Two Birmingham Men Are Arrested By UK's New Intellectual Property Crime Unit 201
cervesaebraciator writes "The Guardian reports that the Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit has arrested two men from Birmingham and have seized 'suspected counterfeit DVD box sets worth around £40,000, including titles such as Game of Thrones, CSI and Vampire Diaries.' The claim is that the men were buying foreign counterfeit copies and selling them online as genuine. London police commissioner Adriad Leppard offers commentary indicative of the thinking behind these efforts, saying, 'Intellectual property crime is already costing our economy hundreds of millions of pounds a year and placing thousands of jobs under threat, and left unchecked and free to feed on new technology could destroy some of our most creative and productive industries.' The article offers £51 billion as an estimate for the cost of illegal downloading to the music, film, and software industry, a figure they say will triple by 2015."
Meanwhile, Netflix is paying attention to piracy via torrent sites as well. The difference is that they're using that data to decide what shows they should buy.
i don't get it (Score:2, Interesting)
i don't get it. can somebody provide insights into why this is a big deal and is on slashdot? criminals break law, get arrested. what is the sizzle here?
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I have no idea. Stories like this have been a stock feature in local papers here in the UK ever since home video recorders came onto the market, usually centered on raids on car boot sales or dodgy market stalls. Maybe it's the "selling online" thing? Though dodgy DVDs being sold as genuine online is hardly a new thing either and has always been something you've known you have to look out for on Ebay and the like.
Maybe it's because it's in the Guardian? There's a certain type of person who takes everything
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I suspect because they're the first arrests made by a new unit dedicated to IP related crimes. They were literally their first arrests as a unit.
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Is it somehow controversial that this division made the arrest? I think the crime itself seems cut and dried bootlegging. Is this unit controversial?
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Maybe its to do with the cost of policing this?
http://www.prospects.ac.uk/police_officer_salary.htm [prospects.ac.uk]
Salaries vary between forces but the typical starting salary for police constables in England and Wales is £22,680 on commencing service and £25,317 on completion of the initial training period. In Scotland and Northern Ireland, the typical starting salary is £23,259, rising to £25,962 after the intial training period.
Range of typical salaries after sever
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i don't get it. can somebody provide insights into why this is a big deal and is on slashdot? criminals break law, get arrested. what is the sizzle here?
The sizzle here is that this is a sane application of IP law. We don't hear of such things much these days.
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"The sizzle here is that this is a sane application of IP law."
No, it isn't. It would be a sane application of fraud law, since they were selling counterfeit goods.
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why this is a big deal and is on slashdot?
You must be nude here.
Here's why this story is on Slashdot:
That, is how a story gets posted on Slashdot.
It's the best of News for Nerds,
Re: i don't get it (Score:2)
> You must be nude here.
Hey if people want to read /. in their birthday suit more power to them but sometimes there really is T.M.I (too much information) as your fetish for others to be nude here :)
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Someone who has journalism (possibly even 'Tech' journalism) experience is trying to run /., perhaps? Or maybe a lack thereof?
Let's review earlier /. submissions: http://games.slashdot.org/story/99/10/15/1012230/john-carmack-answers
Compare that one to the current post, and note the differences. First, /. is generating new content in that post...they are interviewing, even if by email, one of the higher tech people in the industry; what more, they are asking the right questions, because the person asking the
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Let's review earlier /. submissions: http://games.slashdot.org/story/99/10/15/1012230/john-carmack-answers [slashdot.org]
Compare that one to the current post, and note the differences. First, /. is generating new content in that post...they are interviewing, even if by email, one of the higher tech people in the industry; what more, they are asking the right questions, because the person asking them lives in the tech world...the interview is quicker, and perhaps juicier because of that.
/. is not generating new content in that post. All those questions were from readers. Those Q&A sessions are still being held in the same way.
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Well, I don't think that copyright infringement should be a crime; let it be a civil matter so that if copyright holders care, they can go to court, and if they don't care so much as to spend their own money on enforcement, the bill is not passed to taxpayers. A purely civil copyright system worked fine for a long time, as it did for trademarks, and still does afaik for patents.
(That said, if they were defrauding customers who thought they were getting legitimate copies, that might justify the involvement o
Re:i don't get it (Score:5, Insightful)
Woah.. as much as I really hate the copyright kingpins... these guys were selling counterfeit items. They were making money off from other people's work.
It's not the same as the ridiculous crackdowns on people who download a fucking song and find themselves being sued for thousands in damages.
