The Internet is now ILLEGAL! (kinda)

[cheese]

Warning: This thread is sailing into potentially moderator-dangerous waters...

As a few of you may have noted over the weekend a prominant "linking" site where users could find links to illegal content on the internet (such as movies and tv shows) was shut down. The site in question offered only links, and hosted no illegal content themselves. The site was based in the uk. The man who ran the site has been arrested and the servers pulled, removing the site from the internet. The man has been arrested for "facliltating copywrite infringement" and trademark violations.

The legallity of linking sites is dubious. Reading through copywrite and trademark law in the UK it would be an extremely streched arguement that could cover linking.

The move by the UK authorities is atonishing for a number of reasons. First it is unclear that any laws are actually being broken. While linking is certainly morally on rocky ground, the laws themselves are not designed to cover linking, their wording makes it clear that "goods" pretty much have to change hands. Second, they have arrested a 26 year old guy instead of going after the big fish. It is very clear that sites hosting copyright material are illegal. Such sites are YouTube, Google etc. Surely it is ridiculous to not go for the sites hosting the material. There might be a hundred linking sites all linking to one illegal host. If you take out the host then all those links are useless. Take away definately illegal host sites and you eliminate the linking problem. This means that the UK authorities should be arresting the owners of google and YouTube, not the small man from England. Taking down one linking site does nothing to combat the actual problem. Thirdly, the consequences are phenomenal, and if this all goes through legally pretty much the entire internet will be illegal. Google facilitiates in exactly the same way using its search engine. You type in anything in a google search you will probably come up with at least one link to some kind of illegal material. Google then is doubly guilty, both for hosting and linking to illegal content.
Even if you don't hit an illegal site in a search the sites that come up could be linked to sites that are linked to illegal material (and so on forever. Hence the entire linked together internet becomes illegal).

Of course one could say that google doesn't actively promote itself as a source of copyright infringing material, but if two parties are committing a crime does it matter that one party advertises the fact and one doesn't? Both are still committing the crime. And maybe it's better for the authorities to have the linking sites so they can follow the link themselves and get the hosts.

They are not going after the hosts because the hosts are big business, they have super-highly paid lawyers meaning the cost of prosecution would be huge, shutting them down would cause chaos in the economy of the IT industry, so instead of going after the actual criminals they have arrested the small guy.

To be honest I'd rather the police were putting their efforts in to catching and preventing more serious crimes, like murder, and the increasing gun and gang culture in some areas of the UK.

So far the arrested man has not been charged with any offence, some reports suggest he's looking at a £100,000,000 fine for the amount of money the site has supposedly cost the industry. Others say that there is no way they are going to be able to charge him with anything. If this man is charged and found to be guilty then it seems that huge sections of the internet must also be illegal.

[Skydiver]

basically, it's intimidation tactics.

the mpaa does go after the 'big fish' but many of them have lawyers themselves, thus it's easier to go after the 'small fry'. It generates publicity and, they think, sympathy for thier cause.

It also, in a very round about way, is thier way to discourage anyone aligning themselves with the providers of illegal content. If even having a link to an illegal site can get you arrested, in their minds, folks won't have links and the illegal sites will be 'choked off'

Dubious logic at best.


Basically, the mpaa and other groups, such as networks and studios, are and have been about 5 years behind the technology. They would not - and some will not - provide a legal source to obtain entertainment material. They are still trying to control what we watch and when we watch. For example, digital cable only allows you to decode and watch or tape 2 things at a time. Yet the networks will program multiple shows head to head in the desire to 'win' over the other.

Fans are forced to make choices. The thing is, we are more and more a 'give me what i want when i want' society, which flies in the face of the networks and their 'no, you watch what we want you to watch when we want you to watch it'

They are trying to set precedent. They are trying to start the groundwork for laws that could POTENTIALLY make just a handful of distributers the only source for entertainment and curtail the free spread of info (worst case scenario that could ever come out is the ruling that any sort of entertainment content can only be put on the net via a few 'official' sources, thus removing the ability we have now to put whatever up we want)

Basicaly, the entertainment industry is struggling to cram the genie back into the bottle. And they're gonna use the small fry to set those precedents so that they are in place before they take on the big fish

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STuff like this is why we do not allow the trade of illegal download info on this forum.

