IsoHunt Guilty of Inducing Infringement 243
roju writes "The MPAA has won a summary judgment against torrent indexing site isoHunt for inducing copyright infringement. Michael Geist notes that '[t]he judge ruled that the isoHunt case is little different from other US cases such as Napster and Grokster, therefore concluding that there is no need to proceed to a full trial and granting Columbia Pictures request for summary judgment.' Attorney Ben Sheffner, who worked on the case for Fox, explains some of the implications, noting that 'the most significant ruling in the opinion was the court's holding that the DMCA's safe harbors are simply not available where inducement has been established.' This case could have implications on other indexing sites, and creates a gap in the DMCA safe harbor provisions that could have far-reaching implications on other sites."
Is there a way for a US judgement to be enforced? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Is there a way for a US judgement to be enforce (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Is there a way for a US judgement to be enforce (Score:5, Funny)
If they don't comply, the US will invade and liberate those IsoHunt hold captive!
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Hey moron 5there is no extradition for civil cases.
Re:Is there a way for a US judgement to be enforce (Score:5, Informative)
Ability != Right (Score:3, Interesting)
Reality check: - Wealth makes right - Might makes right
Wrong. Wealth and might mean that you don't have to care whether you are in the right or not - you can just do what you please. However it does eventually catch up with you as resentment against you builds. Looking at history the lifetime of "super powers" has been continuously decreasing with the increase in communication. Rome lasted several centuries, the British Empire a couple of centuries and the US will be lucky to make it to one century.
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Hey moron 5there is no extradition for civil cases.
But you can reach any assets he may hold in the states, any income he receives from the states. For a Canadian, that can pinch.
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Also, in Australia, we didn't think it was possible, but they sure showed us.
Hew Raymond Griffiths [wikipedia.org]
Huh? (Score:5, Interesting)
A U.S. federal court in California has issued a summary judgment against Canadian-based isoHunt (and its [Canadian] owner Gary Fung)
Why is a US Court adjudicating a case involving a Canadian citizen and his Canadian website?
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Re:Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
Are you familiar with the Berne Convention?
Are you? Are you familiar with Canadian Law?
My guess would be proving infringement in the US is a first step to getting it shut down in Canada.
Um.... WHAT!?!?!?
I would imagine that suing in Canada would be the first step to getting it shut down in Canada.
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Well, the MPAA knew that it could rely on Grokster to get a judgment in the US. Given the lack of case law in Canada covering the subject, if they were to sue in Canada now, they could then refer back to that American victory, which might provide additional ammo in their suit. For example, the recent Supreme Court of Canada judgments that expanded libel defences referred to case law in the Commonwealth and the US as part of the rationale.
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Actually Grokster shouldn't apply since the materials hosted on IsoHunt don't actually contain any materials belonging to MPAA. Nor does any MPAA material pass through the IsoHunt system.
Nor am I certain that the judges decision that a provision of federal law can just be thrown out because he wants to is going to stand up to an appeals decision.
Finally, suing a Canadian company with no assets in the US is a crock of shit. Since the courts are continually complaining about their load, I would really hope
Re:Huh? (Score:4, Insightful)
Grokster does apply, because it created the precedent of "inducement".
http://w2.eff.org/IP/P2P/MGM_v_Grokster/ [eff.org]
The "Safe Harbor" defense is a red herring. That doesn't apply because IsoHunt wasn't hosting material and then taking it down when asked. It was inducing users to click links which allowed copyright infringement.
The Berne Convention agreement, in conjunction with a closed court case, makes it very likely that Canadia will throw the book at this guy.
Basically, this is the final patch of the legal loophole that allows linking to content as long as you're not hosting it. You have to be a generic search engine, not one dedicated to finding illegal software. (The name "ISO Hunt" does not have that many non-infringing connotations, especially the comments made on the site about being the best place for juarez).
Re:Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
The name "ISO Hunt" does not have that many non-infringing connotations
Apparently, you are not a Linux user.
Re:Huh? (Score:4, Insightful)
Providing links to users who are actively looking for them is not "inducing" anything. Facilitating, perhaps, but inducement means that ISOHunt caused a course of action. Does the mere presence of ISOHunt encourage users in this behaviour? No, because there are so many alternatives. Back in the day there weren't many places one could go, and the presense of Napster or Grokster arguably inspired people to infringe... but these days? Please, it's one of a bazillion places to find links to torrents of ISO images. They should fight this ruling.
