Hollywood Says Due Process Is Too Damn Slow
from the yeah,-that'll-work dept
Apparently, a New Zealand anti-copyright group controlled by the Hollywood movie studios is upset that a new three strikes proposal includes the ability to have a tribunal review a case from a user who feels wrongly accused. The Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT) is worried that everyone accused of infringing will file for such a review, and it will clog up the system. Yes, due process is apparently too messy for the Hollywood studios. It would prefer a system where arbiters are able to process review requests in bulk. Because nothing says a fair and full hearing of your rights like a guy rushing to get through a batch of such complaints in a single process... I'm amazed that the studios haven't picked up on the French plan of giving judges only five minutes to review any such appeal.
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Filed Under: copyright, due process, new zealand, three strikes
Companies: fact, mpaa
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Awesome
If it weren't for my unholy love of Flight of the Concords, I'd say just nuke 'em off the map.
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Hopefully this would compel judges to quickly dismiss cases on the premise that there wasn't enough time for them to properly investigate both sides.
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The copyright industry want to kick someone of the net solely because her or she is accused of downloading three songs. Songs on Amazon cost about a buck. So for three bucks, the person is barred from the net.
Let's imagine a different law. Let's imagine that the banking industry gets annoyed with people stealing pens out of their lobbies. Imagine that a law is enacted stating that any person accused by a bank of stealing three pens is banned from the entire banking industry for the rest of his or her life.
Does anyone think such a law has any chance to be passed? Does anyone seriously think that such a law makes sense?
But for some bizarre reason it does in the crazy brave new world of copyright.
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Let's make it so that all criminals can continue to commit their crimes until convicted. No more handcuffs, you just write a little note saying that they have been a bad boy, and take them to court a couple of years later. In the mean time, they can continue to sell drugs, steal, whatever it is - because due process says they are innocent until proven guilty.
Next time someone is stopped selling knockoff Gucci bags, don't shut them down, don't seize the inventory, let's just wait and see what the courts thing.
Yeah, there is a plan.
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Next time someone is stopped selling knockoff Gucci bags, don't shut them down, don't seize the inventory, let's just wait and see what the courts thing."
You must be an illiterate fascist. Hello!
A few bits of advice:
1) Learn to read; it really is the first step to a whole world of learning.
2) Do some reading regarding historical examples of what you're proposing and how it actually works out (in the real world, not your imagination).
3) Come to understand Sociology; and whether or not a phrase like "Happy Workers are Productive Workers" is better or worse than "We all work for the benefit of the state" (or even "The cake is a lie").
4) Learn to think! Reason, critical thinking, logical capacity; these are all things which it is difficult to overstate the value of.
Thank you, have a nice day.
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Actually, that's exactly what should happen. By seizing inventory, other than a sample for evidence, the person is essentially being convicted before they go to trial. If courts find their bags are close, but different enough to NOT be considered knock-offs, then an innocent person has had their life & business ruined for nothing, with no compensation.
Until a court says "no, these are knock-offs and cannot be manufactured & sold", then their inventory should stay where it is, and the person should be able to conduct the business they were doing.
There's a process in place, and it starts with the presumption of innocence.
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Re: Re:
1) Learn to read; it really is the first step to a whole world of learning.
2) Do some reading regarding historical examples of what you're proposing and how it actually works out (in the real world, not your imagination).
3) Come to understand Sociology; and whether or not a phrase like "Happy Workers are Productive Workers" is better or worse than "We all work for the benefit of the state" (or even "The cake is a lie").
4) Learn to think! Reason, critical thinking, logical capacity; these are all things which it is difficult to overstate the value of."
5) Profit!
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We may confiscate inventory etc during the legal process - but if they are found to be innocent we have to give it all back and give them compensation.
Because of this requirement we are very careful only to pursue clear and provable cases.
What Hollywood is asking for is (equivalent to) to be allowed (as a "victim" - not as a government agency) to accuse anyone of a crime and simply have them locked up without any independent prosecution service, courts, judges, juries, defence lawyers etc.
