UK Court: MPAA Not Entitled To Profits From Piracy 159
jfruh writes "The MPAA and other entertainment industry groups have been locked for years in a legal struggle against Newzbin2, a Usenet-indexing site. Since Newzbin2 profited from making it easier for users to find pirated movies online, the MPAA contends they can sue to take those profits on behalf of members who produced that content in the first place. But a British court has rejected that argument."
Dear MPAA (Score:5, Insightful)
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Not really -- I don't see how they are parasitic at all. They exist because the labels and the "industry" pays them to exist. They bully on behalf of the industry. They are paid service providers. Now the court has essentially said that the industry has to bully directly, and I agree. They have more face to lose than some organization whose public image nobody cares about. Grandma sued by MPAA is no biggie, but Grandma sued by SONY may blow up to a well-recognized name dragged through the mud by the media -
So to be clear ... (Score:2)
Not really -- I don't see how they are parasitic at all.
... The MPAA are not 'parasitic' in a technical sense but you don't take exception to the assertion that they are 'bastards' in a colloquial descriptive sense?
IMHO 'bastards' is term well used in this context.
'Abominable, hideous and abhorrent agents of cold, manipulative and greedy international corporations' would be more accurate and precise than 'parasitic' but a bit wordy. Given that 'bastards' is a figurative description, 'parasitic' isn't so wrong; matches the tone and meaning of the comment.
Besid
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Duh that they are bastards, I never claimed otherwise :) Alas, to claim that they are parasitic -- it's not quite that, or at least not the way you make it seem. MPAA would vanish in an instant were it not provided steady funding by the industry. They are mostly lawyers. What do you think, that they do pro bono work? The lawyers are the parasites, and they are parasites on the industry, not on the consumer. They just happen to harass and bully the consumer, but whatever money they get from consumers is rela
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;-)
Re:Dear MPAA (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Dear MPAA (Score:5, Insightful)
You aren't much into the MPAA's business model are you? The only thing the MPAA creates it wealth for itself.
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Nope. They don't care about wealth, because they are paid for by the industry to be the collective's bullies. That's a bit different than an organization that's only after money for itself.
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But the industry doesn't care about those peanut payments! The industry has specifically formed MPAA and RIAA to be, among others, their bully! It's all about scaring people, not about extracting payments that would form any sort of a sustainable revenue stream. It's coincidental that MPAA has chosen extorting money as their modus operandi. The money they extort wouldn't pay their rent, much less the salaries of all the lawyers that work for them. If you look at cash only, it's all a money sink -- a ruse by
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has specifically formed MPAA and RIAA to be, among others, their bully
Well, wrong choice of words. Of course MPAA and RIAA well predate the current bullying efforts (by a century or so), but the industry supports their existence and those relatively newfangled efforts.
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I'd be more concerned about the misuse of the word "create" in this case, to be honest.
Apparently running Newzbin gave a good lifestyle (Score:3, Informative)
I assume that would be a McLaren F1, cost 0.5M pounds when new, now worth significantly more.
Re:Apparently running Newzbin gave a good lifestyl (Score:4, Funny)
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The F1 has two passenger seats?
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yep - right and left of the driver
Re:Apparently running Newzbin gave a good lifestyl (Score:4, Funny)
Yep, one for the wife and one for the mistress.
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You made my day! Thanks :)
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"I assume that would be a McLaren F1"
Why? They have more than one model now?
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They brought out a new one in 2011, I believe; they also have some others in planning stages.
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It cost 910k to repair Rowan Atkinson's [telegraph.co.uk] after he drove it into a tree and that was still cheaper for the insurance company than replacing it.
Er... (Score:5, Interesting)
Wouldn't collecting the profits from pirate copies translates into making those copies legit?
Re:Er... (Score:5, Insightful)
It'd also mean they'd be guilty of receiving the proceeds of crime, a criminal offense in itself.
Re:Er... (Score:5, Insightful)
It'd also mean they'd be guilty of receiving the proceeds of crime, a criminal offense in itself.
More to the point, I am sure that books, music and music are also traded on usenet. So they would actually be profiting from the 'theft' of other people's work, not merely the ones which they own.
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Sigh... "books, music and software"...
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So... how is that any different from the way the RIAA / MPAA have traditionally acted?
