Court Rejects Massive Torrent Damages Claim, Admin Avoids Jail (torrentfreak.com) 60
A former torrent site operator has largely avoided the goals of an aggressive movie industry prosecution in Sweden. Against a backdrop of demands for years in prison and millions in damages, the 25-year-old owner of private tracker SwePiracy was handed 100 hours community service and told to pay $194,000, TorrentFreak reported Tuesday. The torrent website in question is SwePiracy, and it has existed since 2006. Naturally, it became the target of many anti-piracy outfits. In 2012, the website was shut down in a coordinated effort with anti-piracy group Antipiratbyran. The report adds: Earlier this year its now 25-year-old operator appeared in court to answer charges relating to the unlawful distribution of a sample 27 movies between March 2011 and February 2012. The prosecution demanded several years in prison and nearly $3 million (25k kronor) in damages. During the trial last month, SwePiracy defense lawyer Per E. Samuelsson, who also represents Julian Assange and previously took part in The Pirate Bay trial, said the claims against his client were the most unreasonable he'd seen in his 35 years as a lawyer. After deliberating for three weeks, the Norrkoping District Court handed down its decision today. SwePiracy's former operator was found guilty of copyright infringement but it appears the prosecution's demands for extremely harsh punishment were largely dismissed. The torrent site operator avoided a lengthy jail sentence and was sentenced to probation and 100 hours community service instead.
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Yes, it is. That is why people are going to jail. Wrong is a subjective term, and he who has the gold makes the rules.
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<ObPedantic>The word you're looking for is "illegal". Hyperlinking is illegal. Gold buys laws, which makes things illegal.
That has nothing whatsoever to do with right or wrong.
Being black in the front of a city bus in Selma, Alabama, in 1955 was illegal, but it was not wrong.
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Comparing racist laws with knowingly and willingly providing a service to make copyright infringement? Ludicrous.
The reason it is considered illegal is the same reason knowingly and willingly providing a service for any illegal activity is considered illegal, nothing strange about it. If I'd set up a bar with the intention to profit indirectly from drug dealing and prostitution it would still be illegal even though I didn't directly earn money from those activities. The same applies to this situation.
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Of course it is insane and of course copyright laws should be revised (IMHO - it isn't the opinion of everyone). However claiming indirectly making money on illegal things aren't illegal in themselves is wrong, going further and comparing willingly doing a thing that have repeatedly been judged as aiding an illegal activity (making the person doing it an accessory) with protesting racist laws is again ludicrous.
Also observe that he didn't get a $3M fine, I think the current judgement is still too harsh how
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The reason it is considered illegal is the same reason knowingly and willingly providing a service for any illegal activity is considered illegal
I would argue that a link provides information, not a service.
The classified ads provide information, not illegal services.
The anarchist cookbook provides information, much of which serves only illegal purposes, but we protect that speech (at least where I'm from).
I do support going after those that are distributing the copyrighted content. However, if that content never even touches the defendants servers, I don't believe he should be held liable for those other peoples actions. In the same vein, I don't b
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If the anarchist cookbook provided a link that a user could click to make an illegal substance (it would have to be illegal for the comparison to work at all) then yes, it is comparable. But that isn't the case.
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Yeah I don't see how he was infringing copyright by running the site no matter what it was called.
Helping possibly but doing it? Not unless he actually shared the videos.
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he is more like the getaway car manufacturer or the contractor that made the road.
or in a more us example the gun manufacturer. lets see when was the last time any of them were held accountable!!
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You're giving him too much credit. If he made the car or gun, it would be like him making and distributing and profiting from the bittorrent client software.
He is more like a magazine ad for the gun show where someone bought a gun that was used in a crime.
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that is an interesting pov. what happens if you take out a print ad with site addresses?
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I suspect that would be similar to the decss tshirts, or the decss haiku, or the dramatic readings or songs: http://decss.zoy.org/ [zoy.org]
The copyleft.net decss tshirts did get sued, but I don't know what the outcome was. I though it come out in their favor, but that site is long gone now.
Re: Still wrong (Score:1)
He's more the whiteboard manufacturer, who's whiteboard was used by person-2 who wrote down where to find person-3 who is giving away one part of a gun that person-4 used in a fully built gun that was used during a crime.
Naturally he deserves prison time, not unlike you deserve prison time for typing his name into your posting and thus referencing him and all the people in the above chain of events ending with a crime four steps disconnected
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You don't get how corruption works over historical time, basically big media in most western states successfully conquered public domain and their big idea is to take away our right to own anything. Corporations of the world use United states as a testbed to policies they want to impose on the world, given the stupidity and gullibility of the american public.
