I totally agree with that. as soon as most music became available at a sensible price via amazon or itunes etc then i found myself buying alot more music and um my acquiring the odd track off a shady looking site came to an end I just wish there was a steam like platform for movies, my lord i would never have money again.
£54000 pounds makes it sound like she is a career criminal. But if you take an album as being full price (lets say £15) then that is 3,600 albums. Built up over a couple of years that could be classified as a personal collection. Ok she shared them on line, but NOT FOR MONEY. Persecuting some poor old addled Scottish nurse with psychiatric issues... great way to endear yourselves to the record buying public. And a three year prison sentence? Surely a slap on the wrist, warning and confiscation of equipment would have been enough for a first offence from a vulnerable person?
Yes, lets just prosecute young people and those without psychiatric issues. Old screwballs don't have to live with in the law She only got a slap on the wrist.
I couldn't really be arsed to read the entire thread but here is my two pence The current laws in almost every country is inadequate to handle the current world, a designated "internet law" is required, and will have to be enforced in more than a single country, preferably world wide, but within EU/USA as an absolute minimum. In this, a realistic estimation of the level of fines should be made, as we all know one download is not a lost sale. This however requires far more research into this matter that what has currently been done, and a hones estimation, and not as has been done thus far, taking the figures used by the entertainment industry. As it currently stands the people that make these rules are unqualified for the job, with no knowledge of how things work and with too many presumptions. (the recent suggestion about a "firewall" around EU is a prime example) On top of this the entertainment industry is a powerful lobbyist whereas there are no one to oppose them, so the unqualified lawmakers are only getting information from one side in stead of getting the whole picture. There is a major difference between sharing music and selling copies, I personally do not believe that the punishment for the first one should be that severe, as there is no personal gain in it. Selling however should add about 2,5 times the amount you made on it in fine (to the state.) technically borrowing your CD/DVD's out to your friends is illegal and so is inviting a buddy over to watch it at your home as you only have "one license". Just a few links to useful information Pirates buying more music than others Falling revenues on music (I believe that the chart only shows revenues from hardcopy sales.)
Another point is this was a prosecution bought by the state and police Try getting the police to give a **** about someone breaking in to your car or vandalising your property - half the time they will not even bother turning up and you just get a crime number to give to your insurance company. They seem to have resources to jump to the tune of the record companies.
No as you are still the same household But your friends is a different matter as it is the same as if you at a LAN use the same game on several computers, (bear in mind that my background is Danish law here.) you have the right to use it in your household, but not to borrow it out. but these are trifles, never heard of anyone getting arrested for it. Don't know how the system in English law is, and now I think about it it was stupid to bring that one up as it heavily depends on the structure of the laws in the different countries Please disregard
Now you actually made me read the law by Danish law you are allowed a few things (making copies, borrowing them out etc.) however this is only if nothing else is agreed upon. The EULA is just that, an agreement between you and the one with the rights to the product, and so the EULA Is what is has the last word. Programs has a lot of limitations in the law (no borrowing, no copying, only a little "modding") but again the EULA can change that. One of the few rules that the EULA Can't change is your right to use it within your household, and your right to sell the original copy. All in all I stand corrected
copyright designs and patents act 1988 The making, dealing in or use of infringing copies is a criminal offence (s. 107). The penalties for these copyright infringement offences may include: Before a magistrates' Court, the penalties for distributing unauthorised files are a maximum fine of £5,000 and/or six months imprisonment; On indictment (in the Crown Court) some offences may attract an unlimited fine and up to 10 years imprisonment this is pretty straight forward in terms of uk law. you are only likely to be prosecuted for large scale infringment
Inviting a few friends over to watch a movie isn't the same as inviting a few friends over, then installing your copy of CoD on all their machines. Perhaps it is different in Danish law, but here in the US you are allowed to invite your mates over to watch a movie. As long as it's a limited crowd and you aren't charging anything to watch the movie, then there is no problem. This is why sporting event parties are so popular, even though there is a verbal warning during the game that you are not allowed to record or replay the telecast without written permission from the league and the network. On the other hand, if I own a pub and want to show the big game on the TV for all my patrons, I may have to buy a license to do so (it depends on the network, the size of the venue, and other factors). At work we receive certain network channels and rebroadcast them over an institutional cable TV system plus an IPTV system. We recently ran into a problem when a couple of the networks decided that they didn't want all those potential customers watching ads for free. There was quite a bit of negotiation for site licensing to distribute those signals.
"I personally do not believe that the punishment for the first one should be that severe, as there is no personal gain in it" That's OK then. I can come into your house, help myself to whatever I like, but as long as I give the stuff away and don't sell it I'm not really a villain.
My question is. What in gods name do they do with people at large parties? Because technically that music is being distributed to a bunch of people, while not physical copies, the principle remains the same. Admittedly seeding and leeching is pretty shady under any circumstance, but the definition has to be beyond distributing it. Because last I checked, if there is no intent to profit from it (which is technically an act of altruism then) how can one get in trouble? Of course this breaks copyright laws, but once again, does a large party also break copyright laws?