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They were making money off from other people's work.
Slashdot thinks this is awesome! Look at how people are worshipping Kim Dotcom like some kind of hero.
Re:i don't get it (Score:5, Interesting)
They were mis-describing it when they sold it, if you read TFA. That's bad because it means that the purchasers weren't making an informed decision. By and large, counterfeit box-sets will have lower quality packaging etc than the originals. If they're just burns of TV-rips, then they may also have on-screen network watermarks and other artifacts missing from the official home release.
Plus the people buying it might actually have wanted their money to go to the creators of the show. Even if you're the neckbeard type who believes that all intellectual property is theft, you don't want to say that selling by deception is right?
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Personally, I can perhaps see some use in copyright. It certainly seems obviously immoral to consume someone else's work at no return. However, I think the terms are exceedingly expansive now and that much of the alarmist rhetoric is not logically sound as by their own logic piracy would eventually be self regulating.
If enough people pirated that it hurt the industry to the point that it were not profit
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Obviously FOSS is work and consumed at no cost in good morale standing.
Your fart analogy falls short. That isn't work in line with the context that I used work and your smelling it is not consumption with regards to how I was using consumption. Yes, it is consumption but in the way that reading a book is also consumption and thus pedantry.
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"Your fart analogy falls short. That isn't work in line with the context that I used work and your smelling it is not consumption"
Is it?
What about a beggar cleaning windshields on a traffic lights stop?
There's an obvious work and an obvious benefit. Do you think it's immoral if I don't give him a tip for his unasked for work?
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Now, if you made it clear that you don't want him cleaning your windshield and he did it anyway then it would be different.
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Now, if you made it clear that you don't want him cleaning your windshield and he did it anyway then it would be different.
The default setting, I believe, is opt-out. The charge for violating that is a free windshield washing.
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"The default setting, I believe, is opt-out."
So it seems. The problem is that while waiting for his answer, I prayed for the benefit of his soul.
And I'm still waiting for the 100$ I charge for this service!
Damn indecent an immoral DarkTempes.
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If you replaced the beggar with a penitent monk then it would be different. I mean, this is simple apply the Golden Rule morality. I don't get what is so difficult about it?
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The best part of him leaked down mom's leg.
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Yes, it is. They're finding the data, burning it into a disc, packaging, perhaps offering warranty so that they'll replace the disk if it doesn't work etc. That's a service. The same service the original publisher does mind you, even if the original publisher puts more quality in the end result. As service providers both are certainly entitled to charge whatever they want for said service, provided of course they don't lie about what they're selling to their customers. It's mere competition.
...
By the way: I always purchase the official version if it's available (if it isn't I pirate). I don't do this because some idiotic anti-private property law demands from me to obey a government mandated monopoly, but because *I* want to support official licensees whenever *they* support me. My money, my morals, my choice.
You do know that these men were arrested for selling counterfeit copies as genuine copies right?
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You do know that these men were arrested for selling counterfeit copies as genuine copies right?
Yes. In these cases (lying to a customer, not piracy per se) I'm all of them getting punished, but notice I was replying to the OP's far more generic question on whether selling unlicensed stuff is okay, for which I replied that yes, by itself it is.
By the way I don't agree with this usage of the term "genuine". Unless the contents was in some way altered it's as much "genuine" as one sold by an official licensee. Perhaps the version those guys was, in addition to unlicensed, also cracked, and which case it
Re:i don't get it (Score:4, Interesting)
The real problem here is establishing intent. The alleged perpetrators here might be as much a victim as anyone else. When counterfeits are really good, should a reseller be forced to risk hard jail time just to resell something? Add in the whole nonsense of "region coding" and other attempts to expand copyrights by non-legal means, and you have a situation where the notion of a counterfeit doesn't mean anything anymore.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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Running "extra" parts off real assembly lines, in violation of contract, is commonplace and a source of much counterfeit goods.
The companies run the assembly lines under contract, and they are not supposed to run anything beyond what the property holder wants. They often do, and the "counterfeit" ones even have the trademark stamps on them. But aside from cutting into profits in violation of your contract to run the assembly line, in the case of replacement parts for cars and planes, they can use inferior
Re:i don't get it (Score:5, Informative)
I think the point is that as the end user all you care about is that you get what you're paying for. Extra runs, or overseas imports (grey market items) are common place and I have no problem purchasing them when they are advertised (and priced) as such.
