This is why it's not possible to steal from rich people

[wufwugy]

Or powerful people. Basically, it is no longer immoral to 'steal' from the wealthy and powerful. Here's proof

http://torrentfreak.com/student-hit-...a-case-090731/

[flomo]

Obama orders seals to shoot pirates.

[spoonitnow]

Sucks for him, but my first thought was who even uses Kazaa anymore?

[boost]

Sucks for him, but my first thought was who even uses Kazaa anymore?

he was sued for use in 2004! Jesus, that is so fucked up. It just doesnt make sense, its like they have learned nothing from the war on drugs. Busting crackheads and potheads does absolutely nothing but imprison nonviolent drug users. Busting some college kid is not going to shut down p2p pirating.

[JKDS]

price of one song: $1
number of songs = 30

total amount avoided = $30

fine = $600k

um, what????? 8th amendment much?

[givememyleg]

lol america

[Jack Sawyer]

lol america

[wufwugy]

lol america

Not just America, but Sweden too

http://torrentfreak.com/the-pirate-b...erdict-090417/

[Jack Sawyer]

lol america

Not just America, but Sweden too

http://torrentfreak.com/the-pirate-b...erdict-090417/

Let's compare, wufwugy.

Peter Sunde: Guilty. Fredrik Neij: Guilty. Gottfrid Svartholm: Guilty. Carl Lundström: Guilty. The four receive 1 year in jail each and fines totaling $3,620,000.

This means, that on average, each of these guys would have to pay $900K. Good luck on collecting that, but that's another story.

ThePirateBay is nothing but THE LARGEST FUCKING BITTORENT TRACKER ON THE GODDAMN PLANET. In a single fucking day, this tracker transmits BILLIONS of times the actual data Joel did from his room in his momma's house DURING HIS WHOLE LIFE.

This Joel kid is just an average stupid kid who
1) was stupid enough to use kazaa in the first place
2) didn't know how (or bother to) cover his tracks
3) has to pay roughly the same as the TPB guys for having shared 30 songs. There were 800 in his folder, but the RIAA chose to ignore the other 770 for added shock value.

You mean 30 songs? Are you kidding me? I know quite a few that, by this reasoning, would be fined 18982981793437781773180391734970417301730909172308 179082730173019803091287104710237198273091740871 pjillion gajillion sixtillion dollars.

Its sha-yi-jing-bai, kill one to warn a hundred. Two actually, with Jamie Thomas-Rasset getting 80K per song for about 2 Mil. A few things do highlight the sadness that is the US justice system:

1) wtf?
2) more people not being outraged by this outcome
3) the money collected would be used, not to reimburse the actual "victims" of this crime, but to fund further litigation efforts by the RIAA, despite these fuckers announcing that they would "cease to sue people"
4) people keep referring to this as "stealing", when it is infact "infringement on the right to copy the works involved". That's right, you can steal a car, because when the owner would arrive to where his car should have been parked, it would not be there. Simple. The mp3 will continue being there forever, barring hard drive or optical storage media failure. The ads thta are being put on DVDs highlight this shit.
5) The RIAA not accepting its obsolescence. I mean, you gotta give it to them, the dinosaur that fought back extinction. With the creation of the internet, the artists can now succesfully cut off the middlemen, and can now deliver their goods without having to pay for any bullshit. No one but themselves should collect royalties, and tech is now so far along that Joe Smith in his basement can produce kick-ass music and distribute it, while having spent lunch money.
6) people not realizing that filesharing actually exposes works to a much larger audience. Take my own example, on numerous youtube clips I can't watch em because they are "not available in your country". WTF? Its on the fucking internet, how is it in my country or not? But if I login with a proxy I can see the same damn clip.
Without filesharing I would never have come across lounge music for instance. Ever.
7) With Biden as VP, the music and vids cartel actually got all the Law power they needed. It seems Biden was recipient of many gifts from the RIAA, the MPAA, and all the copyright assholes. And somehow no one saw this coming. Which naturally leads to 8
8) what the RIAA/MPAA thinks is law, becomes law.


Edit:
And for added LOL factor: BREIN, the Dutch equivalent of copyright assholes, just summoned The Pirate Bay guys to come to appear in a Dutch Court. They did this via Twitter, Facebook and some other social network I don't remember which. When TPB obviously did not show up, the judge ordered a default win for BREIN, who then demanded for TPB to remove access for all dutch users from the tracker. And 30K euros for each day they refuse to comply. The beautiful part was that downloading and uploading shit is legal in the Netherlands, they have huge levies on CDs or something like that.

TPB is now suing BREIN for defamation in a Swedish court.


Edit 2:
from Arstechnica, a smart response from somebody who knows wtf he's talking about.

Hello. I am a foreigner who thinks this judgement is ridiculous and harms the reputation of the United States. I also think it is tremendously damaging to copyright law itself, more broadly to respect for the law within the U.S. Awards like this, so out-of-touch with reality, promote unprincipled observance of the law: do whatever you can get away with, just don't get caught.

