Dutch Court Dismisses Criminal Charges Against P2P Index Site, Noting Law Enforcement Relied Too Much On Anti-Piracy Group
from the hmmm dept
We've certainly voiced our concerns over the US government's growing involvement in copyright infringement lawsuits that really should be civil matters between copyright holders and those they accuse of infringement. However, with our government often believing just about anything Hollywood tells them, and with a long term effort by the industry to have the government act as its own private police force, we're seeing things like the totally botched seizure of domain names of blogs and forums on a questionable basis. It seems that the US is not the only country with this sort of problem. Earlier this year, we noted that a court in the Netherlands was questioning why it appeared that Dutch law enforcement had totally outsourced its investigations to the industry "anti-piracy" group BREIN (who, we had noted, in the past somehow ended up keeping evidence) that should not be allowed to be done by private parties.Well, in that case, against an indexing site called ShareConnector, the court has dismissed the case over the "faulty evidence," specifically having to do with law enforcement relying way too much on industry sources, rather than doing the real investigation themselves. This follows on an earlier criminal case where the operator of ShareConnector had all charges dismissed as well.
Once again, all this highlights is how these issues are not as clear cut as the industry and its supporters often make out. It's getting rather silly how often we hear people insist that this or that service or software are "obviously" infringing on copyrights -- and no case should even be heard before they're shut down/seized/thrown in jail/fined whatever. Copyright is not a black or white situation -- there's an awful lot of gray and it should be determined in a court of law, rather than just on the say so of certain industries who benefit from shutting down alternative means of distribution that interfere with their ability to be a gatekeeper.
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Filed Under: civil, copyright, criminal, law enforcement, netherlands
Companies: brein, shareconnector
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It's always important to remind everyone who's side Mike Masnick is on.
It's not the artist's.
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Reality is where he lives, where are you?
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Translation
The ends justify the means.
Even if you believe ShareConnector to be in the wrong then you are still under an obligation to follow due process.
You do the "little guy" no lasting good if you defend him by unjust means.
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Re: The idiocy of posters
You are a complete fool if you believe that these rights hedging laws truly benefit ANYONE other than large corporations.
"Translation: Masnick favors the money-making enterprise, re: a website making money on the back of illegal content, versus the little guy- the guy who can only pray his legitimate request for removal will be honored.
It's always important to remind everyone who's side Mike Masnick is on.
It's not the artist's."
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As the story says, the service was still found to be unlawful.
The results are the same: the site stays down. End.
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Translation: "We will force these damn pirates back into the 80's by any means, legal or otherwise, so they have to buy our shiny discs."
Sorry, trying to shove all the evil back into Pandora's Box isn't going to work.
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That means that hope is still alive ...
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...That's Disney's job.
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But what do you suppose is going to happen in 50 years or so when China and India become fully as technologically advanced as the US but have 8x the population to produce technology et al, and the US is now a net importer of IP? I plan to be a resident of another country by that point, because things in the US are gonna suck.
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