http://torrentfreak.com/illegal-downloads-150x-more-profitable-than-legal-sales-091009/
-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   I ordered stamps from Zazzle that read "Place Stamp Here".

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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>
http://torrentfreak.com/illegal-downloads-150x-more-profitable-than-legal-sales-091009/

  What happens in the following scenario:

  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. (It could be, for example, that the song
is being used as background music for some animation or whatever.) Then
one of these copyright vigilante companies resolves his address and sends
him an email demanding he pay 450 euros, or he will get sued for ten times
that amount (a very common and extremely effective scare tactic).

  You don't even have to go to youtube.com in order to "infringe" copyright
accidentally like that. Youtube (and other similar) videos can be embedded
in web pages, so just browsing a random blog or whatever website out there
might automatically make you download a song illegally without you even
knowing what's happening.

  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. It would be like a virus, but instead
of fucking up your computer, it fucks up your wallet. Or worse. Some people
could even get jailed because they browsed the wrong blogs and they don't
have money to pay for the extortion.

  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.

  The internet has not killed music, but music might well kill the internet.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Warp schrieb:
> 
>   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. (It could be, for example, that the song
> is being used as background music for some animation or whatever.) Then
> one of these copyright vigilante companies resolves his address and sends
> him an email demanding he pay 450 euros, or he will get sued for ten times
> that amount (a very common and extremely effective scare tactic).

At least in Germany, there's an easy tactics against this:

- /Do/ comply with the request to sign a written statement that you will 
not download this video again (which, formally, is the /main/ demand). 
This will prevent them from sueing you for the copyright infringement, 
with the big money label attached.

- Do /not/ concede to have infringed copyright; just inform them that 
you agree to comply with their main demand if it makes them happy.

- Do /not/ pay the 450 euros (which, formally, are to cover their 
expenses so far to uncover your alleged infringement and send you this 
letter), arguing that you consider this demand unsubstantiated (a) 
qualitatively and (b) quantitatively. Thus, if they do want the money 
from you, they'll still have to take it to court, but with the copyright 
infringement out of the way and a much smaller price tag, while still 
leaving them with the burden of having to prove that you actually 
infringed copyright; even if the price tag would still be high enough to 
file a lawsuit (which more often than not it won't be), they're likely 
not to sue, because it's comparatively risky business for them and won't 
pay off on average.

- If you really want to piss them off, send them 1 euro for their 
expenses :-) (again, make sure to not concede anything).

>   The internet has not killed music, but music might well kill the internet.

I don't think that there is /anything/ that can kill the internet. It 
may be forced to evolve, but that's all.

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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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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> >   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.

  Well, if you don't count the fact that in some countries just putting a
link to copyrighted material is illegal. You don't have to *distribute* the
material, it's enough that you *link* to the material.

  That kind of law is really f'ed up in so many levels. For example:

- If it's illegal to post a link to copyrighted material, is it illegal to
post a link to a web page which has illegal material as an embeded video?
Is it illegal to post a link to a youtube video with copyrighted material?

- Is it illegal to post a link to a page which contains links to copyrighted
material (but doesn't distribute it itself)? How many indirection stpes are
necessary before posting a link becomes legal, and why?

- If you post a link to a webpage containing only legal material, and then
some time later illegal material appears on that page, have you committed
a crime retroactively? How do you *prove* that the page did not have the
illegal material when you posted the link?

- If instead of posting an URL to illegal material you describe the URL in
words, is it still illegal? What if you give search keywords to find the
page using google? Is it still illegal? Again, how much indirection has to
be done before doing it becomes legal, and why?

  If the answer is "it hasn't been tested in court", then the law is *really*
f'ed up. How can you obey a law which even the lawmakers can't figure out
precisely when it's applicable and when it isn't? That's completely arbitrary
and random. You could be committing a crime without knowing, because some law
is so imprecise and ambiguous. How can you expect people to obey a law which
doesn't actually define in exact terms when you break the law? That's just
crazy.

> > 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.)

  What do they do there if someone can't pay fines or other payments, and
has no property to speak of?

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Warp wrote:
>   Well, if you don't count the fact that in some countries just putting a
> link to copyrighted material is illegal. You don't have to *distribute* the
> material, it's enough that you *link* to the material.

That's distributing, again, not downloading. You don't get sued for 
following the link, but for publishing it.

What country is it that has links to copyrighted material being illegal?

It's illegal here (in some cases) to put a link to code that breaks 
encryption supposedly protecting copyright. That's the new DMCA stuff.

I suppose I should mention IANAL, but y'all knew that already.

> - If it's illegal to post a link to copyrighted material, is it illegal to
> post a link to a web page which has illegal material as an embeded video?
> Is it illegal to post a link to a youtube video with copyrighted material?
> 
> - Is it illegal to post a link to a page which contains links to copyrighted
> material (but doesn't distribute it itself)? How many indirection stpes are
> necessary before posting a link becomes legal, and why?

And is it illegal to include that in a search engine like Google?  (I'm 
pretty sure Google is technically breaking the law by having "cached" 
versions of your web pages on their servers, incidentally, especially since 
they mark it up with colors to match your search queries, meaning they're no 
longer serving as a "proxy", which is explicitly allowed in the copyright 
code. I'm sure they have enough lawyers to pummel that into the ground, tho.)