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I would imagine that suing in Canada would be the first step to getting it shut down in Canada.
Same here. The Berne Convention would be merely used to establish that copyright existed in Canada.
What I find curious is that the judgement refers to Does 1-10. Are those additional parties in the US?
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Well, I don't know how the Canadians handle it, but I can tell you that the Berne Convention is not of any use in an American court. No one has rights in the US pursuant to Berne; rather, copyrights here are entirely governed by our domestic law, which only extends as far as our borders.
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No, that wouldn't necessarily work, especially not for a summary judgment. But then it's probably not needed. Canadian courts will enforce judgments from other countries if those other countries, among other things, have similar legal structures, and have been willing to enforce Canadian judgments. No new trial would be necessary.
International "Commerce" (Score:3, Insightful)
Because the MPAA could legitimately claim that his service was available to U.S. citizens, U.S. based equipment, and/or passed over U.S. network lines, the court (correctly) ruled that the MPAA had standing in this country.
If isoHunt turned off access via U.S. IP address blocks, it would theoretically no longer be in violation of U.S. law - only potentially Canadian law (which Fung states he is not violating...).
Re:International "Commerce" (Score:4, Insightful)
Isn't it the USERS in the US who are violating US law?
Anyway, it'll all be moot in the next couple of decades, as it gets to the point where software-generated 3d movies and pro-quality music will be able to be generated by anyone in their own home with consumer-grade hardware and software.
We're already seeing self-publishing getting a toe-hold in the literary and music worlds, and it's freaking out the old school. When everyone can generate content, who needs the content rent-seekers?
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YouTube wants to beat you over the head with a clue-by-four until you come to your senses.
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I *did* say "a couple of decades".
BTW, why not participate in the end-fo-year unzombie contest [slashdot.org]?
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You think practice is going to help these folks? You sir, are an optimist of the most impressive degree.
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This is Christmas, so I'll overlook the tiny mistake :-)
Try http://www.starwreck.com/ [starwreck.com]
Seriously, even if 99.44% is still garbage, that leaves some good stuff. It's like literature - there's a lot that comes in on the slush pile, but that doesn't mean that it's *all* slush.
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You think practice is going to help these folks? You sir, are an optimist of the most impressive degree.
A little bit. But more importantly, as the cost of production reaches joe sixpack prices, there will be many more folks creating. Hollywood likes you to think they have a monopoly on talent when all they have is a monopoly on distribution. Even if 99.99% of the independently created stuff is crap, when you have millions of folks creating, you will still get thousands of gems.
The rent-seekers will lose the war, if for no other reason than they've chosen to make it a war of attrition and they are vastly ou
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Anyway, it'll all be moot in the next couple of decades, as it gets to the point where software-generated 3d movies and pro-quality music will be able to be generated by anyone in their own home with consumer-grade hardware and software.
In the future there will be robots.
Re:International "Commerce" (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:International "Commerce" (Score:5, Interesting)
People may be illegally importing said material into the U.S. but ISOHunt is doing what its doing in Canada and therefore falls under their laws.
If you download a file from a Canadian server then you acquired the material in Canada and imported into the U.S. That's on you, the importer.
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I don't do the whole mod thing any more. Having said that, I think this deserves to be modded up.
Re:International "Commerce" (Score:4, Informative)
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Same reason there's no direct flights to Cuba. If Gary is found to be owing a bazillionty dollars to the MPAA and doesn't pay then TSA cavity searches will be the least of his concerns next time he crosses the border.
I have a strong feeling this is also a way to leverage support for ACTA (international DMCA) in Canada. With enough fingers pointing at us and our yarrrr Piratey ways the hope is MPs will give support to this life-changing copyright law.
-Matt
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Same reason there's no direct flights to Cuba. If Gary is found to be owing a bazillionty dollars to the MPAA and doesn't pay then TSA cavity searches will be the least of his concerns next time he crosses the border.
Is this based on anything other than hyperbole?
You're confusing civil judgments with criminal matters. If the MPAA sues (and subsequently wins a judgment against) the ISOHunt principals, they will simply owe them a debt. If there are assets belonging to them in the US, MPAA can petition the courts to have these assets seized/liquidated.
