Federal Jury Convicts Five in Major Illegal Streaming Case (variety.com) 70
A federal jury in Las Vegas has convicted five men for operating Jetflicks, one of the largest illegal streaming services in the U.S., the Justice Department announced Thursday. The service, which charged $9.99 monthly, allegedly hosted over 183,200 TV episodes, surpassing legitimate streaming platforms. Prosecutors said the operation caused "substantial harm" to copyright owners. The defendants face up to 48 years in prison for conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement and related charges. Sentencing dates are pending.
How do they expect to get away with this? (Score:5, Interesting)
I just don't understand how these services expect to get away with these operations. It's almost impossible to hide your identity online these days. Money has to flow, and when money flows you'll be found.
Most criminals don't think (Score:5, Interesting)
They assume that they won't be caught, and do little to prevent that outcome. The fact that the police catch any criminals is mostly due to this; if it wasn't far less crime would be solved. In this case they probably started in a small way and it got very popular and they failed to do the obvious thing which would have been to move their operations off shore.
Sadly the fact that most criminals don't think reflects our wider population: most people don't think. I remain committed to democracy - but only because there is no better alternative; I think it was Churchill who said that no politician's belief in democracy survives their first encounter with actual voters. The most pessimistic conclusion to draw from the present political mess is that the experiment with democracy is coming to an end - because its flaws are becoming intolerable. I wish I could reject that idea.
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> its flaws are becoming intolerable
I don't think the flaws are changing, it's the toleration that's changing. The way you hear people talk, 10% inflation is comparable to the end of the world, that a literal revolution involving people shooting each other is preferable to 10% inflation.
The last people to have a real visceral understanding on how bad the alternatives to democracy are would be the Greatest Generation. They're basically no longer around to impart that wisdom.
It's a great thing that Amer
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I'm confused. What does this have to do with copyright infringement?
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Modern startups. Skirt the law, then hope to become so profitable that lawmakers won't dare shut you down, then complain bitterly when they do.
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Pretty ballsy (Score:2)
To live in the US borders and operate a site like this. At first sure but once you start to see serious money you have to know you're running the risk of serious scrutiny so time to get out of US jurisdiction. Staying here is just making it much much easier for the investigators.
I'm not a criminal, there's probably more to it but this seems like pretty entry level crime stuff. [youtube.com]
"Substantial harm"? (Score:4, Interesting)
The jury convicted them of the crime. That part should be pretty obvious. But damages? Given the description — that they amassed far more content than all the other major streaming services combined, IMO, the first question the judge should ask is how many times users downloaded content A. that was available on another service and B. without also being subscribed to that other service. For every download that doesn't meet those criteria, the judge should award nothing more than statutory damages and six months' probation. The remainder of the penalty should depend on how much traffic was genuinely costing someone money, as opposed to merely demonstrating how much money they're leaving on the table by not making content available.
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You forgot C. They would have paid for it if it had not been available on this service.
Paid for it how? Movies, maybe, but most TV shows that aren't on streaming services are borderline unobtainium.
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the judge should award nothing more than statutory damages and six months' probation
Statutory damages, deliberate infringement in order to profit... Okay, but that's Up to $150,000 per work, and a bare minimum of $10,000 per copyrighted work.
Each individual Television episode contains 2 to 3 copyrighted works which would each of them All have been infringed.
At a bare minimum the Video portions, Audio portions, and incorporated Music sound recordings + Musical Compositions are several copyrighted works per
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Statutory damages, deliberate infringement in order to profit... Okay, but that's Up to $150,000 per work, and a bare minimum of $10,000 per copyrighted work.
The minimum is $750 per work, actually, unless I'm missing something.
Each individual Television episode contains 2 to 3 copyrighted works which would each of them All have been infringed. At a bare minimum the Video portions, Audio portions, and incorporated Music sound recordings + Musical Compositions are several copyrighted works per Episode.
Ostensibly hundreds in many cases. Of course, they aren't taking those elements out of their original context, so the judge likely has the leeway to treat it as violating the copyright on the collection and not consider the individual fragments. Either way, the bigger question is whether they can prove that the copyright was actually infringed. Advertising that something is available for distribution != distributing. And that's where t
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The minimum is $750 per work, actually, unless I'm missing something.
What you're missing is the reckless or deliberate nature of the infringement.