I did have a problem one day when I bought a Nikon lens from a reputable source and after finding a problem with it Nikon wouldn't honour the warranty claim because it was a grey import. I was pissed despite being the owner of several grey market lenses. I went back to the store and demanded they replace the product and told them I will call Nikon afterwards and check the serial number of the replacement too.
They were apologetic. The lens was very cheap originally though.
Re:i don't get it (Score:5, Interesting)
Nikon is particularly dickbagish when it comes to international warranties. They are just begging you to void it.
You could buy a 100% genuine Nikon product from an authorized reseller in another country, and they will not honor the warranty. You could buy the same item in your *own* country, but if it wasn't from an "authorized reseller", they will refuse to honor the warranty, even if it is 100% genuine Nikon product. They won't even service it if you PAY THEM. It's like no one can be arsed to take the tiny extra step of sightly routing around the standard procedure to provide customer service.
They're the polar opposite of IBM/Lenovo, who will bend over backwards to ensure that a ThinkPad purchased anywhere in the world will be supported and serviced anywhere in the world. I'll praise them for this everyday, even if I still don't recommend their purchase anymore because of the dumbass keyboards.
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its funny watching a made-in-china product sold in the USA have its warranty expired once it enters Canada. If it went from china->canada it would have a warranty ? is the product differnt for the canadian market?
same for "gray market". if "large cor
you're not supposed to get it (Score:5, Insightful)
There's deliberate mixing of issues going on. This new unit is supposed to police "illegal downloads" and "counterfeit DVDs". There's a huge difference between a counterfeit of a physical item, and a digital copy. As you say, counterfeits can be of inferior quality. Counterfeits are fraudulently misrepresented as the real thing.
I have no problem with going after counterfeits. What I object to is calling this an "intellectual property" enforcement action, as if there is no difference between busting a counterfeit goods operation, and busting ordinary citizens sharing data. They should call the crime what it is, fraud, and not try to say the chief crime was copyright violation. Physical items were misrepresented. These items happen to be media that contain copyrighted data. Money was fraudulently collected, by deliberately fostering a misunderstanding of where that money was going. Some buyers may have figured out their game, but undoubtedly, many buyers thought they were supporting the artists.
Many people purchase physical media not because they are compelled to, but because they genuinely want to support the artists, and that's the only means the idiot industry has blessed. Yes, the industry grudgingly allows downloading for a price, but they don't like it. A purchase of physical media is really a donation to the artists. Let's not pretend that the content can't be easily copied for free. Pretending to collect donations for some cause, and then pocketing the money, is fraud and theft. Big Media loves it whenever that kind of crime is equated with simple downloading. Most file sharers are not trying to misrepresent the data in any way at all, or collect money. Unfortunately, there are plenty who try to use downloading as a vehicle to commit other crimes, such as injecting viruses into computer systems. And they get away with it because they know no one is busting people for that, not when the attitude is that the "thieving" downloaders got what they deserved.
Once again, Big Media has tricked government into wasting taxpayer money on trying to force their sick, dark fantasy world of total ownership of all content on the public. This new police unit should at the least be given a more accurate name, and its duties more carefully defined. Or it should be dismantled. Too much chance that they will now wade into file sharing, seeing rampant crime everywhere in activities that shouldn't be criminal at all. Police are wont to see crimes where none exist, out of sheer self-interest. They get to stay employed that way. They're real suckers for sob stories of alleged victimization of those poor little giant media conglomerates, I mean, starving artists, by mean, delinquent teenage pirates.
The Justification is the Interesting Element (Score:5, Interesting)
I, too, agree that the men were involved in fraud but I think we're missing the point by talking about the guilt or innocence of these two individuals. If the article only said that two jerks were selling bad copies of The Vampire Diaries, then it'd hardly be worth mentioning.
The revealing thing about the article is the way that a new police unit, funded with £2.56 million over two years, is justified. Of course the first people they arrested were engaged in fraud, for who can complain about arresting such people? But the hyperbolic claims made about piracy here would, in fact, make the girl who downloads a One Direction album partly responsible for the destruction of one of the world's largest economies. And this unit is, as parent recognizes, charged with prosecuting "illegal downloads" as well. £51bn per month, to triple by 2015? Just think about that claim for a moment. That's larger than the British economy! If you take these people at there word then you could blame illegal downloading on the world-wide recession. You needn't bother with accusing innocent financiers and speculators who, after all, are just trying to make a better life for their families and provide a public service.
