The piracy bust

[Nystul]

Something I saw tonight caught my eye after the music piracy thread here. I think one of the major reasons that media piracy is so widespread is that the law is not much deterrent. Of those amongst us who have ever copied something illegally, who really expects to get busted for it? It's not like the cops are going to barge in and seize your computer, right? Well, that's exactly what happened to some college kids across the street from me.

According to The Lantern, a student newspaper at The Ohio State University, university police raided dorm rooms Monday and seized a few kids' computers, DVD players, and various media. Their crime? Running a peer-to-peer filesharing server. They have not been arrested or formally charged with anything. Any charges will hinge on the illegal transfer of copyrighted material, but the reality is that these kids got busted for being bandwidth hogs. They were apparently consuming some 10% of the bandwidth available to thousands of college students, and some network admin decided enough was enough. Of course, those thousands of college students were the ones who were using this server to share files.

Perhaps this is too mundane to merit discussion. It's a remarkable story to me, because not so many years ago I was living in those dorms and sharing a fair number of files (both legally and illegally) myself. Back then, it was simply a matter of looking at the list of computers on the LAN and picking one to browse. At any rate, the thought of University Police raiding a room full of computer science nerds in the engineering dorm and taking their computers is downright bonechilling! Aren't there provisions against cruel and unusual punishment? :)

[Elric of Grans]

Hail Nystul,

The police were checking out he major Uni networks here too; trouble was, everyone knew about it. There was nothing on the networks for a few weeks, some people changed their IPs, etc. Once they left, the place was clocked with illegal music, movies, and some things that boggle the mind...

[kier]

[FONT=Impact][COLOR=red] hiya there, this is my first post on these wonderfull forums. wonderfull site, glad its all legit, i am getting bored of all these hacked lamers on d2.

the police generaly only raid if people are copying cds to sell, or have mass colections, and of course, they need a search warrent, which means they need to have some suspition that you have them, etc.

im not entirely sure, so do NOT quote me on this, but i think you are allowed to copy if the cd is for your own personal use and that it is not track for track off a published 1. for instance, say i wanted to copy a cd, i would change the order of tracks and add another track onto it that wasnt on the cd, and it is for my use, not for others or for sale.

ah well, time to get posting :D a new kids on the block


kier

[Quark]

There's quite a difference there. Most people who are getting illegal copies of anything aren't actively distributing it. That movie you rented from Blockbuster copied in your VCR? Illegal, but one person has access to it. Someone selling said copies at a trade show? Chances are they'll get noticed. It's been this way for years. The distributors are much more likely to get charged than the purchasers/downloaders. Quite simply, they're the easy targets. You don't hear of a guy who had 10 illegal programs getting busted, but you do hear of 3-guy operations that make 1000s of copies getting busted.

It's the same as the drug policy, albiet less strict. The supply is always more punished than the demand. Nevermind the fact that if there was no demand there'd be no supply.

[Hammerskjold]

>Perhaps this is too mundane to merit discussion.

Hell no. Though I'm interested in something else that is somewhat related. In your area, do you know if or when you buy blank CDs, do you pay an extra amount for them? I don't mean retail mark ups or product taxes. I mean something like this:

http://www.gnutellanews.com/article/6052

http://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,...2,57114,00.html

http://vigilant.tv/article/2687

When I first heard about this, I thought it was a joke. The truly absurd thing is the idea has been floated that ALL recordable media that possess a big enough capacity (Decided arbitrarily I guess.) should be taxed or strictly controlled. Hey who really needs a 100+ gig drive anyway? Only evil goat porn makers and bomb making music stealing pirates that's who. ;)

[roguebanshee]

That movie you rented from Blockbuster copied in your VCR?  Illegal, but one person has access to it.  Someone selling said copies at a trade show?  Chances are they'll get noticed.

Actually you're allowed to make a single copy of a movie, music c and the like (not software however) for personal use only, if and only if the original is not a copy itself. It doesn't matter where the original is from as long as it's legally in your possesion, thus you can rent a movie at eg. Blockbuster, make a copy and return the original while legally keeping the copy. You can also borrow a (store bought) music cd from one of your friends and make a copy for yourself. You can not however make legal copies to your friends, they must make them themselves (but you can let them make legal copies with your equipment :lol: ). You are not allowed to distribute the copy (or make copies of it) in any way.

We had a lawyer over to explain copyright and intellectual property before easter and this was one of the points he brought up.

[Elric of Grans]

Hail roguebanshee,

Perhaps it varies from nation to nation, but over here it's quite legal to backup software - yes, I could even burn my DII CDs if it were a backup. No, I am no lawyer, but this happens to be the one and only law in Australia I know - I had to study it once ;) I have a copy of it somewhere around here... loooong document (though, I think the manual for even LaTeX is longer - the legal jargon is boring though, so it seems longer), but I know it's in there somewhere.

Of cause, if a person uses a copyleft, then there's nothing to worry about: distribute as much as you want, so long as you follow the guidelines they provide. Other than (some of) my games, everything on my system is like that :D

[Guest]

As long as p2p software makes pirating so easy, they are never gonna stop it.