The minimum is $750 If the plaintiff can't show the infringement was Willful or reckless, Or $200 for infringement the defendant Could prove was innocent.
For this case they will most certainly be able to show circumstances to make the presumption that the Infringement's a deliberate Tort -- that makes the case extraordinary entitling the plaintiff to 3 to 5 time
Re:"Substantial harm"? (Score:5, Insightful)
They hurt rich and powerful corporations. The government will do anything to protect them. Oh you made terrible businesses decisions and lost money? Oh it's ok how much do you need and when?
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That's unnecessarily reductivist and borderline conspiracy theory. The truth is that what they did WAS/IS against the law and the businesses invested enough in their legal teams to show harm. We ALL know that we're not allowed to distribute protected intellectual property without authorization. They did so, got caught, and didn't provide a strong enough argument in their favor in court.
Sometimes it's not a conspiracy. Sometimes it's just "they got caught doing something they knew damn well was illegal".
Off with their heads! (Score:2)
It's *our* coerced and pilfered IP, not yours!
48 years is crazy (Score:5, Insightful)
That is basically a life sentence for a financial crime where the actual loses are very hard to calculate. So our system just applies a default max sentence based on Hollywood Accounting. This is wrong. The punishment needs to fit the crime.
Jail should be for people that are a danger to others, that will physically harm others. Harming the bottom line of a few big businesses is a crime that does not require a life in prison, restitution sure, rehabilitation sure, incarceration for long periods does not solve any issue here.
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So our system just applies a default max sentence based on Hollywood Accounting. This is wrong. The punishment needs to fit the crime.
That's not how the Federal Sentencing Guidelines work. Yes, the 'max' sentence feels harsh, but the guidelines calculate it based on the number of assets stolen and their value. Unless they already have significant criminal records (unknown) and/or violence was involved in the underlying crimes (seems unlikely) they will serve a lot less time than the clickbait headline wants you to believe.
Re:48 years is crazy (Score:4, Insightful)
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Drug laws, especially those related to crack cocaine, beg to differ.
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Don't forget to toss in some three-strikes laws where you could face life for petty shoplifting.
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Jordan Belfort served 22 months for massive fraud https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] But he was rich and went to rich person jail where your cellmate is a celebrity like Tommy Chong. I'm not sure of the financial standings of these piracy folks.
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Compare the information in these two links:
https://www.justice.gov/archiv... [justice.gov]
https://www.ussc.gov/sites/def... [ussc.gov]
Sorry, raping someone is much more harsh than making copies of your show and selling it. Rapists belong in prison, infringement requires restitution and rehabilitation. Infringer guy is better off working, and paying back his debt than sitting in prison.
I don't have all of the answers but continually locking more people up for longer is not the answer to society's problems. When we take away everythi
Re:48 years is crazy (Score:4, Informative)
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Do you have an example where there was a high profile infringement case like this one, with the sale of copyrighted material and not just giving it away, where something less than the statutory maximum was used in infringement calculations?
Re: 48 years is crazy (Score:2)
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Ok, sure, show me an example, specifically an example around copyright infringement with sales involved. You can't because there are not any. In other kinds of criminal cases you are right, in copyright infringement your are not.
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Also, as a reminder, 43 years of that 48 year max is due to money laundering charges, not copyright infringement charges.
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Lord I hate these takes. We should only punish "dangerous" people is the equivalent of saying we should only punish poor people. If you mug someone you should get jail time but if you commit fraud and steal millions from people, no jail time? Saying they should just pay restitution is saying that the rich who can afford to pay big fines should be allowed to commit crimes. Sorry, but white collar crimes are often much worse than other crimes and deserve to be punished as such.
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Incarceration is not the only form of "punishment". How would incarceration help current and future victims in this case? Restitution and rehabilitation are appropriate.
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So how do you do rehabilitation without incarceration? And restitution only applies if the person has the money to pay it. So once again, the rich are fine with this as they don't have to work so they can easily do whatever rehab you want to apply and they have the money so restitution is not a big deal to them. So they can basically pay their way out of crime. Now if you are poor, you have a job (or multiple) so good luck finding time to do the rehab. And of course you are poor, so you can't pay the restit
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Provide a list of people that were "rich" already and then decided that Copyright Infringement was the best path for them.
48 years? (Score:5, Insightful)
They really should have taken classified documents home instead.