People are not arrested in the US for owing a debt. See: untold number of spammers who [perkinscoie.com] owe [theregister.co.uk] Facebook, MySpace, et al. billions.
Re:Huh? (Score:4, Informative)
The judgment mentions that the US believes it has jurisdiction over an infringment so long as one of the parties is in the United States. Additionally, the person doing the inducing doesn't have to be in the US.
On page 18:
Re:Huh? (Score:5, Interesting)
I wonder how American proponents of such a principle would react to an American citizen being sued and convicted in China for posting information that China considers illegal to a US website that is nevertheless available to Chinese citizens.
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Unfortunately, that's the problem with national sovereignty - nations can do whatever they want and consider their decisions binding on everybody on the planet. The only thing that prevents that is standing armies.
If you don't want to worry about some country's legal system subjecting you to trials in-absentia then it is best to avoid travelling to that country, or to nations that readily extradite people to that country.
The problem isn't really that the jurisdiction is wrong - anybody in the US can seek r
Re:Huh? (Score:4, Interesting)
About the same as they did to a USA company being ordered by a French court to cease "violating French law" by selling Nazi memorabilia on its USA Web site.
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Thank you captain obvious.
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They'd freak out since Americans are rarely smart enough to understand "unintended consequences" of international law.
International law is surrender of sovereignty and should be viewed as such.
The idea of regulation and micro-management of nations by laws their publics didn't vote for is quite popular with politicians, but treaties work both ways.
I'm not sure why all the anti-American angst in these threads are directed towards the US. No question that it's a ridiculous perversion of our system, from the viewpoint of an american. But why aren't you angry at the various countries who cave to the ridiculous whims of these American-based corporations and the courts/legal system they leverage? You speak about sovereignty but I see no pushback from Canada and the like. These types of [relatively, in the scheme of international politics] petty issues simp
Re:Pushback (Score:3, Informative)
We might want our government to push back and assert our sovereignty but the governments that get elected seem inclined to just suck up to the US and take it. The US is rather like the biggest baddest junkyard dog in the yard: whatever it wants it gets or you get beat up until it does. You may not want that to be the view of the US from the rest of the world but I am afraid it often is. You may extole the virtues of democracy and freedom but if I country exercises those results and chooses to do something t
Didn't you know - America rules the world (Score:5, Insightful)
Until the Chinese tell them otherwise ;)
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The judgment says why the court believes they have jurisdiction.
Of course getting a judgment enforced is another matter, but not one that the court worries about.
Re:Huh? (Score:4, Informative)
Why is a US Court adjudicating a case involving a Canadian citizen and his Canadian website?
Beause the court finds that he has induced infringements taking place in the US. I think it's the same legal theory that'll let a US court prosecute you if you shoot someone standing on the US side of the border from Canada, though the Internet tends to make such logic absurd. Don't expect any sudden bursts of logic though.
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Anticipation of ACTA?
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Admittedly, I don't get it either, however we're pretty much joined at the hip with NAFTA and various other treaties. I'm really not sure what standing a ruling like this would have up here. It's almost certainly a bad thing for isoHunt, though.
More worrisome is that our currently (partially) elected government so desperately wants us to be the US that they've been going so far as to get the RIAA and the MPAA to consult on bills, so I wouldn't count on much government support for a Canadian citizen who has
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A U.S. federal court in California has issued a summary judgment against Canadian-based isoHunt (and its [Canadian] owner Gary Fung)
Why is a US Court adjudicating a case involving a Canadian citizen and his Canadian website?
You forgot to add, "on behalf of predominately foreign owned companies".
My interpretation of the summary judgement is that this Canadian was facilitating copyright infringement that occurred on US soil - ie the clients doing the downloading.
Those web sites are guilty as hell. The evidence is that the sites specifically advertised copyrighted torrents, openly declared the intent of the site as facilitating infringing downloads, and 95% of the available torrents were for copyrighted material. It's the juris
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According to U.S. law U.S. courts assume jurisdiction in pretty much all cases they hear. They usually justify it with particulars but that is the bottom line.
Just ask anyone who is stupid enough to draw a trust document under foreign jurisdiction and gets dragged into a U.S. court.
Hell, in trust cases where the trust is U.S based the courts will generally ignore U.S. law in favor of screwing over a trust in any instance where it isn't being used by the rich to control their children's lives or to dodge est
U.S. lawyers think they apply everywhere... (Score:2)
(This happens a lot, usually when they insist on you knowing they are a lawyer, as if that has anything to do with computer savvy.... The ones that only bring up being a lawyer in passing, tend to be normal.)