Traditionally the MPAA member funds the production. They may use fraudulent accounting techniques and behave abominably afterwards, but if they've paid for something to be produced or distributed, they are entitled to a stake in it.
Re:Er... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Why is this so hard to grasp? The robber is a time traveler, who is on his way to rob a bank when he gets lost and realizes he's also forgotten his wallet at home. Fortunately future-robber travels back in time with bags full of stolen cash, allowing present-robber to grab a few bucks and buy a map, which in tur
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The same way an index is used to help you find something, before you actually find it and before and copying takes place.
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If a bank robber buys a map in order to find the way to the bank he is going to rob, is then the owner of the shop selling him the map guilty of receiving the proceeds of the crime?
Well, how about if the owner of a gun shop knowingly sold a would-be bank robber a gun that was used in a bank robbery?
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If a gas station is operating in an area where many arsonists are operating, and it turns out that quite a few arsonists bought the gas they used to burn down houses at that gas station, is the owner of the gas station then guilty of arson?
He is certainly guilty of being an accessory to arson if he knew the gas was being used for arson, yes. And if an unusually high number of kids came in on foot to buy the gas in small quantities, it is arguable that he should be suspicious and do something about it anyway.
You need to be careful with analogies, they don't always help your argument, as your question was clearly expecting a reply of "no, of course not, that would be ludicrous, blah blah blah."
Asphalt Manufacturers Too! (Score:5, Interesting)
Since Newzbin2 profited from making it easier for users to find pirated movies online, the MPAA contends they can sue to take those profits on behalf of members who produced that content in the first place.
This is a bit like saying that asphalt manufacturers profit from making it easier for getaway drivers to whisk bank robbers away from the scene of the crime.
Re:Asphalt Manufacturers Too! (Score:5, Insightful)
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No, asphalt manufacturers make it easier for police to respond and arrive at the scene. Ergo, asphalt manufacturers discourage crime.
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No, they are playing both sides!
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No, asphalt manufacturers make it easier for police to respond and arrive at the scene. Ergo, asphalt manufacturers discourage crime.
And newzbin2 makes it easier for the MPAA to find out about pirated content. So they discourage piracy.
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Where we're going, we don't need roads!
Push it further: We don't need.
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I invite you to go watch Mad Max.
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Not quite. Newz2bin pretty much just archived binaries that were posted to usenet. They may knowingly have done this, (hell that's the only incentive to use usenet at all after spam destroyed it from being useful for anything else.) But the piracy scene on usenet is mostly old-school. The actual distribution system for pirated material is more like
Pirate (ripper) -> IRC -> Bittorrent -> Usenet
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Newzbin2, like all the other nzb sites, doesn't archive binaries. It indexes. IIRC, it didn't even automate crawling like Newznab does (although I could be wrong).
It is to Usenet what The Pirate Bay is to Bittorrent or Yahoo was in it's early years to the web...a directory allowing people to search for what they wanted and pointing to the resource where they could get to it.
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This is a specious and disingenuous argument. As a long-time user of Newzbin2 I was really sad to see it go. However, I would compare them to someone who publishes and charges for an online version of the "map to stars homes" in Hollywood, except it's a "map to unlocked houses".
They aren't precisely condoning theft, but they are knowingly making it easier for thieves to plan jobs, even if their goal is to simply let people know where they can find a welcoming place to crash.
They are listing all the unlocke
"on behalf of members" (Score:3, Insightful)
..with the view to giving those profits *to* those members?
My point exactly! (Score:4, Insightful)
I've been comparing so-called piracy to historic real estate squatting, rather than comparing it to stealing or thievery as has become the propaganda of Big Content. When a court compares it to real estate trespass, it's recognizing the same disingenuous manipulation of Big Content's propaganda.
Re:My point exactly! (Score:5, Interesting)
I've been comparing so-called piracy to historic real estate squatting, rather than comparing it to stealing or thievery as has become the propaganda of Big Content. When a court compares it to real estate trespass, it's recognizing the same disingenuous manipulation of Big Content's propaganda.
Exactly. Now we just need a law saying that if we infringe on copyright for 10 years without the owner doing anything to intervene, the copyright becomes ours... not only does it make the comparison to tresspassing/squatting even more accurate and obvious, it's also a useful solution to the orphan works problem.
