and has open books that are freely auditable?
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So Pirate Bay is registered as a non-profit and has open books that are freely auditable?
What difference does that make? I don't have to register as a non-profit to not make money.
Sure, it's all speculation, but I agree with the GP that between operating the site and paying lawyers and other professionals, there's probably not a lot of profit in running the Pirate Bay.
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Sure, it's all speculation
That's entirely the point. The fact is they are getting revenue from ads. Bandwidth and servers have been cheap for a very long time, and many sites make money via advertising.
It's rather naive to assume they aren't making a decent amount of profit out of it, or even if they aren't, that they aren't trying. Do you think if they were making a lot of money they would just give it all back? It's the whole reason why non-profits and open books are put in place.
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Actually, no speculation is needed. Over the years large monetary offers of cash have been tossed around for obtaining Pirate Bay. If Pirate Bay was not generating a profit, its extremely unlikely such offers would exist. But, one could assume they intended to monetize the services, which is certainly possible.
Furthermore, its extremely unlikely they would operate Pirate Bay at a loss for such a long duration. And its even more unlikely that Pirate Bay would exactly break even, thusly not providing for prof
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As such, the ONLY reasonable assumption is they were making money left and right.
Actually, isn't it equally reasonable to assume that the revenue they made sometimes covered their costs and sometimes didn't? So that some months they may have made a small profit and others they may have had a loss, in such a way that it averages out to essentially no profit? Or maybe just very little profit? It's very possible seeing as their revenue via ads is tied directly to their traffic which is of course the direct driver of their costs.
More traffic = higher costs. Also, more traffic = higher ad re
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a very small amount of profit, but that's it.
There is no basis for that statement. With your logic, as web traffic grows for any site, all ad revenue is just enough to cover growth. Realistically we know such a notion is idiotic and it simply doesn't work that way.
As I originally said, contrary to your wild and completely unreasonable guesses, the only reasonable assumption is they were making a fair bit of profit and have an encouraging growth outlook.
Unless you have hard numbers, you assumptions not only don't add up, but fly in the face of back of
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Using your logic, it is unreasonable to suggest that any site ever isn't making enough money from ad revenue and as such if the site continues to exist they must be making a fair amount of profit. That's unreasonable itself. It depends on whether the ad revenue is enough to cover the traffic to begin with. If your ad revenue is barely enough to cover your traffic, then as your traffic grows your ad revenue is going to grow in a similar fashion (since ad revenue is driven by traffic). Ad revenue is not, usua
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As such, the ONLY reasonable assumption is they were making money left and right.
Except that the Pirate Bay has flatly denied [arstechnica.com] that it makes "huge profits," and in fact they suspect that they operate at a loss overall.
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No, but we have numbers from a police investigation (who I regard as less biased than anti-piracy orgs), which say their income is around $170,000/year. Considering it's on of the top-100 websites in terms of traffic, doesn't seem like profit to me.
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Traffic in terms of what... page views or data? TPB has a very low bandwidth requirement -- there are very few images on their pages and the tracker files that are their raison d'être are smaller than most jpeg images, so it really isn't an expensive site to run per user. I don't know whether this means they're profitting or not, and I wouldn't like to claim either way.
HAL.
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No, but we have numbers from a police investigation (who I regard as less biased than anti-piracy orgs), which say their income is around $170,000/year.
The police investigation number could be missing lots of income. They can only report what they found. If these guys are smart, they'd make sure any income they showed was near operating expenses, and keep the rest in secret accounts.
Considering it's on of the top-100 websites in terms of traffic, doesn't seem like profit to me.
Are you seriously claiming that a top-100 website can't make money off of advertising, and likely isn't? It's extremely naive.
The court also found them guilty of commercially profiting off of piracy, which is why the Wikipedia article infobox shows them as "commercial".
These gu
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Are you seriously claiming that a top-100 website can't make money off of advertising, and likely isn't? It's extremely naive.
I'm saying that, believing the police report, they don't have enough income to have real profit. $170000 isn't much to run a big site.
The court also found them guilty of commercially profiting off of piracy, which is why the Wikipedia article infobox shows them as "commercial".
Yes, based on the police numbers.
These guys never claimed to be operating as a non-profit.
Nor did I say that. I just said I doubt they're making much profit, not that they don't try to.
Do you really think if they were generating a ton of money in ads they'd just donate the money to charity?
No, nor did I say that.
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I'm saying that, believing the police report, they don't have enough income to have real profit.
Which is why I think the police report just scratched the surface. They get far too much traffic to make so little in advertising. The Swedish newspaper estimate, where they quote sales numbers from a sales manager purportedly handling ads for the Pirate Bay, seem much more believable.
Nor did I say that. I just said I doubt they're making much profit, not that they don't try to.
Fair enough.
