MPAA Wants ISPs to Disconnect Persistent Pirates (torrentfreak.com) 263
Ernesto Van der Sar, reporting for TorrentFreak: The MPAA wants Internet providers and services to take stronger actions against persistent copyright infringers. Ideally, the most egregious pirates should lose their accounts permanently, the group says. To accomplish this ISPs should be required to track the number of notices they receive for each account. In recent weeks, many groups and individuals have voiced their opinions about the future of the DMCA, responding to a U.S. Copyright Office consultation. This includes the MPAA, which acts on behalf of the major Hollywood studios. In a 71-page submission the group outlines many problems with the current law, asking for drastic reforms. Ideally, the group would like search engines to enforce a "stay down" policy ensuring that content can't reappear under different URLs. In addition, it would like registrars to suspend domain names of pirate sites, such as The Pirate Bay.The problem is that ISPs don't necessarily see this abuse as a problem.
I have a better idea (Score:2, Insightful)
How about the MAFIAA stop producing crap and expecting people to pay through the nose to see and hear it?
LOL (Score:2, Insightful)
Lol, also like the ISP's are gonna bend over and willingly lose money on behalf of somebody else.
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Movie Theaters will actually do this.
My Wife and I sent to see the new 'Vacation' disaster and walked out One quarter of the way through. We spoke with Management about it and they gave us free tickets to use at some other date. Which we used when Dead Pool came out.
If you are kind and polite when talking to people magick happens.
Re: I have a better idea (Score:2)
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Yawn, same old tired attempts at logic I have sat through before. I remember a college professor always calling IP infringement "rape" because you are "raping" Vanilla Ice or other bands when you copy their cassettes... back in the early 1990s.
IP infringement isn't . The closest thing it is equal to is some kids sneaking in the back door of an empty theater. Problem is that IP rights have so abused here in the US (for example, you cannot make a new invention... and I mean -anything- without running afoul
Re:I have a better idea (Score:5, Interesting)
MPAA don't do movies, the studios do.
What MPAA do is to act like basically norton anti virus and constantly keep the studios scared of the EVIL pirates, so they can keep grabbing cash off the studios to "combat" that EVIL thing.
Basically alarmist scammers of the highest degree.
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MPAA don't do movies, the studios do.
Your ignorance would be charming if you were two or three years old [wikipedia.org], but given Google and Wikipedia and your ostensible exposure to them, it is only pathetic.
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Yes, studios that make movies are members of the MPAA, but the MPAA itself does not make anything.
Re:I have a better idea (Score:5, Insightful)
How about the MAFIAA stop producing crap and expecting people to pay through the nose to see and hear it?
And stop making it difficult to access content that we do pay for. Why in hell should movies that have gone to stream "expire?" Leave the movie on Netflix/ Amazon/ Hulu, so you can keep making money on it.
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DVDs rented out by a service like Netflix incur a cost to store, mail out, and check back in. Yet Netflix keeps DVDs until they physically wear out. Streaming movies cost virtually nothing to maintain and backup on servers. The only reason they "expire" is Hollywood licensing rules.
Re:I have a better idea (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly. If "pirates" didn't exist, the MAFIAA would have to invent them. They are not making as much money as they think they should, and the reason can't possibly be their own failure to produce a salable product.
When all Internet access is filtered and monitored to a fare-thee-well, you get kicked off for so much as saying "Aaaarrrrr," the possession of uncrippled computing devices is a felony, and the MAFIAA are still complaining about their huge profits being not quite huge enough, then what will they do?
Re:I have a better idea (Score:4, Insightful)
They will lobby for a law to make it illegal not to buy at least five of their movies per year.
Re:I have a better idea (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I have a better idea (Score:4, Informative)
This already happens in some places. Take Belgium [wikipedia.org], for example.
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So what you're saying is piracy is legal in Belgium because the license has already been paid? Brilliant!
