Sweden to Give Courts New Power to Hunt IP Infringers 171
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "The Swedish Culture & Justice ministers are preparing to give new power to Swedish courts to let them force ISPs to give up subscriber IPs. The end goal is trying subscribers in court for copyright infringement. As the one-time home of the Pirate Bay, which is now internationally distributed, they face both US pressure and push-back at home. The Swedish arm of the Pirate Party is calling this move a 'sanctioned blackmailing operation', but hopefully the Swedish courts won't allow the IFPI to use as many tricks as the RIAA has in US courts."
Illegal files? Illegitimate Requests! (Score:4, Insightful)
How can they call this a legitimate request [cdt.org], given the recent outrages by the companies involved [slashdot.org]?
Shame on Wired for repeating the propaganda phrases, "illegal file sharing" and "piracy". It's not against the law in many countries and sharing should not be considered damaging or wrong anywhere. Giving someone a copy of a book is not the same thing as feeding them to the fish. I'm used to better things from Wired than this.
Re:Illegal files? Illegitimate Requests! (Score:3, Insightful)
As much as you don't like it, it's the way it is. Not all file sharing is illegal, but not all of it is legal. Morals have nothing do to with lawfulness of it. Giving someone a copy of a book is not like giving 3,000,000 other people a copy of a book. If you wouldn't have paid for it anyway, why are you so desperate to have it ?
Pirate Bay is law abiding! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Illegal files? Illegitimate Requests! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Illegal files? Illegitimate Requests! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Illegal files? Illegitimate Requests! (Score:5, Insightful)
No, piracy also involves a certain degree of wooden legs and parrots and hoisting "Jolly Roger"'s and broadsides and cutlasses, etc.
How come if you come to my house and I put on a CD you're allowed to hear the music, but GOD FORBID you hear the music by any other means including internet radio which now has to pay god knows how many million dollars for "rights".
The RIAA is about GREED pure and simple. Please provide verifiable documents that prove that ONE SINGLE ARTIST has seen ONE PENNY from the RIAA, who apparently fight in their name. In fact many musical groups ENDORSE "piracy", even in their song lyrics (example Molotov:Yofo; Radiohead, etc), because they are fed up of being ripped off by studios.
Please stop bleating like a sheep and start using your brain. The "cost" of distributing "n" copies of music is now almost ZERO. Why do you insist people still have to pay $15-$20 for a "CD" or $.99 for a "song"? Middlemen add nothing to economies. They are parasites pure and simple.
No, actually (Score:5, Insightful)
Also I would say the argument of "Morals have nothing to do with it," is pretty stupid. In the US at least, laws must be just. It isn't simply an abstract concept, it is actually codified in the Constitution. Lower laws must conform to higher level laws, and all laws must be just.
Well it can be quite fairly argued (and indeed is in some RIAA cases) that copyright law is unjust. It has two major constitutional problems:
1) The whole reason Congress is allowed to make copyright law is the Constitution grants it. One of the lines in Article I Section 8 reads "To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;" Ok, great, however like most of the powers granted in the Constitution to the government, there are limits. It doesn't say Congress has the right to do whatever they want with regards to IP. It says that they may secure an exclusive right for a LIMITED amount of time, and the reason they may do so is to promote the progress of science and art.
Ok well it seems current copyright law runs afoul of both. For one, I don't think that "Life plus 70 years," which is the current US copyright length, is what is meant by "limited time." It seems that is far too long. Then there is the fact that the whole reason is to promote science and art, where it seems that the currently lengthy copyrights are used to suppress it. Companies hold on to copyrights, refusing to release the work or allow derivatives. For example companies go after sites distributing copies of old console games, despite the fact that the companies themselves have long since stopped selling those games and indeed refuse to do so anymore. They just sit on the copyright, and stand in the way of using it for any progress.
2) All punishments must be fair, as per Amendment 8 which reads "Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted." In the case of copyright infringement, the part we are interested is "nor excessive fines imposed." The statutory damages seem to run afoul of that. $150,000 per incident of statutory damages? Are you kidding me? It is quite literally more than you'd get had you physically stolen media containing a copy of the work.