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Only one defendant in the case, Carl Lundström, has any money and he inherited that money. As his only involvement with TPB seems to have been the donation of some rackspace and bandwidth, it appears likely that the only reason he's been included in the lawsuit at all has been that nobody else has any money.
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Hotfile is like a club owner who charges an entrance fee to get in his club where he knows that illegal drug trades are taking place, but he gives the drug traders free drinks because he knows they bring in more customers (people who pay the entrance fee). Technically, the owner's not trading drugs, but they are fostering a climate that lends to drug deals, and profiting off that climate.
TPB is like a billboard owner who puts up an electric eye
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Just in case the above loses some people, here's an analogy:
Points for not using a car analogy, but still, analogies prove nothing, and usually just illustrate the prejudices of the speaker (comparing drug dealing with file sharing, as in this case, is pretty prejudicial).
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The Pirate pay makes no money as result of the files being shared
Factually incorrect. They are generating revenue from content. That's how EVERYONE generates revenue from ads. You MUST have content. In their case, content is usually someone else's property. That means they absolutely are making money as a result of files being shared; as that's the content. In short, there is no difference. They are making their money from the trade of someone else's property. The only real distinction is who is paying them (end users verses advertisers).
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Actually, the distinction is that they are making money by providing a service. The Pirate Bay has advertisers who pay to be seen by those who use the service. The service allows users to upload and download files at no cost whatever those files may be.
The difference with HotFile is they charge the users. A free service vs a pay-to-use service is a big difference.
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Please explain this censorship that you are imagining. The moderation here on Slashdot is nothing like censorship at all. No one is preventing you from reading what someone else wrote because you can just change your threshold and still see the posts. While some people do fit your description of "claiming this is about freedom" while "Knowing it's not" and "censoring facts". Many many more want both sides to be see, believe it really is about freedom, and believe that their argument will prevail because it
Which invariably end up being copyrighted movies? (Score:2)
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the site offers incentives for users to upload the most popular files (which invariably end up being copyrighted movies).
I don't think Hotfile should be held liable for its users' poor taste.
Incentive structure discourages noninfringing use (Score:5, Informative)
When a bank robber drives to the bank he is going to stick up no one suggests banning driving or suing the road designer; how is this any different?
The difference is that the site's incentive structure actively discourages noninfringing use, unlike roads and automobiles whose design generally does not discourage noncriminal use. Copyright has a long-established doctrine of secondary liability [wikipedia.org]. If the maker of a product or service knows that infringement is occurring using the product or service, and the product or service has no substantial noninfringing use, the maker of the product or service is a contributory infringer. If the maker of a product or service profits from infringing use that it has power to prevent, the maker of the product or service is a vicarious infringer.
Re:Incentive structure discourages noninfringing u (Score:5, Interesting)
No safe harbor here. (Score:5, Informative)
Question: What does a service provider have to do in order to qualify for safe harbor protection?
Answer: In addition to informing its customers of its policies (discussed above), a service provider must follow the proper notice and takedown procedures (discussed above) and also meet several other requirements in order to qualify for exemption under the safe harbor provisions. ...
Finally, the service provider must not have knowledge that the material or activity is infringing or of the fact that the infringing material exists on its network. [512(c)(1)(A)], [512(d)(1)(A)].
If it does discover such material before being contacted by the copyright owners, it is instructed to remove, or disable access to, the material itself. [512(c)(1)(A)(iii)], [512(d)(1)(C)].
The service provider must not gain any financial benefit that is attributable to the infringing material. [512(c)(1)(B)], [512(d)(2)].
Question: What is third-party liability, also known as "secondary liability"?
Answer: The concept of third party liability refers, as the name implies, to situations in which responsibility for harm can be placed on a party in addition to the one that actually caused the injury. The most common example comes from tort law: a customer in a grocery store drops a bottle of wine and another customer slips on the puddle and injures himself; he may bring an action for negligence against the customer who dropped the bottle and against the owner of the grocery store. Under the common law doctrine of third-party liability, a plaintiff must show not only that an injury actually occurred, but also (in most cases) that some sort of connection existed between the third party and the person who actually caused the injury.
As such the concept of third-party liability is often divided into two different types: contributory infringement and vicarious liability.
Typically, contributory infringement exists when the third party either assists in the commission of the act which causes the injury, or simply induces the primary party to do so commit the act which caused the injury.
Vicarious liability often requires the third party to have exerted some form of control over the primary party's actions.
In copyright law, vicarious liability may be established if the third party had the "right and ability to control" the infringer's activities, and if the third party received some financial benefit from the acts of infringement.
Frequently Asked Questions (And Answers) about DMCA Safe Harbor [chillingeffects.org]
If you know you are hosting infringing content and do nothing about it you are dead.
You can't let things slide until someone rats you out.