Re:My point exactly! (Score:5, Insightful)
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Now we just need a law saying that if we infringe on copyright for 10 years without the owner doing anything to intervene, the copyright becomes ours...
We want orphaned works to pass into public domain, not being taken by someone else.
I'm pretty sure that's what the OP meant. Despite this being a story about the UK I don't think they were using the royal "we".
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it's also a useful solution to the orphan works problem.
No it's not. We want orphaned works to pass into public domain, not being taken by someone else. Take a song like The House of the Rising Sun. The original writer is unknown. The oldest known recording is from 1934. If Asley and Foster would have been able to claim that song as theirs then The Animals would not have been able to do their version in the 60's.
Why wouldn't they? If you mean, they wouldn't have been able to do it for zero cost, that's a different question.
Excuse me if I'm being stupid, but I thought the whole point of copyright was that anyone could copy the work, for a fee.
If Asley and Foster didn't write the song in 1934, they wouldn't have been able to copyright it anyway, they could just have copyrighted their performance (somehow).
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NOPE. Copyright != trademark. It has been said over and over and over, and is a common misconception. Just stop, will you, pwetty pwetty please?
Nobody is required to go after copyright infringers in order not to lose the benefits of copyright protection. At least under U.S. law.
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I think you need to read the post more closely. They are responding to someone who believes that copyright should work like trademark. Currently, trademark law creates some undesirable outcomes and they don't want to see those outcomes also apply to copyright law.
well still problem... (Score:5, Insightful)
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They were going to err on the side of caution and only take 2x what was reported take in for the entire company.
A very conservative estimate I know, but they can't be completely sure of just how much that obviously irrevocably sinfully evil company full of thieves and pirates hid from their earnings report. Why one professional expert's very conservative estimate put the amount of piracy on the site equal to 10 billion USD a month, so they obviously made atleast that much and used terrorist money laundering
Hopefully... (Score:5, Insightful)
The world is finally getting sick and tired of hearing stupid shit from the MPAA/RIAA media mafia.
I know i sure am...
On another silly note. I deserve profits for life because i worked on construction of all MPAA buildings. I'll be waiting for my royalty check you deadbeat fucks.
Sounds pretty stupid. But hey. That's what you're arguing on some non physical property. So pay me now. Or forever shut the fuck up.
I also paid taxes that built the roads that the mpaa uses every day. I'll need a kickback on that too. For life.
I also had children. Future mpaa customers. You need to pay me for providing those. If it wasn't for me you'd have less customers in the future.
An exponential number of future customers all because of me... Pay up now.
What? That's all stupid as fuck? Go fuck myself? Well now you know how the world feels about you mpaa assholes....
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The copyright system is completely broken, and it doesn't work anymore. And I agree that the MPAA/RIAA's actions in recent years have been horrible and ridiculous.
That said...
The world is finally getting sick and tired of hearing stupid shit from the MPAA/RIAA media mafia.
I'm finally getting sick and tired of hearing stupid BS analogies on Slashdot.
I deserve profits for life because i worked on construction of all MPAA buildings. I'll be waiting for my royalty check you deadbeat fucks.
Sounds pretty stupid. But hey. That's what you're arguing on some non physical property. So pay me now. Or forever shut the fuck up.
Nope. Not at all. That's not what's being argued. There are plenty of circumstances where people invest time, money, effort, or resources into something and are guaranteed a return on future profits. Lots of building projects require investors, many of
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" Your hypothetical construction worker just didn't have that negotiated into his contract or written into law somewhere. Instead, he negotiated to be paid upfront, rather than not getting a wage at all for his hard work and promised the mere possibility of future profits if the building actually made any money down the road."
You're missing the big difference here, which is that the law by default gives the artists a lifetime entitlement of royalties, whereas the construction worker doesn't have that defaul
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On another silly note. I deserve profits for life because i worked on construction of all MPAA buildings. I'll be waiting for my royalty check you deadbeat fucks. Sounds pretty stupid. But hey. That's what you're arguing on some non physical property. So pay me now. Or forever shut the fuck up.
Counter-analogy. I am an architect who designs a new type of office block. In my contract, it says that instead of being a one-off fee up front, for each block built, I get 5% of the gross sales proceeds.
