Four Year Sentence For Running Piracy Streaming Site 235
An anonymous reader writes: A 29-year-old man from Northern Ireland has been sentenced to two years in jail and another two "on license" for running a website from his bedroom that streamed pirated content. (Being on license is similar to a strict parole in the U.S.) Police say the man made over £280,000 from ads on the site . Law enforcement was put on the case by an anti-piracy group in the UK. Between 2008 and 2013, users of the site streamed approximately 12 million movies, which prosecutors say caused £12 million in damages. The judge in the case said time in jail was necessary "to show that behavior of this nature does not go unpunished."
very strange (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:very strange (Score:4, Funny)
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That didn't stop the RIAA claiming $75 trillion in damages. [slashdot.org] Granted they didn't ask for that much, but they claimed it was possible to under applicable laws.
This guy's mistake was to enrich himself. Only commercial copyright infringement is punishable as a criminal offence. The guy running Oink's Pink Palace was found not guilty on all counts because he was doing it as a hobby and any ad revenue was used to run the site.
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I don't know the cost of internet in the UK, but how fat a pipe do you need to make movie streaming to multiple parties possible? Anyone able to calculate this guy's expenses to run the site?
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I guess 850k up won't cut it when he has to offer multiple HD streams at the same time.
This is reasonable? (Score:2)
hmmmm unusual, the punishment, estimate of damages/losses actually seem reasonable for a change
Add revenues: 280,000 pounds = $ 432,000 US.
12 million streams @ $5 ea. = $60 million worth of licensed streams.
---- and when a movie is being streamed, I am going to assume that the downloader is sitting there watching it.
That the excuses the geek trots out for his downloads from Pirate Bay don't make any sense here. What he wants is a free movie night and that is the end of it.
12 million streams is an unlicensed wholesale distribution. If the real or intangible property being distributed on such a s
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12 million streams @ $5 ea. = $60 million worth of licensed streams.
They they already determined 12M streams = £12M ie. about $18M (which seems about right - the content owners probably make about $1-3 on streaming rentals on average).
But other than that, this is not sharing a few movies with friends, as you say this is wholesale criminal piracy for profit - he deserved what he got.
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No, he didn't. He harmed no one, thus a jail sentence is unjust. Also, the company which made my coffee maker doesn't get paid every time I brew a cup, nor do they get to claim damages if I offer some to other people, nor do they get to demand a cut if I run a coffee shop. On what basis do record companies demand to be treated differently?
Copyright law will n
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Copyright law will never be respected because it's completely incompatible with humanity's evolved desire to share information.
Eh, is it really? Patent law holds us back in that way, but copyright? Most of the copyrighted 'information' being illegally shared has little cultural value (even as a curiosity) and if it went away tomorrow, society would change only little and usually for the better.
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Copyright law will never be respected because it's completely incompatible with humanity's evolved desire to share information.
Eh, is it really? Patent law holds us back in that way, but copyright? Most of the copyrighted 'information' being illegally shared has little cultural value (even as a curiosity) and if it went away tomorrow, society would change only little and usually for the better.
Is this the old "Everything everyone else really likes is shit, I have much better taste" argument?
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No, he didn't. He harmed no one, thus a jail sentence is unjust.
Since he was doing this at scale for profit I think we're well beyond community service here, what would you recommend?
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Interesting... your theory and $1 will get you a cup of coffee
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I'm pretty liberal when it comes to both sentencing and piracy, but I can't agree in this case.
So piracy is not theft, but there was clearly economic harm, in that he offered a service for profit that competed against other, licensed, for-profit services, and clearly drew some business. If someone steals your car, there are economic losses as well. Should car theft not be punished by jail time? If not, should any economic harm? I would argue that it should.
Now, is the sentence just? I would say that tw
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The question is how many of those 12m streams would have happened if they had to be sold? It's always easier to sell something for free (even if ads are involved). How much of what people watch on TV would be watched if they had to pay just a buck for it?
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Except with the government job we would have made $19k in a year. This site generated about 280k pounds ($430k), or around 72k per year. So the revenue was about four times as much. Additionally the volume of movies was 12 million streams. This would also be a significantly larger impact than the government worker who presumably distributed to people with whom he had some degree of contact (even if only through second or third degree relationships).
Thus it doesn't seem that unreasonable that there was a
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http://www.criminaldefenselawyer.com/crime-penalties/federal/Receipt-of-Stolen-Property.htm
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Aside from the fact that copyright infringement is categorically not theft, good point.
