Indian Court Orders 104 Sites Censored Based On The Say So Of The Indian Music Industry
from the censorship-by-any-other-name dept
Torrentfreak notes the interesting timing on this one. Just as MPAA boss Chris Dodd was in India talking up the importance of stricter copyright laws (like SOPA), an Indian court ordered a SOPA-like block of 104 sites that were declared as "dedicated to infringement" by the Indian Music Industry (IMI). What's interesting is that as you look down the list of blocked sites, they include many that appear to focus on movies, not music -- so it's not clear why IMI gets to decide what's infringing and what's not.Reading some of the details, it's pretty clear that the sites in question were not given a chance to present their side in court. In fact, it appears that even the IMI bosses admit that they haven't yet proved that all of those sites are infringing:
Taking the sites to court is not humanly feasible: when we went after one site, we got the impression that the owner was in the US, based out of the Bahamas, and it was very difficult to get him to respond. Our person has to pose as an advertiser before the owner came on an email, and we eventually found that it was a young kid in Rajkot, and the entire process took six months. Going after 104 sites – can you imagine the effort, the time and the money spent in chasing this? The better route is to establish comprehensively that each ofthese 104 sites is pirating content, and we’re doing that – as a body and not a company – and it’s easier to interact with the ISP now.In other words, shoot first, deal with the fallout of incorrect censorship later.
Not surprisingly, the head of the IFPI (the international RIAA) cheered on this result:
“This decision is a victory for the rule of law online and a blow to those illegal businesses that want to build revenues by violating the rights of others,” said IFPI CEO Frances Moore in a statement.The situation here seems extreme and disproportionate. Not only have the serious problems with DNS and IP blocking been described concerning internet security, but it's pretty clear that efforts like this don't work. There are already reports of sites from the list reappearing under different domain names, and all the court order is doing is spreading the game of whac-a-mole. Amusingly, the same Indian music exec who made the claim above about how it's impossible to actually track down these sites, later (in the same interview) admits he doesn't want to shut down these sites, because they have a "passion for music" and he'd like to work out deals with them. Of course, getting a court order to block access to their existing sites is a funny way to say "hey, I'd like to work with you."
But in a clear signal that for the music and movie industries even the toughest of anti-piracy measures are never enough, Moore says that current developments are a good start.
“The court ruled that blocking is a proportionate and effective way to tackle website piracy,” Moore noted, adding that the Indian government should now “build on this progress” by advancing further legislation to tackle digital piracy.
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Filed Under: accusations, censorship, copyright, dns blocking, due process, india, ip blocking, sopa
Companies: imi
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The content industry wants no law but those that are stop first prove later.
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Re: The content industry wants no law but those that are stop first prove later.
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Re: Re: Re: The content industry wants no law but those that are stop first prove later.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: The content industry wants no law but those that are stop first prove later.
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Re: The content industry wants no law but those that are stop first prove later.
Actually, it's the ultimate form of capitalism, when business gets government to do it's bidding!
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Re: Re: The content industry wants no law but those that are stop first prove later.
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Re: Re: The content industry wants no law but those that are stop first prove later.
--Communism
--Fascism
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Re: Re: Re: The content industry wants no law but those that are stop first prove later.
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You mean like putting out compilation cd's and not paying the artists?
You mean by demanding the right to see what everyone has to make sure you've gotten your money each time?
Considering the Indian Government has recently decided to tax Angel Investor capital at 30%, its sorta clear they are divorced from reality.
http://slashdot.org/story/12/03/18/2043236/indian-government-to-tax-angel-funding
Why is it India can stand up to make life saving drugs in the face of tons of pressure but are blind that the "entertainment" industry is doing the same thing?
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How to Negotiate a Deal on a Friendly Basis
1. Raze the target to the ground.
2. Sow radioactive salt on the ruins.
3. Negotiate.
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Re: How to Negotiate a Deal on a Friendly Basis
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As a side note, would you be denying that these sites are in fact pirate sites?
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"we eventually found that it was a young kid in Rajkot, and the entire process took six months."
That one sentence has so much information about how these guys think, that I'm gonna give them an award for Most Efficient Use of Language.
1) They're spending massive resources to shut down websites run by KIDS.
2) They are wasting a lot of time running after KIDS.
3) They consider KIDS to be the enemy, instead of potential customers. So, does this mean, they focus entirely on selling music to a generation that is getting older and older, and won't bother AT ALL selling to kids?
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Ergo, no one should be charged with murder and all laws against murder should be thrown away.
Gotcha.
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Start with this: It took six months to convict a murderer, so we locked up all suspects with no further evidence.
But that's not complete either, since they didn't really lock up the suspected pirates. All they did was shutdown their speech and make life difficult.