Call comes in, introductions proceed, lawyer makes a point of letting you know he's a lawyer.
For whatever reason, you have to have the caller read something off the screen. (sysinfo, error message, whatever)
Caller claims they can'
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"Why is a US Court adjudicating a case involving a Canadian citizen and his Canadian website?"
Canada will be assimilated sooner or later. Consider this a practice run. :)
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Because the suit was brought in USA Federal court by USA residents complaining about unauthorized copies of works subject to USA copyright being distributed in the USA. If awarded damages the plaintiffs can seize USA assets of the defendant and/or ask a Canadian court to enforce the orders of the USA court. While suits against foreign defendants may be news to you they are in fact routine in all jurisdictions and are handled in accordance with well-established procedures.
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And that, my children, is how USA rolls. Fuck yeah! [youtube.com]
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So are all web sites required to censor themselves according to Chinese law if they don't explicitly firewall off Chinese IP addresses?
If you're concerned about losing your assets in mainland China due to a civil judgment, yep! :)
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what I'm unclear about.. (Score:3, Insightful)
What neither writer makes clear is why isoHunt and Fung, both Canadian, are participating in a lawsuit in California.
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What neither writer makes clear is why isoHunt and Fung, both Canadian, are participating in a lawsuit in California.
Much of the material indexed in IsoHunt is copyrighted by U.S. companies, and many of the users of IsoHunt are based in the U.S. That's more than enough to give them a nexus.
link to the judgment (Score:5, Informative)
The judgment itself [michaelgeist.ca] (pdf) is quite an interesting read. It gives a good overview of the relevant case law, explains how contributory infringement works, as well as why the court is claiming jurisdiction.
I've read the court order and... (Score:5, Informative)
... it seems like Fung's downfall was his own arrogance. The judgment states that Fung's failure to filter out copyright content alone would not have been sufficient grounds for contributory infringement. Contributory infringement was established because, in addition to this, Fung made forum posts detailing how to rip specific copyrighted works for his site and suggesting search terms to help find specific copyrighted works on his site. He also bragged about having certain copyrighted works available on his site and facilitated access to such content via top 20 lists.
Seems like other torrent sites should take note. Never acknowledge the existence of copyrighted content on your site or specifically facilitate access to it (e.g. "top 20" lists) or use copyright suggestive terminology (e.g. "blockbuster") or profit from your site, and you might just escape unscathed. You want to offer about as much assistance as google does when searching for torrent files. Do this and the 5% legitimate content might just save you.
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Seems like other torrent sites should take note. Never acknowledge the existence of copyrighted content on your site or specifically facilitate access to it (e.g. "top 20" lists)
Unfortunately, this would make them suck real bad as the reason things are decent is that fakes, crap, viruses and whatnot is filtered. Even if not by the site owner then a set of moderators and editors and administrators with whoever runs it on top, and those rules and organization will be put at your feet. However they are trying to do something similar with magnet links, and basically say this is just a simple link that points elsewhere and we're discussing it. Not sure if that'll help though.
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I'm not saying torrent sites shouldn't be moderated, just that the site's owners should shy away from doing it themselves. Any site of sufficient size can be reasonably moderated by its users and there are plenty of ways to allow users to flag bad torrents. Also, I don't see any problem with having generic "top 20" lists for specific categories (preferably user generated); you just shouldn't (effectively) call them "Top 20 Copyrighted Hollywood Blockbusters" as you are acknowledging and condoning their ex
Summary judgment (Score:5, Informative)
For those wondering about summary judgment, what it means, and how this can happen without a case going to trial in front of a jury:
Summary judgment requires that the judge consider the evidence in a manner most favorable to the non-moving party (i.e., the party not moving for summary judgment, in this case isoHunt). If, after consideration of the evidence in that light, there is no possibility that the non-moving party could prevail at trial, then summary judgment can be entered instead.
Essentially, this stems from the concept that juries are intended to be finders of fact, not judges of law. If there are no factual issues that need to be considered, then the jury has no job left to do - no matter what factual conclusion they reach concerning the evidence, the outcome as a matter of law will be the same.
