Law firm goes after filesharers

Yes it is a crime if you lend a book to a friend and they copy the book or if you make a copy of the book and lend it to a friend. It's also a crime to steal the book. All of these are violation of copyright laws.

Unless your lawn mower is copyright protected as art, you can do whatever you chose with it.

"For the clueless, piracy of copyright protected materials is a crime for which people get punished. Nothing new here. Move along. Every criminal in prison has an excuse why they are innocent, but they are still in prison. Get use to it. That's how the law works in the real world."

Is it a crime for me to lend or give a book that I bought, to someone else. Is it a crime for me if I sell my book or magazine to someone else after I'm finished with it, or am I to burn it to make sure no one else gets it with out paying for it. It seems to me once i buy and lend or sell what I bought I'm depriving the copyrighted publisher money. I think I will quit buying books and magazines untill this gets sorted out.
I loaned my neighbor my lawn mower the other day, will the police come and take my lawn mower away because the manufacturer of the lawn mower was deprived of a sale. I think I will lock myself up because I could go on and on about how ridicules this crap is and where its taking us. Can't give a smoke to a buddy, your taking a sale away from the producer. nuff said. I just like to say as a society were losing it.

For the clueless, piracy of copyright protected materials is a crime for which people get punished. Nothing new here. Move along. Every criminal in prison has an excuse why they are innocent, but they are still in prison. Get use to it. That's how the law works in the real world.

Freenet needs more development and pushed out to the masses. File sharers need to unite and move to something that simply can't be touched and that would be an improved version of Freenet or Share (an English version) or something new that has the functions of both with some type of bit torrent client tossed in. Basically to make it absolutely impossible for the powers that be to track anything.

Is almost everywhere, just not so direct right now, but we all know it'll spread like wildfire.

And the "emerging markets" are not so emerging anymore, it's just you don't know that if you are not here to see it. You don't really expect your press to relay that :) Like for instance that we have 10 MBit adsl connections for a while, or that you can see better cars on the street than in germany... :)

See?

Some of the comments on here are hard to believe. "Pirates will pay for their crimes?" That would include children below the age of criminal consent, would it? OAPs who dont even own a computer? *Dead* people? All of these have been dragged through the courts and suffered the embarassment and intimidation, the fear of being unable to afford to defend oneself, etc etc purely on the say-so of the MAFIAA. Is that justified? Most right thinking people, I suspect, would argue not.

Nobody is suggesting that people should steal protected content. However, totally perverting the legal system, abolishing the presumption of innocence, railroading through laws outwith the statutory legal framework by using international agreements as a backdoor and allowing rich lobbyists to override the common interest; *some* people *might* argue that these things are taking matters too far to the opposite extreme.

TL;DR version: Peter, Ben and all your other socks - youre an idiot.

The legislation is aimed at rich countries where generally the populace can afford to buy films (even if they don't want to) rather than 'emerging markets'.

People will still use ISPs even if piracy could be stopped (which it can't).

... that not everybody is in USA or UK, and that they maybe don't have the money to buy loads of, really unneeded stuff like CD-s, DVD-s, games etc.

If we imagine a world without even a tad of sharing anything (movies, music), where every single thing is bought, even a few times over, it is OK to say there would be no piracy. Now, in places/nations that do not have enough resources to buy such stuff (entertainment opposed to food/water/etc.) there would be no habits of using movies/music/etc. so frequently or none at all. In turn there wouldn't be so much ISP users and/or they would use very slow limited connections because faster is not needed. Also there wouldn't be so much, or any, selling of CD-s, DVD-s and others, so - less revenue. Even the hardware sales side would be quite smaller (no Hi-Fi's, no fast PC-s, no portable MP3's).

So, if the plan to police the whole world just to pour money into already fat purses of the movie/music industry succeeds, some or all of the things in prior mentioned fantasy will come true: less money/users for the ISP-s, HW firms, less movies seen rented, lees games bought etc.

You really have to be a medical moron to think that because the whole world is used to use this amount of multimedia every day, that they will putt all of their money just to satisfy their "addiction". Yeah, right.

Just as an example, in my country one AAA PC title game is 500 kn (cca 90$), and the normal-to-high salary is 5000 kn. DO you really think that I will spend 1/3 of my salary on a few games? Hahahaha, c'mon :D:D:D

Sorry for a longer post ;)

Frack it, I,ve been putting this off, but I think I'll join "Man of flesh & blood" and get my Lawful Rebellion Affidavits done. There is more than enough cause to rebel now, this is just the last lawless straw!

quote
The message should be clear
Pirates are going to pay for their crimes.

posted by : Paul, 27 November 2009
unquote

do a favour to everybody... shoot yoursef in the head

sorry, but the P2P filesharers trafficing in music, movies and more illegally. yes pirated copies, not a surprise to many, but they do not deserve to be protected.

time has come to move to protect artists, filmmakers and the vast amounts of people in the creative fields from piracy of their works.

websites and p2p networks which have pirated goods deserve to go down.

"Since law abiding citizens out number pirates by at least a 10000 to 1, I don't see ISPs having any issues with staying in Biz"

Since 3/4 of internet traffic (or some similar figure) is people illegally downloading stuff, I find that "10000 to 1" number a tad hard to believe.

http://www.acs-law.org.uk/ looks like a certain law firm not been paying the bill...

It's a civil matter; no chance of any jail whatsoever as a result of receiving these letters.

When you end up in court and get fined and imprisoned, your excuses won't matter one bit because the law rules.