Such hyperbole is reported as fact, except on alternative, online news sources. And it is little wonder. Is MSNBC or FoxNews apt to disagree with the figures given by major media conglomerates? It would be rather shocking if Comcast and Rupert Murdoch allowed anything but the inflation of such figures.
Such hyperbole is also a matter of course when those in power seek to shape public opinion and have new policies accepted. To give a parallel, look at the rhetoric of hawks in the U.S. They constantly inflate the size and significance of every possible threat in order to drum up support for their cause. Hussein was a Hitler-like madman bent on world domination. Never mind that in reality he lacked the capacity and further invasion was not in his interests. Iran will start WWIII by blowing up Israel since they're religious zealots who think to welcome the 12th imam thereby. Never mind that intelligence show Iran is not building a weapon and the religious authorities in Iran have declared the deployment of nuclear weapons haram. Not one year ago, I heard John McCain declare the world a more dangerous place than he had ever seen it. This from a man who lived through the Cuban Missile Crisis. But without the fear, the hyperbole, the little bin Ladins around every corner, the wars will not go on and without the constant wars the apparent need for an ever growing state security apparatus might falter. Then we might devolve to a pre-9/11 world where our lack of war threatens the peace.
Whenever someone in power indulges in hyperbole, threat inflation, and encourages an exaggerated fear know that they're trying to manipulate the public into accepted a policy which, examined with a clear head and a calm heart, any decent person would reject.
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It's not just that, the issue I take with this is why the fuck are City of London police being given free reign across the UK?
Let's be clear, these guys aren't the Met. they're a tiny little police force responsible for nothing more than London's financial square mile.
I simply don't understand what's going on here, it's not their job to be going after anyone in Birmingham, that's not The City of London, that's Birmingham and it should be left to the police force responsible there as to whether that's a prio
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That's not counterfeit. That's the genuine article, but stolen.
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Or they may put it through the full test routine and make a product that is in every way the real deal except for the serial number and where the profits go. It's not quite all the same to the consumer if there was any expectation of support since the fake serial number won't get you supported, but where that wasn't expected, it is just the same to the end consumer.
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This is why Slashdot isn't worth reading anymore.
I clicked on this just to remind myself how silly the comments would be on this.
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how does that scam cost the economy as a whole anything though?
these guys were probably dodging VAT too though.
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how does that scam cost the economy as a whole anything though?
How does selling counterfeit goods hurt the economy? I'm sure there are lots of reasons, and probably tons of research and studies done over the years. But a few things that spring to mind. Typically counterfeit items are of low quality. The customer is purchasing something of a lower quality than they probably expect, and probably with no recourse. Sometimes the customer might expect that, but not always. Sometimes the product isn't made following the standards the real item is made, exposing the customer
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yes but in that case less money was spent on actual physical resources to _make_ the counterfeit item. less actual physical wealth was spent.
and as for what I'd consider costing the economy would be some guy buying some very intricately manufactured parts at great expense and then crushing them... as the actual effort for making those parts would then be totally wasted even if the guys who made it got their money.
I can see how fake rolexes can cost rolex the company by some unmeasurable amount of money - bu
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I'm sure they totally sent a letter like that.
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"Nobody, not even modern IP law, prevents you from telling stories for free."
We'll, you'd be surprised.
An example: an artist (music composer and perfomer) gets invited to a charity event. He tries to perform for free his own songs... and he can't do it: copyright collecting rights agency still bills its share.
That happens in Spain which have (or better said, used to have before USA bussiness got in the middle) quite progressive laws with regard to IP protection.
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If they say upfront that it isn't a Rolex (and even indicate it as a Rolox or Rollex or whatever) and I depart from my 10.000USD (or 10USD) then there is no problem.
So if you can detect clearly enough that it is not original Rolex, selling counterfeit products is somehow okay?
There is still a free market to create and sell cheap watches. Just use your own brand name and don't rip off others.
Also many nice and reasonably priced products wouldn't exist if the makers didn't have protection for their trademark.
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"Also many nice and reasonably priced products wouldn't exist if the makers didn't have protection for their trademark."
Unsupported opinion. In fact, quite the opposite may be truer: the strongest the brand, the higher the margins applied to its products, that's why it makes sense to develop a strong trade mark, after all.
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> So if you can detect clearly enough that it is not original Rolex, selling counterfeit products is somehow okay?