If you are aiding the infringer in any way - or rewarding him for posting infringing content - you are dead. If you penalize the legitimate content provider you are dead.
If you are making money on the infringement you are dead.
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Question: What does a service provider have to do in order to qualify for safe harbor protection?
Answer: In addition to informing its customers of its policies (discussed above), a service provider must follow the proper notice and takedown procedures (discussed above) and also meet several other requirements in order to qualify for exemption under the safe harbor provisions. ...
Finally, the service provider must not have knowledge that the material or activity is infringing or of the fact that the infringing material exists on its network. [512(c)(1)(A)], [512(d)(1)(A)].
If it does discover such material before being contacted by the copyright owners, it is instructed to remove, or disable access to, the material itself. [512(c)(1)(A)(iii)], [512(d)(1)(C)].
The service provider must not gain any financial benefit that is attributable to the infringing material. [512(c)(1)(B)], [512(d)(2)].
Question: What is third-party liability, also known as "secondary liability"?
Answer: The concept of third party liability refers, as the name implies, to situations in which responsibility for harm can be placed on a party in addition to the one that actually caused the injury. The most common example comes from tort law: a customer in a grocery store drops a bottle of wine and another customer slips on the puddle and injures himself; he may bring an action for negligence against the customer who dropped the bottle and against the owner of the grocery store. Under the common law doctrine of third-party liability, a plaintiff must show not only that an injury actually occurred, but also (in most cases) that some sort of connection existed between the third party and the person who actually caused the injury.
As such the concept of third-party liability is often divided into two different types: contributory infringement and vicarious liability.
Typically, contributory infringement exists when the third party either assists in the commission of the act which causes the injury, or simply induces the primary party to do so commit the act which caused the injury.
Vicarious liability often requires the third party to have exerted some form of control over the primary party's actions.
In copyright law, vicarious liability may be established if the third party had the "right and ability to control" the infringer's activities, and if the third party received some financial benefit from the acts of infringement.
Frequently Asked Questions (And Answers) about DMCA Safe Harbor [chillingeffects.org]
If you know you are hosting infringing content and do nothing about it you are dead.
You can't let things slide until someone rats you out.
If you are aiding the infringer in any way - or rewarding him for posting infringing content - you are dead. If you penalize the legitimate content provider you are dead.
If you are making money on the infringement you are dead.
And if you die of old age, you are dead.
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Question: What does a service provider have to do in order to qualify for safe harbor protection?
Answer: In addition to informing its customers of its policies (discussed above), a service provider must follow the proper notice and takedown procedures (discussed above) and also meet several other requirements in order to qualify for exemption under the safe harbor provisions. ...
Finally, the service provider must not have knowledge that the material or activity is infringing or of the fact that the infringing material exists on its network. [512(c)(1)(A)], [512(d)(1)(A)].
If it does discover such material before being contacted by the copyright owners, it is instructed to remove, or disable access to, the material itself. [512(c)(1)(A)(iii)], [512(d)(1)(C)].
The service provider must not gain any financial benefit that is attributable to the infringing material. [512(c)(1)(B)], [512(d)(2)].
Question: What is third-party liability, also known as "secondary liability"?
Answer: The concept of third party liability refers, as the name implies, to situations in which responsibility for harm can be placed on a party in addition to the one that actually caused the injury. The most common example comes from tort law: a customer in a grocery store drops a bottle of wine and another customer slips on the puddle and injures himself; he may bring an action for negligence against the customer who dropped the bottle and against the owner of the grocery store. Under the common law doctrine of third-party liability, a plaintiff must show not only that an injury actually occurred, but also (in most cases) that some sort of connection existed between the third party and the person who actually caused the injury.
As such the concept of third-party liability is often divided into two different types: contributory infringement and vicarious liability.
Typically, contributory infringement exists when the third party either assists in the commission of the act which causes the injury, or simply induces the primary party to do so commit the act which caused the injury.
Vicarious liability often requires the third party to have exerted some form of control over the primary party's actions.
In copyright law, vicarious liability may be established if the third party had the "right and ability to control" the infringer's activities, and if the third party received some financial benefit from the acts of infringement.
Frequently Asked Questions (And Answers) about DMCA Safe Harbor [chillingeffects.org]
If you know you are hosting infringing content and do nothing about it you are dead.
You can't let things slide until someone rats you out.
If you are aiding the infringer in any way - or rewarding him for posting infringing content - you are dead. If you penalize the legitimate content provider you are dead.
If you are making money on the infringement you are dead.
And if you die of old age, you are dead.
I almost died of old age scrolling down. You didn't have to quote the entire post.
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Nor DMCA can reach to the land of U.S. greatest creditor.... China.
Re:Incentive structure discourages noninfringing u (Score:4, Interesting)
As far as I can tell, the DMCA does not protect Hotfile with the safe harbor clause. The safe harbor clause gets voided when you directly profit off of the infringement.
