The Pirate Bay case

[rsts]

Really?

Guess the news is wrong then.

"Australia welcomes American DMCA

3 August 2004 15:23 by Petteri "dRD" Pyyny | 5 comments
As part of the free-trade agreement (that was signed today) between the United States
and Australia, Australian government and the leading opposition party of the country have both accepted the fact that Australia now has to implement all the key proportions of the American DMCA legislation into its own national legislation.

This means that after Australia implements the required changes, selling, developing or distributing of tools that allow copy protection circumvention will become illegal. Open source DVD players for Linux? Illegal. DVD backup tools that circumvent CSS copy protection found on virtually all DVD movies? Illegal. Copying tracks to your iPod from a copy-protected CD that you legally own? Illegal.

The agreement also requires Australia to allow software patents -- patenting code has been so far impossible in Australia -- and requires Australia to extend the time that copyrights are valid."

cheers

[PB]

> has to implement

The magic phrase.

[pdwyer]

From what I understand, all DVD players in AU are multi region now since the courts passed their ruling on the region zone issue. I haven't been back to see if that's really true though. I assume it would apply to BD regions too?

That is a court ruling I can easily agree with

Here in Sony's back yard the regions are a pain in the butt

[blueznl]

Let's split this up, because it's not a simple subject.

1. Copying in general. I think it should be perfectly legal to make OR OBTAIN a copy for anything you already own or own a license for. After all, you already paid for it, so it's yours. If the medium gets damaged you should be able to get a backup. If the big disti's want to block that copying as well, no problem, as long as they provide free or cost based backups. (Well, that would be something novel, change your scratched 50 bucks CD for a new one? Fat chance...)

2. Revenue lost. 1 download = 1 sell? Absolutely not! That's the biggest bull in the world. I'm pretty sure there will be some revenue lost, but it's silly to claim that every download is a sale less. In fact, I'd even like to suggest that in some cases the download is actually improving sales of certain products.

3. Creative pricing, ie. margins and strange pricing / region models. Get serious, splitting up the world in regions is just to increase the margin and revenue, and there's nothing against that. But why would I not be allowed to play something on my home DVD player that I bought somewhere else? Get serious, people, I bought it, I paid the price! Then think about the decades of inflated CD prices, for example here in the Netherlands, where we Dutch had to pay about twice as much for a popular CD than in the US. Claims as 'a more expensive distribution channel' make not that much sense... And silly me, though the volume of sold CD's has stayed the same or even went down, how in heaven's name is it posible that prices wend DOWN? So, in my book that means they were too high in the past...

4. Suicidal pricing. Sorry, developers, but why does a game have to cost 40 50 60 bucks? Two to six months down the line the same game goes for 20 bucks. I wonder how many more people would by the original product if the price was a little more decent. (I can tell you I buy quite a few movies etc. from the discount stands, and why not?)

5. Legal aspects. This is my primary reason why I disagree with the ruling. Is INDEXING ANYTHING illegal? Is linking anything illegal? What's the next step? No more links to http://google.com because that's infringing Google's trademark? No more printing of links in a magazine, because, hey, we could get sued? It's an INDEXING service, not a download deposit. The actual providers of that material are guilty (in most countries) and the same goes for the downloaders (in many countries) but how can that index itself be illegal? Next step is the banning of newspapers because they write about a bank robbery, now bank robberies are illegal, and showing an image of that bank is a link, thus it would tempt people to rob that bank, thus illegal as well...

I think we all went way overboard. I download quite a bit (which is by the way legal in NL as long as the original wasn't copy protected, so a recording of a television show is a fair target for us dutchies, at least until now, but a rip of a DVD isn't) but that hasn't stopped me or even slowed down purchasing material. I wouldn't have bought more if I would not download, in fact I'd have watched less selective by hopping channels on the television instead of watching more selectively the things I like. My watching pattern would have changed but not my spending pattern.

[pdwyer]

well, you can still search for torrents in google so I guess they should be sent to gaol to!