Re:I have a better idea (Score:5, Insightful)
You'd think that, but no. The old adage about giving someone and inch and them taking a mile is still as true as it ever was.
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Never let the facts get in the way of this tired clickbait:
http://www.latimes.com/enterta... [latimes.com]
Re:I have a better idea (Score:5, Insightful)
I have conflicted feeling about this idea, on one had I really really want to do things legally. I subscribe to netflix, amazon prime, hulu and own hundreds of cd's dvd and bluerays. etc. I don't mind paying for ad-free content. but I'm currently in a situation where we will be traveling half-way around the world where our netflix subscription will not work, with a 2 and a 4 year old who insist on/have favorite movies. So, even though I'm paying for like 3 streaming services, I'm basically forced to pirate their favorite stuff thats unavailable on physical, purchasable media, because I need it off line, and in different regions. I guess that I *could* buy a 20 dollar dvd and rip it but then I will be paying a fourth time for something that I feel I've already paid for. Some things are simply unavailable legally.
It's too much, they're too greedy.
Piracy is the easiest (and coincidentally the cheapest) way to consume content. I can put it on any device I own, time shift, format shift and region shift without worrying if it'll work because I changed location, device or format for something I paid for already. The alternative is you can sit next to hysterical children on a 12 hour flight.
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That is a move that his kids aged 2 and 4 will understand and accept as the reason why they can't watch Frozen for the 1001st time.
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I hate to sound like captain hindsight, but maybe you shouldn't have rented movies from a streaming service that only works in your country. Just because you want to do things legally doesn't mean you have to settle for supporting flawed services.
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Re:I have a better idea (Score:5, Insightful)
"Piracy" is an inherent part of a free market whenever you are pricing a product significantly higher than the cost to produce it.
Why is enforcement the ISP's responsibility? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why is it the ISP's responsibility to enforce copyright laws? Piracy is only a problem for the ISP if excessive bandwidth is consumed and it results in degraded network performance. But that doesn't really have anything to do with copyright laws.
There need to be different penalties depending on the type of infringement. The person who downloads a couple of movies on bittorrent and doesn't realize they're also uploading is very different from a person who is collecting money for access to a site with a massive collection of movies. In short, to collect a large settlement, it should be shown that there's an intent to distribute and/or the person infringing upon copyrights is profiting from doing so. This would probably render it unprofitable to pursue individuals who download a few movies but don't intend to share them.
The focus needs to be on people who are making the movies available to begin with, those who are sharing massive amounts of content, and those who are making a profit from piracy.
Unlike what seems like a large portion of Slashdot, I don't think there's an ethical defense for piracy. However, the punishment ought to be proportional to the egregiousness of the offense committed. The massive settlements against people who weren't infringing a lot of content is absurd. And there's no reason to disconnect people from internet access for piracy, either temporarily or permanently. That's ridiculous.
I'd suggest that for the casual offender, the maximum settlement should be the larger of 1.3*(retail price)*(number of proven downloads) or, 10*(retail price). Let the much larger settlements only apply to the most egregious offenders.
Re:Why is enforcement the ISP's responsibility? (Score:5, Insightful)
Unlike what seems like a large portion of Slashdot, I don't think there's an ethical defense for piracy.
It's not so much that a people defend piracy, it's that there is a large reaction against the means the record/movie industry is using to battle something that should be their problem.
If they want to change their product to make it harder to pirate I'm completely fine with that.
Lobbying to change the law to make reverse engineering illegal is something I don't approve of. If I want to figure out how a product I bought works then they shouldn't have a say in the matter. If the record companies didn't want me to do that they shouldn't have sold me the product.
I would like to keep the laws in a state where you have to prove that someone is doing wrong before punishing them.
I would also like that everyone is treated equally under the law and that means that the "victim" can't have a say in what the punishment should be, otherwise we will get a situation where hurting a nice and forgiving person is less severe than one who is vengeful.