I am also a scholar studying the online commons (hence unavoidably copyright) and a copyfighter.

You need to stop treating the U.S. Constitution like the word of God. It has many unique and admirable characteristics. But it ain't perfect. Some of its measures were evil (it's one-time support for slavery, for example). Like any law, it is a technical tool of governance, not a moral code. The law is one thing; ethics are another.

In a democracy, the legitimacy of the law is usually understood to arise from the consent of the governed. It is effective primarily because people choose to respect it. I do not mean they merely obey the law, I mean they must actually respect it. When you have a significant proportion of the population (not even a majority or near majority) who do not respect the law, it tends to fail. Copyright, as it stands, is clearly failing. It is perceived - correctly! - as an abusive tool bought and paid for by a few special interests.

You can debate the technicalities of the law all you like. The question of whether the law is just is not something the law itself can resolve. That is outside the law. This law, as it stands, as this jury award shows, is unjust. The harm of that goes far beyond any hardship to Mr Tenenbaum: a society built on the rule of law must be very careful when it undermines the legitimacy of that law.

Edit 3:
An example, just to show the fuckedupness of it all

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,535914,00.html
Court records say Jenkins "did willfully inflict" the injury to her other son "by striking the child's head on a surface, causing a fracture to the child's skull," on Oct. 19, 2008. She was sentenced to 29 days of work release, fined $75.50 and put on probation for two years.

[givememyleg]

lol sweden

[Renton]

I realize that this is playing directly into their hands to do this, but should I be worried at all? Is there something I should be doing to cover my tracks? I use torrents and download entire bands' catalogs (i.e. last week I downloaded 9 gigs worth of the cure records and bootlegs, so thats gotta be like 5 billion dollars worth of fine).

[spoonitnow]

I realize that this is playing directly into their hands to do this, but should I be worried at all? Is there something I should be doing to cover my tracks? I use torrents and download entire bands' catalogs (i.e. last week I downloaded 9 gigs worth of the cure records and bootlegs, so thats gotta be like 5 billion dollars worth of fine).

And you're a gambler! They'd probably hang you.

[wufwugy]

I realize that this is playing directly into their hands to do this, but should I be worried at all? Is there something I should be doing to cover my tracks? I use torrents and download entire bands' catalogs (i.e. last week I downloaded 9 gigs worth of the cure records and bootlegs, so thats gotta be like 5 billion dollars worth of fine).

No

There's more to this story that isn't in this article, but it's irrelevant to the outrageous verdict so I didn't link it. He could have settled out of court, he had been warned in letter by the RIAA, and had previous litigation over this. Also, the RIAA has said that they are not pursuing any other individuals over this, they're just wrapping up the current ones they have

[Parasurama]

@renton: Although the method the RIAA uses to choose who it prosecutes is probably arbitrary, I think this particular guy got in trouble because he was sharing the songs, as in making them available to anyone using kazaa.

So, if you torrent and then immediately stop seeding (like I do) it's not easy for them to trace pirated copies of songs to your machine.

As an aside, I think torrents make it harder to gather information and prosecute file sharers because when you torrent a file, you get pieces of it from many different sources

[spoonitnow]

If you're super paranoid you could probably just record songs using something like Audacity straight to your machine from playlist.com, youtube.com, pandora.com, etc.

[givememyleg]

i got a letter in the mail like 6 years ago from my isp for uploading a movie over irc. they slapped my wrist and threatened disconnection and legal trouble if i did it again.

[flomo]

i got a letter in the mail like 6 years ago from my isp for uploading a movie over irc. they slapped my wrist and threatened disconnection and legal trouble if i did it again.

you are a very bad boy.

[Renton]

@renton: Although the method the RIAA uses to choose who it prosecutes is probably arbitrary, I think this particular guy got in trouble because he was sharing the songs, as in making them available to anyone using kazaa.

So, if you torrent and then immediately stop seeding (like I do) it's not easy for them to trace pirated copies of songs to your machine.

As an aside, I think torrents make it harder to gather information and prosecute file sharers because when you torrent a file, you get pieces of it from many different sources

well you'll have to seed or you'll have a shitty ratio and eventually shitty download speeds

[Parasurama]

@renton: Although the method the RIAA uses to choose who it prosecutes is probably arbitrary, I think this particular guy got in trouble because he was sharing the songs, as in making them available to anyone using kazaa.

So, if you torrent and then immediately stop seeding (like I do) it's not easy for them to trace pirated copies of songs to your machine.

As an aside, I think torrents make it harder to gather information and prosecute file sharers because when you torrent a file, you get pieces of it from many different sources

well you'll have to seed or you'll have a shitty ratio and eventually shitty download speeds

true for private trackers, but I just use the public ones (and deal with slower speeds). I'm guessing I don't torrent as much as you.

[boost]

I guess its a bit retarded to get on a moral highhorse when talking about p2p etiquette, but if you dont share youre essentially biting the hand that feeds you. Honor amongst thieves or whatever..

[pocketfours]

sad imo