Actually, since your entire point was equivocating infringement with theft, it was a terrible point. My mistake.
What happened ot the money? (Score:2)
I'll do two years standing on my head for 280K.
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Not me. I don't know what prisons are like over there but in the USA I'd pay pretty much anything to stay out of prison. I'd sell everything I owned and give them my retirement and 401K account. I've seen enough of what these hell holes we call prisons are like and I'd kill anyone to stay out of one. If they ever come to get me to stick me in one of those cages it'll be a shootout like Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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Or you could do 5 years as a free man and easily make that much. 55k/yr is well within reach of someone with even a HS education and average IQ.
Sounds like the goddam ... (Score:2)
... movie industry should go into the fucking piracy business.
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Uh, 280,000 pounds over five years isn't exactly rolling in it. Not if you have to pay the cost of actually making the movies.
This may be hard to grasp (Score:2)
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Because copyright law was nuisance in Industrial Age, but actively damages the productive potential of Information Age. Humanity as a whole can be thought of as a kind of distributed computer where each individual node (human) receives ideas, combines them with other received ideas to come up with slight variations, and passes those on to other humans to be further evaluated. Because bandwidth is limited, this requires an efficient compression algorithm, which in turn requires shared [wikipedia.org]
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Nothing of what you said applies to streaming copies of Mad Max.
Mad Max does not inform anything related to a shared knowledge base to build humanity.
You should teach at a liberal-arts college. Your stupid ideas would fit in well.
Behavior of this nature goes unpunished? (Score:2)
Sure it does. If you're the CEO of a corporation or a politician it goes unpunished all the time.
Re:Pretty reasonable (Score:5, Insightful)
Prison is never 'reasonable' for petty shit like this.
Re:Pretty reasonable (Score:5, Insightful)
I never defend piracy. And if a person isn't dangerous, you don't lock him up!
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I never defend piracy. And if a person isn't dangerous, you don't lock him up!
Well if minimum security prisons in the UK are anything like the ones in Canada, it basically will be a vacation for the guy. He can even go out on day passes -- every day up to 12 hours with no one looking over his shoulder. In some cases, you can even have your car brought to the prison so you can drive it out when you go out on your day pass. You still get all the goodies that exist, like education(HS, University and College courses) as well. And after the probation period at least here, you can appl
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Deterrent
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No, he deserves to get his money taken, grabbed by his ankles and shaken 'til enough falls out of his pockets to reimburse those he cost money.
Personally I'd add selling his organs, but then people start calling me a horrible person again.
What's the gain from locking that guy up? I want him to work so he can pay those back he harmed. Locking him up won't do his investors any good.
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Do you not agree you need to have the bigger hammer in your quivver,
at least to threaten them with?
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So, in that case, he might as well just keep committing crimes, since the only punishment (if he gets caught) is taking the stolen money away again. This is literally an incentive TO commit crime in this case, as it's the only way he will have money.
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That makes no sense. If he can't and keep and spend the money, why go through all the effort?
Because you are only caught and punished for 10% of the stuff you do. So if your penalty isn't 10x worse than what you did, then there's no disincentive.
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Yup, that was they key point. Also the fact that he doesn't *really* have to commit any more crimes, the 90% of the crimes he already committed that weren't noticed means he has tons of friends, colleagues, and relatives with a lot of untraceable money who now owe him (and probably want his silence) and will support him in a luxurious lifestyle for as long as he needs.
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Whether or not a crime is committed depends (outside the area of acts of desperation or passion) on a simple formula: Gain vs punishment * chance to be caught. If the gain outweighs the chance to be caught times the punishment meted out if caught, it's recommended to ignore the law.
Simple game mechanics.
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Limit the amount "friends can give as gifts. holidays are to be up to a certain value.
Gifts only up to a certain value only otherwise it's confiscated - including holidays.
Loans only up to a certain value otherwise the loaner is breaking the law and can be prosecuted etc....
There might be money stashed away but THEY won't be able to enjoy it. Their families would more than likely still be able to benefit from
Re: Pretty reasonable (Score:2)
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So, as long as a person isn't "dangerous" (in what definition immediate threat to someone's life or health?) jail time should never be a result?
Awesome! So, the ideal criminal pursuit is to go steal as much as you can in a non-threatening way, spend it all, and get off scot-free! Or worst case: don't spend it all, get caught, and have to give whatever is left back. Oh no, what a deterrent!