Now we have a bunch of companies that wants to change the law so that they can point out people they don't like and punish them without a fair trial.
Not only that, they want other companies to go through the work to do the punishment. That wouldn't be a problem if everyone just told those companies to fuck off.
Unfortunately that isn't happening and because of that those companies have become the largest threat we have to functional democracy where everyone is treated equal under the law. Not even terrorist groups like ISIS are close to causing that much harm to our society.
I don't care much for piracy. I got too busy with other hobbies and more or less stopped consuming the kind of media involved there, but I rather see all the companies involved with RIAA/MPAA dismantled and everyone working for them becoming unemployed with all the damage that comes with that than let them change the laws the way they want to.
So whenever someone comes crying about "how should the artist get paid" all I can say is bugger off, you don't have a right to get paid and you sure as hell don't have the right to change the laws to make your business profitable.
TL;DR; It's not in defense of piracy, it's in defense of a functional legal system.
Re:Why is enforcement the ISP's responsibility? (Score:4, Insightful)
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whenever someone comes crying about "how should the artist get paid"
The RIAA/MPAA argue that "the artists should be paid", but their actions are not about paying artists. It's about preserving the oligopoly status of their members, the record companies and movie studios.
As a musical artist, I agree with you that they - the RIAA (and MPAA) should not have the right to get laws changed to make it's member companies' businnesses profitable. If their business model is nolonger profitable, it's because they failed to adapt.
I don't need the RIAA or its members. In fact, I'd be be
Re:Why is enforcement the ISP's responsibility? (Score:5, Insightful)
Unlike what seems like a large portion of Slashdot, I don't think there's an ethical defense for piracy.
It causes no harm, and anything that causes no harm should not be illegal. If you don't like that, please point out the error in it.
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Of course it does harm - the reason copyright was invented was to encourage production of art like books, plays, music etc. It costs money and effort to produce, how could removal of the encouragement be without harm?
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the MPAA is full of notorious pirates who say they changed your story just enough to legally use it without paying you. If you do not like it they would like you to meet their kennel of voracious lawyers who will devour your resources.
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Copyright is used to kill fan fiction and other things that are creative works.
Causes no harm? (Score:4, Interesting)
It causes no harm, and anything that causes no harm should not be illegal. If you don't like that, please point out the error in it.
It causes no harm as long as the work has already been created.
It causes great harm if the deal between society and creators, as set out through copyright, is that the creators have to invest whatever is necessary to create a work that will benefit others, but then they have a mechanism to generate revenue in return by controlling distribution for a while. Allowing creators to create as part of this deal, but then failing to effectively enforce the copyright protections, is failing to hold up the other side of the bargain, pure and simple. The harm is then whatever it cost the creators to create and share the work in the first place plus the opportunity cost for them because they didn't invest their resources into something else useful instead.
If society feels that the current bargain is not appropriate for today's world, that's fine, it can change the laws. If society collectively wants to do away with copyright because "information wants to be free" or whatever, fine, do it. Some people will still create new content and no doubt some people will still find ways to do so commercially. But society shouldn't complain if it makes that change and then finds that, lacking the same incentive to create and share new works, hardly anyone is making big summer blockbusters or original AAA quality computer games or well-produced studio albums or high school math textbooks with thousands of carefully constructed exercises and matching answer books for teachers any more. Nor should it complain when other business models that are less reliant on simply paying for something you find valuable -- things like blatant product placement throughout TV shows and movies, or subscription-only on-line software -- become the norm, even though a lot of consumers don't like them.
Re:Causes no harm? (Score:5, Insightful)
Some people will still create new content and no doubt some people will still find ways to do so commercially. But society shouldn't complain if it makes that change and then finds that, lacking the same incentive to create and share new works, hardly anyone is making big summer blockbusters or original AAA quality computer games or well-produced studio albums or....
People were creating art long before there was such a thing as copyright.
