Warp wrote:
>   Some random person is browsing the internet, and clicks on a link. The link
> happens to point to, let's say, a youtube video which contains an entire
> copyrighted song. This person does not realize that he is now illegally
> downloading a copyrighted song.

I've never heard of anyone getting sued for downloading a file. I've heard 
of people getting sued for *sharing* a file.  I think this article is 
confusing "downloading" with "sharing", and they keep switching back and 
forth between the two. "They send notices to file sharers" followed by "for 
every illegal download...."

Technically, the person who requests the copy be made (i.e., the person 
clicking the link) is the person who is responsible for copying. In 
practice, if you sued someone for downloading from youtube, you'd be pulling 
youtube into the lawsuit also, as they were engaged in making the content 
available (the "contributory infringement" bit).

I think this is where copyright law needs to get fixed up, tho. Once you add 
automation into the process, how responsible can you hold the person who 
automated things?  If the source for Windows7 winds up propagating through 
Net News, who is responsible for a copy winding up on every machine? If the 
thief only posted it to his ISP's news server once, how many copies did he make?

The way these places work is they look at a tracker, figure out who is 
seeding, pull the entire song down from that one seed, then some human 
checks that it really is the entire song, *then* they send out the lawyers. 
At least that's what I've read of it.

>   If these companies would have their way, it would soon be impossible to
> use a web browser for anything because you could have a lawsuit in your
> hands just by going to some website.

That's why we don't have laws quite *that* f'ed up.

> could even get jailed because they browsed the wrong blogs and they don't
> have money to pay for the extortion.

We aren't supposed to be sending people to jail for inability to pay civil 
fines.  (I think I read a whole bunch of outrage about it happening to one 
person, but it's certainly not normal.)

>   At the same time the real criminals, the ones who do it intentionally and
> for profit, will be undeterred. They know how to use anonymizers, they know
> how to mask their IP addresses, they know how to get around the vigilantes.

Well, other than the Pirate Bay. :-)

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   I ordered stamps from Zazzle that read "Place Stamp Here".

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