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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

#121

Post by tptacek »

andy_ppp wrote: post #120
tptacek wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The important thing to take away from it is that the DOJ deliberately misrepresents sentences in press releases, presumably for the deterrent factor. But you can just download the sentencing guidelines and follow the charts to get a likely range of actual months (it's interesting! I recommend it!) and they're virtually never anything like the DOJ's claim.

What are the sentences here likely to be?

I don't know, I didn't look. I read the indictment on PACER; it's probably on RECAP or whatever now. I could give you the offense statutes, I guess; you'd then have to look them up in the sentencing guidelines yourself. My point is, you should do that; the sentence range itself will be less illuminating than doing the work of seeing how it's reached.

Later

It's:

    18:371.F CONSPIRACY TO COMMIT COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT
    18:1349.F ATTEMPT AND CONSPIRACY TO COMMIT WIRE FRAUD
    18:371.F CONSPIRACY TO TRANSPORT STOLEN PROPERTY INTERSTATE

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

#123

Post by rebelos »

intricatedetail wrote: post #51
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…

Any business can be viable if it is backed by state violence. If it can't survive without violence then in my opinion should be allowed to perish.

This is certainly possible. Watch all of your content in theaters with all copies of the content as heavily secured as possible (physically and digitally)

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

#124

Post by ksec »

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…

Well the key word here would be threatens and rampant. Which is sort of the absolute of extreme end of the augment.

For example Adobe and Microsoft has turned a blind eye on piracy for years. I believe it was Steve Jobs who had the gut to point out the obvious, Student on campus just pirate their Photoshop.

For content, you could derive additional revenue from non-content product like merchandise or other form of cross-industry IP sharing. You cant have these sort of deals without getting significant mindshare of the public. And for some piracy is part of it. Think Game of Thrones. The most pirated TV shows on the planet. And is the same with Music. Most artist dont earn much with licensing, streaming or disc sales any more. It is about live performance tours and merchandise. Streaming Music isn't doing as well as most media would like you to believe, such as back to to the peaks of 90s without accounting for inflation and population difference.

That is why I sort of think in the future some content could end up going the freemium model. Just like how mobile games are doing.

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

#125

Post by andy_ppp »

lolinder wrote: post #96
HotHotLava wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even in that strawman version of the argument, competing publishers would not be able to "steal" all the profit because they also could only sell the books more or less at cost. The price floor for physical books in such a world would, I imagine, be set by some chinese on-demand printing factories. Business models for authors would shift towards patreon supporters, subscription fees for periodical releases, signed co…

Definitely not looking forward to the day of ad-supported ebooks. "Sponsored" paragraphs injected into the middle of a chapter? Or maybe flashy banner ads alongside? Sounds like a nightmare.

“Don’t forget to click [Subscribe] and tick the annoy me whenever I release content icon”…

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

#126

Post by [deleted] »

ndesaulniers wrote: post #98
loxias wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 anyt…

> 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? Pepperidge Farm remembers. I have all the streaming services, and yet now I find that most of what I want to watch is not licensed to any service! I'm constantly using justwatch.com and yet still many famous movies aren't being licensed by any of the services I have (at…

[deleted]

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

#127

Post by andy_ppp »

29athrowaway wrote: post #94
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…

Many serious electronic crimes can be described as copying bits. Like illegally exfiltrating and distributing PII, credit card info, etc.

I still think those shouldn’t be crimes, stealing money (or causing money to be stolen) should be a crime.

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

#128

Post by [deleted] »

unraveller wrote: post #78
6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Should it be impossible to make a living writing books or recording music or movies? Because that's what it amounts to. Imagine writing a book, selling a copy for $10 to the first reader, and then the rest of the readers get it for free. Or printing a book and having a competing publisher type it up and sell it, taking all the profit.

Exclusivity of data presentation should depend on personal ability to keep it exclusive not state force in every digital nook of society where they can't be stopped from copying/writing to everything also. Plato, Aristotle, and Epicurus wrote some of the best books and they were always meant to be mass redistributed for free like all common knowledge and recipes - recited from memory. You paid the scriber if you want…

[deleted]

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

#129

Post by dendriti »

wyldfire wrote: post #119
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…

> 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. The idea behind a copyright is to have The People temporarily forfeit their innate right to communicate art, ideas, and stories in order to stimulate an industry of artists and scientists. If the business model depends on people not copyin…

If you actually read the link, Strauss is not being "extradited to another country for potential imprisonment" just for criminal copyright infringement.

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

#130

Post by andy_ppp »

tptacek wrote: post #116
zarzavat wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's nothing wrong with copying credit card numbers, people used to do that all the time with the manual credit card machines. What is wrong is stealing money.

Really. So if I copy the credit cards out of a database and put them on Pastebin, I've done nothing blameworthy, so long as I myself don't try to buy anything with them? Do you have an argument against enforcing criminal copyright laws that would be persuasive to someone who doesn't believe that?

As long as nobody uses the credit card information to steal money then fine, otherwise you’re obviously doing something illegal (facilitating theft). To be honest though even then I think we should at this point require some sort of 2FA, maybe if doing such things (putting credit card numbers online) wasn’t illegal better protections would have to be implemented…
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