The world before copyright gave us Shakespeare and Beethoven. The world now gives us Justin Bieber and Sharknado.
Nuff said.
Re: Causes no harm? (Score:5, Insightful)
So that silly myth that they teach in schools, the one that suggests "society's" in charge... you actually believed that shit?!
I know, right? I have no problem with copyright being issued for a limited time and yet somehow the copyright period gets longer and longer and when was the last time something ended up in the public domain? Someone has unilaterally altered the bargain and we shouldn't need to pray that they don't alter it further.
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Unlike what seems like a large portion of Slashdot, I don't think there's an ethical defense for piracy.
It causes no harm, and anything that causes no harm should not be illegal.
It's not clear that it does cause no harm, though, as a body. Some cases of it cause no harm. Some have even been shown to be beneficial to the copyright holder, as advertising. In some cases, copyright infringement may actually cause harm by decreasing the value of legitimate distribution. What should not happen, however, is the assumption that it causes harm; damages should have to be shown in every case.
Re:Why is enforcement the ISP's responsibility? (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem is with your statement that piracy causes no harm.
So, I buy a movie on DVD, copy it to my hard drive in violation of the license, thus piracy, what harm befalls the distributor? If I take that copy and put it on a USB and walk it over to a friend's house, and give the USB drive to them with the "illegal" movie on it, what harm befalls the distributor?
It seems illogical that piracy would cause an increase in revenue; I think that's highly unlikely.
The facts show that piracy correlates with profit. You may like to ignore reality, but denial doesn't change reality. You are the one asserting that advertising and exposure decreases revenue. Go on, back up your insane claim.
Re:Why is enforcement the ISP's responsibility? (Score:4, Interesting)
So, I buy a movie on DVD, copy it to my hard drive in violation of the license, thus piracy
Assuming you're in the United States, that's not piracy. The Betamax [wikipedia.org] and the Diamond Rio [wikipedia.org] cases set precedents for time and space shifting for personal use, which is what you described.
It is, however, a violation of the DMCA's anti-circumvention rules. By making it illegal to break DRM, they made it illegal to record or copy anything that has even the most rudimentary DRM. If you circumvent the DRM on the DVD in order to copy it to your hard drive, you've violated those portions of the DMCA even though the act of copying is legal.
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piracy causes no harm.
what harm befalls the distributor?
You're arguing with straw men.
The real reason that A/C is so popular is so that a single asshole can lie, provoke, and disappear, to make the same or similar argument elsewhere.
I'm arguing a "strawman" becuase I'm directly addressing the words of the A/C before. Verbatim. And addressing those in a direct and concise manner. That's a strawman to a lying AC who will claim that was some other AC or something, when confronted with their bald-faced lie. "No" harm means none. The law defines piracy, according to *AA desires, and that in
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It causes me harm that you don't send me 10% of your paycheck, because I don't have as much money to spend on stuff that makes me happy.
If you were the GP's agent, and they had only got that job as a result of your work and with a prior agreement to send you 10% of their paycheck as your fee, then you would be well within your rights to receive that money. You took on the work as an agent with no guarantee of getting paid but on the basis that you would receive 10% if things worked out, and in this case things did work out.
In particular, there's no natural right not to have information copied - the content producer's desire for profit doesn't trump the human right to remember information and write it down again.
There's no "natural right" for me not to find your comments offensive and come punch you in the face, but hopefully we
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There's no "natural right" for me not to find your comments offensive and come punch you in the face,
Insofar as natural rights are even a thing, yes there is. There is a right to be free from violence. State-granted exceptions aside, this is literally encoded in every system of law from the very beginning (eye for an eye.)
No-one is disputing that in today's world copying information is fast and cheap. I expect almost everyone would agree that this is a good thing in principle. What often gets conveniently ignored in these discussions is that first there has to be some information worth copying. If creating
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There was as much or more art prior to copyright.