It all depends on how you define the victim. Trademarks are supposed to protect from consumer confusion. If the consumer knows that they are getting a fake, then the consumer is no longer a victim. There is also no real trademark dilution.
So there really isn't a victim anywhere.
Any legal theory that doens't focus on the consumer being the victim is corrupt.
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They were making money off from other people's work.
They were selling a product that people decided to buy. All they had to do was copy the original data over and over, so no theft was involved; there were no damages.
I can't stand hypocrites who think that selling copyrighted works is magically harmful, but copying it freely is not. Either you are pro-freedom or you are not; if you support copyright, you support censorship and the loss of control over private property.
It is pretty hypocritical to state that there were no damages because there was no theft in the traditional sense of the word.
They make lots of money on the effort of the movie company without the latter getting any compensation. Why would that be fair or even that overused phrase "fair use"? It is not a case of someone selling their official dvds.
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Traditionally, pirates didn't tolerate bootleggers. Copying and sharing stuff was OK but copy stuff and selling it was considered unacceptable.
It's one thing to "steal" a ZERO dollar sale and quite another to steal a $20 sale or even a $1 one.
In the latter, you are infact intercepting a paying customer. Some computable harm is being done.
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Not gaining something != a loss, so you can't claim that that's harm.
So when an orange farmer gets hit by a late frost, all the blossoms die off, and the farmer no longer gains the crop of delicious fruit... that somehow is not a loss?
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So you plan to arrest the weather?
That's an inherent risk of doing that kind of business, and when your business involves making copies and selling them at huge margin then someone else making copies and selling them is also a risk.
Notice you only ever get "counterfeit" goods when the originals are sold with unreasonable margins... Designer clothes don't cost more to produce than generic ones, they are just sold for a much higher price. If they were sold at a reasonable price relative to their production co
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What's your definition of "unreasonable margins", though? I would expect counterfeit goods to exist wherever the sale price is above the marginal cost of production; but since the marginal cost of production excludes things like design costs, that would suggest that anything where significant effort has gone into design would be vulnerable to counterfeiting. Does that mean they all have "unreasonable margins"?
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I think that the point is that the real loss was the expected value of the orange harvest. Obviously the blossoms existed, but they don't have much (any?) sale value in and of themselves. I'm sure some people would say that he never actually had the orange harvest, but I don't see why loss should be limited to things that are physical.
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I think that the point is that the real loss was the expected value of the orange harvest.
Expectations are irrelevant, so there are no real losses.
An accountant will include expectations (positive or negative) in drawing up accounts, and there is a good reason: if you don't, it doesn't reflect reality - expectations do have value. Imagine that you have a token that carries a 50% chance to win $1,000,000. At the moment all have have is an expectation - but I'm guessing you wouldn't sell it for $5. Alternatively, imagine that two people have those tokens; Person A has his token stolen one second before the prize draw; Person B has his token stolen one s
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Buy yourself a dictionary.
Will a torrent do? ;)
Re:i don't get it (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, I guess I'm not a hypocrite, since I think selling or freely copying copyrighted works is wrong. But it's absurd to claim profiting on someone else's work is not worse than just copying it. If someone copies a movie for free it's hard to justify the studio claims that they lost money because someone "would have paid for it" - who knows if the "consumer" would have bothered to watch it if they had to pay. But if someone copies a movie and SELLS IT FOR MONEY then obviously that question was answered and the studio has a valid point...
And I can't imagine how the hell you think preventing you from copying someone else's original work is censorship, let alone "loss of control of private property" - which is inherently idiotic because now you are trying to claim content both is and is not "private property". At least if it's not then it is (in non-commercial piracy cases, at least) a civil issue. If it *is* then it becomes the same as stealing a car and then would be criminal theft!
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If someone copies a movie for free it's hard to justify the studio claims that they lost money because someone "would have paid for it" - who knows if the "consumer" would have bothered to watch it if they had to pay. But if someone copies a movie and SELLS IT FOR MONEY then obviously that question was answered and the studio has a valid point...
That's absurd. You didn't consider the possibility that the 'fake' products might be sold at a lower price, might be more convenient, or that the creators of the product haven't yet made it available in the country that the 'fakes' are being sold in.
Besides, not gaining something is not the same as losing something, so even if people would have bought the products otherwise, that does not mean harm was done.