Hotfile doesn't directly profit from the infringement -- i.e., they aren't selling you copies of movies. They charge you for access to their system. What you do with that access is none of their concern. If people are uploading improper content then send Hotfile a DMCA takedown notice.
Hotfile is no more "directly profiting" than Youtube, which makes many millions of dollars every year. When Viacom tried to sue Youtube they lost because Youtube demonstrated that they have a policy in place to properly deal with DMCA takedown notices. As long as Hotfile takes stuff down when notified of infringement then I see no difference between them and Youtube.
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Re:Incentive structure discourages noninfringing u (Score:5, Informative)
When a bank robber drives to the bank he is going to stick up no one suggests banning driving or suing the road designer; how is this any different?
The difference is that the site's incentive structure actively discourages noninfringing use, unlike roads and automobiles whose design generally does not discourage noncriminal use. Copyright has a long-established doctrine of secondary liability [wikipedia.org]. If the maker of a product or service knows that infringement is occurring using the product or service, and the product or service has no substantial noninfringing use, the maker of the product or service is a contributory infringer. If the maker of a product or service profits from infringing use that it has power to prevent, the maker of the product or service is a vicarious infringer.
Remember when Sony was sued for helping people infringe copyright by selling Betamax VCRs?
The "Beta can be used to make illegal copies" lawsuit alerted more people that such could be done and Sony sold a bit more units because of this newly publicised use-case.
Lets not kid ourselves, Betamax cassettes were primarily used to "pirate" TV or other cassettes; Sony knew this hence: double cassette "duplication" models, models with timed recording settings, etc.
So, Universal sues Sony -- Sony Inc. v Universal Studios [wikipedia.org]:
The Court's 5-4 ruling to reverse the Ninth Circuit in favor of Sony hinged on the possibility that the technology in question had significant non-infringing uses, and that the plaintiffs were unable to prove otherwise.
On the question of whether Sony could be described as "contributing" to copyright infringement, the Court stated:
[There must be] a balance between a copyright holder's legitimate demand for effective - not merely symbolic - protection of the statutory monopoly, and the rights of others freely to engage in substantially unrelated areas of commerce. Accordingly, the sale of copying equipment, like the sale of other articles of commerce, does not constitute contributory infringement if the product is widely used for legitimate, unobjectionable purposes. Indeed, it need merely be capable of substantial noninfringing uses....
(emphasis mine)
So, WTF, file sharing services meet the qualification of merely being capable of substantial noninfringing uses.
It's amazing how X on a Computer or X on the Internet somehow requires a whole new legal precedent rather than just X on a cassette or CD.
Ignorant judges and jurors are the main cause of my copyright rage today... It's quite simple to understand, yet blows my mind on a regular basis just how ignorant the general public (including courts) are about such things.
File sharing technology much like Sony, has made available something that could help people infringe copyright; In neither case does the file sharing site or Sony's Betamax cassettes require that the users infringe copyright. If someone does infringe copyright using a file sharing service, Bittorrent search site, or a Betamax cassette then you don't hold the creator of the tools in use responsible.
Hint: Betamax cassettes, blank CDs, blank DVDs, Flash USB drives, magnetic hard drives, the Internet, file sharing protocols & websites -- All these things havesubstantial noninfringing uses. The DMCA exists, if the MPAA issuing take-down notices and the hosts are not removing the content, they lose safe harbor and may be culpable. Simply charging for a service (or for Betamax cassettes) which can be used to commit copyright infringement, does not imply contributory infringement.
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Yes but betamax cassettes don't have the capability to see exactly what you are copying and determine if it should be allowed or not. There's a difference between the willful ignorance perpetrated by file sharing sites and a machine that is incapable of telling the difference between a home video and a movie rental. Likewise, if the only thing betamax could be used for was copying someone else's work, then I don't think the court would had ruled the way they did.
How to determine if it should be allowed? (Score:2)
betamax cassettes don't have the capability to see exactly what you are copying and determine if it should be allowed or not.
Nor does a file sharing service. Without a database of every non-free copyrighted work ever published, it can't determine whether the VP8 frames and Vorbis MDCTs of the .webm video that you uploaded represent a non-free copyrighted work. Relying on title matching leads to the Usher debacle [cnet.com]. An automated process currently can't detect nonliteral copying either, such as adaptation of a non-free copyrighted book into a film. And even if an automated process could reliably identify all non-free copyrighted work
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Yes but betamax cassettes don't have the capability to see exactly what you are copying and determine if it should be allowed or not.