If you commit a crime knowing beforehand that it was a crime and was punishable by jail time, you have no one to blam
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And that helps the victim in what way?
Assume someone steals your wallet. Would you want your wallet back and something to compensate you for your trouble or would you want that person locked up. At your expense, of course (because jails don't run for free, ya know...)?
I want him to pay back what he stole, and then some on top of it for good measure. Can't pay? Work it off. We'll find something to do for you.
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Your rape fantasies really mean more to you than your possessions? Well, to each their own. Personally I'd like to get my money back. I can't pay my bills by having his butthole widened.
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In the Bernie Madoff example? Pissing him off is just fine (why on EARTH would that be a problem??), and I don't think prison is going to make a 70 year old privileged billionaire "dangerous".
On the other hand, you can let him out, and as you say, go after his assets and income. But by this time he already has friends and relative who can support him VERY comfortably - and that's assuming he doesn't have millions stashed in foreign accounts he can use, anyway.
The only way to truly punish (and really, dete
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The only way to truly punish (and really, deter) those who are above our ability to punish financially, is to confine them.
No, that's not the only way.
Right. There is the death sentence too, and just flogging them.
Trouble with most other methods is that crooks and lawbreakers find ways round them. Fining? Crooks are masters of spiriting their gains out of sight and reach. Probation and supervision (like having to attend rehabilitation ) is that it takes massive public expense and manpower, and certain types of crook are able to charm their way out of it anyway. Probation officers are only human and susceptible to bribes, threats and charm. Jail is
Re:Pretty reasonable (Score:5, Interesting)
Copyright infringement is not really, not morally a crime, just contractual infringement based upon a very questionable law. However, crime was the individuals choice and the likelihood is, if streaming content and promoting the worst likely products was not available, alternate criminal activity would have been undertaken. The question is though, what kind of bandwidth did the individual have to make those numbers real, bandwidth going to his bedroom presumably in a residential area. How accurate was the number of streams and was it hugely inflated. So did they actually measure them all or did they just do statistical non evidenciary bullshit, so you should only get convicted for the crimes you did do and not the crimes you might have done. So I would have to call bullshit 12 million movies streamed.
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Copyright infringement is not really, not morally a crime
Disagree. Like many other crimes, it's easy to rationalize when you think of it as a crime against a faceless conglomerate or something. And, let's face it, I have downloaded stuff for free before that I shouldn't, you probably have too, so we like to wave our hands and say it's not really a crime or morally wrong, because we abstract things so the "victim" is someone we have no sympathy for.
But that's not really true, is it? Let's say for example that the copyright infringement was giving away free copies
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You are copying content. You are not denying anything to anyone, you are not brutalising anyone, you are not taking anything. The distinction is arbitrary based upon the majority if instances nothing but greed and the corruption of government by the greedy. You deserve absolutely no payment, none at all, create what you wish you have zero right to demand anything from anyone because of it. You paint a picture, you keep it, some one else copies yours, that is their labour and material, you still have your p
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How much do you pay for your air? Or do you just not consume it?
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schnell:
I don't think there is a victim of copying (assuming it does not involve invasion of privacy or misattribution), as I don't think there is any harm caused by it. Imagine for a second that we discovered life on Mars... and they were copying our movies. Would you consider us on Earth to have been victims suffering harm all this time, but simply unaware
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I think a better test would be whether a person is likely to commit crimes in the future.
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I never defend piracy
This whole thread is discussing punishment as if it's a forgone conclusion that copying is bad. "Piracy" is a loaded term and part of the propaganda publishers use to justify their stance. They've spent decades trying to convince the public to accept the simplification that "property is property" and there's no difference between "intellectual properties" and material properties. However seductive it sounds, it's flat wrong.
You should defend our rights. Sharing of information is a natural right. Soon
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Sharing of information is a natural right.
There is a huge difference between:
"Hey, there was this really cool movie... so-and-so was in it and the plot was like..."
and:
"Hey, here's a copy of the movie I saw last night. Enjoy."
The first is legal, the second is not. Why? Because society has collectively decided to reward content creators a right to profit from their creations. If they decide to share, it's on their terms, not yours. Freely or otherwise. Don't quote Linux as an example of freedom, because Linux is not free -- it is chained by the GPL.