Cell phones are a common tool for drug dealers to use so cell carriers are all in trouble :roll:

File shareing index sites do actually index a lot of non pirated stuff too.

If google stops liking torrent sites I'll be a bit more concerned

[the.weavster]

This should cut both ways you know. Under English law goods have to be of "Merchantable quality" and "fit for the purposes for which they are intended"

As you go to the Cinema, or rent a video, or buy an album to be entertained you should be entitled to a full and immediate refund if you weren't as it clearly wasn't fit for purpose.

In my experience of watching movies (particularly American ones which are invariably 5h1t3) I often feel like I've wasted hours of my life and a refund is really the minimum I should be awarded.

And how many times have you heard a couple of tracks by an artist that you liked and purchased their album only to find everything else on it is complete pants.

And as for games for a DS, one or two masterpieces and a plethora of absolute cr4p.

Even if you believe the Pirate Bay are guilty of something the disproportionate punishment dished out shows that Western 'justice' is dictated by corporate money. We had a similar thing in England where a woman was fined £16,000 for illegally sharing a game on the internet. If she'd got p155ed and maimed someone with her car she wouldn't have got that.

[utopiomania]

Everyone in their right mind knows that downloading commercial films and music from the net i stealing. The pirate bay
case will certainly make people trying to set up a similar service think twice, and IPRED laws will make you think twice
too.

[the.weavster]

Everyone in their right mind knows that downloading commercial films and music from the net i stealing.

Ahh, I see... anybody who has a different opinion to you isn't in their right mind. You have been blessed with the power to make the definitive judgement.

If somebody could right-click on my car and save an identical copy of it I wouldn't feel dispossessed in any way.

"When I woke up this morning everything I own had been stolen and replaced with exact replicas"
- Steve Wright

[PB]

> If somebody could right-click on my car and save an identical copy of it
> I wouldn't feel dispossessed in any way

But you'd feel angry if you were supposed to get $100 from everyone who
right-clicked and copied your car, and they weren't paying you even though
they were right-clicking. That's the point.

[the.weavster]

But you'd feel angry if you were supposed to get $100 from everyone who
right-clicked and copied your car, and they weren't paying you even though
they were right-clicking. That's the point.

I see no good reason why I would expect to get $100 for that.

If they expect me to bring my car round so they can right-click it I would expect some recompense, if it doesn't involve any effort on my behalf click away.

[Heathen]

I think the biggest issue here is the fact that they weren't physically hosting warez of any kind. They are essentially an IP repository. Last I checked, it's not illegal to write on your webpage "OMG TWILIGHT DVD QUALITY!!!1!", unless you also offer the movie for download, which piratebay does not do, they don't even link to it. All they provide on their server is a checksum and IPs.

As others mentioned, what they are doing should be considered no more illegal than what Google is doing. Google even takes it a step further from linking to warez pages, they even cache them on their servers.

This is just a matter of big companies trying to milk people more than they are already milking them.

[pdwyer]

But you'd feel angry if you were supposed to get $100 from everyone who
right-clicked and copied your car, and they weren't paying you even though
they were right-clicking. That's the point.

I see no good reason why I would expect to get $100 for that.

If they expect me to bring my car round so they can right-click it I would expect some recompense, if it doesn't involve any effort on my behalf click away.

But if you spend a million dollars on design and parts to build the car and thought make a business model out of people taking $100 copies easily and the courts didn't defend you when people took their copy and didn't pay then you wouldn't be too happy.

The bigger implication here is that if the courts don't defent the content and providers then the business model breaks down. Cinemas will make some money still I guess as they have a value add, rental vids and home purchase will go the way of the dodo. If revenue drops too far then the available budget for films will decrease

Is this a bad thing though? is it just an evolution of the industry to a download model... (don't ask me, I'm just breaking wind here )

[Tipperton]

<withdrawn>

[the.weavster]

You can't use cars or any other physical thing here since it simply doesn' t work.

Then should it be referred to as 'stealing'? The thing you've 'stolen' is still there.