What happens if someone acquires a copy of my blueprints and builds an exact copy of my office block?
My answer would be that I should be able to sue them for the 5% of gross I didn't get. But people here would presumably say it's just tough luck, because that person only copied the building. However,
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What happens if someone acquires a copy of my blueprints and builds an exact copy of my office block?
Nothing.
My answer would be that I should be able to sue them for the 5% of gross I didn't get.
Why? This "someone" is not bound by your contract. That's between you and whoever you originally provided the blueprints to.
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So how many times should an artist get paid, and how much.
$1 for the first song. Should we limit it to just 10,000 buyers, or should we set some other arbitrary limit?
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No, you need to install double doors. That's double the security against illegal entry :)
Took me a second to see the logic... (Score:5, Interesting)
From TFA:
[High court judge] Newey ruled that a copyright infringer cannot be compared to a thief who steals a bag of coins, as submitted by the studios' lawyer. "A copyright infringer is more akin to a trespasser" than to a coin thief, Newey said.
Originally, I thought the judge lost his marbles. Of course it's more akin to stealing something rather than just trespass, they are part of stealing/redistributing a product!
But then I realized how the media conglomerates played the whole DRM thing as effectively leasing you (and only you) the rights to listen to the music you purchased (and only in the media format they presented it!). That sure sounds a bit like charging an admission's fee to experience some wonderful scenery to me (a scenery experience that you obviously can't share with anyone else!). In that respect, it really does seem like NZB(2) did was criminally trespass over this entity of music or what-have-you that we are allowed to take part in (but not take a part of).
Seems like the MPAA screwed their own pooch on this one. I hope this sets a precedence (even if Bri'ish) and people can start owning their music again.
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Unlike US, trespass in UK applies *only* to physical locations. Criminal trespass is applied to places like infrastructure (railways, electricity substations, etc.) and restricted areas like Downing St, royal residences and military bases.
You cannot trespass on digital media.
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It can apply to private property as well: trespass at any premise licensed for the storage of explosives automatically becomes criminal trespass as well. I've yet to work out if that includes the homes of people who hold explosives certificates (which I used to), because that could be amusing.
I suspect you get in to a whole new arena of fun when it's a List X site.
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Unlike US, trespass in UK applies *only* to physical locations.
Also, trespass only applies if you fail to leave the location after being asked to. If no one asks you to leave, you're not trespassing.
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He's using it as an analogy, in that trespass and copyright infringement are both torts with no damage, harm or deprivation of property.
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You cannot trespass on digital media.
That's where the phrase "intellectual property" came from, though. Patents and copyrights are supposed to define a boundary that allows you to prevent others from trespassing on your piece of "land".
It isn't a perfect analogy, of course, but it's better than most people around treat it.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
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Stealing differs from making a replica (Score:3)
It's nothing like stealing something. It's like walking into an art gallery which is open to the public and making a perfect replica of an exhibit for yourself. (If there were DRM, it would be a locked gallery instead of an open one.)
Before there was one piece, and now there are two. The gallery is still in possession of its exhibit, so this is nothing like stealing an exhibit from them. It's more akin to creating new exhibits.
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Before there was one piece, and now there are two. The gallery is still in possession of its exhibit, so this is nothing like stealing an exhibit from them. It's more akin to creating new exhibits.
Using this analogy, the question then becomes "Is the original gallery entitled to the profits of the copy being displayed in a competing gallery?".
My opinion is that they are not. If it were illegal to make a copy of the exhibit, then the profits of displaying said illegal copy become criminal proceeds, which the original gallery should not be entitled to. If it's a legal copy, then it's not even an issue to begin with. Either way, the only just course of action that the original gallery should have
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Originally, I thought the judge lost his marbles. Of course it's more akin to stealing something rather than just trespass, they are part of stealing/redistributing a product!
If you read the whole thing, I think he is right. Here is the complete argument: If someone set up a stall selling DVDs, whether legal or illegal, on someone else's land, that would be trespass. However, while the landowner coud remove the trespasser, the landowner would have no rights to the profits that the stall makes. And the copyright infringer trespasses on the copyright holder's rights, but by the same argument the copyright holder has no rights to the profits.