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were those documents copyrighted?
hmmm, perhaps a better deterrent would be to copyright documents rather then classify them.
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Documents produced by the federal government cannot be copyrighted. The government can purchase copyrighted material created by others, but in general classified material isn't protected by copyright. Some of it could be, but for the most part classified things are protected to a much higher degree than copyright provides. Serious criminal penalties apply to distributing classified material. Despite the fact that a number of high profile people have essentially gotten away with mishandling classified da
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You need to have appointed a few judges beholden to you before you do that, and before you decide to cover it up. The real crime there was not taking the documents home, but in deliberately covering it up.
Buttery Males! Except she returned the docs when asked. Just a Harmless Old Man! Except he returned the docs when asked. Orange Man! He lied, claimed they were not classified, claimed they were his, claimed he had immunity, claimed he declassified them in his mind, bragged about having them, moved th
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They really should have taken classified documents home instead.
Or stored them on their bathroom server.
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Imagine if one could legally access TV shows! (Score:5, Insightful)
The fact that a handful of people were able to create a streaming site and make millions of dollars reminds us that just like the early 2000s, piracy is once again the best way for people to get content. And that creating a streaming site isn't that hard, so this isn't a technology barrier any longer.
Yes, these guys were criminals. But the demand for a black-market was created by the movie and TV IP holders. They make it impossible to license the content or access it by signing exclusive multi-year distribution deals that block people from being able to access it. Even if they wanted to, Jetflix could not have paid the copyright holders for the content. It's silly that there is literally no way to license it unless you are a billion dollar company with existing ties to the industry. This is why piracy exists.
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They make it impossible to license the content or access it by signing exclusive multi-year distribution deals that block people from being able to access it.
This is the part that should be regulated and deemed illegal. If it's under the protection of IP law then it must be made available in some form, whether that is through yourself or a reasonable license fee.
If you want to lock something away then it's on you to control the access to it. If it get's in the wild then it's de-facto public domain.
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This is why piracy exists.
No it's not. Piracy exists because some people want to make money from other people's work. Most (not all) of this content was available elsewhere.. The consumers simply wanted as much as possible for as little money as possible.
There's always one twat trying to justify it...
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Most (not all) of this content was available elsewhere.
I can't confirm or deny that from the article, but people don't pay pirates for content they can legitimately get elsewhere. Black markets don't make money selling socks, shoes, and bubble gum. They sell things you can't get elsewhere.
According to the article:
At one point, Jetflicks claimed to host more than 183,200 TV episodes — a lineup larger than the combined catalogs of Netflix, Hulu, Vudu and Amazon Prime Video, according to prosecutors.
So "larger than" means that a significant amount of this was not available. And "combined" means that much of what was available would have required subscribing to 4 different services. That's a big part of the problem. You want to watch this one
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I can't confirm or deny that from the article, but people don't pay pirates for content they can legitimately get elsewhere. Black markets don't make money selling socks, shoes, and bubble gum. They sell things you can't get elsewhere.
C'mon, man.. That's bullshit and you know it.. They were selling hundreds (thousands?) of dollars of content for $20/month.
My state has legal and heavily taxed marijuana.. The tax rate is 25%.... The black market for weed is still alive.. Because the same amount will cost you 25% less...
Don't tell me people won't resort to a black market for shit they can buy legally...
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https://theoatmeal.com/comics/game_of_thrones [theoatmeal.com]
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At one point, Jetflicks claimed to host more than 183,200 TV episodes — a lineup larger than the combined catalogs of Netflix, Hulu, Vudu and Amazon Prime Video, according to prosecutors.
So "larger than" means that a significant amount of this was not available.
No, it does not mean a significant portion was not available. It means a significant portion was not available on those FOUR platforms.. There are far more subscription services than those four.
And "combined" means that much of what was available would have required subscribing to 4 different services. That's a big part of the problem. You want to watch this one episode of this one show? Sure, it's probably available... just sign-up for a 12-month subscription at $40/month.
Exactly.. It was available for $$$. You're contradicting yourself. Just say it: "I want to pay one low subscription for everything". At least be fucking honest about the motivation.
Remember cable TV? You wanted HBO you had to pay for it.. You want Disney? you had to pay for it. You want CINEMAX? You had to pay
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There are far more subscription services than those four.