The firm is a chancer, they will depend on the "embarrassment" factor hoping that £300 will be affordable to avoid a name in the local paper. I tried to visit the "Law" firm's website to have a look at the other side of the story. Up popped a warning not to open the link. I sense a scam.

Its a long read, but it will get you to live as a person of flesh and blood and not an entity which the goverment make you as a child with your birth certificate!

Live by common law, i.e. DOnt cause HARM or LOSE to anyone else, pretty simple and correct in my eyes, Statutes and acts ARE CONTRACTS! If you dont understand or agree, THEY DONT APPLY! or even better, sign yourself out of them!

http://lawfulrebellion.org/2009/11/23/get-government-to-lawfully-agree-that-youre-not-a-person-subject-to-acts/

people don't download pirated software, films or music........everything is downloaded or passed around hacker groups who put the downloaded material on DVDs and then sell the discs for next to nothing and usually many people will share the same discs.. One disc can have 1 hundred or more programmes or music tracts...same for films and games.

Stopping this type of piracy is very difficult so if illegal downloading becomes a danger to users they will simply switch to the "Asian" way of doing it.

Why not try making retail prices reflect the real cost of production then selling to a much larger consumer base because police enforcement is never going to work.

Perhaps you would like to see pirates Hung as well....sorry but your reply is not proportional to what is being talked about...minor copyright infringement.
Likewise this law firms action is not proportionate (particularly as the copyright protection company actually put up the torrents themselves in the first place...completely agent provocature), this minor copyright infringement does not justify them breaching privacy and data protection laws. How on earth can sending such private information through the postal system where it can be lost, sent to the wrong address (possibly your neighbours) read by anyone in the postal service be justified....they are comitting data protection offences by doing this. This information in the wrong hands could even lead to people being extorted.
If they are sending 30,000 letters then a large number will go astray.
This is simply not acceptable.

I don't know too much about it, but as Lea said, books and songs come under copyrights for intellectual property and receive royalties, as opposed to movies which don't.
Would a system where movie-makers receive royalties for times played rather than times bought?
I dont know, just putting it out there.

You can dream up any scenario you desire but the courts do not buy the fantasy plea. Pirates are going to be prosecuted so get use to it. You're entitled to a fair trial, prison time and a large fine for pirating.

There have got to be other legal issues here as well as copyright.....what about data protection and human rights privacy law.
Take the following scenario....husband and wife share internet connection which is paid for by wife.....husband downloads copyrighted porn....this law firm sends a letter to the wife being the account holder resulting in strife and divorce....they have surely breached both his human rights to privacy and data protection laws.
I can see this law firm being sued themselves

Well telling, that SHARING is unlawful it is just BS!!! when author writes book, or songwriter writes song and publishes, that means this eprson shares it! i know for well downlaoding for free, torrents and all that are unlawful, cuz when you are downloading it you become owner illegaly. But watching online, or uploading your own file, which you want to share with whole world CAN'T BE unlawful, it will be the same to prohibit to authors to publish their works. Just Bull shit!!!!

where this law firms interests lie.
They are not interested in copyright law enforcement and are just out to make a quick buck.....that is the reason they have concentrated on copyrighted porn material. They know that more people will pay up when they recieve a letter because of the embarrisment factor of possibly being dragged through court for downloading porn.
Bet they don't take anyone to court this is just legalised blackmail.

I bet lots of the downloading is done via open wireless networks of which one always finds a few.
If your neighbours are being dragged out by the police saying "it wasn't me", then you have to use another open wireless network.

The Roayl Court of Justice should first be explained that it is too easy to hijack a wireless connection, making people look guilty who actually didn't do anything.
Than there needs to be a law that all wireless networks have to be password protected, e.g. the boxes from the ISP's come with a wireless password (not all of them have that), and the ones sold in the shop, must have a password too. Then they can talk about starting to sue people.
But still, this is not watertight.

Never mind, the law should be changed to combat the profiteering by the record/movie companies :-)

It really doesn't matter what law firm does the leg work for the police, the pirates are still going to get convicted and the courts are going to enforce the laws.

Sorry I added the WRONG URL for those accused.

http://beingthreatened.yolasite.com/

There are a number of sites dealing with ACS LAW one is a fantastic "First base place" called "beingthreatened" (http://sites.google.com/site/acsillegalsite/) there are others, one has just popped up that gives more background details of the main players of this sham (http://sites.google.com/site/acsillegalsite)

Since law abiding citizens out number pirates by at least a 10000 to 1, I don't see ISPs having any issues with staying in Biz while reporting pirates to law enforcement and law firms for prosecution.

UK citizens need to vote with their wallets and take there money elsewhere. If a ISP is suspected of providing their customers details to businesses like ACS:Law do they deserve to keep your custom?

And every day, more and more customers are coming back to BT...and then going away again.

to track your ratio while using DHT. Maybe something similar to Limewire where you don't need a website. I mean the tracker information is just another file, not very big at all. They could come up with a way where they back up you info on a 100 or so computers(your ratio info I mean) and then update it periodically. I'm not much of a programmer, but I'm already beginning to think of some possibilities.

The file sharers stop sharing files on the intenet and just use rogue wifi networks. E.g. or a cantenna network / access point connected to a battery.

The only people to win in this are the flippin lawyers.

Not if they are intelligent they won't. It's not difficult/costly to prevent being caught.

Pirates are going to pay for their crimes.

I use Limewire to download porn & all the major movies and songs leglly purchasing via itunes.

Hope they are not going after people who download porn. Because i don't wanna pay for porn.