Posts by James Harton
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It's not stretching things too far to say that most ISPs have and will benefited from the activities of their customers in breach of copyright.
That's far from true. It costs money to deal with all the C&D letters and legal crap, for starters but most importantly, do you think there is more margin in Russell's high-cap broadband connection that he is flatlining the crap out of 24/7 or a suburban granny that pays for a 1GB cap and only uses it to occasionally email her grand kids?
High traffic customers are a pain in the arse from a capacity planning and economic point of view. The idea that ISPs make a lot of money out of copyright infringement is rubbish, if anything all the grannies are subsidising your bittorrent. -
@Kyle. Sure but it's not the council's job to make sure that I don't drown people in it. Look, you have to get a warrant to tap someone's phone - it's a serious invasion of privacy. If you open someone else's mail you can get in very serious trouble. Why would there be a lesser level of protection for my personal communications just because their over one sort of network and not another?
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The thing that drives me on this is that I fundamentally believe that no one has the right to steal my property, and these bands recorded music is exactly that, property in the same way that your car is yours and your shirt is yours and you should be able to protect yourself from someone taking it or even building a video sharing website around its broadcast and selling it for 1.5 billion dollars without compensating me for it (which is a whole other thread)
The flaw in your analogy Mark is that if I steal your car you can no longer drive it (or sell it), if I steal your shirt you can no longer wear it (or sell it). If I copy your album I do not deprive you of the ability to sell it because these bits were made for copying.
Cory Doctorow likes to say: "as a science fiction author my greatest problem isn't people downloading and reading my books for free, it's obscurity!"
Look, I buy hard copies of creative commons books I have read online, I buy downloads of albums I have gotten off bittorrent - provided that the quality of the product is better and easier to use than my free copy. I buy DVDs of TV shows and movies I have downloaded off bittorrent. I've alluded to the DRM debate here, but really I think the issue is one of quality. I don't mind paying $17 for an album on iTunes, but I resent not being able to do the same thing I could do with my free copy or the CD - let my family listen to it, lend it to a friend, take it with me wherever I go, not have to worry whether it's going to play or not on different devices. All of these things I can do with downloaded files - what you as a music distributor has to do to get my dollar is provide a better than free service. This isn't hard; as already mentioned here, metadata is a key feature, high resolution album art, lyrics, notes and trivia - all these are easy add ons using existing technology. -
You're right. But I think it would be to the tribunal, and not to the copyright owner.
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Yup. But for it to be a process in which, at very least, some evidence is provided of breach of copyright, that would have to come from the ISP. Otherwise everyone would just say "nah, I didn't" and it would go nowhere.
Not true. The US example is that copyright holders have bots that automatically trawl p2p networks and video sharing sites, etc looking for evidence of copyright infringement. They then send a C&D to the network provider saying "this IP address, this time, this file, this protocol" and the provider does the leg work of identifying you.
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For one thing, a copyright holder might need to get information from a third party (isp) about the extent of any breach - how long, how much, how many times etc.
Under current law, these would be a breach of privacy. My understanding of S92A suggests that the ISP may terminate the access but is under no compulsion to release any other data to the copyright holder other than; "it's done".
As Matt outlined earlier, the only times ISPs will give out customer information (just like your dentist, your lawyer, your milkman, your plumber) is when presented with a valid search warrant. Unless there is some radical changes to law, I don't see copyright holders being able to apply for search warrants. -
@Clarke: You missed the bit about "reasonable process" :)
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The Ministry of Justice's page on the Disputes Tribunal says:
Disputes Tribunals are not like formal courts. There are no lawyers or judges.
Disputes are heard by a referee who has been carefully selected and trained.
A referee is someone who will either help you to come to your own solution or will determine your dispute. Any ruling they make is binding and will, if necessary, be enforced by the Courts.
If I remember my fourth form social studies correctly there is a maximum penalty which can be assigned to either or both parties. If the process is fast, informal and allows for people who are not technically savvy to defend themselves without being ambushed by jargon then I don't see why it wouldn't work. Oh, except that it would cost money. Who wants to spend that money? Not the recording industry. I'm sure it's cheaper to lobby for draconian copyright law instead.
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Right. So there needs to be a balance, just like every other aspect of copyright. Going to court is too hard for them, letting them make up reasons to have us disconnected without any arbitration is unreasonable for us.
How about a "small claims" for copyright infringers? -
@Simon Grigg: You're right there. But they do have a proven track record of being big-business shills. Content is the new primary industry.