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If it is now trespassing, does that mean all they have to do is post a "No Trespassing, Violators will be shot" sign on/in their movies? To go from suing alleged infringes to executing them is really upping the ante.
Well, of course. (Score:2)
The MPAA once again sued on irrational claims and their claim got rejected, of course.
We shouldn't talk about it or make articles about it on Slashdot. It should have been rejected silently. The more we talk about it, the more their claim becomes normal. The MPAA is taken more and more seriously, which is scary. It doesn't deserve all that publicity. Their plea should be ignored like the random pleas from mad people that happen all the time.
Re:Well, of course. (Score:5, Insightful)
I refer the MPAA to... (Score:3)
I refer the MPAA to the response given in the case of Arkell v. Pressdram.
I'm quite happy that this Judge thinks it's also a perfectly reasonable statement too.
Newzbin2 has called it quits .. (Score:3)
"Add to this a climate of fear driving individuals providing vital services away from the site, plus legal action against PayPal aimed at Newzbin2's UK-based payment provider, and the site's operators have decided to shut down."
ROFL (Score:2)
Headline grossly misleading? (Score:3)
All the court has decided, it appears, is that the copyright owners don't have a "proprietary" right to the proceeds of infringement. That's a specific form of legal shortcut to seizing assets. The issue of whether there is a valid claim is still proceeding, just not using that specific legal mechanism. No decision has been made on anyone's entitlement to anything, except the entitlement of a copyright owner to make a particular form of legal submission.
Re:Headline grossly misleading? (Score:5, Insightful)
absolutely correct. The case was not about whether MPAA could sue Newzbin for damages - it is clear that under English law it can. But to do so, the MPAA would need to show its members suffered loss, and the MPAA could then only recover for their loss. The members' loss has no direct relationship with Newzbin's profits - it could be more than Newzbin's profits; it could be less than Newzbin's profits.
In fact pretty hard to show what the MPAA members' loss is - and this case was about a crafty attempt by the MPAA to avoid that difficulty.
The argument was that Newzbin's profits actually belonged to the MPAA members (in the same way that if you steal my bike, the bike still belongs to me, and if you steal my cash, I can have a proprietary right in your bank account of the same amount). Would be a great result for the MPAA, as they would then simply take the all profit and not need to show any loss. The slight problem was that there was no legal authority for such a claim, and so they lost
Bob
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In fact pretty hard to show what the MPAA members' loss is - and this case was about a crafty attempt by the MPAA to avoid that difficulty.
Now if we could only get a court to rule that the MAFIAA (Music And Film Industry Association of America) has to prove that a person who downloaded a pirate copy of a work would have bought a copy of that work if the pirated copy were not available before that download could be considered a 'loss', and that the value of the loss was limited to the wholesale cost of the work (i.e., the price the record publisher sells a CD to retailers), then maybe the MAFIAA lawyers would have to go back to chasing ambulanc
Thread hijack - New Indexing Sites (Score:2)
C'mon folks, cough 'em up...with several nzb sites down where are the freshest indexing sites now? Couch Potato isn't going to run itself, you know.
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I'm tempted to provide a list, but also conflicted, given the first rule of usenet. On an completely unrelated note, reddit sure seems to have subreddits for absolutely everything these days, don't they?
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Well, the judge's argument seems logical to me.
"Suppose, say, that a market trader sells infringing DVDs, among other goods, from a stall he has set up on someone else's land without consent. The owner of the land could not, as I see it, make any proprietary claim to the proceeds of the trading or even the profit from it. There is no evident reason why the owner of the copyright in the DVDs should be in a better position in this respect," he said.
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Infringement itself is not criminal; it is a civil matter between the infringer and the copyright holder. Under some DMCA legislation in various countries breaking a digital lock makes you a criminal.
Re:Profiting from criminal acts (Score:4, Interesting)
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I see...
Another post being marked troll because the overlords don't like the message, Slashdot is becoming unbearable as platform.
I hope somebody with mod points will change this back to at least neutral.
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"Oh boy oh boy, it seems british judges haven't lost their fucking minds."
If so then the US Supreme Court has too, since they long ago similarly ruled that copyright infringement IS NOT THEFT.
I really don't understand why everyone here makes such a big deal out of this. Is theft some special, awful crime in the US? Is being a thief worse than being a rapist, paedophile, mugger of old ladies or card cheat man?