$3 million (25k kronor) (Score:4, Informative)
That should be 25M Kronor - 25 MILLION.
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Glad we still have some sense (Score:1)
Corporation rips off millions of people = $100K fine, don't do it again.
One guy in a basement copies a movie = $100,000,000,000 KERBILLION SQUILLION fine, whole family goes to Guantanamo.
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Nor that he's right. Should we agree that it is a worthless statement?
I might be a bit thick (Score:5, Insightful)
Except for the obvious. (Powerful Hollywood got the laws they paid for).
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Because it serves the public good.
Or it is supposed to like Patents. And trademarks.
Writing a Book or a song is time consuming but cheap to copy. To encourage these activities the copy-Right was created.
Copying Movies is cheap too. Making them is expensive. The same thing.
Hosting them Blaitant violation, you will be prosecuted. Storing links to then is an attempt to find a loophole in the law.
Remember like all parasites the more they are successful the sicker the host. So can't get rid of all the torr
Re:I might be a bit thick (Score:5, Informative)
Patent and trademark infringement are not criminal offenses either; they're civil cases.
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was about to say the same, hence no one from google, samsung or apple in jail
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The public has no interest in copyright because with a life plus next generation copyright, nobody who is currently living has any incentive whatsoever to participate. Copyrights should last 14 years, and given companies and individuals are producing derivative works, you can grant an extension every time the new work is published by the original author, AND registered with the library of congress. None of this exclusivity or transfer-ability of copyright nonsense either, no more Marking things and making
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Can anyone explain why copyright infringement is a criminal offense? Except for the obvious. (Powerful Hollywood got the laws they paid for).
Redress or punishment or a little of both. If my kid accidentally dents your car playing, I'm liable for damages but not guilty of a crime. If I steal your car and wreck it I'm liable for the damage and guilty of the theft. If I drive drunk and get pulled over I'm guilty of a DUI but not liable since there was no damage or victims. Most things you do on purpose are both, if I smashed your car with a baseball bat it's obviously no longer an accident. Civil law is mainly intended for disputes and disagreement
And billing fraud is not (Score:5, Interesting)
Can anyone explain why copyright infringement is a criminal offense?
For contrast, note that Comcast was fined $2.3 million [slashdot.org] for ripping off customers with fraudulent charges.
Comcast's statement on the fines reads:
[Comcast's statement] "...also alleged that the FCC "found no problematic policy or intentional wrongdoing, but just isolated errors or customer confusion." When pressed about that phrasing, Comcast representatives clarified that "there was no finding or admission of liability in this Consent Decree."
(Emphasis mine.)
As someone pointed out, Comcast recovers $2.3 million in revenue in about 15 minutes.
Our government is completely against the people, and for the companies. This has to stop, whether by election or armed revolt is, at the point, immaterial.
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Traditionally the power of authors are weak and the power of printers/distributors etc. are strong. Even after copyright as a concept was accepted into law printers still tended to take writings from misc. authors and print it without authorization and without compensation. That may have something to do with it...
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"Can anyone explain why copyright infringement is a criminal offense?"
Because capitalism has successfully overcome rule of law, and has for a long time but most people are uninformed and unaware that capitalism is now free from the rule of law completely and reshaping the laws of countries to suit corporate power.
AKA corporations are attacking your right to own anything and undermining your civil rights as histroically been the case with the business community, most people are too distracted, indoctrinated
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In most places it's only a crime if it's done on a "commercial" scale. They apply that definition to torrent sites because they usually need advertising to pay for server costs, and occasionally make their owners some money.
A case in the UK fell apart because the guy was only taking donations and never spend any of the money on himself. Unfortunately the police wiped the server before they gave it back to him.
How the fuck? (Score:2)
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It's actually worse than that: "damages was dramatically reduced from millions to ‘just’ $148,000, payable to movie outfit Nordisk Film. On top, the state confiscated $45,600 said to have been generated by SwePiracy."
So nope, the guy is very broke I imagine.
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popular file-sharing sites make tens of millions of dollars a year in advertising revenue. he can probably pay with cash :p
Do you want to buy a bridge?
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You don't. But it's a lot easier to pay off than a $3m fine that was asked for.
SWEDISH court rejects massive torrent damages ... (Score:2)
Important detail.
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So he owned it since he was 15? (Score:2)
The owner is 25 years old and it has been operating since 2006?
I was mowing yards and doing odd jobs saving up for a car when I was 15.