Re:Summary judgment (Score:5, Informative)
Essentially, this stems from the concept that juries are intended to be finders of fact, not judges of law.
Yes, but where does that erroneous concept come from? Chief Justice John Jay said "It is presumed, that juries are the best judges of facts; it is, on the other hand, presumed that courts are the best judges of law. But still both objects are within your power of decision... you [juries] have a right to take it upon yourselves to judge of both, and to determine the law as well as the fact in controversy"
Re:Summary judgment (Score:4, Insightful)
"Essentially, this stems from the concept that juries are intended to be finders of fact, not judges of law."
Which is ridiculous. The entire point of a jury is to determine if it is just to apply a black and white law in a specific full color world scenario.
This is the only direct power the people have to check government. Well that and the right to bear arms but both have been subverted at this point.
The power of juries has been subverted by the courts who decided they no longer had to inform juries of their rights and obligations in this area (a recent development in truth) and the right to bear arms by both the legislative and the executive.
Re:Summary judgment (Score:5, Informative)
That's right. As a juror, you have a right to refuse to convict someone if you feel the law itself is unjust. It's one of the rights won in the Magna Carta. Prior to that, a juror was required to vote guilty if the facts made it clear, and this allowed unconscionably bad, unfair, and abusive laws to be foisted on the people by tyrants. With this right gained, the legal system simply chokes on any law that the people feel is beyond the pale.
It's been a part of common law since before there even was a United States, and for damn good reason.
Re:Summary judgment (Score:4, Insightful)
Mod this AC up.
Just mentioning these rights or having literature that mentions them can result in a judge declaring a mistrial. That is because in this instance the jury not only checks the legislature, it checks the judicial.
Judges don't like the fact that juries outrank them and jumped on the first excuse to subvert the power of the people (juries abused this power in the Jim Jones south).
Jury is trier of fact (Score:2)
The Constitution's clause on right to trial by jury in civil cases doesn't include an "unless the judge thinks that the case against oppressive Copyright is irrelevant" clause.
The Seventh Amendment to which you allude talks about "no fact tried by a jury", not "no law interpreted by a jury".
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The seventh amendment actually says:
"no fact tried by a jury" has to do with the appeals process. The right to trial by ju
MPAA Pretends to Write International Law (Score:3, Interesting)
The MPAA have pretended for the last decade that US copyright law has worldwide jurisdiction, and their attorneys have generated lawsuits or cease-and-desist letters reflecting this belief. Dreamworks sics the DMCA on Pirate Bay [thepiratebay.org]
Between the EU and the MPAA there's always someone trying to concentrate their own power by making their favorite local laws the international rule.
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I know you Yanks love Yooroe bashing because we're all so ungrateful or whatever but I'm not sure where the EU comes into this. Which EU law(s) are you referring to?
Ignore the gyrations of management (Score:4, Insightful)
I used to read stuff like this and get upset. But then I realized that my entire generation knows it's baloney. They can't explain it intellectually. They have no real understanding of the subtleties of the law, or arguments about artists' rights or any of that. All they really understand is there is a large corporation charging private citizens tens, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars, for downloading a few songs here and there. And it's intuitively obvious that it can't possibly be worth that.
So what's happened is that this entire generation has disregarded copyright law. It's become a moot point. They could release attack dogs and black helicopters and it wouldn't really change people's attitudes. It won't matter how many websites they shut down or how many lives they ruin, they've already lost the culture war. At this point the only thing these corporations can do is shift the costs to the government and other corporations under color of law in a desperate bid for relevance. That's pretty much what they're doing.
But what does this mean for the average person? Well, it means that we google and float around to an ever-changing landscape of sites. We communicate by word of mouth via e-mail, instant messaging, and social networking sites where the latest fix of free movies, music, and games are. If you don't make enough money to participate in the artificial marketplace of entertainment goods -- you don't exclude yourself from it, you go to the grey market instead. And all the technological, legal, and philosophical barriers in the world amount to nothing because there's a small core of people like you and I, here on slashdot, that do understand the implications of what they're doing and we continually search for ways to screw them over and liberate their goods and services for "sale" on the grey market. It is, economically and politically, structurally identical to the Prohibition, except that instead of smuggling liquor we are smuggling digital files.