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Piracy could be seen as a loaded term - but it's also one that has been very easy to reclaim, because pirates are just cool. There's a very large community based around sharing data, and they are proud to call themselves pirates. The most successful copyright-infringement site in the history of the internet is called The Pirate Bay. You can't reject the term, it's too late for that, but you can embrace and reform it.
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Re:Pretty reasonable (Score:4, Insightful)
Or maybe making a major movie that cost millions of dollars (and employed hundreds or even thousands of people) IS creating something, and the investors would to make back their investment from the people who consume their content for entertainment.
IMO in this case the "entitled" are not the studios wanting payment for watching their movies, it's the people who think that watching those movies is somehow their inherent right and they shouldn't have to pay for it.
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IMO in this case the "entitled" are not the studios wanting payment for watching their movies
Except the greedy bastards want payments for the next 120 years. Copyright s/b 25 years tops. If you can not make back your nut in a generation it doesn't deserve protection. unregistered copyright 3 years. Registered copyright 7 years, renewal at 14 & 21 years at 10% of the gross profit of the 1st 3 years. Unregistered and unrenewed works fall into the public domain.
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Totally agree there. Copyright could be limited. Patents should be limited. I'd be all for 25 (or even 15?) year copyrights and 5 year patents.
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I find it interesting that with the advent of global mass media and just a larger population, the payback time for the media industry has actually gone down. Many movies, even blockbusters, make back their entire production budget in the first two weeks after release. Age of Ultron has taken in four times the production budget so far, and that's before it hits the big money of blu-ray sales. Software has a commercial lifespan of maybe a few years. TV shows exist as fads, heavily-promoted for a time and then
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It's not nearly so black and white as that.
People are used to getting movies for free. They come on free-to-air TV after a year or two. They can borrow the DVD from a friend. There are lots of ways to avoid paying for movies, which are either completely legal or at least morally justifiable (really, who would say lending a DVD is a crime?)
The producers of the movie have a right to charge what they like for it, but realistically they have to set the price at what people will pay. If people stream their movie
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Even with the DRM, the pirate community is hurting from Netflix and iTunes. Lost a lot of good pirates to the lure of legal convenience.
Piracy wasn't just about the free stuff - a good part of the lure has always been convenience. No need to go to the store, or manage a shelf of discs, or deal with some obnoxious online service. Search, download, enjoy. It's only in the last few years that the legal option has been able to match that.
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I assume you think the same thing for patents? Once it's "public" anyone should be able to copy it? (there really is no difference) Same thing with software. Once *anyone* other than the creator uses it, it's "public" and should be freely copyable? Great position, but it would destroy most modern entertainment and technological innovation as we know it. Proper *limited* (way more than currently done, clearly!) monopoly on innovation is one of the foundations of modern art and technology.
How about me farting first and then, if you happen to smell it, ask for your money supported by law?
I guess I shoul
Re:Pretty reasonable (Score:4, Insightful)
"I assume you think the same thing for patents?"
Of course yes: both patents and copyrights work under the same asumptions.
"Once it's "public" anyone should be able to copy it?"
Non sequitur. I never said anything like that about copyright.
What I said is that once it's public anyone *can* copy and that this is the natural affair of things and that in order for the people *not* to copy, you need to restrict their natural rights by means of force of law.
"Inherent rights? Are you serious? You could just as easily argue that you have an "inherent right" to your neighbor's stuff as long as you have the power to take it and keep it."
You have set yourself the very and most basic notion of proprietorship. Which is exactly the things someone can retain on his own power and will. Everything else builds upon this notion.
And that rises a very interesting point about intellectual and physical properties and it is that they work in exactly opposite ways. How do you know I'm the owner of something (physical)? Because it's already under my reach so, in order to retain it I don't need to do anything and in order to transfer ownership against my will you will need to employ violence beyond my own capacity.
On the other hand, look at intellectual property: for an already published work (work of art, idea, patent...) I get access to it without any violence (that's the very definition of "publishing"): you sing, and I hear, once I hear, I remember, once I remember, I can also sing that song. But then, in order for you to claim ownership of that piece of work I already know so I can't sing it, it is *you*, not me, the one that needs to employ violence against me, not the other way around!
This makes clear that "intellectual property" is not property at all but a government-granted privilege. But, then, on a free society, government-granted anything needs to answer to their social contract value. It is not that I'm against government-granted anythings, but that given they are violence against the natural state of affairs, they need to be under continous scrutiny to see if they still respond to the goal they were granted for and as soon as they don't, be immediately redefined or even outright revoked.
