" It just gets incrementally harder to justify investing in making it. "
No it doesn't. People create without a legal need to all the time. Artists commission works. They do this without having to enforce copyrights on their consumers. Artists build portfolios of the art that they do to show their talent. Where does the copyright, the monopoly on distribution, act as a great incentive?
""But it's not new!" or "Once it's opened, it should sold as used!" - Wrong. The game wasn't touched, making it new."
No, even the coupon was part of the package. It would have been great if Square gave them a heads up about this, instead offering a "no coupon" for one of its vendors. Taking out the coupon and not giving that option to consumers after learning of the coupons, is not something a legitimate business should do.
"The court remains unpersuaded that the peer-to-peer architecture of the BitTorrent technology justifies the joinder of otherwise unrelated defendants in a single action," wrote (PDF) federal Magistrate Judge Joseph Spero last week before launching into a detailed analysis of how BitTorrent "swarm" activity might be mapped to existing legal notions about "acting in concert":
First, the Hansmeier declaration [about BitTorrent technology] argues at length about the "concerted activity" within a given swarm. Presumably he does so in response to the concern highlighted by Judge Ryu that users in different swarms have nothing in common other than downloading the same work, which as this court and others have noted is insufficient under our precedent. But the Hansmeier declaration itself offers overwhelming evidence that the IP addresses were in fact gathered from multiple swarms.
Second, even if the IP addresses at issue in this motion all came from a single swarm, there is no evidence to suggest that each of the addresses "acted in concert" with all of the others. In fact, the nearly six-week span covering the activity associated with each of the addresses calls into question whether there was ever common activity linking the addresses in this case. In this age of instant digital gratification, it is difficult to imagine, let alone believe, that an alleged infringer of the copyrighted work would patiently wait six weeks to collect the bits of the work necessary to watch the work as a whole. At the very least, there is no proof that bits from each of these addresses were ever assembled into a single swarm. As the court previously explained, under this court's precedent regarding other file sharing protocols, merely infringing the same copyrighted work over this period is not enough.
Finally, nothing in the BitTorrent architecture changes the fact that each defendant also will likely have a different defense."
The bold part? That's where Howell is out of concert. Of course, since she helped draft those laws, she knows how to work around the system and allow these plaintiffs to sue for settlement damages instead of doing what's right.
Here's a flying leap in logic...
If gamestop is selling a game used, SOMEONE bought the game already. It just had to be reiterated that the entire"but developers must be paid" argument is invalid here.
I can only help you so much. If you can't see that her ruling of mass IPs goes against tradition set as far back as the RIAA's sue em all strategy, I can't help you.
When life gives you lemons, don’t make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back! Get mad! I don’t want your damn lemons! What am I supposed to do with these?! Demand to see life’s manager! Make life rue the day it thought it could give Cave Johnson lemons! Do you know who I am? I’m the man who’s gonna burn your house down! With the lemons! I’m gonna get my engineers to invent a combustible lemon that burns your house down!
Last week, Washington, DC federal judge Beryl Howell ruled on three mass file-sharing lawsuits. Judges in Texas, West Virginia, and Illinois had all ruled recently that such lawsuits were defective in various ways, but Howell gave her cases the green light; attorneys could use the federal courts to sue thousands of people at once and then issue mass subpoenas to Internet providers. Yes, issues of "joinder" and "jurisdiction" would no doubt arise later, but the initial mass unmasking of alleged file-swappers was legitimate.
The closest that the US has gone into fighting an idea would be the War on Drugs. It's akin to trying to fight copyright because both seem to try to attack the suppliers of an illicit through a hard ban. More than 40 years later the Drug Wars have failed, and so has this idea that more enforcement of copyright. Seriously, it's been more than 10 years of the DMCA. It's cost the industry $3 million to fight infringement, for the RIAA to receive $300K. The move to criminal infringement is less of a burden on the industry, but it's still all about trying to take people's freedoms away for infringing a copyright.