The Betamax VCR by definition must have the capability to see exactly what you are copying. USA TV broadcasts are all copyrighted. Even this post is automatically granted a copyright to me as soon as I press "submit". The Betamax VCR was capable of recording live ( copyrighted ) TV -- the VCR was specifically designed with full knowledge that it would lead to recording of copyrighted content. Yet, because Betamax can also be used to produce/copy your own videos (camcorder + VCR = noninfringing works; Fil
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Likewise, if the only thing betamax could be used for was copying someone else's work, then I don't think the court would had ruled the way they did.
Which falls in line with the ruling they made. Sony was not infringing because the betamax had substantial non-infringing uses. What you are saying is no different.
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There is no law of the universe dictating that the most popular files will be ones infringing MPAA copyrights.
Can you name any files that might be more popular than those infringing the copyrights of the MPAA studios, the major porn studios, the big four record labels, or the major video game publishers?
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Linux ISOs. No, wait....
But seriously, this is where the difference between per se and per quod comes in. Giving bonuses for illegal movie downloads is infringement per se, but giving bonuses for popular downloads that turn out to be illegal downloads is infringement per quod. It isn't illegal on the face, but it might be illegal in light of extrinsic information---specifically the fact that the vast majority of popular downloads are illegal. The MPAA should have a hard time proving this, or at least on
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> To that end, long-term popular downloads should be treated as suspect
Rapidshare, Hotfile, Megaupload & Co provide a very general, content-independent data transfer service, which is, in principle, no different from what a ISP does.
In order to prevent monitoring, users usually share non-identifiable and encrypted archive files. When you suggest data transfer providers should treat files as "suspect" merely because of their popularity, what _exactly_ are they supposed to do, when they see, that a fil
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Perhaps I can. [nvidia.com]
It really doesn't seem to be so hard. [adobe.com]
I mean, really: Did you even stop to look around at the world before you wrote that? [mozilla.com]
Because, frankly, I think the concept that you're attempting to quantify is bullshit. [apple.com]
Really, I do. [videolan.org]
Peace. [adobe.com]
But why upload freeware to Hotfile? (Score:2)
Re:But why upload freeware to Hotfile? (Score:5, Informative)
You asked. I answer. Pull up a chair, lad, it's story-telling time:
Once upon a time, there was a company called 3dfx. They made video cards, the first of their kind, with all kinds of gee-whiz video acceleration.
Now, along comes nVidia. Their first few 3D chipsets sucked, but later on, they grew up and made real competitors to the 3dfx line.
Eventually, 3dfx was bought by nVidia.
And, it just happened that the weekend after this, I was at a small LAN party with my PC.
3dfx's website was gone. No 404, no response, no nothing. nVidia didn't mirror anything. And I, of course, needed drivers for my 3dfx Voodoo3 2000.
Every. Single. Fucking. Link. From. Every. Single. Fucking. Web page. was a dead link to 3dfx's defunct site. So, there simply weren't any drivers to be found. I didn't even know, yet, that 3dfx had been bought out: I failed miserably at playing games that weekend, despite my keen sense of Internet-fu and the help of the fellow geeks around me.
Some time later, an ad-hoc support structure of hobbyists began providing 3dfx drivers, but that was far too late.
In addition, 3dfx's sudden demise abolished what was left of STB's drivers and documentation. See, sometime before all of the above, 3dfx bought STB, who used to make a variety of different add-on cards for PCs, including video adapters and other stuff.
I have here, somewhere, an STB I/O card which is completely inoperable. Why? While 3dfx did keep STB's old support site alive, nVidia flushed the whole lot. This, despite written, personal assurance from a pre-3dfx STB that they'd keep the old information online indefinitely. The information is simply lost to time, which is plainly fucking retarded.
And don't get me started on the X-Fi card in my desktop. It's an OEM variant that, while quite good and versatile, was never sold separately. Instead, it only came in (IIRC) some Dell, Alienware, and HP machines -- I haven't even seen it for sale in the white-box OEM market.
Creative Labs, in their infinite wisdom, will not let you install software items that have been downloaded from their website unless you already have that software installed (can you spot the glaringly-obvious Catch-22?). Alienware, in their own infinite wisdom, packaged a bad driver disk with the system, wherein the X-Fi drivers and software were both broken and did not match those that were pre-installed with the default load of Windows. And both Dell and HP seem to ignore the fact that the card exists at all when it comes to software support.
Now, Alienware does have 32-bit drivers, with a complete and installable suite of software, available for download on their website (unlike Creative Labs). And, lo, they do work. It's a few hundred megs of shit, though, and it's difficult to find (and Google isn't much help except to find other people looking for the same thing, but failing to find it), and much of it doesn't work on a 64-bit system.
I eventually found and downloaded this, and made it all work on my desktop Alienware box after upgrading to 64-bit Windows. And things are good, the Creative Labs update program works well and automatically downloaded and upgraded stuff, and I'm able to stay current with things.