Really? They had mass-produced thousand-page textbooks for teaching many thousands or even millions of children to do math, complete with many thousands of carefully constructed exercises and guides for teachers, did they? They produced works equivalent to a modern movie or a show like Game of Thrones, with budgets running into the equivalent of hundreds of millions of dollars, paying for production teams and casts numbering hundreds if not thousands of people, and then made those works available to million
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Interesting argument. I hadn't considered the impact of scale on the funding of the whole operation. You're right, I think, that that poses new problems.
However, while that would validate some form of copyright, it does in no way validate the current Disney extension. That was, for me at least, the straw that broke the camel's back: ever since it was ratified and a massive hold-up of the public was perpetrated by the MAFIAA, I have not been able to take copyright law serious anymore. While I don't make a ta
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FWIW, I agree that extensions in favour of Disney and the like are an abuse of the principle and those aspects of the law should be changed. However, I also think it's important to remember that while the copyright term extensions are bad, in reality most piracy involves very recent works that would almost certainly still have been covered even under a much shorter and more reasonable term of protection. The whole issue of creeping term length is mostly a distraction in practice, when the terms are already
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I didn't priorly agree to not copy shit.
And I didn't explicitly agree not to punch you in the face, but our society as a whole has decided that that isn't acceptable behaviour, and that's why it's against the law.
Do you realise that your argument here is effectively that you are above the law, that the only laws that apply to you are the ones you agree with?
I'm not sure you understand what "natural rights" are. Go take a first level American History, or Politics, or Ethics class.
What some people call "natural rights" is mostly an illusion, a convenient lie we tell ourselves to try to make us feel better when enforceable law doesn't match our personal expectations or b
Re:Why is enforcement the ISP's responsibility? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why is it the ISP's responsibility to enforce copyright laws?...
It's not. This proposal is the basis for increasing the extortion done by the MPAA, e.g., "pay us $5000 and we won't have your ISP terminate your Internet access".
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It makes it a lot easier for the MPAA surrogates to extort people into paying up, instead of paying for a lawyer to defend oneself against trumped-up charges.
Re:Why is enforcement the ISP's responsibility? (Score:4, Insightful)
...Unlike what seems like a large portion of Slashdot, I don't think there's an ethical defense for piracy....
I also do not think there is an ethical defense for piracy.
.,br> However, there is also no ethical defense for the sloppy tactics used by the MPAA (and RIAA) to identify, accuse, pass judgment and punish. They have been shown time and time again to operate outside the law, accusing, judging and punishing innocent people.
If the MPAA and RIAA want to use the law to catch and punish pirates, then the MPAA and RIAA should work within the law to do so.
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Re:Why is enforcement the ISP's responsibility? (Score:4, Insightful)
Unlike what seems like a large portion of Slashdot, I don't think there's an ethical defense for piracy.
I have pirated one movie. I ad bought a new Blu-Ray player a few years ago, and wanted to watch Avatar on it with some friends.
I couldn't get it to play because it needed a newer version of the player's software. Something with Avatar using a never version of DRM.
The software update program would not work as it ran in SD, not HD and my beamer didn't understand it, or something like that. Something weird with the HDMI.
After two hours of messing with it instead of having a fun evening with my friends, I downloaded the movie. That ran without a problem.
I haven't bought a Blu-Ray since, my player gets used for DVDs and CDs but mostly gathers dust.
I hate this kind of crap. They should make it easier to use the legal version than the illegal version. Preferably no DRM at all. I've only bough songs on iTunes that are DRM free and would prefer if all companies used that model. DRM just makes the experience worse for your paying customers and doesn't really hinder the pirates.
Re:Why is enforcement the ISP's responsibility? (Score:5, Insightful)
There is a deeper question though. Why should someone be sent to digital exile based on the ALLEGATIONS of the MPAA?