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Punitive imprisonment is never effective at preventing future crimes (check out the recidivism rate!)
A couple of points;
1. Who is to say recidivism rates would not be higher of the prison sentence was not there.
2. Recidivism rate do not reflect the number of crimes prevented due to potential criminals not wanting to risk jail time.
There is nothing that you can take from someone that is more precious than years of their life, especially years in the prime of their life.
Exactly and maybe fewer crimes are being commuted because people do not want to risk losing those years.
Just stop trying to defend punitive imprisonment.
What is your alternative?
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I believe the word is rehabilitation.
You haven't talked about anything that would indicate a reduced rate of recidivism. So what do you propose, other than "not jail"?
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I believe the word is rehabilitation.
Nice word "rehabilitation. Where would this be done? How would you ensure the criminals take it seriously. How do you know rehabilitation does not take place while confined. We are talking about minimum security prison not supermax hell holes. Confinement in minimum security is there to force inmates to spend time thinking about what they did, to reevaluate their lives, and maybe decide to change them.
not exactly an irrational reaction to such abuse.
Wow, confinement in better conditions than many working poor live is abuse?
There is a very old saying "don'
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Typical left wing ideas with no practical way to apply them. Saying the word rehabilitation does not rehabilitate anyone.
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It seem strange that you can not seem to actually describe the process of rehabilitation.
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If you can describe the process then why don't you? I don't believe that you actually understand the process of rehabilitation. To you is is just a buzz word.
Re:Pretty reasonable (Score:5, Insightful)
Is he a danger to society? If not, he shouldn't be in prison.
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While in theory I agree, in practice, what else can we do? Someone commits a crime, they need to be punished. Sure, we can levy fines, but if the person is rich, they just pay them and it doesn't matter to them. If they are poor they can't pay them anyway so what do we do then? If someone steals a car, we can try and get them to pay for the car, but they probably don't have enough to do it. Sure, we can garnish wages for the future, but that is just a sure fire way of keeping the poor committing crimes beca
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Sure, we can levy fines, but if the person is rich, they just pay them and it doesn't matter to them.
So determine the size of the fine based on a proportion of their income or their wealth (or some combination of the two).
If they are poor they can't pay them anyway so what do we do then?
Get them to repay the damage they've caused to society in some other way. Community service springs to mind.
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Criminal record, on licence/probation, fine that they can afford but hurts. Plenty of punishment there, considering that there is no danger to the public and it's difficult to even show that there was a victim or loss here.
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...Why?
I'm asking because I've followed a lot of theological discussions lately, and have noticed that the nastiest perversions - such as the entire concept of Hell as God's torture chamber - are invariably introduced by taking the need for punishment as granted, even in a setting where the culprit can't possibly harm anyone anymore. On the other hand, animal trainers generally seem to agree that punishments are counter-productive from the viewpoint of gett
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...Why?
Two mains reasons:
1) To discourage others from doing the same thing
2) To ensure that the victim feels there was a sufficient level of "justice" to avoid vigilantism
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Hmm.. lets see now... how about some community service?
At least this way the state gets something out of the deal, supposedly to compensate us for the terrible wrongs we've suffered here. Right now, you and I are just paying for his jail time, and nothing of value is ever created or returned to us.
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You left out #4:
In the United States, prisons are a HUGE industry that includes supporting entities like food service, medical incompetence, internal bribes, gangs, etc.
The incarceration empires love, and lobby for, jail time for tiny bits of drug possession, for instance.
That's why America has such a high prison population.
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I don't buy that 1 or 3 are valid at all. There are other punishments that can be used to serve as a deterrent. And frankly, taking vengeance from someone I find barbaric.
Prison has far too many consequences to be used simply as a deterrent - it literally destroys someone's life (they will likely lose their job and their house, they will probably struggle to ever get a job again, and hence to ever have any kind of life). It should not be used casually. Separating someone from society who is actually dan
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Big difference in intent. Most traffic violations are the result of carelessness (running a stop sign) to a technicality (rolling through a stop sign at 1mph but failing to make a complete stop) to going with the flow of traffic (good number of speeding infractions), etc.
Ongoing commercial scale copyright infringment with 600,000$ in revenues... if you want to equate that with a moving violation... fine: organized street racing.
Re:Pretty reasonable (Score:5, Insightful)
"He's shown a willingness to harm others for profit."
Who was harmed, then?