But: Alienware's buried download is the only place the drivers are available from. If/when it vanishes (and it's not so much if as it is when -- see above), it will be gone. I've burned them to CD, of course, but I'm by no means the only person with this card.
So, while currently functional, it's a fragile situation. The next installation of Windows may not be so easy.
Accordingly, having learned from my previous STB/3dfx experiences, I tried to seed the drivers on The Pirate Bay, hoping that TPB's high Pagerank would let others find them easily. I included a good description of how to make them work, what card they were for, and why I was posting it, but they banned my account and nuked the .torrent after a
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Mod Parent "Required reading for fresh-faced boys and girls".
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Fool! Don't you know that you're supposed to THROW AWAY any card that is no longer officially supported by a copyright holder? You're then supposed to go out and buy whole new hardware every time they drop driver support.
And don't even try to reverse-engineer the card and WRITE your own driver, that's a violation of the DMCA!
In fact, I think it will soon be mandatory to throw away your computer whenever the sound card stops working and buy a whole new computer! With all your apps "on the cloud" anyhow, it's
Viacom sued Google and lost (Score:3)
The service (Google search) has no substantial noninfringing use
For one thing, Google Search and Google Image Search don't have an incentive structure with the effect of deterring noninfringing use. I use Google every day to search for documents on the web that aren't obvious infringements, as do millions of other U.S. residents. For another, Google can claim safe harbor because it responds swiftly to OCILLA notices from copyright owners.
Heck you can go even further and sue Google Videos for copyright infringing video
MPAA member Viacom tried that and lost [zdnet.com] due to Google's OCILLA safe harbor.
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Well, this is more like the government filing charges against the owner of the bank for allowing the crime to occur on their premises, simply by not actively preventing the robber from entering the bank and taking the currency, which is the "property" of the government, in a legal tender kind of sense. The government in this analogy, much like the MPAA, didn't directly lose anything, but something happened to something they have copyright over. It's clearly the banks fault...
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I think it's more like renting out rooms to people for cash and then giving them a discount if you find human blood on the walls when they're done. You didn't actually tell them to break the law, but you encouraged it and profited by it.
Note I am not saying copyright infringement is the same as murder.
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I just want to say that I'm sooooooooo sick and tired of people on the internet making whatever sketchy analogy supports whatever view they want to advance. Considering how often analogies are used to re-write the situation into something different, I propose making analogies the equivalent of invoking Nazis.
Pro bono, or pro-Bono? (Score:4, Informative)
people are constantly stealing their content and then slamming them for protecting it.
The movie studios are notorious for taking from the commons without giving back. Walt Disney Pictures especially is known for adapting films, often right after they go out of copyright (such as Pinocchio and The Jungle Book), and then closing the barn door behind it by not only successfully lobbying for successive legislative extensions of the term of copyright in all works published during the existence of the company but also acting like it owns the original work and harassing smaller studios that make their own adaptations. Case in point: Disney owns a trademark on "Pinocchio" for dolls [uspto.gov], so good luck selling toys based on your own film adaptation of Collodi's novel. Disney has also sued GoodTimes Entertainment over "trade dress" rights in the packaging of its direct-to-video adaptations of the same stories that Disney had adapted.
Publishers of proprietary computer programs such as Apple also own copyrights. But some Slashdot users have a better view of Apple and tolerate its action to defend its copyright in Mac OS X (Apple v. Psystar) in part because Apple does charitable work by contributing to Darwin, WebKit, and select other free software projects. If the major record labels and major motion picture studios were to do some analogous pro bono work* by releasing some of their back catalog under a license for free cultural works [freedomdefined.org], Slashdot users might have a better opinion of them.
* That's pro bono [wikipedia.org], not pro-Bono [wikipedia.org].
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The movie studios are notorious for taking from the commons without giving back. Walt Disney Pictures especially is known for adapting films, often right after they go out of copyright (such as Pinocchio and The Jungle Book), and then closing the barn door behind it by not only successfully lobbying for successive legislative extensions of the term of copyright in all works published during the existence of the company but also acting like it owns the original work and harassing smaller studios that make their own adaptations
For "The Jungle Book," there are only two versions that are likely to survive, Korda's vivid live-action Technicolor epic from 1942 and Disney's delightful and inventive animated musical from 1967.
For "Pinocchio," IMDB returns about 60 results going back to 1911. Pinocchio [imdb.com]
It's telling, I think, that the Disney version is the only one the geek remembers or gives a damn about.
The book is not the movie.
