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UK national extradited to US for film/TV piracy

justice.gov

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Re: UK national extradited to US for film/TV piracy

#81

Post by bawolff »

mannykannot wrote: post #71
bawolff wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To play devil's advocate, if there is no business model capable of supporting something, it should die. I like tv as much as the next person, but its hardly sacrosanct.

At first sight, this seems to be a common-sense response, but things get more nuanced when you consider it in depth. Electronic media are a viable business as things stand, so you must be considering whether they would continue to be viable without the sort of laws being discussed here. Whether any business model is viable is relative to the laws in effect. Without laws governing issues like property and contracts, a…

> Electronic media are a viable business as things stand, so you must be considering whether they would continue to be viable without the sort of laws being discussed here.

I'm responding to the parent post who is arguing we must have current laws because otherwise tv would not be viable.

The current laws might make sense. They have problems, but i'm also not super sympathetic to people who resell the work of others without adding anything to them, for commercial gain. However i dont think, without law X, industry Y wouldn't exist is ever a sufficient reason in and of itself. If that's the only reason we have for a law, then the industry is not worth it.

Re: UK national extradited to US for film/TV piracy

#82

Post by mortehu »

azalemeth wrote: post #49
rebelos wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not hard to see how piracy threatens the entire business model. You can have rampant piracy or you can have financially sustainable content production. You cannot have both. There is some critical mass of piracy that would in fact destroy the economics of the content production model. The industry has to work to deter that by periodically making examples of people. The timing is likely not coincidental either. E…

Piracy, when casually undertaken by 50-70% of the population does not harm or even mildly helps sales, as found in a suppressed EU-wide report [1, 2] that you can read in detail here [3]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27798879 [2] TFA: https://www.engadget.com/2017-09-22-eu-suppressed-study-pira... [3] https://op.europa.eu/en/publication-detail/-/publication/59e... or https://cdn.netzpolitik.org/wp-upload/…

This "study" is a survey. No experiment was undertaken to actually determine a casual relationship.

Re: UK national extradited to US for film/TV piracy

#83

Post by tptacek »

ssklash wrote: post #12

It is insane to me that someone can get up to 5 years or more for using one of the fundamental mechanisms of digital technology. If you put out a product on a medium whose design is fundamentally based on copying bits , I don't know how you can expect anything else to happen. Instead of accepting the reality of digital communications, the MPAA, RIAA, and the like lobby to have the law protect their outdated but favor…

These people are accused of fraudulently obtaining the bits that they copied, which suggests that your whole argument would apply just as directly to credit card numbers, which are also just bits, amenable to the fundamental mechanisms of technology.

As for the sentencing, as always: https://www.popehat.com/2013/02/05/crime-whale-sushi-sentenc...

Re: UK national extradited to US for film/TV piracy

#84

Post by Joakal »

unity1001 wrote: post #21
rebelos wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not hard to see how piracy threatens the entire business model. You can have rampant piracy or you can have financially sustainable content production. You cannot have both. There is some critical mass of piracy that would in fact destroy the economics of the content production model. The industry has to work to deter that by periodically making examples of people. The timing is likely not coincidental either. E…

Record industry does not support content production at all. Less, artists. They are one of the biggest scams on the planet. http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100712/23482610186.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110707/03264014993/riaa-a... http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140425/07192227027/riaa-c... ... That industry should be killed with fire.

Easy way to kill distributors AND support creators with this small change:

Have copyright return to creators after a period of time, ie 20 years.

Billions of dollars will be spent fighting hints of this suggestion.

Re: UK national extradited to US for film/TV piracy

#86

Post by mannykannot »

bawolff wrote: post #81
mannykannot wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At first sight, this seems to be a common-sense response, but things get more nuanced when you consider it in depth. Electronic media are a viable business as things stand, so you must be considering whether they would continue to be viable without the sort of laws being discussed here. Whether any business model is viable is relative to the laws in effect. Without laws governing issues like property and contracts, a…

> Electronic media are a viable business as things stand, so you must be considering whether they would continue to be viable without the sort of laws being discussed here. I'm responding to the parent post who is arguing we must have current laws because otherwise tv would not be viable. The current laws might make sense. They have problems, but i'm also not super sympathetic to people who resell the work of others…

I take your point, though there may be cases where the greater good is served by intervention (vaccines for an emerging disease?) I agree that TV and movies do not fall into this category.

Re: UK national extradited to US for film/TV piracy

#87

Post by elif »

ssklash wrote: post #12

It is insane to me that someone can get up to 5 years or more for using one of the fundamental mechanisms of digital technology. If you put out a product on a medium whose design is fundamentally based on copying bits , I don't know how you can expect anything else to happen. Instead of accepting the reality of digital communications, the MPAA, RIAA, and the like lobby to have the law protect their outdated but favor…

I agree. US intellectual property law is anachronistic and at odds with the evolution of modern technology. More permissive ip countries will leave us in the dust.

Re: UK national extradited to US for film/TV piracy

#88

Post by amarshall »

ssklash wrote: post #12

It is insane to me that someone can get up to 5 years or more for using one of the fundamental mechanisms of digital technology. If you put out a product on a medium whose design is fundamentally based on copying bits , I don't know how you can expect anything else to happen. Instead of accepting the reality of digital communications, the MPAA, RIAA, and the like lobby to have the law protect their outdated but favor…

You may find “What Colour Are Your Bits”[1] an interesting read.

[1]: https://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23

Re: UK national extradited to US for film/TV piracy

#89

Post by Joakal »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #39

The "Spark group" was not a for-profit enterprise, they just gave away what they pirated, and made no money off of it? That seems remarkable.

An Australian who had never been to USA was extradited and jailed despite not for profit too. On release, they got re jailed for being in USA illegally.

They only got deported back to Australia on the condition they never visit USA in future.

Currently, Australia's laws allow extradition if there's a jail term and we all know that sharing a picture is a jailable offence. Pirate Party Australia tried to push for non commercial+violent exemption but they never took off.

Re: UK national extradited to US for film/TV piracy

#90

Post by loxias »

rebelos wrote: post #14
ssklash wrote: post #12

It is insane to me that someone can get up to 5 years or more for using one of the fundamental mechanisms of digital technology. If you put out a product on a medium whose design is fundamentally based on copying bits , I don't know how you can expect anything else to happen. Instead of accepting the reality of digital communications, the MPAA, RIAA, and the like lobby to have the law protect their outdated but favor…

It's not hard to see how piracy threatens the entire business model. You can have rampant piracy or you can have financially sustainable content production. You cannot have both. There is some critical mass of piracy that would in fact destroy the economics of the content production model. The industry has to work to deter that by periodically making examples of people. The timing is likely not coincidental either. E…

Remember that narrow window of time when Netflix had All The TV and was the only streaming platform, which you could access for a low monthly fee?

I've always thought and argued that while money might be part of the motivation for digital piracy, ease of access and user experience is also a large component. 10 bucks a month to stream anything, without commercials, was great! For those few years I didn't download anything, because I didn't have to. It wasn't the path of least resistance.

Now I have to deal with a half dozen streaming platforms, some of them don't work on my laptop (Peacock), others which are spotty (Disney+) and others which insist on wanting me to see commercials, despite taking my money (Hulu). With increasing fragmentation and a decreasing user experience, the path of least resistance has gone back to downloading and I expect it to increase. :/

I wonder how long until the industry re-invents cable packages. It might work if Netflix handled the tech, though I admit that would never happen in the real world.

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