[AvatarIII]

i can't wait for the end of scheduled programming,
all TV and Movies on demand all the time, for everyone,
i mean, that sort of thing is already starting and has been going on quite a while with "on demand" movies and more recently "on demand" and legal internet based viewing of tv shows.
i think that is the future of TV and of course, it will bring around a world of better TV, because noone is going to watch shows they don't want to, when as it stands, often people will watch something just because "there's nothing better on" and therefore ratings will be more accurate.
it will also pull people away from watching TV perpetually, because once people have watched everything they want to, they'll run out of stuff to watch, and will probably go and do something constructive.
when all that is in place, there will be no reason for people to pirate anything

[Womble]

The move by the UK authorities is atonishing for a number of reasons. First it is unclear that any laws are actually being broken. While linking is certainly morally on rocky ground, the laws themselves are not designed to cover linking, their wording makes it clear that "goods" pretty much have to change hands. Second, they have arrested a 26 year old guy instead of going after the big fish. It is very clear that sites hosting copyright material are illegal. Such sites are YouTube, Google etc. Surely it is ridiculous to not go for the sites hosting the material. There might be a hundred linking sites all linking to one illegal host. If you take out the host then all those links are useless. Take away definately illegal host sites and you eliminate the linking problem. This means that the UK authorities should be arresting the owners of google and YouTube, not the small man from England. Taking down one linking site does nothing to combat the actual problem. Thirdly, the consequences are phenomenal, and if this all goes through legally pretty much the entire internet will be illegal. Google facilitiates in exactly the same way using its search engine. You type in anything in a google search you will probably come up with at least one link to some kind of illegal material. Google then is doubly guilty, both for hosting and linking to illegal content.
Even if you don't hit an illegal site in a search the sites that come up could be linked to sites that are linked to illegal material (and so on forever. Hence the entire linked together internet becomes illegal).

Of course one could say that google doesn't actively promote itself as a source of copyright infringing material, but if two parties are committing a crime does it matter that one party advertises the fact and one doesn't? Both are still committing the crime. And maybe it's better for the authorities to have the linking sites so they can follow the link themselves and get the hosts.

I tried to follow your logic here, but it escaped me.

Google and Youtube are billboards. Anyone can come and put up whatever, and moderation is done post-factum. They are not a party to the crime anymore than me posting a child porn link on this board would make the moderators complicit in child pornography distribution. The website team's ability to moderate content is limited, and in the case of Youtube where 65 000 videos are uploaded per day, it is damn near impossible. Moreover, YouTube explicitly forbids uploading videos that constitute copyright infrigement, and deletes them whenever they are discovered. Youtube or Google could only be called parties to the crime if they were notified of an illegal upload but refused to take action.

This is NOT the same as consciously running a website dedicated to linking to illegal content- which is akin to marketing stolen goods.

To be honest I'd rather the police were putting their efforts in to catching and preventing more serious crimes, like murder, and the increasing gun and gang culture in some areas of the UK.

Copyright infringement is theft, pure and simple. Hurting a movie's DVD sales is exactly like taking a chunk out of your salary. It undermines the ability of actors, writers, musicians, movie directors and other men of art to make a living by their trade. Why should the police not fight it?

The thing is, we are more and more a 'give me what i want when i want' society, which flies in the face of the networks and their 'no, you watch what we want you to watch when we want you to watch it'

The thing is, we are more and more a "give me a free lunch" society. We want to get what we want when we want without regard for the rights and livelyhood of those who are meant to give.

[Skydiver]

there's making a living and there's making a killing.

When you shell out $20 for that cd, how much of that money does the artist really get? Not much. The suits take more than thier fair share all because 'make me a billionaire' is the prime motivation of many

I have no issue at all with artists getting thier compensation. What i do have an issue with is bully tactics with people pushing 'the little guys' around.

Some need to be slapped down, sure. And there are always those out there that will take more than their share and do their dangdest to not pay for it.

But surely there is a happy medium, where content can be protected but the consumers aren't micromanaged into obscurity