Remember - these are the people who wanted immunity if a malfunctioning DRM system (say in a car entertainment system) went haywire and caused a death.
Their business model is more important than (somebody else's) life.
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they would want all their right's and time to find a loop hole !!
so why shouldn't we have the same time and rights??
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Already have that
Thats what injunctions are for you industry-shilling a-hole. You obviously have no idea how the law works, and want a "hang 'em first, ask questions later!" policy toward whomever you view is a "criminal." Sadly for you, the law and courts work a bit differently than that. Otherwise, we could accuse YOU of something, and since in your insane little world accusation=guilt, YOU would get hung out to dry with ZERO recourse. Wouldnt like that much, would you?
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To use your lovely analogy, this is seizing an inventory of SUSPECTED fake Gucci bags with no intent to go to court.
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Nice one - I just had to pretend to be coughing under my desk, don't think anyone noticed (at least no more than the usual "what da f### is he doing this time?")
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Re: Already have that
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klu klux Hollywood?
"People accused of internet piracy might be deemed to have waived some rights if they had not disputed warning notices."
These days, more so than any in recent history, people ACCUSED of a crime are suddenly second class citizens. Innocence or guilt, these are secondary issues in the media and litigation frenzies. Businesses, reputations, family units, and careers are eagerly ripped apart in the quest for the "TRUTH". And even should you find a guilty party, does the punishment fit the crime? How is hundreds of thousands in fines considered fair for theft under a hundred dollars? How is a thousand dollars fair for a theft of under a hundred dollars? If this is fair, should we not recieve hundreds of thousands of dollars in renumeration for every defective music trac, disconnected internet sight, and scratched movie we purchase? After all, we actually lose more money over these things than big companies do a downloaded song, and we make far far less.
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Mike, it's a sad commentary on the big media companies, but it seems to me that many of the news stories that you comment on could have a headline almost exactly like this.
- Companies wanting to sue a web site that is protected by safe harbor laws when they should be suing the people who uploaded the content must believe that due process is too slow.
- Lobbying groups that want French judges to only spend five minutes on a case.
- Lobbying groups that want a three strikes rule without a review process.
All of these are cases were companies or lobbying groups want to short-circuit due process because they can't be bothered to go after the people actually breaking the law. Sure, I can sympathize with the companies who have to go after all of the individuals, but this does not extend to breaking one of the fundamental precepts of any just legal system.
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Though said with an over-abundance of emotion, RD has a valid point you need to consider here. Allowing seizure on the basis of an accusation is completely unacceptable to any civilized society and would open the door to rampant abuses by industry and Government. Justice is not a one sided concept...
JMHO
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Due Process WIN
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Re: klu klux Hollywood?
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Are you suggesting people should be guilty until proven innocent?
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Because the rich and the powerful get immunity no matter how many deaths they are responsible for (take Bayer selling Aids tainted blood as an example) but the poor and the powerless must go to jail forever if they download a song.
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Re: Already have that
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You've just restated the argument that "due process is too damn slow". What's fair is to punish the people who are breaking the law, not to go after the people who are providing the people who are breaking the law the platform to do so just because it's convenient.
Besides, no one is "hiding" behind the safe harbor provisions. That's like saying I'm hiding behind the constitution if I want to excercise my right to free speech.
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Let's make it so that all criminals can continue to commit their crimes until convicted. No more handcuffs, you just write a little note saying that they have been a bad boy, and take them to court a couple of years later. In the mean time, they can continue to sell drugs, steal, whatever it is - because due process says they are innocent until proven guilty.
Next time someone is stopped selling knockoff Gucci bags, don't shut them down, don't seize the inventory, let's just wait and see what the courts thing.
Yeah, there is a plan.
Yes, it would be much better to prosecute innocent people and not really worry about if they have truly done something wrong or not. As long as Hollywood or some corporation gets to hang people from the gallows to prove how valuable their 'product' is.
So I could make a call and accuse pretty much anyone I want to 'get' of copyright infringement and at the expense of whatever company I can have them tossed in jail! Wonderful!
