41–50 of 56 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It seems odd to me that in other countries individuals can't bring criminal cases - leaving everything to the "official" prosecutor (e.g the Procurator Fiscal here in Scotland).
How, exactly, do pleas and charge reductions work when the person conducting the prosecution has none of the incentives for leniency that the state does?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
A Torrent file's hash is representative of the movie or music's binary data, much like a synopsis or summary is representative of the plot line. You can't recreate a movie 100% from a summary, and it's even more difficult to recreate a movie from a hash. The only infringement would come from downloading the movie itself (as a separate action) and comparing it to the hash or summary to ensure you have the correct movi…
That's not how copy write works. A summery involves creativity and factual information, and hash is a purely mechanical transformation without creative input. For much the same reason if you ran someone else book though a language translation software you could not prevent them from selling copy's of their work after being run through that same software translation. However, if you paid someone else to translate a bo…
And me being pedantic: It's copyright, not copy write, because this is a form of law, like "the right to bear arms", or "the right to an attorney". Conversely, a work cannot be "copywritten", it is "copyrighted", or more appropriately "to secure copyright for [a work]".
A thought experiment: What if he was facilitating access to child pornography rather than Hollywood films would people be as outraged? More so? Less so? If the suggestion of an income of up to £50,000 per month is even in the correct ballpark then this character was in the business of profiting hugely from copyright infringment and the jail time is appropriate. The outrage about this is just windbaggery from thieves…
Especially ridiculous is that the judge complains that he has no remorse for "making available" content that "infringes copyright". But of course, he didn't make any such content available. (Do .torrent files "infringe copyright"?)
.torrent files make that content available. The simplest counterargument is that if his actions didn't make that content available, what were all the visitors to his site doing? Should a person be able to successfully defend with "What's the problem, I was only giving copies of the vault key to the people who I knew would burgle it. I never handled any of the vault contents myself!"?
That is bizarre. The government is, in theory at least, non biased towards any particular private interests. The fact that a private entity can launch its own investigation using its own methodology and then use said evidence to take away someones freedom is downright terrifying.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
How, exactly, do pleas and charge reductions work when the person conducting the prosecution has none of the incentives for leniency that the state does?
Are you talking about plea bargains, that American system for bullying people into forgoing their right to be tried on the evidence?
Prosecutors routinely have to decide between pressing an ambitious charge with a higher risk of acquittal, or settling for a lesser charge. This happens all the way up and down the spectrum of offenses; for instance, there's something like 4 different things a mugger in Chicago can get charged with. How exactly do this balance get handled when the prosecutor is by charter acting in their own interests and not the interests of the community?
Especially ridiculous is that the judge complains that he has no remorse for "making available" content that "infringes copyright". But of course, he didn't make any such content available. (Do .torrent files "infringe copyright"?)
.torrent files make that content available. The simplest counterargument is that if his actions didn't make that content available, what were all the visitors to his site doing? Should a person be able to successfully defend with "What's the problem, I was only giving copies of the vault key to the people who I knew would burgle it. I never handled any of the vault contents myself!"?
I think the difference here is that information and objects have an intended purpose - a knife is usually for chopping food, a gun is usually for... erm - however a vault key clearly can't have a use outside of using it to get into the valut. Where to .torrents fall in this? It's not the vault key situation, because there are definite good uses for them (linux distros, I believe Blizzard uses bittorrent to distribute updates?). However, the majority of torrent usage is for piracy [citation needed].
So I guess what I'm saying is that all objects have a potential for negative usage and a potential for positive usage, and we're trying to draw the line somewhere in a rather undefined way.
To me, it seems unfair and harsh to be imprisoned for something that by another interpretation seems okay. I have a reasonable expectation not to be imprisoned for creating a site where people can post content. If it's coopted by the community into a place where people post torrents, it seems that right now I could be sent to jail for that.
The problem here isn't the intention of the owner of the site, just like it isn't about Kim Dotcom's intention. I don't disagree that they were completely aware that they were profiting from other people's desire to pirate. My problem is that all of these legal cases against these people seem to be brought in a way that doesn't feel 'just'.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's not how copy write works. A summery involves creativity and factual information, and hash is a purely mechanical transformation without creative input. For much the same reason if you ran someone else book though a language translation software you could not prevent them from selling copy's of their work after being run through that same software translation. However, if you paid someone else to translate a bo…
Do you have a link to the article about color? Google isn't turning up anything in regards to "copyrighting color" that seems remotely relevant. And me being pedantic: It's copyright , not copy write , because this is a form of law, like "the right to bear arms", or "the right to an attorney". Conversely, a work cannot be "copywritten", it is "copyrighted", or more appropriately "to secure copyright for [a work]".
"What Colour are your bits?" http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23
Earlier quoted context omitted.
How, exactly, do pleas and charge reductions work when the person conducting the prosecution has none of the incentives for leniency that the state does?
Are you talking about plea bargains, that American system for bullying people into forgoing their right to be tried on the evidence?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are you talking about plea bargains, that American system for bullying people into forgoing their right to be tried on the evidence?
It seems like you either think we should eliminate the ability for defendants to negotiate lesser sentences, or you want to make an entirely orthogonal point about the US criminal justice system. Which is it? Prosecutors routinely have to decide between pressing an ambitious charge with a higher risk of acquittal, or settling for a lesser charge. This happens all the way up and down the spectrum of offenses; for inst…
para 1: yes, I want to eliminate the ability for defendants to negotiate lesser sentences. Like many practices we like to despise governments for tolerating (bribery, corruption, torture), it's convenient, practical and even successful in many cases, but it's totally unjust.