MegaUpload has been shut down

There really isn't,especially in the UK.
And while that remains we are unlikely to see are rights as consumers increase either. Currently it's not really legal to do much fpwith the content we buy.

And even the American ones aren't well tested or established. Which means untill so meshing changes charges will be brought forward willy nilly and see what they can get away with and what they can't.

Sure we need better laws for us the consumers of content that clarifys and removes the stupid restrictions we have (like not being able to format shift or take backups) but for copyright violations almost all countries have adequate laws. Dicking around with DNS can never be acceptable and nor can laws lobbied for purely by media corps*.

*That's the same corps that throw around crazy figures like piracy costs $58 billion a year and 700,000 jobs when it actually costs $480 million (the profits of a modest film) and no real job losses in reality.
 
Sure we need better laws for us the consumers of content that clarifys and removes the stupid restrictions we have (like not being able to format shift or take backups) .

And you think providers are going to give that willingly when there are basically no laws in the Uk to protect them. Unlike America we don't have punitive charges. Which means copyright infringement can't even be sued as you can't prove loss of earnings.

Both sides need better laws and we are unlikely to get one without the other. Unless EU step in and force consumer rights through.
 
Unlike America we don't have punitive charges. Which means copyright infringement can't even be sued as you can't prove loss of earnings.

No, it means you can only be sued for the value of what you are deemed to have infringed on (assuming no distribution) instead of thousands of pounds for downloading a single DVD.

They can do it, it's just a complete waste of their time.
 
Which means copyright infringement can't even be sued as you can't prove loss of earnings..

Are you advocating that we have something like what they do in America where the RIAA et al sue an old lady for millions for uploading a few songs? Or where lawyers (in the loosest use) send demands for payouts with no valid proof other than an IP address?

Thankfully the Germans have determined said IP Adress are protected private information. Hopefully the rest of Europe follow suite.
 
No, it means you can only be sued for the value of what you are deemed to have infringed on (assuming no distribution) instead of thousands of pounds for downloading a single DVD.

They can do it, it's just a complete waste of their time.
As far as I know there hasn't been any legal cases, but you can only sue for lose of earnings, you can't prove that. The uk has no adequate laws for copyright.

Are you advocating that we have something like what they do in America where the RIAA et al sue an old lady for millions for uploading a few songs? Or where lawyers (in the loosest use) send demands for payouts with no valid proof other than an IP address?
.

Of course not, you know the options are not only nothing or the extreme. There's a massive amount of middle ground where new laws could occupy.

Like making it criminal offence, rather than civil. Just like theft, but with a much reduced punishment range, due to no physical property or aggregating motives.

We already deal with lots of minor infringements in such ways. Speeding would be a good comparison. Where most of the public do it and for 99.99% of cases it's a low fine, with the ability to up punishment in extreme cases.
 
But this is not what i was talking about..... you said that a system that allows the sharing of information itself can be illegal. (so not the content but the mere facility...) Can you substantiate that claim please.

It was identified that Megaupload wasn't thorough or fast enough in removing illegal material from their site. I have no idea on the actual timescale/sample cross section required, but apparently Megaupload wasn't diligent enough in removing dodgy material from their site. The above may be loophole through which US courts prosecuted Megaupload but it appears to have worked.

Compare this to Rapidshare. a sizeable portion of the material it hosts is considered illegal, but it is diligent enough in removing material (a matter of days in some cases) that (for now) it has avoided the fate that Megaupload has suffered.

I'm just a little worried that America has too much clout around the world. It was quoted by BBC that the US courts executed warrants in 9 seperate countries. If they can execute this sort of legislation pre-SOPA, how bad is going to be when SOPA ie ignoring due process is made law?
 
As far as I know there hasn't been any legal cases, but you can only sue for lose of earnings, you can't prove that. The uk has no adequate laws for copyright.

You can and the laws are adequate, it's perfectly easy but no copyright holder in their right mind is going to pursue someone through the courts in order to claim a loss of earnings for a £12.99 movie.

They focus on uploaders and distributors as these are bigger targets and may actually be worthwhile suing.
 
no where did I say just the mechanism of sharing can be deemed illegal.
But of course sharing sites can be illegal, not all sharing sites.


What a shocker...........:rolleyes:

So you are now accepting that it is the content that is legal/illegal not the actual facility of sharing....

My post

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showpost.php?p=21080849&postcount=455


Specifically this question

Content can be legal or illegal but a site that merely facilitates sharing of information? That can be termed illegal?

Your post in answer

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showpost.php?p=21081046&postcount=462

Specifically your answer

Of course it can be deemed illegal.


I guess i can understand you now changing your view because you never read my post in the first place...

Thats very annoying and quite rude.......people ehh
 
Of course not, you know the options are not only nothing or the extreme. There's a massive amount of middle ground where new laws could occupy.

Like making it criminal offence, rather than civil. Just like theft, but with a much reduced punishment range, due to no physical property or aggregating motives.

The law should require the cost of the infringement to be reimbursed. Thus if somebody has 10 songs they pay for those ten plus court costs. However before any of that you need cast iron proof. Not just an IP address that the content industry feels is proof.

As for making it akin to theft well the problem with that is simple - it isn't. Making it a criminal offence may help but the cost overheads of attempting to prosecute so many people would be astronomical.

You solve (by making piracy not worth the effort) by Making access to content easy, cheap and available. Simples.
 
