Insurance Policies For File Sharing?
from the and-a-t-shirt dept
There isn't much detail on this (speaking Swedish might help), but in a Slashdot collection of posts, if you scroll down a bit, there's a short blurb about an insurance company in Sweden that is supposedly selling insurance policies to protect people from RIAA lawsuits. The best way to not get sued, of course, is not to share files (though, even that doesn't always work). However, if you really must keep sharing, the company is supposedly offering a $19/year policy where they'll pay any fines you get from the RIAA and (here's the good part) give you a t-shirt. While it's basically an amusing gimmick, it does, perhaps, give you a sense of what some folks think the market price should be for unlimited music -- and it's a lot lower than what the industry wants to charge.
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HAHA
but if this is real... sign me up.. my raid array would be grateful.
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For shame! :)
As any regular reader of TechDirt knows, file sharing != stealing protected content.
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Re: For shame! :)
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Re: Re: For shame! :)
Totaly agreed, I share a lot of files (online podcasts, game mods, and other stuff thats legal). File sharing is not a crime!
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I beat the RIAA?
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Re:
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cynic
if someones actually offering this as a service they are either thinking *they* will fight a few cases, and charge costs to riaa/mpaa as required, *or* that the chances of anyone with a bit of legal muscle behind them actually going to court is minimal.
plus i dare say they will make a packet with counter suits etc.
oh and if you *are* taken to court and manage to loose, i'll bet theres some nice small print...
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Easy target
http://collaborativemarketing.blogspot.com/
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Read Small Prints
For all you know, the insurance may only cover sharing of files that you own...and not files owned by others and protected by copyright laws.
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Afterall, auto insurance will still pay if you get drunk and hit another car, at least in most cases.
In that case, you've done something illegal as well. I can't see why selling an insurance policy itself could be illegal at all.
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Re:
I was going to point out that you're wrong... but I just checked and you're not. In Florida, at least, your policy will provide coverage if the damages you cause are the result of an illegal activity.
But you better believe that your company will drop your a$$ as soon as they know you were driving under the influence. They'll pay that first claim, but good luck getting insurance with a DUI again.
Selling the insurance is not illegal, even if it covers you for illegal activites. It's not condoning or supporting those activites. It's just following it's policy provisions by paying out damages for which you are responsible. Same thing for this RIAA insurance. If you are responsible for paying out damages, and you have a contract that someone else will pay on your behalf, then that payor is not commiting an illegal act.
But from the translation that Erik posted, it seems that this is not really an insurance contract.
The right to change w/o notice? Yeah, you're not going to see much of that in an insurance contract. There are two ways that your insurance changes:
1)If the change is not beneficial to the policyholder, it's changed at the next renewal.
2)If the change is beneficial to the policyholder, it's made "immediatly" (usually, asap after the change is authorized).
I would not be suprised if the first time you make a claim on this, they have some kind of "change" that renders your claim unpayable. And since it's not a contract that prohibit's mid-term changes, ::shrug:: whatcha gonna do?
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Terms for the insurance
The insurance is valid from the date of receipt of payment for the insurance.
Tankafritt.nu reserves the right to exclude customers that are employed by trade organizations or movie/music companies, or customers with obvious intent to sabotage our services.
The customers will be compensated for fines associated with file sharing violations only if the content was not already illegal, such as child porn.
The customer may not have been sharing files for financial gain.
Tankafritt.nu only operates in Sweden and does not accept customers from other countries.
If the customer is accused of file sharing crimes, the customer shall contact tankafritt.nu as soon as possible and submit a copy of the complaint received by the police.
Tankafritt.nu has the right to take action that may affect the availability of this services, if necessary for technical, maintenance, operational or economical reasons.
Tankafritt.nu reserves the right to, without prior notice, change the terms for this service.
Tankafritt.nu will not compensate customers for fines assessed outside of the time period for which the customer has paid for insurance.
The customer does not have the right to be compensated for fines associated with sharing of music, movies, software programs our games through home pages. E.g. if the customers sets up a public home page where such content can be downloaded directly from a server. (Not applicable for torrents or downloads). [Translator's comment: Yes, confusing, I know.]
All customer information will be treated with confidentiality, in order to protect customer integrity and safety.
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RIAA assessing fines?
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re: Terms of insurance
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Wow..
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Re: Wow..
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Re: Wow..
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The downside...
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Re: The downside...
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If your chances of being sued are roughly 1 in 2000 for a given year (http://www.slyck.com/news.php?story=769) then that would give the insurance company about $40,000 to settle each lawsuit. Usually the settlements are quite a bit lower than that I would think. The numbers may be more favorable in Sweden where I presume it is significantly harder to bring a lawsuit for these types of things.
Of course, if the RIAA was somewhow able to get a list of the people that are being "insured"... things could get ugly :)
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Re:
One thing for sure - the lawyers are making out like bandits.
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the text on the t-shirt translated
Isn't that a laugh in the face of the RIAA.. ;)
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late but anyways
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RIAA
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Legalize already!
Sane people buy their music and movies to support further developement. So there will always be a reason to buy things you want even if you can download them free off of the internet.
What could lessen the amount of piracy going on is if release dates would be when the product is complete (worldwide). Not 18 months later.
Personally I mostly download to preview things. I know there are trailers for movies but they are often misleading, and I don't want to buy something I don't know what it is.
There are demos for games and applications, and sometimes they are sufficient. Sometimes they are not.
If I hear a good song, I want to download the album to make sure that wasn't the only good song.
I also don't want to wait all those months for the dvd release since I'm not the cinema person, but prefer to watch movies at home.
The last reason to download is when you can't afford something, like a $5'000 software for instance. I would never be able to afford this even if I didn't download it, so there are no loss for the company.
I will keep download for free as well as I will buy everything I like that I can afford. Because I want to see that movie sequel, play the next game in the series and hear the next great song of my favourite band.
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