The ones looking to shove this back will be the judicial system. There is no way in hell that the judges assigned to violent crimes such as murder and arson are going to put away a nonviolent criminal of a copyright infringer in the same place. So for all of the law, that's where you'll probably see a major pushback.
" Even the copyright lobby's staunchest supporters are not insane."
Uhm... They're clueless about what it takes to make their business model work. Have you read up on Doug Morrison by chance? How about the game of musical chairs going on with the Big Four? They don't care about cost, they care about control of the market like they had in the 80s. And they're all part of the RIAA which supports more draconian laws to curtail consumer freedoms. If you can find a way to talk sense to them, be my guest. But it's a lot of money being passed around to limit platforms of expression, in a quixotic attempt to limit the market to what makes the industries the most money.
While we can know that more enforcement = more debt, you should note that it is the MPAA and RIAA that are pushing for more criminal infringement laws.
You are aware that Youtube is an American company right? With everything that it invests into the internet, I doubt that it can just pull up quickly and move operations outside of the US. Yes, I believe the same that if the US begins to use more enforcement through CFSA or PIPA, it's going to slip through their fingers.
The fact remains that the factors for proving criminal infringement are not clearly defined before passing this law. It's still overcriminalization to no real benefit for the consumer (who is to be jailed), the copyright holder (who still hasn't made money), nor the state (that has wasted taxpayer money on a civil case)
"Armed robbery (and any robbery for that matter) is an economic crime. That is to say they aren't doing it for the violence, they are doing it for the money."
Here's what I wrote: The threat of force is used in your example. You're threatening someone with their life if they don't give up items of monetary value. In no way does copyright infringement harm anyone's physical well being.
And what Karl wrote: Nothing is taken from the copyright holders - neither product, nor money. And the costs of manufacturing and distribution is borne entirely by the infringers. It is not "robbery," it is competition - unlawful though it may be.
You are not answering that point, merely continuing your own assertion.
"It's sort of how you figure out the difference between criminal and civil liabilities in copyright violations."
"This guy was actively reselling access to copyright material, that makes it criminal, you know, an economic crime."
Based on how the government collects evidence, I'm not likely to believe they know what the hell they're doing in regards to copyright law. The fact that he made a paltry sum of money compared to what the WWE and UFC are bringing in from their licensed channels should be more than telling that this is a waste of government resources.
"You may not like it, you may not enjoy it, but in the end, it's the creation of personal wealth via criminal activities"
Wow, he's an economic terrorist for running a server and passing links around. And last I checked linking on the internet was legal unless now you can prove he caused economic harm to UFC and WWE. $6000 is not economic profit, so please... Show evidence that the people he sold tickets to would have paid the WWE and UFC's higher fees of $50-$70 for a spot on the PPV versus going to a bar and doing the exact same thing of watching for free. I'll wait.
"In piracy, the files are in one place and the site in another to try to create separation for legal purposes."
The reverse is true. Because of the criminalization of the filesharing, in order to remain legal, most filesharing sites separate those files to avoid liability from the major trade industries. I can't look at every one of the rulings, but I notice that UFC has really stepped up pressure on smaller sites rather than continue litigation against places such as justin.tv
" So when Mike stands on the single P10 v Google ruling, he is pretty much ignoring everything else going on."
You're moving the goalposts there. You're talking about the Netherlands and the Newzbin2 example, then coming back to the US to discuss copyright law? I would think you would want to use a US standard such as Limewire to make your point.
"Clearly, he feels there should not be prosecution of this sort of thing. He is standing up for the site owner, and coming up with excuses why his site is "legal"."
Because a 19 year old kid running a website that made $6000 is clearly a threat to the *world*, for a site that is barely known to merely a handful of people, so that he has to face jailtime should he lose his case. I can see that conversation in prison...
Ali: What are you in for?
Convict 1: I'm in for murder and drugs. You?