They are basically saying (in public) That they believe their word should hold the power of law. Imagine. They want to just point to someone and like that, they're gone from the digital world. No witnesses, no trial, no right to face an accuser, just gone because the King said so.
Someone who would ask for that with a straight face is the last person who should ever have any authority over anyone.
Re:Why is enforcement the ISP's responsibility? (Score:5, Interesting)
Unlike what seems like a large portion of Slashdot, I don't think there's an ethical defense for piracy.
How about piracy being an ethical offence against the industry slowly taking away your rights in the media, your product, your ability to watch something, to buy something, to have something come into public domain, rooting your computer, breaking a disc playback format, attempting to criminalise or prevent format shifting which is legal in most of the world...
The list of the ethical breaches of the movie / music industry just has no end.
I would happily pay for media, but no one seems to sell me what I want except for the pirate bay.
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Unlike what seems like a large portion of Slashdot, I don't think there's an ethical defense for piracy.
Like with all things I think the world is more complex than absolute pronouncements. Copyright was always meant to be a tradeoff. The government grants a limited time monopoly on distibution in exchange for people getting certain rights and the work entering the public domain.
One half of that deal has been renaged on, with DRM and the ever extending copyright terms.
Technically, me using a region free play
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Unlike what seems like a large portion of Slashdot, I don't think there's an ethical defense for piracy.
The issue is that digital rights are an alien concept. Just like I - as a non-physicist - will never truly grasp subatomic physics, large portions of digital rights make ZERO sense to a consumer. That's a huge sign that they're nonsensical.
You can't explain to a non-lawyer that it's unethical or wrong to take the songs from a CD you've bought and put them on your new iPod. The law tells us that's wrong, unethical, and illegal, and we're all bad people for doing it. It's roughly equivalent to a farmer
Why disconnect? (Score:4, Interesting)
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And that is the problem. While they are trying to save their outdated business-model, the only way they can do so has so massive drawbacks for individuals and society as a whole, it can never work. Their business-model is dead, the only question is how much damage they can do before they finally realize that.
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Losing this basic human right of communication is akin to home imprisonment.
So they're lobbying for home imprisonment without due process due to a household member's actions that may-or-may-not have reduced an entertainment provider's profits!
Then what? Do rent-homes & apartments permanently stay disconnected? Or does the restrictions follow anyone with the same name? Either is insane.
MPAA doesn't want ISP to take stronger actions (Score:3, Insightful)
The MPAA doesn't want ISP to take stronger actions, the really don't want ISP's at all. There own fantasy world, without internet, where they transport there product using ships, trains and lorries to brick stores which they can tell to put any competitor on the bottom shelve. That is what the want.
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Indeed.
Hmmm... (Score:2, Interesting)
Between the incredible amounts of money they hoard and the iron fist they exert for control, the MPAA strikes me as far closer to something resembling a pirate than the loner in his basement who downloads a movie on Friday nights. Honestly, I think the MPAA should be forced to prove their victim would have bought the material otherwise, if they didn't have the opportunity to pirate it. That's the say, I don't think it's illegal to pirate a movie that's unavailable legitimately, because then there's no loss
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"Between the incredible amounts of money they hoard and the iron fist they exert for control, the MPAA strikes me as far closer to something resembling a pirate than the loner in his basement who downloads a movie on Friday nights."
Did you pay attention that in this entry, as it happens in others when there's a strongly economical partner (i.e.: articles about global warming) some 80% or more of the comments come from Anonymous Cowards going on with either long-winded cliche opinions or non-related ones wit
Allow DMCA abusers to be shut down too (Score:5, Insightful)
If the law also allows DMCA abusers to be shut down too, I have less of a problem with this law (by which I mean, companies which send out DMCA notices incorrectly). And by shut down, I mean, being unable to send out notices in the future, and disconnected from the internet entirely (including their company website)
It wouldn't surprise me if all members of the MPAA have incorrectly sent out DMCA notices before, for media they had no rights too (a news station for instance shut down a video of a Mars landing uploaded by NASA).