You just spent a lot time and effort writing a book, you find a publisher who will print and sell your book for you. The book is a hit and soon money starts rolling in.

Suddenly another copy of your book appears only this one is an eBook and its being passed around freely, sales of your printed book start dropping off because now there a free version that people are reading instead of your paid for version.

So now you want to shut down public libraries too?


Historically if a musician wanted to make money they would have to play their musical instrument for an audience, if an actor wanted to make money they would have to get on stage and act. Being able to capture a performance on some medium and then sell it over and over again is a fairly recent thing.

Well it was fun while it lasted and it served the make a lot of the 'artists' very rich but it's beginning to look like the party's over and they might have to go back to performing for a living.

[SFSxOI]

I'm in favor of the ruling.

You are after all responsible for the content of your web site and by their name and content they were promoting and even making a profit on piracy.

And yeah, it may attack the torrents and p2p networks but maybe thats a good thing. Those networks need to have some changes implemented to make it harder to use it for sharing content illegally.

Remember Napster? Time to start cleaning up the rest of it.

Yes, but consider the ruling carefully. They didn't get nailed for having the content on their web site. They got nailed for facilitating. Thats where the problem arises with this judgement. It allowed big content to simply say they 'think' rather then know. In other words they can accuse and argue without proof and opened the door for big content to say that about anything anyone posts or provides (In Sweeden at least) either legal or illegal. Based upon the 'facilitation' it means that any link posted to anything a person does not own, if its allowed to exist on a web site then the web site owners are 'facilitating' piracy regardless if the link pointed to is not pirated material, for example, it means that every link posted to a video at youtube on any web site in Sweeden is now illegal (unless a person owns the video at youtube or received permission to post the link). Just because the case was focused on movies and other pirated works doesn't mean the case law produced from this ruling can't be applied by someone else for anything else. Yes, its stupid to think that someone would go to such great lenghts for something posted on youtube.

But lets say for example that the PureBasic website was located in Sweeden, and lets further say that you come along one day and find a link posted in the PureBasic forum to some code you created that was publically posted on your own web site and on your own web site it says that the code can't be copied and reposted somewhere else without permission, so some enterprising soul simply posted a link to it thinking he/she was respecting your desire that it not be just copied and reposted somewhere else. And then lets say there is nothing on your site that says you can't post a link to the material or indicates that permission is given to post a link to the material. Under the Pirate Bay ruling you could haul PureBasic into court because they 'facilitated' unauthorized access to your work if the link was allowed to be posted or they took no action to remove it from the PureBasic web site. The presence of the link would become prima facia proof.

So the ruling in this case is overly broad, based on what might have happened (thats basically what facilitation is - that you could have helped a crime happen or did help a crime happen - but it doesn't mean the crime had to actually happen for you to have facilitated it) instead of what did happen, and allows implied presence as proof. You could simply say its pirated without having to prove its pirated, which basically is what big content was allowed to do in this case, accuse and persecute without proof. This ruling at it stands now is a mockery to a legal system as it allows big content free reign over who does what on the web simply by accusing without proof. Facilitation is provable when tangible objects, persons, or things are involved if you can show an actual material harm. There was no actual tangible harm here because PirateBay did not host the material and had no way of knowing if an actual transfer of the pirated material took place, and simply connected people together who were hosting the material. Thats like you or I or anyone else saying "People say you can get the .torrent at www.Joe's Ye Olde Torrent Shoppe.com", under this ruling when you even say that you have facilitated piracy (in Sweeden at least) because you provided information that possibly helped someone infringe even if the material was not pirated because you may not have had permission provide that information and you don't know if the material the .torrent points to is pirated or not.

Yes, the example is a little extreme. But there are people in this world who would go to those extremes and tie someone up in court for so long that it would ruin the accused financially even if the case ended up not being prosecuted and was thrown out. Did Pirate Bay promote piracy/infringement - yes i think they did. But did Pirate Bay faciliate piracy/infringement - there in lies the real question - in my mind I think they did but I can't point to anything in the verdict that absolutly proves that. But the problem is with the ruling its self.