Billions have been spent combatting a singularily simple idea that was spawned thirty years ago by a bunch of socially-inept disaffected teenagers working out of their garages: Information wants to be free. Except information has no wants -- it's the people who want to be free. And while we can change attitudes about smoking with aggressive media campaigns, and sell people material goods and services they don't really need, we cannot change the fundamental aspects upon which our generation has built a new society out of.
You can't stop people talking -- and just as we have physical connections to each other, increasingly we have digital connections to one another as well. These connections have, and continue to, actively resist attempts at control because doing so fundamentally impedes the development and nature of the relationships we have with one another. We will naturally seek the methods which give us the greatest freedom to express ourselves to each other. That is a force of nature (ours, specifically) that has evolved out of our interconnectedness, and it goes far, far beyond copyright. Ultimately, this is a battle they cannot win -- they can only delay, building dams and locks to stem the tide, but they will fail. Forces of nature are unpredictable and in the end it always wins.
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And thats why you shouldn't clone dinosaurs with Frog DNA.
Re:Ignore the gyrations of management (Score:5, Insightful)
I seem to have a bit of cynacism about it, though. I'd like to get rid of that, but I think it has a solid foundation. Your reference to Prohibition was absoutely right. The problem is, this country has not learned from it. Prohibition taught us that you cannot stop a powerful economic force, and if you try too hard to do it, you will create a black market and you will provide fertile soil for organized crime. No one fought with submachine guns and died in the streets over alcohol until it was made illegal. Alfonso Capone would be an anonymous figure if not for Prohibition. Imagine all the tax dollars, buildup of increasingly paramilitary police forces, involvement of the federal government in basic law enforcement issues and lives lost just to enforce a law that should never have been written, a law designed to enforce one group's Puritannical moral objections on everyone else.
For anyone who's actually familiar with American history and tradition, it's hard to imagine anything more un-American than using law to micromanage the personal lives of others. You cannot tell a person what they may put into their body without also, implicitly, claiming ownership of their body. Yet that happened, right here in the "land of the free." And we tolerated it, because we were told that it was for our own good.
Then consider that we haven't really learned anything from it because we still have Prohibition. We still have The War on (some) Drugs. Only the object of the prohibition has changed, but the process is the same. So are the problems. We have learned nothing.
I would like to think that when iron-fisted copyright proves to be a failure, we will learn from this and find more reasonable approaches. But the utter failure of Prohibition hasn't stopped us from implementing similar laws. I would like to believe that a cultural war has been won, that when the old guard retires those who replace them will have a more enlightened viewpoint. I truly want to believe that. But I really don't see much precedent for it.
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I would like to think that when iron-fisted copyright proves to be a failure, we will learn from this and find more reasonable approaches. But the utter failure of Prohibition hasn't stopped us from implementing similar laws. I would like to believe that a cultural war has been won, that when the old guard retires those who replace them will have a more enlightened viewpoint. I truly want to believe that. But I really don't see much precedent for it.
Every law advantages one group while disadvantaging another. This is why we will always have new Prohibitions. This is not a reason to give up hope or be cynical! We are in the middle of a social revolution that has few outward signs. Unlike generations past, the revolution that is happening now exists in fragmentary communications and a collectivistic movement that lacks any real core. It seems to be created by an unspoken understanding between its participants. That is to say, the participants of the digi
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You can't stop people talking -- and just as we have physical connections to each other, increasingly we have digital connections to one another as well.
Neat theory. You might want to double-check how that's working out in China.
Re:Ignore the gyrations of management (Score:4, Insightful)
You've proven her point. We know what is happening in China. We read blogs about people in China. People who obviously know whats going on in China.
See how well they locked it down? Not as well as you might think.
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Its generally working fine, the majority of the people like the way it is. Much like the majority of americans don't care about the torture centers called prisons in the US.
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I used to read stuff like this and get upset. But then I realized that my entire generation knows it's baloney. They can't explain it intellectually.
They don't have to, since they have bought the legal system.
Copyright is theft (Score:2)
And since information wants to be free, I'm going to copy your text and paste it all over the internet :)
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Uh, I don't know about you, but if they released attack dogs and helicopters, I think I could summon the willpower to make sure that I never visited isoHunt.
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I think the point wooshed over you. They can set up the road blocks at the ISP's all they want. It won't stop the tech savvy, they'll find a way around it. And the tech savvy either teach their friends or develop apps to mimick what they've learned.