Ali: I showed people a link to a UFC match.
Seriously, does the punishment for this and the wasted tax dollars to protect UFC's overpriced model really fit the crime of trying to jail this person?
The rest is just you ranting so it's not worth bringing up.
No, by putting the "public performance" into copyright law and specifically putting streaming in there, you are specifically trying to harass someone for putting up copyrighted material of any sort by criminalizing them. The other detriment is if you've "made money" from the video watching. Whether it's in the form of donations or direct sales, doesn't matter to a prosecutor. What matters is did you do it?
Hell, I've seen John Cornyn's form letter. He says it himself that " federal prosecutors have little incentive to pursue misdemeanors, and as a result these crimes largely go unpunished." Now why does a federal prosecutor *NEED* to combat piracy? Why is a prosecutor trying to "protect the internet" when it's running just fine?
And the final question: Why is streaming being criminalized in the first place? All studies have suggested that people are paying more for tangible products. Netflix was beating piracy (Now, I'm not so sure with the higher licensing fees and crazy price structures). Even the suppressed report of the entertainment industry found that pirates are their best customers.
So why are PIPA, S978, the UK Digital Economy Act, the ACTA, the DMCA, the NET ACT, and all of these rules for more copyright needed?
On the post: Would We Have Art Without Copyright Law?
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
No it doesn't. People create without a legal need to all the time. Artists commission works. They do this without having to enforce copyrights on their consumers. Artists build portfolios of the art that they do to show their talent. Where does the copyright, the monopoly on distribution, act as a great incentive?
On the post: Gamestop Discovers The Streisand Effect; Gives OnLive Tons Of Free Publicity In Trying To Take Away Coupons
Re: Re: Re: Re:
No, even the coupon was part of the package. It would have been great if Square gave them a heads up about this, instead offering a "no coupon" for one of its vendors. Taking out the coupon and not giving that option to consumers after learning of the coupons, is not something a legitimate business should do.
On the post: US Copyright Group, Hurt Locker Producers Sue Dead Man & Others Unlikely To Have Infringed
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
"The court remains unpersuaded that the peer-to-peer architecture of the BitTorrent technology justifies the joinder of otherwise unrelated defendants in a single action," wrote (PDF) federal Magistrate Judge Joseph Spero last week before launching into a detailed analysis of how BitTorrent "swarm" activity might be mapped to existing legal notions about "acting in concert":
First, the Hansmeier declaration [about BitTorrent technology] argues at length about the "concerted activity" within a given swarm. Presumably he does so in response to the concern highlighted by Judge Ryu that users in different swarms have nothing in common other than downloading the same work, which as this court and others have noted is insufficient under our precedent. But the Hansmeier declaration itself offers overwhelming evidence that the IP addresses were in fact gathered from multiple swarms.
Second, even if the IP addresses at issue in this motion all came from a single swarm, there is no evidence to suggest that each of the addresses "acted in concert" with all of the others. In fact, the nearly six-week span covering the activity associated with each of the addresses calls into question whether there was ever common activity linking the addresses in this case. In this age of instant digital gratification, it is difficult to imagine, let alone believe, that an alleged infringer of the copyrighted work would patiently wait six weeks to collect the bits of the work necessary to watch the work as a whole. At the very least, there is no proof that bits from each of these addresses were ever assembled into a single swarm. As the court previously explained, under this court's precedent regarding other file sharing protocols, merely infringing the same copyrighted work over this period is not enough.
Finally, nothing in the BitTorrent architecture changes the fact that each defendant also will likely have a different defense."
The bold part? That's where Howell is out of concert. Of course, since she helped draft those laws, she knows how to work around the system and allow these plaintiffs to sue for settlement damages instead of doing what's right.
On the post: Gamestop Discovers The Streisand Effect; Gives OnLive Tons Of Free Publicity In Trying To Take Away Coupons
Just one small thing...