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the 'fake' products might be sold at a lower price
A lower price is still a price. "We have established what you are, madam. We are now merely haggling over the price..."
might be more convenient
This is the UK. How on earth is "some dude selling counterfeit movies" more convenient than the other gazillion ways to buy them?
the creators of the product haven't yet made it available in the country that the 'fakes' are being sold in.
Game of Thrones (one of the DVD sets counterfeited) is available on amazon.uk.
Any other pointless, incorrect hypotheticals? This was a specific story abo
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You cannot say what a world without copyright and such would be like; you can only spew forth random speculations.
You are right, we can only speculate what a world without copyright would be like. But I think it would be a fairly boring place. I enjoy watch movies that were made on a $100 million dollar budget. They tend to be better than movies made on a $10,000 budget. I find it hard to believe that anyone would spend $100 million dollars making a movie in a world without copyrights. I find it hard to believe people would spend significant time and effort generating content in a world without copyright.
It seems lik
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This is the central point to why copyright exists.
The cost of production is spread over many individual sales (either as tickets or rentals or whatever).
Saying that the marginal cost is zero or that the person who stole the item would not have brought it does not address the big question "Do we want expensive movies, books that take years to write, music from people who do prefer studio work?" Then there is has to be a way for money to go back to the producers.
Saying "I'm ripping off the companies, not the
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You are right, we can only speculate what a world without copyright would be like. But I think it would be a fairly boring place.
Well, copyright didn't exist until the 18th century, and then didn't become widespread until the 19th and 20th centuries (in many places, due to colonialism, rather than because the local population liked the idea).
So now you have a pretty good idea of what it would be like.
Of course, you'd have to factor in differences unrelated to copyrights: many places have less censorship than they once did; they have higher literacy rates; they have publishing technologies that are far more efficient than what was ava
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But studios claim money loss after the fact - studios say they lost money because someone saw the movie, not because someone might have seen the movie. So, after the fact has happened, piracy *IS* money loss.
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That's not true. You are free to use that copying machine to copy a DVD as a backup/for your OWN use. You are not free to give or sell that copy to someone ELSE.
Re:i don't get it (Score:5, Funny)
They were selling a product that people decided to buy. All they had to do was copy the original data over and over, so no theft was involved; there were no damages.
I can't stand hypocrites who think that selling copyrighted works is magically harmful, but copying it freely is not. Either you are pro-freedom or you are not; if you support copyright, you support censorship and the loss of control over private property.
Oookay. Now I can conclude that the views on piracy of some people here really have reached insane levels.
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> There seems to be some idea that it's the dumb, uneducated public who believes piracy is wrong
You've go that ass backwards. It's only the "geeks" that understand that there might be a legal or moral issue here. It's much harder for the "dumb uneducated public" to understand why copying and sharing is wrong. Even people that are highly uptight religious types may be completely oblivious to the issues here.
No. The norm is actually that you have to tell a normal non-geek that copying is wrong.
It's not som
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Either you are pro-freedom or you are not; if you support copyright, you support censorship and the loss of control over private property.
Is it ok to sell counterfeit clothes and purses and watches? Ignoring the "IP" issue, selling a counterfeit item as an original is fraud. These guys weren't selling these items as "copies."
As far as your loss of control over your private property, you know if you go down to the store and purchase a DVD, you are free to sell it to someone else.
But you want to claim the bits now belong to you, and you have the right to copy them and sell them to someone else (and stopping you is somehow censorship). Well
We are here to protect you (Score:2)
Re:We are here to protect you (Score:5, Funny)
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http://www.votegeorgegalloway.com/ [votegeorgegalloway.com]
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He dissed Jo Coburn on BBC2's Daily Proleantics last week. That's absolutely not on.
If I'd been there I'd have punched the muzzy-loving thistle-arsec cunt.
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I don't think he loves Muslims. He's just a self-serving man who seems to have a pathological need to always take the opposing view of any positions the UK and US governments hold. There's a wealth of weirdness there, with his hard-on for Islam being married with his support for gay rights and his automatic and unyielding support for any regime run by arabs and/or Muslims. He's an apologist for butchers - so long as they're arabs or Muslims - even when these odious regimes are persecuting muslims and the ma
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Correction: Mr Galloway is actually now spending some time in Parliament. Nice of him to do his day job when he's no swanning around the world.
51 billion?? (Score:2, Insightful)
an unauthorized/unlicensed download does not equal a lost sale. is it that hard a concept to comprehend?
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is it that hard a concept to comprehend?