>   If the answer is "it hasn't been tested in court", then the law is *really*
> f'ed up. How can you obey a law which even the lawmakers can't figure out
> precisely when it's applicable and when it isn't? 

Technically, in the USA, if it's not clear enough that you know when you're 
breaking it, the law isn't a valid enforcable law. In practice, this doesn't 
always hold up. (See, for example, anti-trust laws, or "I'll know it when I 
see it" pornography laws, etc.)

> That's just crazy.

Fully agreed.

>   What do they do there if someone can't pay fines or other payments, and
> has no property to speak of?

In a *criminal* case, you go to jail. I.e., if you get caught shoplifting, 
you might get fined "$100 or 30 days in jail".

Otherwise, you file personal bankruptcy, which means the court looks at 
everything you own, excludes the stuff that is by law not possible to take, 
and takes the rest, giving it to the people you owe. There are some things 
(which vary state by state) that the court isn't allowed to take. Retirement 
money, in California, is an example, which is why OJSimpson lost a lawsuit 
for millions of dollars and is still happily retired and living a wealthy life.

Most places have "homestead laws", which means that at least some of the 
money from selling your primary house stays with you for you to pay rent or 
whatever (they won't make you homeless). In Texas, where being a farmer or 
rancher was a big thing when the laws were being made, they don't get to 
take your house at all. In California, you get something like the first $75K 
from selling your house to pay your debts.

After that, except for special circumstances, you're done. Your debts are 
gone, and the person you owe the money to is SOL. The exceptions are what 
you'd expect, like owing tax money, which just looms over your head and some 
of which comes out of your paycheck each week, taken before you even see it.

A lot of poor people are "judgement-proof", meaning that even if you get a 
judge to tell them to pay you, they have no money to pay with. A lot of rich 
people are also "judgement-proof", because they technically own nothing 
themselves. Instead, they put money in a company whose charter is (say) to 
pay them the profits from investments until they die, and then to disburse 
that money to their children. Technically that money belongs to the kids and 
you can't take it from the kids to pay the parent's debts. Also, since the 
company is required to give the parents the profit, you can't take it away 
because the kids can't pay their debts. Also, since the company is just 
buying stocks and such, they're not doing anything that could conceivably 
get them sued.

But basically you give your money over to a judge, and he decides what to do 
with it, and then you're off the hook.

For businesses, it's a bit more complicated, because it's not *too* bad to 
close down a business that's so far in debt it'll never recover, while you 
wouldn't want to execute someone simply because they've already spent more 
than they'll ever earn in their lifetime.

How about where you are? Is it more enlightened?

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

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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> What country is it that has links to copyrighted material being illegal?

  The USA, among others. See for example
http://www.elawfacts.com/2008/10/contributory-copyright-infringment-and-illegal-linking/

  The embedded youtube example has another twist:

- Suppose you embed a completely legal youtube video into your website. Then
some time later the author of that video *changes* it to contain copyrighted
material (AFAIK that's perfectly possible in youtube), and you never notice.
Does your embedding become retractively illegal?

- One could argue that it's your fault for not checking regularly the videos
you are embedding. However, assume you embedded it on some web forum post
which you cannot change afterwards. (I don't know if any actual web forum
disallows editing your own posts, but it's at least theoretically completely
possible.)

> How about where you are? Is it more enlightened?

  I have to confess I don't know the specifics here either. There is the
concept of imprisonment because of debts, but I'm not acquainted with the
details of when this is the case.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Warp wrote:
> - One could argue that it's your fault for not checking regularly the
> videos you are embedding. However, assume you embedded it on some web
> forum post which you cannot change afterwards. (I don't know if any actual
> web forum disallows editing your own posts, but it's at least
> theoretically completely possible.)

I know of a "forum" system that doesn't let you edit posts, but doesn't let
you embed videos either. It's called NNTP.

I also know of a web-based forum software that only lets you edit posts
within 30 minutes of posting; except moderators who can edit any time.

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On 10/11/09 13:41, Darren New wrote:
> take. Retirement money, in California, is an example, which is why
> OJSimpson lost a lawsuit for millions of dollars and is still happily
> retired and living a wealthy life.

	Which universe do you live in?

-- 
The worst thing about censorship is .

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Warp wrote:
> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>> What country is it that has links to copyrighted material being illegal?
> 
>   The USA, among others. See for example
>
http://www.elawfacts.com/2008/10/contributory-copyright-infringment-and-illegal-linking/

Huh. OK.  I'm not sure that linking to something you don't know is 
copyrighted is indeed "contributory infringement". This is more aimed at 
people like The Pirate Bay than people emailing a link to a cool youtube video.

> - Suppose you embed a completely legal youtube video into your website. Then
> some time later the author of that video *changes* it to contain copyrighted
> material (AFAIK that's perfectly possible in youtube), and you never notice.
> Does your embedding become retractively illegal?

I think you could argue that the person who changed the video is the one 
contributing to copyright violation there.

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

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