If gamestop is selling a game used, SOMEONE bought the game already. It just had to be reiterated that the entire"but developers must be paid" argument is invalid here.
On the post: US Copyright Group, Hurt Locker Producers Sue Dead Man & Others Unlikely To Have Infringed
Re: Re:
On the post: Gamestop Discovers The Streisand Effect; Gives OnLive Tons Of Free Publicity In Trying To Take Away Coupons
Re: New or used?
On the post: US Copyright Group, Hurt Locker Producers Sue Dead Man & Others Unlikely To Have Infringed
Re: Re: Re:
I can only help you so much. If you can't see that her ruling of mass IPs goes against tradition set as far back as the RIAA's sue em all strategy, I can't help you.
On the post: Killer_Tofu's Favorite Techdirt Posts Of The Week
I say what you're all thinking!
On the post: US Copyright Group, Hurt Locker Producers Sue Dead Man & Others Unlikely To Have Infringed
Re:
On the post: US Copyright Group, Hurt Locker Producers Sue Dead Man & Others Unlikely To Have Infringed
Re:
Link
First paragraph:
Last week, Washington, DC federal judge Beryl Howell ruled on three mass file-sharing lawsuits. Judges in Texas, West Virginia, and Illinois had all ruled recently that such lawsuits were defective in various ways, but Howell gave her cases the green light; attorneys could use the federal courts to sue thousands of people at once and then issue mass subpoenas to Internet providers. Yes, issues of "joinder" and "jurisdiction" would no doubt arise later, but the initial mass unmasking of alleged file-swappers was legitimate.
Tsk, tsk, tsk. Troll better next time.
On the post: Killer_Tofu's Favorite Techdirt Posts Of The Week
Re:
On the post: Paul Vixie Explains How PROTECT IP Will Break The Internet
Re:
The closest that the US has gone into fighting an idea would be the War on Drugs. It's akin to trying to fight copyright because both seem to try to attack the suppliers of an illicit through a hard ban. More than 40 years later the Drug Wars have failed, and so has this idea that more enforcement of copyright. Seriously, it's been more than 10 years of the DMCA. It's cost the industry $3 million to fight infringement, for the RIAA to receive $300K. The move to criminal infringement is less of a burden on the industry, but it's still all about trying to take people's freedoms away for infringing a copyright.
The ones looking to shove this back will be the judicial system. There is no way in hell that the judges assigned to violent crimes such as murder and arson are going to put away a nonviolent criminal of a copyright infringer in the same place. So for all of the law, that's where you'll probably see a major pushback.
" Even the copyright lobby's staunchest supporters are not insane."
Uhm... They're clueless about what it takes to make their business model work. Have you read up on Doug Morrison by chance? How about the game of musical chairs going on with the Big Four? They don't care about cost, they care about control of the market like they had in the 80s. And they're all part of the RIAA which supports more draconian laws to curtail consumer freedoms. If you can find a way to talk sense to them, be my guest. But it's a lot of money being passed around to limit platforms of expression, in a quixotic attempt to limit the market to what makes the industries the most money.
While we can know that more enforcement = more debt, you should note that it is the MPAA and RIAA that are pushing for more criminal infringement laws.
On the post: Paul Vixie Explains How PROTECT IP Will Break The Internet
Re:
On the post: Paul Vixie Explains How PROTECT IP Will Break The Internet
Re:
The fact remains that the factors for proving criminal infringement are not clearly defined before passing this law. It's still overcriminalization to no real benefit for the consumer (who is to be jailed), the copyright holder (who still hasn't made money), nor the state (that has wasted taxpayer money on a civil case)
On the post: EA's Origin Service Wants To Exchange Games For Your Personal Data [Updated]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: It gets even better!
On the post: ICE Arrests Another Person For Allowing Access To Streams From Elsewhere
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Hmm
"Armed robbery (and any robbery for that matter) is an economic crime. That is to say they aren't doing it for the violence, they are doing it for the money."
