MPAA Agent Poses As Homebuyer To Catch Pirates 289
bonch writes "The MPAA used an undercover agent posing as a potential homebuyer to gain access to the home of a British couple charged with running a streaming links site. UK authorities decided not to pursue the case, but the MPAA continued, focusing on a Boston programmer who worked on the site, leading to an unprecedented legal maneuver whereby U.S. charges were dropped in exchange for testimony in a UK fraud case."
Outsourced eh? (Score:5, Insightful)
I guess even police work and evidence collection is getting outsourced these days....
On a serious note, what right does the MPAA have to place 'undercover' agents?
Man.. (Score:2, Insightful)
Fuck the **AA
Re:Piracy, and making money (Score:4, Insightful)
I would agree with you, except I have a much, much bigger problem with corporations sending UNDERCOVER FUCKING AGENTS into people's homes under false pretenses.
If you can't gather enough evidence of criminal activity to convince a rubberstamp-wielding judge to issue a warrant, served by people at least superficially trained in such silly little issues as chain-of-custody, then you drop the issue. You don't hire plumbers to break in and go through your enemies' files.
Re:Outsourced eh? (Score:5, Insightful)
Read the story: MPAA were the ones that siezed the equipment under police guard, did the investigation of the equipment themselves, and then even were allowed to participate in the questioning.
There is a problem here.
To: Editors (and TFA writer) (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Piracy, and making money (Score:4, Insightful)
I think it's probably the Profit motive. You're a hero if you are providing access to media not otherwise available. If you are seeking money for it when you're not the copyright holder then you're just a money grubbing dick. You might be a money grubber even if you hold the copyright; but then you're at least legal.
It's like the story of the vet who sent something like 10k pirated DVDs over to the desert. Yes, he violated copyright, but people have his sympathy. If somebody took those 10k DVDs and tried to sell them for $2 profit each, the view is much different. People view you differently if you're not doing it for profit, especially if you're 'donating' your own resources to the cause without hope of return.
I feel like... (Score:5, Insightful)
This is getting too wacky and out of hand. I mean, piracy is one thing, but playing police?
Next thing you know laws will be privatized for the highest bidder in a location. I think we need to step back and ask ourselves, is piracy really worth letting this crap slip by?
I think we should start by reducing the amount of legislation and bureaucracy and let the police do their job. Then we write the minimum amount of laws required to protect start up industries, and then we hang all the lawyers anyways because they're ridiculous and will ruin everything (as always).
Re:Piracy, and making money (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Suing the programmer? (Score:5, Insightful)
Simply blackmail in a legal way: you sue the programmer in the US so he has to spend tens of thousands of dollars to defend himself: that will bankrupt him. Or he won't spend that amount of money to defend himself and the torts from the lawsuit will bankrupt him. Now the MPAA has a lever and can coerce the programmer to testify for them.
Welcome to the legal system of the United States of America. If some people with italian sounding names did such a thing, they'd be prosecuted under RICO.
Re:Outsourced eh? (Score:5, Insightful)
Bullshit. Major problem here. The MPAA isn't supposed to be a governmental organization. They have no business participating in a raid.
Re:Clarify (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I feel like... (Score:5, Insightful)
Welcome to the return of the Pinkertons.
Re:Clarify (Score:5, Insightful)
>They were even allowed to investigate the confiscated equipment themselves.
\Wouldn't any lawyer be able to get this easily thrown out? The police giving away evidence to the plaintiff to do as they wish with it aster the case was dropped? Isn't that stealing, conspiracy, possession of stolen property, tampering with evidence, etc, etc , etc.....
hollywood accounting is stealing (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Clarify (Score:5, Insightful)
Sounds like the couple aren't the ones who should be charged with fraud. Verifying the identities of the 'interested parties' would have likely quashed this whole debacle before it progressed into the absurdity it is now.
If the MPAA/RIAA are going so far as to infiltrate your home with 'actors' to thwart copyright infringement, they really have hit the bottom of the cesspool. That's absolutely disgusting!
Re:Piracy, and making money (Score:4, Insightful)
Pay your legislators enough cash and you don't only control governmental actions, you almost become PART of the government apparently.
Well, corporations are government creations, so it's not entirely surprising. The cycle goes roughly:
1) create permanent private-benefit corporations
2) protect individuals in corporations from nearly all consequences
3) allow corporations to grow much larger than non-corporate business could achieve to gain unnatural economies of scale
4) allow corporations to squelch their competition through favorable laws, incumbent-protecting regulations, court actions, etc. Be sure to speak boldly about new regulations to control corporations, then let corporations write those regulations.
5) take small percentage of corporate profits as taxes
6) take much larger percentage of corporate profits as campaign contributions to ensure cycle perpetuation
7) GOTO 2
You'll notice the loop is positive feedback and doesn't halt so long as resources are available to keep it running.
Re:Clarify (Score:5, Insightful)
It's only a crime if the people in power say it's a crime. Right now, the people in power are the MPAA.
Slashdotters never read articles (Score:3, Insightful)
You have to realize that Slashdotters never click the links to read articles. They rely on the summary to tell them what reaction to have so they can post comments about it. Actual reading of the article or may or may not occur at a later date.
Re:Clarify (Score:5, Insightful)
Please. They've sued dead people. If you think this is rock bottom you've forgotten the last 12 years.
Examining Equipment? (Score:4, Insightful)
Not only were Hollywood representatives taking part in the questioning, they also brought along investigators who were allowed to examine the equipment.
Why on earth are they allowed to look at the equipment? Can company X allege something now against company Y in order to look through Y's internal files?
Re:Clarify (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Clarify (Score:5, Insightful)
Private corporations are not law enforcement officers.
Re:What? (Score:5, Insightful)
It means that the sick greed which drives the movie industry knows no bounds.
Re:Clarify (Score:4, Insightful)
It gets even better when you read about stories like this one, where RIAA member owned VEVO was busted illegally streaming a football game [myce.com] at an event at Sundance a couple years ago.
And let's not even get into Hollywood Accounting [wikipedia.org]...
You know why the MAFIAA is so pissed off about getting ripped off? Because it's cutting into the profits they make ripping other people off. Poor babies...