So it seems that the current situation may well be unjust, immoral, and thus it certainly DOES matter. I hate this idea of "The law is the law." Ya well, guess what? The law can and should be changed. It was the law at one time that you could own slaves, certain humans were seen as worth less. That was actually right in the Constitution. That doesn't mean it was right. It is silly to simply point to a bad law and say "Well that's the law so there."
Re:Illegal files? Illegitimate Requests! (Score:5, Insightful)
Convenient how you failed to mention that it *WOULD* be illegal if you burned a copy of the CD for your friend.
The record companies can sell their products for whatever price they want to. Just like any other company. They make outrageous profit selling CDs for $15 each, but that's not illegal, and as long as people keep buying them for that price, they'll keep doing it.
Re:Illegal files? Illegitimate Requests! (Score:5, Insightful)
However, the market is being distorted by the copyright monopolies. For most kinds of product, a competing vendor could sell cheaper product that is adequately substitutable - due to copyright monopoly law, doing that is classed as "piracy" for some types of information pattern expressed in a physical substrate.
That is _why_ the companies can get away with charging so much money and still stay in business - they've got the government giving them monopolies, usually under some socialistic "help the starving artists" lie.
Personally, I support the abolition of copyright law. They (the copyrightists) have apparently decided to make it a stark choice between communications liberty and enforcement of copyright. If they say "well, we won't release anything if we don't get our copyright monopolies", I say "Fine by me!". Everyone's freedom of communication is simply more important than their monopolies or their ability to make a profit. It's not even all artists that would be hurt - it's that subset of people that are only happy if they get a distribution monopoly. We can simply do without their "art".
Remember, the term "intellectual property" is a debate-framing tactic designed to make you think that copyrights and patents and such are "like" physical property and therefore similarly worthy of protection.
Re:Illegal files? Illegitimate Requests! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:lol (Score:4, Insightful)
The purists are just reinforcing the first point, and telling the pirates that the correct action for them to take is not point 1, but to deal with point 2 instead.
The pirates are using the reality that the industry and government are rigged such that it's not possible to fix point 2, to justify point 1.
I believe that most people that consider this situation will come to the same conclusion. You should not break the law even if the law is unjust, so long as you have the mechanism to get the law fixed. Once those efforts ("the system") fails to work in the favor of justice and fairness, then you have at least some moral standing to break the unjust law.
it's a bit like rebellion. Most people agree that trying to try to overthrow your government is a bad idea, so long as you the people have the ability to affect change. Once you have come to the conclusion that you cannot fix what is broken, it's time for revolution. Read the preamble to the constitution.
The same thing is happening here with copyright that happened every time there was a revolt in the past. People are "mad as hell and not going to take it anymore." And most sensible people can stand back and observe the situation, and agree that yes, they are breaking the law, and yes there is some justification to their actions.
Tightening the laws and controls never fixes these sorts of problems. (you cannot fix the problem by addressing point 1) As long as a significant injustice remains, there will always be a faction fighting for change. (you must address point 2) The examples are too numerous to mention, and exceptions all but nonexistent.
MOD PARENT UP (Score:3, Insightful)
"Intellectual Property" is a Propaganda term (oh wait, they get offended if you call them propagandists-- they want to be called Public Relations.)
The term "Piracy" is ALSO a manipulative tactic on the act of non-profit copyright infringement. Its such a minor infringement, where as the profit without permission on copy written work is a major infringement and is a core principle for the existence of copyright. Sadly, the "pirates" have embraced the term as part of their identity which HURTS their image to the outside world.
Large cartels that unfairly exploit creators for profit; while legal, are the antithesis of the this fundamental reason for copyright.
Re:Illegal files? Illegitimate Requests! (Score:3, Insightful)
In Canada, for example, it's not: http://grep.law.harvard.edu/articles/03/08/22/1655233.shtml [harvard.edu]
Re:Illegal files? Illegitimate Requests! (Score:4, Insightful)
Copyright is necessary (danger: groupthink error) (Score:5, Insightful)
If musicians were the only people making copyrighted works, then your position might be reasonable. Not all musicians care about copyright, and we can do without the "art" from those who do. But copyright also provides the only way to fund things that are extremely expensive, but also necessary.