So it's more like: It took six months to convict a murderer, so we confiscated the phone numbers of the remaining suspects with no further action.
So not only are they pissing on due process, they're also not doing anything to stop further law breaking. If they went with real due process they'd get the evil lawbreakers to stop. Instead they violate due process, make the suspects life difficult, but do nothing to stop the activity they view as bad. They're being both ineffective and pissing people off while doing it. If instead they went with due process, they'd both not make people angry and put a stop to the activities they don't like.
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Imaginary Property compared to murder - Nice try.
Its to hard for us to manage our government granted monopolies, make other people pay to do it.
If an innocent man is put into jail incorrectly for murder, that means the law was wrong and need to be addressed. Maybe the standards used to reach the decision were bad. Like assuming every site on a list is pirating music, without actually having to prove it.
But I guess thats why the **AA's are so stupid, they think like you do. Black and White and no depth.
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I think the MPAA would disagree with that last point - they would point out that they've had colour films for quite a while now and have even managed 3D in recent years - that B/W silent film in 2D that won the Oscar was just an aberration!
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The fines & jail-time for imaginary property theft are WAY higher than those involved in murder.
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its needs to be said often and LOUDLY:
The man who copied Michael Jackson's songs got more fines and jail time than the man who ACTUALLY KILLED Michael Jackson.
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All property is imaginary. You can only own it because of legal constructs. Otherwise, anyone could take your "property" without risk.
The only thing that is artificial here is your understanding of property.
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Property is a concept that exists in nature well outside of human legal constructs. The only difference really is that societies have evolved to the point where the government defends property in addition to the property owner defending property.
Conversely there is no natural conception of copyrights or any other so-called intellectual property right.
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The only thing here which could be seen as artificial is your apparently LACK of understanding and/or intelligence in general.
Conflating murder and copyright infringement. I guess the "child pornography" approach wasn't sufficient so you're changing things a bit to see just what people are willing to allow you to get away with.
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Not true. Physical possession is the basis of property rights in physical objects. The law came later - and defers to physical possession in more cases - ever heard the expression "Possession is nine points of the law"?
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Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrooooong! Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrooooong! You're wrong! You're wrong! You're wrooooooooooong!
"An innocent man charged with murder was incorrectly put in jail.
Ergo, no one should be charged with murder and all laws against murder should be thrown away."
You *DO* realize, and, this might be a stretch, considering that it's you, but the policy of "Innocent until proven guilty" has a secondary point to it? That it's better to let 50 guilty men go free than put even ONE innocent man (or woman or child) behind bars, right?
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hmmm debatable, but I agree the AC's analogy doesn't hold. considering what really matters here is that the sites were censored without due process, irregardless of their innocence/non-innocence.
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Or dead printer's grandma
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Ergo, no one should be charged with murder and all laws against murder should be thrown away.
No - Ergo the processes which caused this to happen should be reviewed and the law adjusted to ensure that the chances of it happening again are reduced.
And since the case we are actually discussing here concerns not the law of murder but rather a law of questionable morality and even more questionable efficacy then abolishing it might well be a reasonable response.
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Ergo, no one should be charged with murder and all laws against murder should be thrown away.
Gotcha.
104 innocent men were charged with murder and incorrectly put in jail.
Gotcha, boy.
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BBC News - Briton Graham Mitchell faces Portugal extradition
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Or not.
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Ergo, everyone should be charged with murder and put into jail, just in case.
Gotcha.
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what if
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What fallout? I can't hear you censored sites complaining about being censored, which means there is no fallout!
And who cares if the reason I can't hear them complaining is because I censored them so I can no longer visit their websites/blogs?
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“This decision is a victory for the rule of law . . .
Ignore collateral damage.
Not have to prove anything.
Business as usual.
Oh, but for some reason, they need SOPA in order to do, um, what they are already doing.
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I do wonder when people (the industries) and the courts/legislators will ever learn that people in India who do download/share/pirate/steal music will just route around this.
It's nuts.
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“The court ruled that blocking is a proportionate and effective way to tackle website piracy,”
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Re: “The court ruled that blocking is a proportionate and effective way to tackle website piracy,”
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Why let such a nuisance as the due process of law get in the way of shutting down websites... or businesses... or of putting people in prison? Such rules are only there to protect the guilty anyway, so why not do away with them altogether?
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Propaganda alert,
Mind the propaganda,
nothing to see here folks
Except for propaganda
I'm a terrorist
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India has a music industry?
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Waahhh
'But actually doing investigation and fact-checking is *hard*. Can't we just have them all shot? Would be much easier... No? Oh, well, take down their sites then.
We'll sit here on our mountain of gold and laugh at the little people as they scurry around trying to save their thieving websites.'
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