It is a terribly hard thing to make a man understand a concept when his livelihood depends on his not understanding it.
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Yup, that number is just unbelievably stupid - it's basically equal to the entire world entertainment industry, so they are claiming without piracy they's make 2x the revenue. Yeah, right, dream on...
But on the other hand, this article overall was NOT about "unauthorized downloading", it was about pirates arrested for SELLING COUNTERFEIT DVDs, which is so obviously not a debatable copyright issue it's getting pretty absurd. Do these two mostly unrelated issues have to be conflated EVERY TIME by the media
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an unauthorized/unlicensed download does not equal a lost sale. is it that hard a concept to comprehend?
Really? So if you were a creator of TV show, would you like the profits come to you through the official distribution channels, or would you like that profit to go into third party hands, without you getting a dime?
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Spain? When was the last time you looked at a map?
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Actually, it does equal a lost sale.
Copyright gives the ability to control the copying and distribution of a protected work. If someone downloads a copy, they have taken the distribution step (well, the person who offered it for download anyways) and performed it without the sale that copyright provides. Therefore, if someone distributes a copyrighted work, they have effect a transfer without the sale. Once the transfer is done, the sale is lost.
Now, you can argue all you want that someone would never have
Let's Call It Smuggling, Not Pirating (Score:3)
When I consume a sandwich in a restaurant, the restaurant has that much less meat, bread, cheese, and alfalfa. That and the labor used to make sandwich are direct losses to the restaurant. Furthermore, no one else can have that sandwich once I have, so the restaurant will have to make new ones before they can sell more. There is nothing about this that is directly analogous to what's called piracy.
Which brings up another point. I know the pirate communi
because the people want it. (Score:5, Insightful)
"It not only damages the UK economy, but substandard goods and services can pose real threats to consumers too."
if it's actually "substandard" then it means it's not a copy of the original because there is no original to copy. meaning they were selling the latest seasons of the shows which aren't on sale yet. if you want the latest season of game of thrones, you are going to have to wait until 2014.
the industry needs to learn that when there is a demand, someone will fill it. if you aren't filling that demand, someone else will.
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Yes, if the industry really wanted to cut down on piracy for movies/TV shows and games, there are two very simple steps it could take, neither of which would involve paying for new laws and both of which would likely be more effective than legislation, particularly in terms of getting at that particular subcategory of piracy where a torrented version actually does equate into a lost sale.
1) For movies and TV shows, cut the gap between cinema release/TV air date and the media going on sale in a "to own" form
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if it's actually "substandard" then it means it's not a copy of the original because there is no original to copy. meaning they were selling the latest seasons of the shows which aren't on sale yet.
Well, no, it just means it was substandard. The DVD itself can be poorly written, and might not play properly. Box sets might be missing items.
There was no indication in the article that they were selling the very latest episodes.
if you want the latest season of game of thrones, you are going to have to wait until 2014.
the industry needs to learn that when there is a demand, someone will fill it. if you aren't filling that demand, someone else will.
Do you mean, when there is a demand for cheaper product? There was no indication that these DVDs weren't available anywhere else. But most likely they were cheaper than the product that is available in the store.
Easy job (Score:2)
Easiest job ever, search online through shopping review sites and ebay feedback for 'fake' etc, Buy item. Arrest if selling a lot of fakes.
Numbers. (Score:2)
I tried to look up the size of the UK music, movie and software industries for comparison. Music wasn't too hard, but I'm getting wildly conflicting results for the movie industry in my googling. It's hard to work out - most of their income comes from overseas distribution, and as with any movie production the official net income is worthless due to dodgy accounting. That's before considering the government subsidies and tax breaks the industry gets to 'promote british culture.'
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watch shameless UK season 1 EP 1 then the US version. Do the same with the office. Same opening theme, same jokes...
Just saying...
What's the big deal? (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem with Copyright is the *AA has been trying to use these laws to penalize the filesharer (who makes a single copy for themselves) as if they were full-blown bootleggers. The "making available" argument is bunk because if you take the number of illegal copies made via filesharing, and divide by the number of people doing the sharing, the math says there's one illegal copy made per offender. Ergo each offender is responsible for one illegal copy. Totally different from the bootlegger case where the single bootlegger is making thousands of copies available (the buyers are not guilty of anything because they paid for what they thought was a legal copy).
That's why copyright fines are so high - to discourage bootleggers who are trying to sell thousands of copies for profit. Not to bankrupt for life someone trying to make a single illegal copy for himself. The law really needs to distinguish between these cases.
