Experience with tougher copyright laws in France

[Kali Yuga]

Originally Posted by Sil_liS

According to your interpretation the accused needs to prove their innocence, and this is a case of guilty until proven innocent. Which is what I said.

According to the Hadopi law, the prosecution has to prove to the judge that the accused is in fact infringing copyright before any penalties are meted out. I.e. the system does maintain a presumption of innocence.

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by Kali Yuga

According to the Hadopi law, the prosecution has to prove to the judge that the accused is in fact infringing copyright before any penalties are meted out. I.e. the system does maintain a presumption of innocence.

Does the accused and any interested onlookers get to be there as well, or is it done behind closed doors?

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by Kali Yuga

So then, why aren't you looking at a $2000 fine and option to cut off Internet access for 1 month as a significant improvement?

There's no jail time for copyright infringement of digital goods, though you could get zinged if you're selling physical counterfeits like fake handbags.

It needs to be in line with theft of the physical item it represents, you can't have a situation where downloading something gets a harsher penalty than stealing the same thing from a shop. We had some over the top prison sentences handed out for shoplifting bottles of water recently, but usually it's just a small fine and/or community service.

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by Kali Yuga

They're checking the IP's of infringing file transfers. It's not a sure-fire method, so it is entirely plausible for someone to explain to the agency or judge that "my wireless access point got hacked." Of course, the plausibility of that declines a little bit when you've gotten a registered letter saying "we think you're a pirate" and your IP still racks up gig after gig of infringing traffic.

I would have thought continuing to download gigs of stuff on a protocol that you know is monitored when you are on your final warning would make a network hack even more plausible. Guilty people would either switch to another protocol that isn't monitored, or encrypt their traffic after the first warning. They would only continue as before if they didn't see the warnings.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by sbroome

Just to get you to be more concise with your position, in an article in which a creator (who writes and draws her own stories),has said specifically that people who have nothing to do with her actual creative process do not deserve to distribute her work without her permission and take away page hits and ad revenue from her, what is your contention?

That it is likely she is exaggerating the amount of damage being done to her, and this undermines her point. If someone driving a car runs into me, that's bad damage, and we should (and do) have laws against that. If the care merely drives close to me and splashes a huge muddy-oily puddle onto me, this may ruin my outfit and *perhaps* we should take action against that. If the care drives several feet away and the breeze of its passing knocks my hat off, I'm in no position to rant about the evils of irresponsible drivers and how they are ruining my life. Even if it was my favorite hat and it lands in a mud puddle.

This is not a huge media corporate giant, this is an individual who has worked her ASS off to create and sell something, telling people to stop misappropriating it. What possible problem could you have with what she's saying?

That her case is not more compelling when supported by nebulous unverifiable numbers. That if the goal is to convince people not to share her creations without her permission, she needs to make a case for it not based on "because it costs me money, of an amount I don't know, derived from site activity I can't prove would be happening anyway."

She can tell them that it bothers her (although this isn't often compelling to fans, especially in industries where the actual creators are obscured by the companies who promote their works). She can say that she gets future work contracts based on *measurable* popularity of her past work, which includes both sales and site hits, and encourage people to both buy and download from her site. She can point out that the internet is not like a city--her fans "live" no farther away from her than from their friends, or from download sites, and they can get access to her content from her site instead of other places. (This, of course, presumes she hasn't put weird restrictions on use of her site, like requiring a login ID just to read things, or filling it with blinking flashing ads that drive people away.) She can release her works without DRM that requires *another* type of login ID with commercial data kept by a third party, and pitch that point as why they should buy her works.

Appealing to fans for less piracy and more attention and money to the creators: Good.

Doing so by insisting piracy is costing some unknown-but-it-must-be-huge amount of damage to creators' careers: Not good.

[Sil_liS]

Originally Posted by Kali Yuga

The accused in France receive an email, and then a registered letter (6 months later iirc), notifying them that they are suspected of piracy. They sent out 880,000 emails; followed by 68,000 registered letter. I.e. they nailed almost 810,000 on the first shot. After the letter, only 165 people went to the third stage, and supposedly only a fraction of them have gone before a judge.

Mistakes can happen, but it is somewhat hard to believe that you could be utterly blindsided after receiving at least one certified warning.

How do you know that the 880,000 weren't wrongly accused? Considering that one person was wrongly accused 3 times in a row that seems very likely. The 810,000 might have just improved the security of their wifi or something.

Originally Posted by Kali Yuga

According to the Hadopi law, the prosecution has to prove to the judge that the accused is in fact infringing copyright before any penalties are meted out. I.e. the system does maintain a presumption of innocence.

This is not what you said before:

Originally Posted by Kali Yuga

Or, if they can demonstrate that it's not their fault, they are not punished.

[HansTWN]

Originally Posted by Sil_liS

How do you know that the 880,000 weren't wrongly accused? Considering that one person was wrongly accused 3 times in a row that seems very likely. The 810,000 might have just improved the security of their wifi or something.

If someone knows about WiFi security they have WPA2 protection already, and some may even have MAC access restrictions. If they don't know how to do it (and are running an unsecured network) then they are very unlikely to even think of that being the problem after receiving the first round of letters.

Anyway, what was the harm for those 810,000? They received a warning and stopped (or they were never downloading anything in the first place and it was a false alarm). Justice has been done in these cases, they got a reminder to respect other people's property and that is it.

[plib]

Originally Posted by HansTWN

If someone knows about WiFi security they have WPA2 protection already, and some may even have MAC access restrictions. If they don't know how to do it (and are running an unsecured network) then they are very unlikely to even think of that being the problem after receiving the first round of letters.

