ISP Suggests That Record Labels Can Sue Torrent Client Developers * TorrentFreak

aPirate@lemmy.dbzer0.com to Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ@lemmy.dbzer0.com – 284 points –
torrentfreak.com
68

Wait! Those torrent clients are written with programming languages! We should sue the people who made the programming languages for encouraging piracy!

And pirates are using hardware to commit their dirty deeds!

Maybe this is how technological society crumbles, one lawsuit at a time.

That's funny that you mention hardware, cause in Germany you pay a set fee for each device (13.19€ for a computer, 6.25€ for a phone) on purchase since it could be used to create copies of media.

I'm just getting my money's worth, officer.

In Denmark it is lawful copies of a media. Problem is that almost all media is copyright protected and it is illegal to circumvent that. So essentially it is a free tax for the organization that represents the artists without any checks and balances to make sure those money actually get distributed to the artists afterwards.

I from Denmark and I have no clue which law you are refering to.

Law regarding fees on drives and the like: https://www.copydan-kulturplus.dk/presse/pressemeddelser/lovaendring-om-kompensation-for-privatkopiering-er-vedtaget-nye-medier-er-omfattet

The law regarding circumvention of copyright measures is part of the copyright law, more specifically §75c stk. 1 & stk. 4:

§75 c - It is not permitted to circumvent effective technological measures without the consent of the rightholder.

[...]

(4). Effective technological measures in subsections (1) and (2) shall mean any kind of effective technological measures which, in the normal course of their operation, are intended to protect works and other subject matter, etc. protected under this Act.

Stk. 2 also creates some draconian rules that basically prohibits you from creating tools that help others circumvent copyright protection.

It is not permitted to circumvent effective technological measures

Germany has a similar law and unless it was changed it is legal to circumvent ineffective technological measures which means if you can circumvent it it is ineffective, making the entire law kind of pointless, because how would you circumvent something that can't be circumvented.

The Danish word "effektiv" I believe carries the meaning "not amateurishly put together" so it might be more of a grey zone leaning into illegal still. Some might after all still call a vaccine effective if it "only" prevents 95% of infections against a certain virus and has a 2% risk of certain moderate side effects.

But interesting tid bit as it's also relevant in a Danish context. I didn't know about it.

If I can prove that I downloaded a torrent of an AppleTV show on my Mac, will Apple sue itself?

Meanwhile the writers of assembly - the root of all programming languages - are shaking in their boots.

So parents can sue gun companies right?

And they can sue the state for giving out driver's license

It's just a tool...for killing, very efficient killing tool

True, and a knife is an effective tool for cutting, the problem comes in when one decides instead of shooting some paper or cutting a steak, they shoot or cut a person (excluding legal self defense ofc, that's fine).

No, that’s different. People kill people, not guns.

/s

It's true though. When was the last time a person ever killed a gun?

/joke

Torrent clients don't download torrents, people download torrents. See? No difference.

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They should sue movie producers. After all, they regularly supply the pirates with fresh wares.

Someone doesn't understand peer2peer filesharing. Next they will sue Microsoft for allowing pirated thing to run...

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It's pretty easy: there's no culpability on either side. It's not either-or. If guns and ammo and knife manufacturers are not responsible for murder than neither are ISPs and software developers responsible for piracy.

If the courts don't like that an IP isn't a person, then they can pressure congress to change the laws. Until then, everyone can go fuck off

Double whammy, corporations are not people and should also have laws changed.

Corporations treated as persons only gives board people the ability to vote twice while the workers can't.

I would argue by virtue of their constant bribery.. I mean lobbying.. that each of their votes is more like 2 million votes as far as getting policy changes enacted...

Although, the primary intended use of torrents are p2p filesharing, unlike any kind of weapon whose primary purpose is to cause harm or kill a living thing.

Yup, and you can sue Sig Sauer if someone shoots you with one of their guns. You'll lose due to having no basis for their culpability, but you can try.

the difference is sig sauer has money, lawyers and a few centuries of lobbying on their side, plus being the right side of capital... your average torrent client developer has none of those to fight back with, and is the wrong side of capital.

Feel like Sig Sauer et. al. might at least make a amicus curiae though, considering the legal ramifications.

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Well if that argument works out for the studios, Oneida better get ready because I'll be seeing them in court. After all, they made the spoons that I used to eat the ice cream that made me fat.

The same people that would use the "they made the software that was used for infringement" will be the ones stating that "the manufacturer of this firearm is not responsible for it being used in this mass-shooting".

Kinda funny how the main driving point behind their argument is "does this affect me and my bottom line"

With that logic they should sue the creators of the AV1 codec as well. Lots of pirated movies will be encoded with it....

They should sue Alan Turing and John von Neumann.

plenty of legal uses of the protocol. whats different here?

e.

Grande doesn’t explain why or when developers of torrent clients should be held liable for piracy. Popular torrent clients and sites that distribute this software are typically content-neutral and don’t actively encourage piracy. That is similar to the defense Grande relies on.

just graspin at straws it seems

In a way, they're making a point. Just because they provide internet shouldn't mean that they are the ones that should pay damages to record companies. But neither should torrent client developers. If you can't catch the end user, then that's your problem. If you're that concerned, make your material more accessibile.

Plenty of legal uses. For example, it was legitimately faster for me to install deluge and torrent Ubuntu than it was to just download Ubuntu.

There's so many other legitimate uses, but that's the main one I used it for

Same with large academic datasets. You can't rely on most academics to maintain their work past publication, nor to have machines capable of serving that much data in one go.

Sue the mine in China that supplied the raw materials that went into the dielectric material in the capacitors in the power supply of the computer that facilitated the downloading of illegal content….

Those materials wouldn't exist if the Big Bang didn't happen. So sue whoever made that happen.

“In the beginning the Universe was created. This had made many people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move.” ― Douglas Adams

I sue everyone in Muricaland that enables tech to pirate. Including ISPs and record labels themselves they are the content providers.

Really funny because you can't sue a gun maker for the guns they sold killing people. I say funny but I mean that it's so depressing I have to laugh to maintain sanity.

You can sue anyone for anything - doesn't mean you're going to win.

Maybe in response to this we should all download a bunch of new music, then delete it all because it's complete garbage.

You wouldn't download and then delete a car would you?

I'd like to get a Tesla so I can put a turbo 3.8 V6 in it.

Sie the stupid animal that crawled out of the water so we evolved into humans, who can pirate digital goods.

How did the saying go? [NOUN_1] don't [VERB] [NOUN_2], it's people that [VERB] [NOUN_2].

OOHHH Mad libs! I love these!

Rocks don't lick buttholes, it's people that lick buttholes.

Good luck sueing someone that lives in an unheard of African country with a population of one. This is exactly why people release software anonymously.

Why is it always that a torrentfreak link is posted here and it's something negative and fear mongering?

Because part of their job is sharing all the batshit people argue in court that affects the space?

Whose job? And why does inconsequential rubbish that will be laughed at need to be reported?

Torrent Freak's.

They cover news in the torrent and piracy space. This is very clearly news. It's literally the whole purpose of the site.

Is why I like to have multiple aliases and always connect via vpn... harder to sue me if they can't figure out who I really am.

On that note, it would be really cool if there was a TOR-based github alternative (or even an I2P-based one) for hosting project repos somewhere that take-downs have no effect and servers can't be seized. Anybody aware of anything like that? then again, I'm not even sure how I would configure git / ssh to use a TOR-based server lol