Originally, Pinocchio was to be depicted as a Charlie McCarthy-esque wise guy, equally as rambunctious and sarcastic as the puppet in the original novel. He looked exactly like a real wooden puppet with, among other things, a long pointed nose, a peaked cap, and bare wooden hands. But Walt found that no one could really sympathize with such a character and so the designer Milt Kahl had to redesign the puppet as much as possible. Eventually, they revised the puppet to make him look more like a real boy, with, among other things, a button nose, a child's Tyrolean hat, and standard cartoon character 4-fingered (or 3 and a thumb) hands with Mickey Mouse-type gloves on them. Milt quoted " I don't think of him as a puppet, but as a little boy". The only parts of him that still looked more or less like a puppet were his arms and legs. In this film, he is still led astray by deceiving characters, but gradually learns bit by bit, and even exhibits his good heart when he is offered to go to Pleasure Island by saying he needs to go home two times, before Honest John and Gideon pick him up themselves and carry him away.
Additionally, it was at this stage that the character of the cricket was expanded. Jiminy Cricket became central to the story
Pinocchio [wikipedia.org]
What the geek wants from Disney is a set of signature - marketable - Lego blocks.
Pre-buil
More realistic example (Score:3)
Well, this is a little more like suing a limo company that specialises in clients who walk out of banks with bags of money, wearing masks and waving guns around...
Why not go for a more realistic example. Most car manufacturers sell vehicles capable of travelling well over the maximum speed limit on public roads and yet I have yet to see one of them being successfully sued for encouraging drivers to speed. Of course technically you could use them to drive at high speeds on private roads but the overwhelming use of the vehicles is on public roads where they cannot exceed $LEGAL_MAX m/s.
It seems that this is exactly like Hotfile: you can use the service to share leg
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Plausible (Score:4, Insightful)
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Indeed, this is a sensible case. I've avoided Hotfile specifically for this reason. It encourages piracy so much that it screams "Honeypot". Seems not to be the case, which makes it a pretty clear-cut case of wilfully enabling and encouraging others to commit a crime. Of course, the law isn't that simple, so it'll be up to the courts to decide. As much as I am fairly neutral on "enabling" where there are other, legitimate uses - Hotfile's encouragement I cannot support.
Re:Plausible (Score:4, Informative)
However, the summary is misleading here:
And because the site charges membership fees before people can download the content uploaded by others, ...
Hotfiles allows for downloads (though at limited speeds) for non-premium accounts too.
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"Staggering" .... (Score:5, Insightful)
its 21st century. not 19th. pretty much everyone knows that the only one 'staggered' with situations like these, are private interests or governments catering to them.
so its pointless to attempt portraying a self-interest, public-enemy move as something positive and socially acceptable. they should just cut to the chase.
The MPAA owns TV news (Score:3)
private interests or governments catering to them
Of course governments cater to the private interests that control the means by which legislators are elected. MPAA studios' parent companies own the major TV news outlets [pineight.com].
"Staggering" != "In Stages"? (Score:2)
I thought they meant that Hotfile infringed on copyright in stages or something. The hyperbolic meaning didn't even occur to me; and now that it has, I really wish all those MBA marketing types would go fall down a well somewhere.
Meh.
Where have they been? (Score:4, Insightful)
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you can download from hotfile with paying a fee (Score:5, Informative)
Fig Leaf Linux ? (Score:2)
Without registering, I could download Ubuntu Maverick Meerkat from hotfile.com
Now tell me what files you can download after your "membership fee " clears through your bank card or PayPal.
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Now tell me what files you can download after your "membership fee " clears through your bank card or PayPal.
If you're implying that you get access to "special" files by paying for membership, not so. You can download anything as a free user, just have to type in a captcha and wait a minute -- the members get the same files, but faster.
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I do believe he is referring to SkipScreen [mozilla.org]. It's pretty awesome.
Solution to crime! (Score:2, Insightful)
The MPAA has found the solution to all kinds of crime!
Instead of going after individual perpetrators we should instead go after the post office because the post office allows people to exchange everything from child porn to music discs and does nothing to discourage it!
a funny thing happened on the way to the internets (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm obviously going against the mob here, but i think Hotfile.com is just a GENERAL service provider... No more responsible for "copyright infringement" than your ISP.
I personally don't think they deliberately set out to achieve "staggering copyright infringement", just like I don't think the guys who hacked together the first BitTorrent client and tracker, the first Gnutella servent, and the first 'Internet' were "out-and-out" encouraging copyright infringement (well, at least publicly... I certainly can't
Stupid fat cats (Score:2)
As I've said numerous times before, if you don't like what the MPAA and RIAA do, buy nothing that has the slightest taint from them. Do not vote for politicians that support them.
I have not been to a MPAA associated movie in 16 years (even getting a rating from the MPAA is enough for me to boycott it). I do not buy RIAA artist's work. I write letters telling the producers and artists why I won't buy their works. I haven't bought any IP from Sony in more than twenty years for personal use. I try not to buy c
There's really only one question here: (Score:2)
Is Hotfile complying with DMCA takedown requests?