Piracy is good! (Score:2)
I would like to be the devil's advocate. In TFA, the IP cop says
Intellectual property crime is already costing our economy hundreds of millions of pounds a year and placing thousands of jobs under threat, and left unchecked and free to feed on new technology could destroy some of our most creative and productive industries
Violating IP is now a crime instead of an offense in the UK? I note that we always consider the lost money stream and jobs at companies holding IP, but not at the actors that violate it. After all the two men selling counterfeit DVD created two jobs (their own), and generated revenue. Of course that revenue cannot be taxed, but the IP holder is big enought that I assume it used some fiscal tricks to avoid paying taxes too. In the end we talks a
Woah, big numbers (Score:5, Insightful)
Did you know that piracy increases lifespan by 5.7 years on average, boosts the national GDP by 3.2% (4.1% adjusted for inflation), and increases overall subjective happiness by no less than 18.5%?
Writing random numbers is so easy. I don't know where they pulled that "£51 billion" crap out of, but they're welcome to shove it back in there.
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According to the best stats I can find, the "Creative Industries" are responsible for ~8% of a £1.5Tn GDP, so about £120Bn.
So basically, the Creative Industries in the UK are apparently losing ~45% of their output to piracy and within the next two years that could be 120%.
There we have it, by 2015 no creative industry in the UK will be making a profit or be otherwise contributing to our economy, so enjoy them while they're still there.
sorry but... (Score:2)
"thousands of jobs" (Score:2)
Technically speaking, as some of the people selling these DVDs at car boot sales etc. use that as their main or only source of income, enforcement puts thousands of jobs under threat. It all comes down to a value judgement of whose job you thin
Library DVDs (Score:2)
Random number generation (Score:2)
I think that is wrong... pretty sure the number they were looking for was £51,000,000 trillion billion bazillion... and it will certainly more than triple... with crappy draconian new laws and whatnot, it will be more like 10x.
Re:Not really slashdot... (Score:4, Interesting)
No, neither the US nor the UK has any provisions saying that "if a show isn't sold in this country, copyright doesn't apply to it". Even if it did, that wouldn't apply in this case, as you can buy DVD box-sets of all of those shows in the UK.
Of course, there are instances where copyright holders take a relaxed view of whether or not to pursue people from territories they don't operate in downloading their stuff. Anime's probably the biggest example here; the odds of being sued for torrenting fansubs of an anime show that isn't licensed in the West are next to zero (though the people who upload them in Japan can and do get prosecuted over there). Even if the show is licensed, you're still much less likely to get hit than you might be with Western shows. The main reason why? Overseas sales are so marginal to the business model for making these shows that it's not worth the cost of cross-border prosecutions. Plus watching the popularity of torrents is, as referenced with Netflix in the summary, sometimes an indicator of which shows are worth licensing for a Western distributor.
But that isn't to say that they couldn't go after people in the West downloading their shows, or even that it hasn't happened. We've seen a harder line on people torrenting Ghost in the Shell material (certainly to the extent of chasing fansub groups, if not individual downloaders) - possibly because GitS is a bit more "made for export" than the norm.
Re:How does this hurt England? (Score:5, Insightful)
In this case, fraud - they were buying counterfeits and selling them as if they were genuine. They were deceiving consumers into believing they were buying something they weren't. That's a definite attack on English consumers, even if it doesn't hurt their economy per se.
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It harms the bit of it that's reselling the genuine articles, as they lose out on sales, which has a knock on effect on various things, such as being able to maintain a profitable business, paying your employees, collecting VAT...on which point, I suspect the gentlemen in question were almost certainly not collecting VAT on their sales; so that's denying HMRC tax revenue. And I'm willing to bet they either weren't paying import duty on the DVDs or they weren't paying the correct import duty.
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How on earth did you decide I had no problem with Vodaphone?
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You wouldn't be the first thick local yocal gardener to hear a big business discussion, in the main meeting room, with the windows open, when it comes to fantasy films http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120737/ [imdb.com]
At least nobody caught you, or you might have had to slog all the way to mount 7 Arts, with soul sucking henchmen dogging your trail the whole way to confront a giant, floating, flaming, time warner logo.
Re: even criminals have criminals (Score:2)
> can one make a "counterfit" digital bit?
What, you didn't get the memo about the TCP Evil Bit? :)
Compare to GDP (Score:4, Interesting)