WPA2 is not foolproof , although it is harder to crack than the alternatives. Within reach of my router there are about 20 networks, three of which are still using WEP (which is a 60 second job to crack). I know for a fact that at least one of the WPA2 networks is still using the default manufacturer login/password. MAC access restrictions are useless, also a 60 second crack with the right software.

All this round and round about cars ( I thought no one would download a car anyway? ) would be more appropriate if the red light runner in question could claim any or all of:

- I left my keys in the ignition
- I left my keys on the hall table but the door unlocked
- There's been a rash of burglaries in the neighbourhood with no marks of forced entry
- Yale don't make a lock which someone can't forge a key to.

which would make it a lot more similar to hijacking a wi-fi router. I'm no hacker but based on what I know I could probably hijack at least 4 routers just on our street. Based on conversations there are a number of younger acquaintances who routinely use someone else's wi-fi, not necessarily for downloading but they could.

And that's not even getting to the subject of the thousands of bot-net infected computers that exist.

[Sil_liS]

Originally Posted by HansTWN

If someone knows about WiFi security they have WPA2 protection already, and some may even have MAC access restrictions. If they don't know how to do it (and are running an unsecured network) then they are very unlikely to even think of that being the problem after receiving the first round of letters.

Anyway, what was the harm for those 810,000? They received a warning and stopped (or they were never downloading anything in the first place and it was a false alarm). Justice has been done in these cases, they got a reminder to respect other people's property and that is it.

The 810,000 warnings cost money. Justice has not been done. Either they secured their networks or they switched to VPN, nothing has changed. Well that is not true, now other governments will have the reason to spend money on this kind of frivolous actions.

[HansTWN]

Originally Posted by plib

WPA2 is not foolproof , although it is harder to crack than the alternatives. Within reach of my router there are about 20 networks, three of which are still using WEP (which is a 60 second job to crack). I know for a fact that at least one of the WPA2 networks is still using the default manufacturer login/password. MAC access restrictions are useless, also a 60 second crack with the right software.

All this round and round about cars ( I thought no one would download a car anyway? ) would be more appropriate if the red light runner in question could claim any or all of:

- I left my keys in the ignition
- I left my keys on the hall table but the door unlocked
- There's been a rash of burglaries in the neighbourhood with no marks of forced entry
- Yale don't make a lock which someone can't forge a key to.

which would make it a lot more similar to hijacking a wi-fi router. I'm no hacker but based on what I know I could probably hijack at least 4 routers just on our street. Based on conversations there are a number of younger acquaintances who routinely use someone else's wi-fi, not necessarily for downloading but they could.

And that's not even getting to the subject of the thousands of bot-net infected computers that exist.

Think about it this way, if their network is being used by someone else or if the accused family's computer has been turned into a bot --- wouldn't it actually be a service to them, if they found out this way after receiving such a notice?

This is only a notice, and a reasonable defense can still be raised. Just as in many countries you can say "I wasn't driving when that picture of my car speeding was taken". It is a valid defense, if you were not clearly identifiable. Of course, you may be forced to keep a log of who is driving your car at all times in the future. Also reasonable, if you claim you had no idea who was driving at the time your car was caught on camera.

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by HansTWN

Think about it this way, if their network is being used by someone else or if the accused family's computer has been turned into a bot --- wouldn't it actually be a service to them, if they found out this way after receiving such a notice?

It would take a certain degree of computer knowledge to even think that any of those were possible, never mind happening to your own computer.

I get emails all the time telling me some bank account I don't have has been accessed and telling me I should log in to report a crime. If I got one accusing me of some crime or other that I knew I hadn't done that would go in the same bin as all the other crap.

[plib]

Originally Posted by HansTWN

Think about it this way, if their network is being used by someone else or if the accused family's computer has been turned into a bot --- wouldn't it actually be a service to them, if they found out this way after receiving such a notice?

I know a number of otherwise very intelligent people who would have no clue what to do if they were told they were downloading something that they actually hadn't. People on here are relatively computer literate, most people aren't. Just like most people can drive but very few can fix their cars. There are a vast number of people who have no idea what a torrent is, what the firmware in their router does or even what the OS on their computer does. Many of them are likely to say "nothing to do with me" and ignore an email that makes no sense to them. If they even get it. The email my ISP has for me I don't open more than about once a year.

To say that 810,000 people were warned off is ludicrous. There are about 60 million people in France, God only knows how many internet connections are made in a day, it's impossible to monitor all of them 100% of the time. All their stats mean is that therir monitoring picked up 68,000 IP addresses twice. It doesn't mean the other 810,000 addresses stopped whatever they were doing, it just means they didn't get picked up twice which, unless someone is downloading everything available 24 hours a day, is very hard to do. Based on the recent duplication and dispersement of the Pirate Bay site there are a million and half torrents in that file, and that's just one site. How on earth are they going to monitor everything on the net?

[Sil_liS]

Originally Posted by mr ploppy

I get emails all the time telling me some bank account I don't have has been accessed and telling me I should log in to report a crime. If I got one accusing me of some crime or other that I knew I hadn't done that would go in the same bin as all the other crap.

I get them for package delivery.

[plib]

Originally Posted by mr ploppy

I get emails all the time telling me some bank account I don't have has been accessed and telling me I should log in to report a crime. If I got one accusing me of some crime or other that I knew I hadn't done that would go in the same bin as all the other crap.

Good point. I wouldn't be surprised if a large number of those emails hit somebody's spam filter before they even reached the email account.

[Belfaborac]

Originally Posted by Sil_liS

I get them for package delivery.

I mainly get the ones selling penis enlargement. I hope everyone else gets those too, or I might begin to worry...