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Piracy The Courts Entertainment

5-Year Suspended Sentence For S. Africa's First Online Pirate 45

An anonymous reader writes "South Africa's first prosecution for online piracy was concluded this morning, with a five-year, wholly suspended sentence handed down to a filesharer who uploaded local movie Four Corners to The Pirate Bay. The man — who lost his job recently — said he's relieved by the verdict, which was the result of a plea bargain. Director Ian Gabriel, who made the film, recently said he was 'philosophical' about piracy."
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5-Year Suspended Sentence For S. Africa's First Online Pirate

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  • Kindergarten Rules (Score:5, Insightful)

    by rmdingler ( 1955220 ) on Thursday April 17, 2014 @07:56AM (#46778269) Journal
    Don't take things that don't belong to you.

    Share your toys with others.

    See where all the confusion comes from?

    • What confusion? Who's confused?

    • copying something is not the same as taking.
      P2P is exactly that, sharing your toys with others.

      I'm not sure which way your point was supposed to be taken, can you clarify?

      • P2Ping software illegally is taking something that isnt yours-- the right to distribute. Thats the problem.

        Joey loaned you his toy truck to play with. Is it OK to paint it red? Wouldnt he be right to be upset if you did that, as you violated the terms of your arrangement>

  • Bad Summary (Score:5, Informative)

    by niftydude ( 1745144 ) on Thursday April 17, 2014 @08:13AM (#46778401)
    No one has ever uploaded a movie to The Pirate Bay. That is not how torrents work.

    TFA correctly states what the defendant did, so why is the summary for Slashdot, the supposed "news for nerds" site, dumbed down?
    • Typical. The one story in ten that isn't a copy and paste of two randomly chosen paragraphs from the article, and it's wrong.

    • by Anonymous Coward

      Maybe the submitter had to spellcheck for copyrights before downloading the article to slashdot.

    • by PhilHibbs ( 4537 )

      The torrent is the movie. It's just heavily compressed, using a compression algorithm that involves a look-up to a different location.

      • In this thread: Geeks attempt to use technical devices to create legal loopholes, discover that that doesnt work.

      • by tragedy ( 27079 )

        People have tried to get away with that sort of thing in "compression" algorithms before. For example, create a thousand 0 byte files and stuff all the data in the filenames and you can claim to have just achieved an infinite (or undefined) compression ratio. That sort of thing is rightly considered to be cheating when it comes to compression algorithms.

    • by Anonymous Coward

      I'm playing Nautical Street Racer for the Nintendo 64, and boy is it fun! "He's the Grinch! The Naaaaaaaaaautical Grinch! He's slimy when he's sleepy, and shitty when he's peepee! He's the Griiiiiiiiiiiiiiinch!" Wow, the music in this game is fantastic!

      Wait... how come every time the music loops, more and more light disappears from my house...?

  • Something about Generalisimo Fransisco Franco being dead still might make it too.

You know you've landed gear-up when it takes full power to taxi.

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