BitTorrent Pirate Loses His Last Appeal

Vix666 writes with a link to a ZDNet article on the final chapter of a story we've discussed before: the first user convicted of piracy for using BitTorrent to download a movie has really, finally, lost his case. Chan Nai-ming was sentenced in November of 2005, lost an appeal in December of last year, and appears to have once again failed to convince a judge to let him out. "The Hong Kong government welcomed the judgment, saying it clarified the law regarding Internet piracy. 'This judgment has confirmed that it commits a crime and violates copyright laws for the act of using (BitTorrent) software to upload and distribute,' said customs official Tam Yiu-keung in a written statement. He added the judgment would have a deterrent effect, a view endorsed by industry watchdogs such as the Hong Kong branch of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry."

Re:wtf

[Jherek Carnelian]

what do you do when people simply dont intend to pay for something that took alot of cash to make to begin with

Work only on commission. That way you get paid before it is possible to "pirate" the creation. The internet is great at distributing information in the form of media, it ought to be great at distributing information in the form of debts too, making the pooling of commissions by groups of millions of patrons feasible to pay for even the most crazy expensive productions.

Re:come on out trolls

[Locklin]

There's a reason geeks get up at arms over GPL violations, and it's not because of a double standard.

It's because the GPL (and simmilar) was created to sidestep the problems of copyright. If you think current copyright law is a farse, than you release your work as GPL, not public domain. If you release it public domain, people can use it in copyrighted works, thus (indirectly) copyrighting your work.

The GPL uses copyright law to make sure your work never becomes part of the farse of copyright.

Responsibility of the oppressed

[Anonymous Coward]

If you live under an oppressive regime, you should dedicate your subversive activities to the overthrow of that regime, not your personal entertainment. If he was being persecuted for opposing the corrupt government, he would deserve respect. Instead, he is being persecuted for bing subversive for his own entertainment purposes. Not only is that not deserving of respect, but it might make life even a little worse for others who have to live under the same corruption. Selfish bastard deserves prison, but the unfortunate thing is it may have repercussions for others who do nothing wrong.

That said, my other observation has long been, why aren't "pirate" networks obscured by real crypto already? Mildly hard crypto keeps observers out, and investigators would have to actively be a party to the sharing, as opposed to being able to easily stumble upon it.

Please before you flame me, my interest here is purely in terms of the capabilities of network systems, among other things, for private communication, specifically private from prying eyes of oppressive governments. In some eyes, I'm sure that makes me a terrorist or something, but I'm not concerned about that.

Re:wtf

[Arterion]

How about I send them a penny in the mail for the work? Then it's not for free. I say that because I think many feel that, relatively speaking, that's how big business collectively compensates the hard work of peons. And I do mean hard work. Like, back-breaking work. I don't really think that sitting back and making money simply by investing is "hard work", but the richest people get by just by doing that.

I think of more people had more disposable income, they'd see more sales. I think that Johnny Minimum Wage should be able to enjoy art without having to choose between licensing fees or rent.

Re:In the net balance...

[cpt kangarooski]

And no, the world is not a better place with fifty gazillion hacks trying to rework Disney cartoons, we are far richer as a culture when a smalll handful of talented people are rewarded fairly for creating the next Mickey Mouse.

A reworking of a Disney cartoon is of equal value to an original cartoon, actually.

Look at Shakespeare: nearly all of his plays are either based on history, or are based on stories that were already around. He was a thoroughly derivative artist, but a really excellent one. So long as there is a great quantity of works, I'm not too worried about just what those works happen to be.

China's economy

[HaMMeReD3]

This is just a joke, sure 1 person loses most of his life so china can make an example to the world that "oh we care about piracy". They are a communist nation and as such have sacrificed one life so they can pretend like they care.

Uhhh, yeah, sure, uh huh, china cares about piracy?????

If anything china is the one country on this planet that in general has no respect for any copyright laws of any other nation. Hell, they will pirate anything. You invent and patent invention a (NOT SOFTWARE), the chinese will steal it, remake it out of the cheapest and crappiest components possible and try their hardest to undersell you, effectively causing you, the inventor/artist/producer major damages. What legal repercussions do you have? Don't look at me, I have no clue.

We pirate movies freely in america, in china you pay for pirate copies of movies in retail stores.

Although there are ethical rules against being a pirate, a pirate must also have a code of ethics, and reselling is against that code. They aren't even to be called pirates from now, they do not deserve the honor with the title, from now on chinese pirates are to be known only as software thieves.