Point being, they only way they'll stop the communication now is if they physically stop people from talking or stop people from using computers. Which is, to the best of my knowledge, not practicle.
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The internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it. It's an older quote, but it's still accurate. If the telcos start putting in more and more blocks, people will find ways around them. Strong encryption (as is already used in some BitTorrent clients), stenography, more decentralisation, and even, if things get pushed so far that such 'digital' techniques are hard to avoid censorship with, a return to the 'sneakernet' (or smaller, semi-private neighbourhood/town/city-wide, possibly wireless,
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"The best they can do, in the long run, is limit the damage by giving people what they evidently want -- no DRM, low prices, convenient access, among other things."
Or limit data transfer for normal people, and death sentences if you break the copyright law.
Copyright is stealing (Score:2)
Learn that AC
Re:Ignore the gyrations of management (Score:5, Funny)
And that's why I no longer download music.
I just break into a studio, take the master tape of whatever music I want and leave a reel of blank tape in its place. This way I only steal the music and not the tape itself. The studio experiences the same loss as if I would have just downloaded the music, but this way I get higher quality.
Inducing copyright infringement (Score:2)
I assume this is one of those charges that they don't intend to pursue fairly, as FBI warnings, and DVD encryption have done a lot more towards "Inducing copyright infringement" than isoHunt.
Re: (Score:2)
I can understand the DVD encryption argument, but the FBI warning? Is there some sort of subliminal message that makes you want to hit Bittorrent and download copyrighted stuff? Do you have some sort of strange Pavlovian condition where seeing the warning triggers an insatiable desire to hit the Pirate Bay?
Re:Inducing copyright infringement (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes. Legitimate copies won't let you skip it. Sometimes even the ads are unskippable. That's minutes of your life wasted for every single legitimate disk you watch. Bootleg copies on the other hand will let you just start watching the movie you wanted to watch.
Something is broken horribly in a world where the knockoffs have full feature and quality parity with the originals and in addition are superior in other ways as well.
Re: (Score:2)
I think it is more of a case of seeing injustice inspiring a psychological rebellion which in turn ultimately manifests in the form of civil disobedience.
Do you download 20gb of mp3's because you want them or need them? Is it to show off to others? Perhaps, in vary degrees from individual to individual. But for most people, that is reason to download an album or even a few. Escalating that beyond what you want or need is about making a statement. It is also about collecting but the reason for choosing that
Re: (Score:2)
Every time Hollywood complains about "billions of dollars of lost revenue", people should rebut and complain about Hollywood stealing millions of dollars of people's time [640k.ca] with those FBI warnings.
Most BitTorrent sites submit entries to Google (Score:4, Interesting)
so will the MAFIAA then sue Google for caching the Torrent entries and listing links to them in their search engine?
Don't believe me, do a Google search by adding the word "torrent" to any downloadable product type.
Google "$show torrents" sometime and see what happens.
Google "Windows 7 Ultimate torrent" and see what happens.
Google "Elvis torrent" and see what happens.
Did you find some links to torrent sites and entries that allows a person to download a torrent? Google is becoming a massive torrent search engine. But the MAFIAA won't sue Google because they are too big a target and have expensive lawyers on their side.
All ISOHunt and other torrent sites are just search engines like Google, but they differ from Google in that they host BitTorrent trackers and torrent files.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Torrent sites exist for the sole purpose of aiding and abetting the violation of copyright.
No. http://www.torrentbox.com/torrents-browse.php?cat=51 [torrentbox.com]
If a lawyer attains a high level of scumbaggery... (Score:2)
...he becomes a judge.
This stinks of a fix. I hope somebody can find grounds for an appeal.
Effective (Score:2)
I'm so glad sites like this and especially The Pirate Bay get shut down. Oh, wait...
Nothing to see here. (Score:3, Informative)
The plain language of the "safe harbor" provision makes it clear that the defense is not available when inducement is involved.
Can anybody name... (Score:2)
I can't.
Welcome to the 1970s (Score:3, Informative)
Long live sneakernet, and in the case of the more tech savvy, and private communications.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
That means it is *benefiting* small shops and indie artists as well as the big corporations, actually. You completely misunderstand/misrepresent the dynamic. Grey-market downloads, *particularly* those from "small shops and indie artists" increase their exposure and (if the content isnt total crap, and the seller doesnt shoot their own foot by