Take software engineering for example. There are specialist software programs that are the product of many thousands of man years of engineering. These have been very costly to develop, but with the "no copyrights" model, they are worth no more than the cost of reproduction. The Linux-style "give it away for free" approach simply doesn't work for programs that are (a) very complex and (b) not widely used. I'm thinking of music composing, CAD, EDA and 3D design tools here; no doubt there are many other examples of very complex programs that are only required by a small number of people. In a world without IP, who will pay for the R&D cost of these programs? Is it reasonable to expect them to be written for free, by free software guys, when there is so little demand for them? Conversely, is it reasonable to expect anyone pay for them if they can be legally pirated? Would your business pay $10k for an essential program if the Pirate Bay would legally give it to you for $0?
There are other sorts of IP. Chip designs, for example. If there is no copyright, an unscrupulous fab owner can steal a design from Intel or AMD and start making identical chips. The chips will be cheaper because Intel and AMD won't see any profit from them, and the costs won't include the substantial R&D cost of designing the chips in the first place. Intel and AMD would go out of business if this type of piracy was legal. And yet that is exactly the model advocated by the "imaginary property" crowd today: if it's information, then it can't be property.
My point here is that if this truly is the information age, then we must have the notion of information as property. It is not just the MPAA and RIAA who are affected by theft of information; it is every software engineer and everyone else who is trying to make a living by selling information. Even free software programmers are affected, since IP law also protects their work from being stolen (GPL violations, etc.). The "sell concert tickets", "sell ads", "make it into a service" and "ask for donations" business models just don't apply to every case. Make no mistake, we all need some form of IP law.
Re:Illegal files? Illegitimate Requests! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Illegal files? Illegitimate Requests! (Score:2, Insightful)
Should we apply your standards for art to other fields of human endeavor? If you're not working your shitty, low-level, $6-an-hour job out of sheer love and passion for customer service / burger flipping / telemarketing, are you also a "street corner slut"? Should the way people put food on the table be subjected to arbitrary "acceptability" judgments, once we're past the boundaries of safety and health regulations?
Or do you just object to people making "too much" money (however much you define "too much" to be)? If a minor comic book artist manages to supplement his income by doing $100 commission pieces, is he a whore? What about someone like Bryan Hitch, who gets $4k and up for his commissioned pieces? Hell, is the idea of illustrating someone else's stories at all selling out, too?
I don't think people who rail against copyright law should be so judgmental about such things. If you're against artificial restrictions on the distribution of creative works, why have these mental barriers regarding the act of artistic creation itself? I'll let you in a little secret: No starving artist ever set out to be one.
Re:Illegal files? Illegitimate Requests! (Score:3, Insightful)
In Canada, for example, it's not: http://grep.law.harvard.edu/articles/03/08/22/1655233.shtml [harvard.edu]
Though Canada does require a higher standard of evidence than "here's some plain text log files showing that this IP was making available a file named usher.mp3. We don't have any evidence that this file was by the musician Usher or that this file was uploaded to anyone or that it resided on the computer of the person who's name is on the account (not that we have that name since there are privacy laws requiring us to get a court order by providing actual evidence before the ISP will reveal it). But make them give us money anyway."
I actually like this law (Score:3, Insightful)
If you have admissible evidence that someone is committing a crime, such as copyright infringement, I see no reason you cannot go to a judge, get a warrant, and get the IP address of the culprits. I see no reason that you cannot take the evidence for any number of such crimes, and go to a judge, and get a warrant to get the IP addresses of all of the culprits. The problem with the RIAA is that they really don't do that. They taken blanket unsubstatiated information and then go directly to the ISP/school/whatever. However, given a reasonable due process, this is quite reasonable.
And this really doesn't impact The Pirate Bay. If The Pirate Bay hosts torrents, and those torrents lead to people who are illegally copying files, then I see no reason that the copyright holder's ability to get that IP address has anything to do with the person hosting the files or the torrents. Either way, they are not liable any more than a bank is liable if someone puts drugs into their safe deposit box. No more than if someone agrees to a drug deal while drinking coffee at your restaurant.