Enough of that and they won't have to worry at all about copyright infringement, because all of their customers will either be in jail or paying fines and not have the money to own a TV anyway.
I'm SO glad none of this happened when say... people were just using VHS tapes! lol
Actually - the very first movie I ever seen for a VCR - a beta - was in fact; a pirated copy of Star Wars.
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yeah, filesharing is just like selling knockoffs. that's where we get all that piratebay money that we have to keep in offshore accounts.
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they would want all their right's and time to find a loop hole !!
so why shouldn't we have the same time and rights??
you're funny. you know we don't have the same rights as corporations! especially corporations that have contributed as much money to political campaigns as the entertainment industry has!
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Anyone who provides a service directly on a domain (from youtube to file hosting) should be held to the standard of knowing who their service customers are. They should be held to retain this information (including access records), and in the case of a valid DMCA notification or court order, be required to provide that information to the complainant so they can contact the "230" service customer.
Without it, the deck is entirely stacked against the copyright holder, who must jump through flaming hoops only to find out that someone has pulled a SODDI on them.
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Re: actually...
The courts are too busy to see all the murderers, rapists, child molesters, drug dealers, thieves and other malcontents, and the prisons are too full to hold them there.
The largest county (population-wise) houses our capitol and last I check, there are like 1000 loose criminals on the street because of the justice system. So maybe you should just shut the f### up and sit down.
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1) the phone company should listen in on all conversations
2) Mortgage companies should monitor CCTV feeds from inside your house, so should apts, condos, etc and log all persons leaving and entering
3) Automobile makers need to monitor where and how you drive your vehicle
4) your employer needs to be aware of everything you do 24/7
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Re: Troll
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Surprising Thing...
...is that Big Content seemed to have the predominant input into the drafting of this new proposal, and yet they still don't like the result.
Politicians demonstrating some actual backbone, for a change? Of course it helps that they wouldn't want a repeat of the furore over Section 92A...
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Re: Surprising Thing...
one of their more recent surveys i came across? basicly stated that any such law would stop maybe 1 - 2 thirds of so called 'piracy'.
that it Caught.
and that was from actually going out and Asking people. who straight up said 'nope, wouldn't stop me'
likewise, common causes for piracy in NZ:
arbitrary or semi-arbitrary delayed releases [especially after all the hype and build up over how great something is]. DRM,and how useless and annoying it is, Especially region locking. which, legally, unless they changed something, DVD video players are not actually Allowed to respect here :D which doesn't stop some disks from being funkey enough that they still won't run, and it doesn't change the effect of consoles and online content which are still locked up. and, additionally, sometimes ridiculous over pricing. video games cost [usually] 90-120 NZ$ [some are as low as 80, and expansions sometimes get down to 60].
that's roughly 60-80 US$, btw.
interestingly, one never hears of book piracy here [except for manga scanlations, which suffer the same issues of delayed releases due to how long the american companies take to get around to a given series, and often suffer from 'region locking' when put on the internet by those same companies]. maybe all the free public libraries render it unnecessary most of the time?
not that i really keep track, but our news papers seem to be doing ok too.
anyway, slightly more on topic again: most of the objection to section 92a was, in fact, due to the lack of due process. people [including elements of the media] kept trying to paint it as being all about free stuff and file sharing, but Every Time they asked the people involved in the protesting, it came back to due process. and to a lesser extent free speech. over and over.
well, that i saw and remember, anyway.
actually, one of the problems with NZ's legal system IS that it's too slow. a criminal case will regularly take almost a year to go to trial simply because the courts are, apparently, that busy. thus why we have tribunals and such, so far as i can tell. still, giving up due process is Not a viable solution. though i couldn't really tell you what Is.
as usual, ramble with various vaguely defined points. hope it at least interests someone :D
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Re: French 5 minute trials
Hopefully this would compel judges to quickly dismiss cases on the premise that there wasn't enough time for them to properly investigate both sides.
Unfortunately if I remember correctly, France uses a system where you are presumed to be guilty and it is your task to prove your innocence. Thus with 5 minutes per case, you are almost automatically going to be found guilty due to the lack of to argue your case.
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