So, if laws were put in place to allow companies to be shut down, if they abuse the DMCA, or make a mistake, I wouldn't have a problem with this, because it would ensure that notices were only sent in cases that they were warranted.
But the way it stands, it just opens the system up to more bullying and abuse.
Dosconnect the MPAA for persistent whining (Score:3)
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Correlation =! causation. A lot of people stopped downloading movies and at the same time they stopped going to the movies, that is true. Hence the conclusion that downloading means people go to the movies more.
The fallacy is that they stopped going to the movies 'cause they stopped downloading. Closer to the truth is simply that they stopped both because the junk produced today ain't even worth the bandwidth, let alone money.
Say no to piracy (Score:5, Insightful)
Piracy is an act of robbery or criminal violence at sea.
We should not tolerate marine thuggery.
Copyright infringement, however, can't be easily equated to piracy or theft.
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy... [gnu.org]
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/... [findlaw.com]
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That's an excellent addition to any file sharing related discussion. People have become so accustomed to the term 'piracy' and 'theft' in this context that they have forgotten where those terms originated from and why. Another lovely term I've come across in Nordic Countries is 'illegal downloading', often used by local MPAA/IFPI organizations. This despite the fact that in these countries downloading is in fact legal whereas unauthorized sharing is illegal (in most cases, except to your friends and family)
Re:Say no to piracy (Score:5, Funny)
But ... the lack of pirates is one of the leading causes of global warming! Why do you hate the planet?
Re:Say no to dolts (Score:2)
You dolt. Piracy has referred to copyright infringement for hundreds of years. The GNU philosophy statement is disingenuous in that sense, and cannot support a factual argument. Semantic, sure, but not factual.
The case you linked to has a footnote clarifying what a pirated work is, and how that differs from bootlegs.
Take your links, add a dictionary, and your support actually does not support you.
Perhaps the MPAA is willing to compensate the ISPs (Score:4, Interesting)
MPAA - Your action will lead to another company losing revenue.
Using your maths, each customer lost thanks to your rule is a multiple of the actual loss.
So, again using your rules, how about you compensate the ISP for each customer you terminate to the tune of $250,000?
I mean that is the number you use right? And it is all about lost revenue so I am sure you can appreciate the revenue the ISP has lost and want to compensate them just as you expect to be compensated for your "losses".
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That's about right. That's pretty much what the average customer could have paid for his internet access to the ISP in the next 70 or so years.
That's actually a pretty conservative estimate, considering that it's 70 years from now, not, like with copyright, lifetime + 70 years.
So, lemme get that straight, what was that? (Score:5, Insightful)
You want me to disconnect my customer, who will then burden and pester me and my support about it, I will lose that customer and potentially others, if word gets around that I randomly disconnect my customers based on nothing more but hearsay from you and your whims? You want me to risk my common carrier status and insanely bad press and PR? Without any kind of compensation whatsoever?
You find the door yourself or should I just toss you out the window?
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If that was true then they wouldn't need to try to strong arm ISPs into doing this, because the court judgment could just include this.
Headline correction (Score:5, Insightful)
Better ID rates (Score:3)
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There also needs to be significant penalties if the MPAA mis-identifies someone as a pirate. I'm thinking a proper penalty for mis-identifying a pirate would be that the MPAA's Internet access be terminated.
Use the tools you have (Score:4, Interesting)
The MPAA isn't the judicial branch, they don't get to be a judge and jury in these cases, they are the plaintiff. Nor are they the legislative branch, if they want to write a law, they need to buy off their congressman like they always have before. And the ISP isn't a police force, they are a witness and vendor to the defendant. If the MPAA wants to enforce penalties like this, use the legal system that already exists rather than acting like the mafia and enforcing their own laws with their own judge and their own police force.