First, let us accept your premise that everything on Jetflix is available on other subscription services. That means one must subscribe to dozens of platforms to get the content. That ultimately leads to piracy, not merely because of price, but also because of convenience.
But sadly, that premise isn't true:
Remember cable TV? You wanted HBO you had to pay for it.. You want Disney? you had to pay for it. You want CINEMAX? You had to pay for it..
First: Subscribers paid for those via one cable subscription plan, dealing with one company, with no login required. All that in a world that existed before streaming services.
Second: Remember when Net
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This is why piracy exists.
Piracy exists because people believe they are entitled to someone's elses work without having to pay the person who created that work.
It's that simple. Entitlement.
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I remember years ago getting ready to confront a guy who was the penultimate pirate. We all know the type - has ever song, movie, whatever that you've ever heard of, on an array of hard drives somewhere. A server with a VPN running bittorrent. The pride themselves on how many gigs they seed a month. As someone who profits from selling software, I was kinda pissed-off at him. But a respectable friend stopped me and gave me pause. This uber pirate also bought more music and movies in a week than I bough
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He pirated the stuff *THAT THEY WOULD NOT SELL HIM*. This included: anime, manga, region-locked foreign films, old movies, unplugged recordings of band practice, or original cuts of movies that were "digitally remastered."
Right. He felt he was entitled to that work. Gotcha.
They thrive when people can't buy the goods and services from legitimate vendors.
Because they feel entitled to have something. You can make every excuse you want, but in the end, it's about entitlement. If someone doesn't want to sell
Re:Imagine if one could legally access TV shows! (Score:4, Interesting)
They thrive when people can't buy the goods and services from legitimate vendors.
Because they feel entitled to have something.
Because copyright law is flawed. The purpose of copyright was to give individuals the ability to maintain the sole right to profit from their work. But if they are choosing to not profit from it at all, then the whole point of having copyrights breaks down. It's not an inherent right. It's a right that governments have chosen to give people for a very specific purpose — to promote the creation and distribution of new works to enhance the culture of the world. When works are not being made available, copyright law ceases to serve that purpose, and becomes something else entirely.
I've always been of the opinion that copyright should be like trademarks once a work is initially published. If you don't continue to use the work in commerce, after a period of time, the copyright should go away, and the work should become part of the public domain.
And one could reasonably argue, IMO, that if the work is not available, then absent reasonable evidence that it will become available again, fair use should lean in favor of allowing copies to be made, because clearly doing so cannot have any financial impact on the value of the work, which should be presumed to be zero.
Mind you, the commercial nature of their distribution model would not favor a fair use finding, but at least in principle, it could be argued in some other circumstances.
That doesn't give you the right to take their product because you believe you're entitled to have it.
If they're not making it available, is it really a product? And if they would not have earned any income from it, and did not lose it, can you really argue that someone took it?
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"Entitlement" didn't create the region coding system.
Disagree. Corporate entitlement is a kind of entitlement. ;-)
Ticked off the wrong people... (Score:2)
Should have just murdered someone. Sentence would be lower.
How does the potential sentence make any sense? (Score:2)
How do you propose to jail Boeing? (Score:2)
Of course you're trying to tie the deaths to specific executives, but I doubt that will be possible. Worth trying, of course, but I doubt it's going to work. And if you do, then in the future executives will work harder to avoid direct responsibility. Or they'll do a VW - and ensure that the executives are beyond the reach of US law, as has happened with the exhaust results scandal
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Beware retrospective crimes (Score:2)
It is often possible with 20/20 hindsight to identify that a mistake was made. The mere fact that it has horrendous consequences doesn't, in and of itself, mean that it was criminal. It is always possible to choose the safer route and - at some point - that becomes an absurd choice; allowing cars to drive faster than 5mph ensures that people will die as a result of traffic accidents, whilst anti-jaywalking legislation is a sledgehammer to crush a nut. At some point therefore a 'bad' decision is, at worst, a
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Have you ever been responsible for hard decisions? (Score:2)
If you make getting difficult decision wrong a criminal matter, then the low risk but wrong decision will be made even more often. Do you think the result would be healthy?
The founding fathers ... (Score:2)
... thought that 7 years renewable to 14 years was enough for copyright. I agree.
There's no good reason that every TV show made before 2010 should be free to use any way we want.