Please note that I'm not asked who *claimed* to be harmed but who was *actually* harmed.
The people who saw the films? I don't think so.
The advertisers that voluntarily for showing their ads? I don't think so.
The companies that produced the films under distribution? Well, they claim to be damaged but, how? Can they show that anybody stopped paying a ticket or a licensed streamer because of that? I don't think so. And then, even if that could be demonstrated, what about the pub I went this evening? Me being at the pub certainly avoided me going to the cinema and paying them a ticket. Maybe we should also fine the pub.
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"So if I look for cars in garages that haven't been driven in a month, and I steal them, you have to prove that there was some actual loss of utility, not just a loss of property?"
The day you can take my car from the garage but still I can take my car from the garage whenever I want, you can come back with that argument. If you are honest, you need to think harder; if you are a troll, you already should know this kind of equivalence between physical and intellectual property is a no-go you need to avoid si
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The court indicated it was about $12M in actual provable loss
This is NI so possibly not the same as the rest of the UK but in most cases losses have to be quantifiable in UK law to be claimed in damages.
This can lead to some (imo) unfair situations where if a 'labour of love' is destroyed then damages are likely to be merely the raw material costs.
There are exceptions, and the law is beginning to recognise 'emotional distress' as a loss but, in general, when you see quantified losses or damages in UK cases
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(it's not actually piracy, it's copyright infringement)
Yes, it is piracy. And it's also copyright infringement. Because piracy in this case is basically a (somewhat) more colloquial term for the copyright infringement. If you don't believe me, look it up: there are TONS of citations going back to the 1600's.
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Really, I thought the piracy bit stemmed from the unlicensed radio broadcasts from ships anchored in international waters off the coast of the U.K. There is a much close link to the original use of the term pirate. They where ships on the high seas for starters engaged in "illegal" activity.
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Yeah, I agree it's a colloquial term... that has been pervasive for a long time...
but let's not forget that this is a tort, and not a criminal offence...
I stand by copyright, but not the criminal prosecution of such.
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I agree strongly with one point in particular: prison is not acceptable for this.
Prison should be: does this person need physical restraint from harming society again? YES/NO.
In this case, forbid him Internet access for 4 years, with 2 years under strict supervision. Fuck. It hurts me just to write that... Ugh...
I am annoyed that he profited from this, so I think the financial punishment should be 2x what he earned (why 2x? because 1x is comensation, 2x is punishment... he deserves to be punished for profit
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In this case, forbid him Internet access for 4 years, with 2 years under strict supervision.
That's the first alternative suggestion I've heard that's serious enough to merit consideration.
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Truth.
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Minimum of three years if highly provoked, up to lifetime imprisonment if lightly provoked. [cps.gov.uk]
Justice is complex. (Score:2, Insightful)
You are equating that justice should be proportional to the damage caused, vs intent, and chances for reoccurrence.
Manslaughter or murder has some of the highest damage that we consider. However most people who do this are not mass murderers, and will not make such a habit. And often it isn't because of disrespect of the law but because the person felt threatened on some level.
Justice requires stiff penalty for such action though as to make it clear to the population that you must take great care before y
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You are equating that justice should be proportional to the damage caused, vs intent, and chances for reoccurrence.
Of course it should. As you mention, it should also factor in the variable of deterrent effect on the individual, and likelihood to reoffend, but it should absolutely consider the magnitude of the damage caused. Anything else would be arbitrary and capricious.
Also, money is replaceable, and victims can be made whole, while lives are irreplaceable, at least to the people who lose them.
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12 million movies over 5 years? That's still an average of 6,575+ movies a day. How do you do that with a 2008 broadband internet connection from your bedroom while you're unemployed and have never been employed.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess they weren't HD 1080p videos?
He ran it from his bedroom (ie didn't create a multi-person company or rent office space), I'm pretty sure he didn't host it from his bedroom.
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Right. The Democrats and Republicans are run by the RIAA and MPAA plus Disney and some others.
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Yes. Ad revenue is the damage. x2 is the punishment.
But the jail term? for a tort? FSM, that is not right.
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If his gains are related to the crime, then stealing a $100,000 car and selling it for $10 is a $10 theft. That's not how it works.
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If his gains are related to the crime, then stealing a $100,000 car and selling it for $10 is a $10 theft. That's not how it works.
Perfect analogy. Well done, sir.
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Clearly not, since the retail price for almost all movies is more than 1 pound.