The law should require the cost of the infringement to be reimbursed. Thus if somebody has 10 songs they pay for those ten plus court costs. However before any of that you need cast iron proof. Not just an IP address that the content industry feels is proof.
Disagree on first part, agree on second part. A crime has punishment which is a deterrent. It shouldn't just be costs. No other crime is.

As for proof, I totally agree.
As for making it akin to theft well the problem with that is simple - it isn't. Making it a criminal offence may help but the cost overheads of attempting to prosecute so many people would be astronomical.

.


I didn't say combine it with theft, and I also stated that it isn't like theft and should have a lower punishment bracket, so try again on that point.


You solve (by making piracy not worth the effort) by Making access to content easy, cheap and available. Simples.

Why should they?
Also it wouldn't work any way, cheap vs free I wonder how many would change. Some will perhaps even lots. It doesn't tackle the issue though.
Food's cheap and easy to access. People still steal it.
Speedings easy to avoid, most of us still speed.
 
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The trouble is most people upload when they are downloading.

Well, that depends on where you're downloading from.

Something like MegaUpload or Rapidshare you wouldn't be uploading as well.

Even your average torrent user is only likely to have uploaded to 10 or 12 people unless they seed a hell of a lot, which still wouldn't be worth bothering with I wouldn't have thought.
 
Even your average torrent user is only likely to have uploaded to 10 or 12 people unless they seed a hell of a lot, which still wouldn't be worth bothering with I wouldn't have thought.

if they could prove it, then up yes it would as it would be under distribution which is criminal already.
However you need evidence to seize computers to get the evidence and at the moment there isn't really anyway to get enough evidence to seize.
 
Piratebays take on it for another angle:

INTERNETS, 18th of January 2012. PRESS RELEASE, FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE.

Over a century ago Thomas Edison got the patent for a device which would "do for the eye what the phonograph does for the ear". He called it the Kinetoscope. He was not only amongst the first to record video, he was also the first person to own the copyright to a motion picture.

Because of Edisons patents for the motion pictures it was close to financially impossible to create motion pictures in the North american east coast. The movie studios therefor relocated to California, and founded what we today call Hollywood. The reason was mostly because there was no patent. There was also no copyright to speak of, so the studios could copy old stories and make movies out of them - like Fantasia, one of Disneys biggest hits ever.

So, the whole basis of this industry, that today is screaming about losing control over immaterial rights, is that they circumvented immaterial rights. They copied (or put in their terminology: "stole") other peoples creative works, without paying for it. They did it in order to make a huge profit. Today, they're all successful and most of the studios are on the Fortune 500 list of the richest companies in the world. Congratulations - it's all based on being able to re-use other peoples creative works. And today they hold the rights to what other people create.

If you want to get something released, you have to abide to their rules. The ones they created after circumventing other peoples rules. The reason they are always complainting about "pirates" today is simple. We've done what they did. We circumvented the rules they created and created our own. We crushed their monopoly by giving people something more efficient. We allow people to have direct communication between eachother, circumventing the profitable middle man, that in some cases take over 107% of the profits (yes, you pay to work for them).

It's all based on the fact that we're competition. We've proven that their existance in their current form is no longer needed. We're just better than they are. And the funny part is that our rules are very similar to the founding ideas of the USA. We fight for freedom of speech. We see all people as equal. We believe that the public, not the elite, should rule the nation. We believe that laws should be created to serve the public, not the rich corporations.

The Pirate Bay is truly an international community. The team is spread all over the globe - but we've stayed out of the USA. We have Swedish roots and a swedish friend said this: The word SOPA means "trash" in Swedish. The word PIPA means "a pipe" in Swedish. This is of course not a coincidence. They want to make the internet inte a one way pipe, with them at the top, shoving trash through the pipe down to the rest of us obedient consumers. The public opinion on this matter is clear. Ask anyone on the street and you'll learn that no one wants to be fed with trash.

Why the US government want the american people to be fed with trash is beyond our imagination but we hope that you will stop them, before we all drown. SOPA can't do anything to stop TPB. Worst case we'll change top level domain from our current .org to one of the hundreds of other names that we already also use. In countries where TPB is blocked, China and Saudi Arabia springs to mind, they block hundreds of our domain names. And did it work? Not really. To fix the "problem of piracy" one should go to the source of the problem.

The entertainment industry say they're creating "culture" but what they really do is stuff like selling overpriced plushy dolls and making 11 year old girls become anorexic. Either from working in the factories that creates the dolls for basically no salary or by watching movies and tv shows that make them think that they're fat. In the great Sid Meiers computer game Civilization you can build Wonders of the world. One of the most powerful ones is Hollywood. With that you control all culture and media in the world.

Rupert Murdoch was happy with MySpace and had no problems with their own piracy until it failed. Now he's complainting that Google is the biggest source of piracy in the world - because he's jealous. He wants to retain his mind control over people and clearly you'd get a more honest view of things on Wikipedia and Google than on Fox News. Some facts (years, dates) are probably wrong in this press release. The reason is that we can't access this information when Wikipedia is blacked out. Because of pressure from our failing competitors. We're sorry for that. THE PIRATE BAY, (K)2012
 
Saw that the other day and agreed with it a bit tbh.

That piratebay press release is the most pretentious load of BS I've seen for a long while.

Hollywood (et al) are content creators. People want the content they create. They want it enough to search for it, and download it.

piratebay doesn't create anything. Along with MegaUpload, they simply take other people's work, and publish it without their consent.

How that makes them "better than Hollywood" (their words) I fail to comprehend. That they think they are "competition" is laughable. They are pirates, and nothing more.
 
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