The choice is simple. By seeding, people are giving away someone else's work without their permission. By leeching, people are knowingly not paying for someone else's work.
actually interesting thought came reading the thread: what about eulas, and how can they be forced upon a customer when you're buying a PC game for example? Because, you cannot read the eula before buying the product (a boxed DVD for example), before you start installing it. And, since shops will not accept returns on an opened software package, seems to be that the eula itself is irrelevant. Or not?
I'm still totally stuck on the piracy thing. A few things that are, I think, beyond dispute: 1. Piracy isn't theft, as a pure technicality - it's piracy. 2. That said, it does harm developers and creators in a way similar to theft. 3. It's only damaging collectively, and an individual act of piracy is morally ambiguous, therefore 4. people will always do it, because it doesn't feel particularly wrong. 5. There is no practical way to stop it that isn't a huge PITA for legitimate customers, and therefore harms developers and creators too. There, the piracy problem in a nutshell. No black and white oversimplifications, no silly moral preaching, just a big pain in the arse for an entire industry. I've been thinking about it for a while - both from the moral perspective of a customer/pirate and from the business perspective of a developer - and I can't think of an easy solution to any of it. Industry's ****ed.
Pretty much true chap. Doesn't matter what anyone ever does or says piracy will always occur. Be it in the dark depths of the darknet where search engines daren't go or blasting in the face of every major record label. People will always do it... a) it's easy to do (I wouldn't need to get my ass out of my pc chair/sofa) b) it's free (lol - explaination not needed) c) it's incredibly hard to track these days. (So my bandwidth jumps 5GB at night on my downloads... that's fine... it's just windows update on some new machines... prove me otherwise!) Until they come up with an idea where you can literally buy albums for £4 at a time, piracy will occur. Hell you give the music away for free or at a loss to your company... You'd still get people pirating things, thats the way of the WorldWideWeb! Although hearing all the insane drivel from Political Officals how they're going to make new legislation or setup a massive firewall or give developers more legal powers or some other crackpot scheme that gives the Daily Mail and Record Companies more stomach ulsars than the amount of rum I go through in an average weekend binging could! No matter what anyone does, Piracy will always happen. If they want to stop it... redesign the entire basis of the web and code into it tracking protocol's from the bottom up... that is the only feasable way, but that requires a time-machine, although to be fair by the time it's built the plans will be on the web and we'd all have T-rex arms and some bloody 4Chan'er would be standing there with a genetically enginnered trollface on!
music "piracy" is here to stay as long as an aging and out of touch industry insists on limping along with its old profit model and enough young musicians still take the bait. gradually it will give way to another, less high-profile, revenue generating model, hopefully one that is a great deal more equitable to artists and largely controlled by and for them. this woman is being made an example of as a scare tactic. perhaps i would take the moral high ground, if i didn't know my popular music history. if i didn't know about the legions of artists taken advantage of and stolen from for the profit of the "legitimate" music industry.
Piracy is really just the result of poor self-targetted marketing. Self-targetted marketing distributes roughly the same product at different price levels, to target consumers who are willing to pay more or less. An example is Starbucks coffee. You can get the straightforward coffee at £1,50 or you can get the double-choca-mocha-wocka-organic-fairtrade-latte with whipcream, mocha syrup, chocolate flake and an extra espresso shot for £5,--. Another example is a straightforward DVD that is sold in supermarkets for £4,--, or the Special Deluxe Director's Ego Edition that comes in a collector's box, with extra DVDs (the "Making of" documentary, selected outtakes and alternative endings, The 3:4 edition and widescreen edition, director's cut, poster, T-shirt, promo material and the book of the story of the film), for £25,--. The logic is that people who are only prepared to pay rock-bottom dollar are happy with the basic, no frills product. After all, piracy does not come with a pretty box. You get the track, and nothing but the track. You get the film, but in glorious grain-o-vision with Urdu and Swedish subtitles (superimposed at the same time). So suppose you can get an album as "download only" (bring your own CD-R) for only a quid, but you know it is of decent quality and doesn't get you arrested, then why bother torrenting the same thing when you have a good chance that it will be of poorer quality, or turn out to be some Austrian's home-brew porn movie? You could even get a return on your investment: "You download the album and create your own cover artwork, and we'll print it for you, free of charge". With the proviso that your artwork becomes available to share with and print out by other people downloading the same album. You get your customer to design the marketing art for you. Same with computer games. All games could start as shareware. You play the first level. You like it? Pay £2,-- to unlock the next five. You still like it? Pay another £10,-- to unlock the whole game. Think about it: you get to try before you buy; you get to pay only for what you play. As for games manufacturers: in order to get the full return on your product you have to keep ramping up the excitement. If your game gets too boring/repetitive too quickly, you lose profit... To an extent this is already what is happening with MMORPGs. You get the game itself for free, but you pay a subscription to keep playing, and to keep customers coming back for more new content keeps being rolled out.