Here's what I wrote: The threat of force is used in your example. You're threatening someone with their life if they don't give up items of monetary value. In no way does copyright infringement harm anyone's physical well being.
And what Karl wrote: Nothing is taken from the copyright holders - neither product, nor money. And the costs of manufacturing and distribution is borne entirely by the infringers. It is not "robbery," it is competition - unlawful though it may be.
You are not answering that point, merely continuing your own assertion.
"It's sort of how you figure out the difference between criminal and civil liabilities in copyright violations."
Here's a good write up on the difference of infringement and theft from a legal perspective.
"This guy was actively reselling access to copyright material, that makes it criminal, you know, an economic crime."
Based on how the government collects evidence, I'm not likely to believe they know what the hell they're doing in regards to copyright law. The fact that he made a paltry sum of money compared to what the WWE and UFC are bringing in from their licensed channels should be more than telling that this is a waste of government resources.
"You may not like it, you may not enjoy it, but in the end, it's the creation of personal wealth via criminal activities"
Wow, he's an economic terrorist for running a server and passing links around. And last I checked linking on the internet was legal unless now you can prove he caused economic harm to UFC and WWE. $6000 is not economic profit, so please... Show evidence that the people he sold tickets to would have paid the WWE and UFC's higher fees of $50-$70 for a spot on the PPV versus going to a bar and doing the exact same thing of watching for free. I'll wait.
"In piracy, the files are in one place and the site in another to try to create separation for legal purposes."
The reverse is true. Because of the criminalization of the filesharing, in order to remain legal, most filesharing sites separate those files to avoid liability from the major trade industries. I can't look at every one of the rulings, but I notice that UFC has really stepped up pressure on smaller sites rather than continue litigation against places such as justin.tv
" So when Mike stands on the single P10 v Google ruling, he is pretty much ignoring everything else going on."
You're moving the goalposts there. You're talking about the Netherlands and the Newzbin2 example, then coming back to the US to discuss copyright law? I would think you would want to use a US standard such as Limewire to make your point.
"Clearly, he feels there should not be prosecution of this sort of thing. He is standing up for the site owner, and coming up with excuses why his site is "legal"."
Because a 19 year old kid running a website that made $6000 is clearly a threat to the *world*, for a site that is barely known to merely a handful of people, so that he has to face jailtime should he lose his case. I can see that conversation in prison...
Ali: What are you in for?
Convict 1: I'm in for murder and drugs. You?
Ali: I showed people a link to a UFC match.
Seriously, does the punishment for this and the wasted tax dollars to protect UFC's overpriced model really fit the crime of trying to jail this person?
The rest is just you ranting so it's not worth bringing up.
On the post: Paul Vixie Explains How PROTECT IP Will Break The Internet
Re:
I don't know why you're going back to the "watching videos" point, when what I'm saying is that the larger points are the ones you're ignoring.
On the post: Killer_Tofu's Favorite Techdirt Posts Of The Week
Re:
Killer Tofuuuuu!
On the post: Paul Vixie Explains How PROTECT IP Will Break The Internet
Re:
Hell, I've seen John Cornyn's form letter. He says it himself that " federal prosecutors have little incentive to pursue misdemeanors, and as a result these crimes largely go unpunished." Now why does a federal prosecutor *NEED* to combat piracy? Why is a prosecutor trying to "protect the internet" when it's running just fine?
And the final question: Why is streaming being criminalized in the first place? All studies have suggested that people are paying more for tangible products. Netflix was beating piracy (Now, I'm not so sure with the higher licensing fees and crazy price structures). Even the suppressed report of the entertainment industry found that pirates are their best customers.
So why are PIPA, S978, the UK Digital Economy Act, the ACTA, the DMCA, the NET ACT, and all of these rules for more copyright needed?
On the post: Brazil Looks To Criminalize Ripping A CD?
Re:
Mainly, set up a bureaucracy that is anathema to the freedoms that Brazil had.
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