Everyone wastes so much time arguing about an exact physical analogy to copyright infringement that the main issue (without copyright, creators get no financial reward for their work) goes ignored.
Re:Take that MPAA/RIAA (Score:5, Insightful)
Metaphors can be a tool for avoiding deep thought. This isn't necessarily a bad thing; I'm not saying don't use metaphors or use any other heuristics in order to avoid doing work! Sometimes that's a wise approach, especially if you're trying to do something quickly. Sometimes, though, you want people to think harder, and then you want to discourage metaphors. Perhaps you're not in a hurry. Or you want people to not think, so you encourage a default position which works to your own advantage.
If copyright infringement is theft, then instead of wasting time thinking about how you might deal with copyright infringement, you can instead think about how you have in the past dealt with theft. (For the most part, people think theft has been covered fairly well, as societies have had millennia to work on it.) Then, if you implement similar policies with regard to copyright infringement, this is simple conservativism rather than radical new-fangled unproven speculation. It's common sense. It's tried and true strategy. Not thinking can be smart! (?!)
If copyright infringement is not theft, then it's probably dumb to use policies derived from theft. It's going to fail to address the badness in copyright infringement, and it's going to result in collateral damage against innocent non-infringers (i.e. the policy will cause badness of some kind).
In USA, we currently all vote unanimously for politicians who treat copyright infringement as theft; we've either completely bought into the metaphor, or we act like we have. These lawmakers then pass laws which are based on that idea, so, for example, you get a situation where DRM is seen as being much like a "lock" on someone else's property. Of course you don't break someone else's lock, unless you intend to steal their stuff. From this premise, DMCA isn't absurd.
On the other hand...
If you have used a computer for more than a couple weeks, or if you have ever purchased DRMed media and then tried to make use of it, then you start to realize that the "lock" is on something you bought, and keeps you from conveniently making non-infringing use of it. So right off, the metaphor is letting you down, and laws based on it (DMCA) are a kind of injustice. But it gets even worse. You go pirate the thing you already bought, in order to get a DRM-free copy which you're able to play (if the DRM is non-trivial; if the DRM is trivial then you might simply use an illegal player, limiting your "black market" exposure to a single non-recurring instance). Go through this a few times, and you soon get habituated to using the piracy sources routinely, and ..
.. (huh, that's weird, who could have predicted this?) ..
.. eventually you stop seeing any advantage to ever bothering with the initial purchasing step. You never get anything useful out of it except a warm'n'fuzzy feeling, and you always have to pirate anyway, so pretty soon the piracy sources become the primary source ("I'll get around to buying the BluRay that the file was derived from, some day.... even though it'll stay shrink-wrapped since staying up-to-date with the keys and the BD+ scheme du jour is so tedious..")..
.. somehow the lawmakers' metaphor that copyright infringement is theft, not only fails to make a dent in the theft, but is causing creators to get less financial reward. Oops. Instead of the law being a force for justice, it has created an "Everyone loses" situation.
That is the power of a metaphor, when the metaphor has been d
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The big reason behind is is theft doesn't have an expiration date. Copyrights expire, and there are some powerful sources who want that to stop. If violation is theft, then it makes no sense to have a type of theft that stops being criminal when the items are still arguably valuable but just get too old. Just as we wouldn't let a thief off because he stole a Queen Anne desk that was an antique, or a vintage Mustang roadster, or an original gold doubloon, we wouldn't let them off just because they had copied
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I really don't understand why everyone here makes such a big deal out of this. Is theft some special, awful crime in the US? Is being a thief worse than being a rapist, paedophile, mugger of old ladies or card cheat man?
It doesn't need to be particularly awful, it just needs to be negative.
The thing is that sharing is seen, and has been seen for a large part of human history, as a positive and fantastic thing. Sharing with eachother is why we have democracy, technology, modern health care, an unprecedented peaceful planet, etc. and so forth. It is because past generation chose to share with eachother their thoughts, ideas, plans, suggestions, discovieries, etc. that we have been able to work our way out of dark smoke-fille
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They wouldn't have far to go; we (the British) used to sarcastically refer to the UK as the USS Great Britain for a reason...
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Airstrip One