Wow, they have no case here (Score:5, Insightful)
Reading the brief they've filed, it's pretty apparent that they're stretching quite a ways. The only evidence of HotFile encouraging users to upload pirated content to their servers is that HotFile encourages users to upload files which are a) heavily downloaded by others and b) large. The MPAA is asking the courts to assume that large, heavily-downloaded files must be illegal content. They make a big deal in their brief of being scandalized by the fact that HotFile is not a service for people to store their own files, as if that's the only legal thing that a website which allows people to upload files can be. That might somehow bolster their case if HotFile was claiming to be an on-line locker service, but there's no reason to believe that they will make any such claim. The MPAA also accuse HotFile of having, prepare to be shocked, an affiliate program.
It's not just that the brief they've filed doesn't contain a smoking gun: it doesn't even assert that one exists. They're accusing HotFile of being what it is: a site which facilitates the distribution of large files to a wide audience and asking the courts to declare any site which does that to automatically be illegal despite full compliance with the DMCA and no evidence that they induced users to engage in piracy. I certainly hope that the courts don't do that because it would set a terrible precedent and effectively rewrite the law to amend the safe harbor clause of the DMCA to say "except for big files which a lot of people download because those must be pirated".
Mostly, though, what all this shows is that the *AA groups are going to have to reach farther and farther. They pretty much got to write the DMCA, but now it turns out that even it doesn't go far enough for them. The problem is that they didn't foresee that sites like HotFile (ad/subscription-supported large-file distribution sites which are completely content-ignorant and have no search or index mechanism) could exist. Now that they do, they want them gone. The reason that these sites can exist and be profitable is that bandwidth and storage costs have fallen so low that a peer-to-peer model is no longer necessary. As bandwidth and storage gets cheaper and cheaper, newer types of sites will be used for piracy too. Next will probably be sites which allow you to host your own blog or other website. As storage becomes cheaper, their maximum allowed file size will reach a point where you can slap a movie up on your blog without violating the maximum file size. Once that happens, the MPAA is going to want those sites gone too. Any site or program which allows ordinary, anonymous users to host and distribute large files (for some definition of large), is going to be on their hit list.
I'm no particular fan of piracy, but you can't remove the sites which allow people to distribute pirated files for free without also removing the sites which allow artists to distribute their own albums and music videos for free because those are the same sites. The long-range eventuality of the plan the MPAA is following will be a total lock-down on any means of widely distributing large files. That's too high a price to pay for stamping out piracy.
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Illegal content? (Score:2)
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That's a stretch. So is the pay to download. Technically membership pays for faster, unlimited downloads. Lower bandwidth downloads are free. A technicality I know, but it's one of the same technicalities that MPAA loves to try and get a toehold with.
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So what's the solution? Content verification won't work: file sharers already encrypt it using passworded rars. So what do you propose? Banning any kind of file hosting service?
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BAN PAPER OMG ITS BEING USED TO INFRINGE!!
Re:Good sites like Hotfiles are a blight (Score:4, Informative)
Complying with DMCA notices isn't really sufficient. The EFF has a pretty good analysis of the status quo of US copyright law: https://www.eff.org/wp/iaal-what-peer-peer-developers-need-know-about-copyright-law [eff.org]
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Crime implies the legal definition, not the laymanâ(TM)s. And in legal terms, copyright infringement is not stealing.
Webster isn't a legal dictionary.
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The damage caused by theft is demonstrable even without a legal system: In the absence of copyright law you cannot stand before a group of your peers and claim that you have lost anything because your neighbour copied your painting. Yet even without any law, if your painting is taken, you can demonstrate that you have lost something.
Copyright has no basis in natural law; its nature is to restrict the rights of people to do what t
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That explains why people always look so confused when a baseball player steals a base, or a lover steals a kiss, or a plagarist stole someone's idea, or a cute girl stole their heart, or a blowhard stole their thunder, etc. Because the FIRST THING people think of when they hear steal is "loss of previously owned property". No, the only people who have (or claim to have) any trouble at all understanding what steal means are morons who try to pretend that copyright infringement ISN'T stealing.
There's no legal aspect to stealing bases in baseball, or stealing a kiss in love, etc. But on the other hand, if someone said that my lighting a cigarette in an area where smoking was prohibited was arson, I think it would be perfectly acceptable to point out how that's wrong. Before I went to law school and learned about it, I once annoyed a policeman by using robbery and burglary as synonyms. Which they're not, and in any case, neither described the circumstances anyway.
I'm sure most of the people here f
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I disagree. Comment #35145558 has it right. While I loathe the business model and snake oil sales of these fileshare companies, I do not believe that they promote or support piracy any more than torrent aggregators or server hosts do. Take that as you wish. Either you believe that service providers (including YouTube) are legally responsible for the unchecked files their users upload, or you don't.
My server host has an infinity sign next to my maximum storage space meter, and Amazon S3 probably doesn't care