Regardless, I don't see what reason the ISPs would have to work with the MPAA, it's against their financial best interest to eliminate consumers. And it's against the better interest of society to have laws that permanently cut off individuals from the internet, this has become a basic necessity in modern life, not unlike electricity made its transition to necessity in the last century. Anyone that cannot legally use the internet would be much more likely to be unemployed, possibly homeless and a burden on the local society.
If an ISP chooses to enforce these policies, they should immediately lose any local monopoly on providing internet service, open up the area to competition, possibly municipal internet. And ISPs should become liable for denial of service for any reason that is not legally recognized and where an individual was never convicted of a crime. It would be nice if the government found a few laws that the MPAA violated just for attempting to get a policy like this through, discrimination against individuals, anti-trust, extortion, etc.
A Little Due Process First (Score:3)
they haven't thought this through (Score:2)
they are going to object to their own bypass of due process when they suddenly find themselves booted off the internet.
As soon as they pay for it. (Score:2)
Maybe. But probably not.
Does it really matter? (Score:3, Interesting)
Pirates use the internet because it's currently the easiest way to do things.
But if it was impossible to spread "unapproved" media through the internet, people would just go back to sneaker-net.
I can buy 32 gig on portable media for under 10 bucks.
Swapping drives with just two people 5 days a week is yields a respectable 4.2 Mbps "sneaker-net a bandwidth".
You might have to wait a month for content to saturate the network, but everybody would have access to everything.
And that's close to the minimum a sneaker-net would be.
Most people have more than 2 friends they could swap with, and 128 gig drives are pretty cheap.
Things are going great, and it's only getting better - Moore's law FTW.
So pirates just need a VPN? $30 a year? (Score:2)
My understanding is: VPNs are not that expensive. I think some are actually free.
So what is the problem?
But that's not all.... (Score:3)
"MPAA Wants ISPs to Disconnect Persistent Pirates"....and they went on to say, "and we want a pony! And a 60-ft red yacht with gold handrails! And we want the letter "E" removed from the dictionary!"
Let's start with a better proposal (Score:2)
Let's first ban all forms of DRM so that I can easily just watch my BluRay disks or copy them to harddisk without having to go through dubious providers.
Once DRM is gone and piracy therefore has dropped considerably as you can simply pay for DRM-free copies on the Internet, we can talk about hunting "pirates".
The MPAA has to understand that their 1970s business models of "renting cartivision tapes" just can't coexist with a computerized digital world where making copies is trivial.
Well, the MPAA Does Write Our Laws (Score:2)
Until campaign donations are are control, what do you expect?
Slashdot refuses to Stop... (Score:2)
Posting Persistent Stories. [slashdot.org]
I agree all MPAA members shout not have Internet! (Score:2)
This includes any company filing a DMCA take down notice, that turns out to be false.
Re: (Score:2)
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I don't get posts like this.
So someone is prosecuting people doing crime A while the poster is doing crime B. Crime A is well known and published and everyone knows how to do it, crime B is occult and only a few people who are "in it" know how to do it.
Why the FUCK would I want to draw attention away from crime A if I did crime B?
If they want copyright respected (Score:4, Insightful)
then they need to respect copyright (and most especially the responsibilities) themselves.
When they steal works from the public (by extending copyright), they disrespect copyright. When they destroy works before it gets to public domain, they disrespect copyright. When they make claims asserting copy right but are lying about it, they disrespect copyright. When they make claims of a work for hire (so the performers don't get residuals) but claim a creative work (which isn't a work for hire) so they can get the copy rights that works for hire do not accrue, they disrespect copyrights.
When they have spend 50-80 years breaking their end of the copy right bargain, why the hell should I or anyone else still obey the restrictions on us?
Re:if you don't want to be disconnected... (Score:4, Interesting)
If you don't want people to torrent your stuff, STOP PRODUCING it, assholes!
See? I can be unreasonable, too.
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Al Capone went to jail for less than that...