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The European Court of Justice handed down a ruling against The Pirate Bay yesterday, one which could have implications far beyond the torrent site. Platforms such as Google and YouTube, which play an active role in the way content is presented, could be seriously affected, experts warn.
After years of legal wrangling, yesterday the European Court of Justice handed down a decision in the case between Dutch anti-piracy outfit BREIN and ISPs Ziggo and XS4ALL.
BREIN had demanded that the ISPs block The Pirate Bay, but both providers dug in their heels, forcing the case through the Supreme Court and eventually the ECJ.
For BREIN, yesterday's decision will have been worth the wait. Although The Pirate Bay does not provide the content that's ultimately downloaded and shared by its users, the ECJ said that it plays an important role in how that content is presented.
"Whilst it accepts that the works in question are placed online by the users, the Court highlights the fact that the operators of the platform play an essential role in making those works available," the Court said.
With that established the all-important matter is whether by providing such a platform, the operators of The Pirate Bay are effectively engaging in a "communication to the public" of copyrighted works. According to the ECJ, that's indeed the case.
"The Court holds that the making available and management of an online sharing platform must be considered to be an act of communication for the purposes of the directive," the ECJ said.
Add into the mix that The Pirate Bay generates profit from its activities and there's a potent case for copyright liability.
Wait, you mean the EU is even more in the pocket of corporations than the US? Huh...
Source: https://torrentfreak.com/pirate-bay-ruling-is-bad-news-for-google-youtube-experts-says-170615/
(Score: 4, Insightful) by pTamok on Sunday June 18 2017, @06:38AM (13 children)
In principle, you have deprived the person who benefits from the privilege of copyright from the possibility of additional revenue by selling another copy to the 'someone else' themselves. If their process for delivering another copy to a recipient is sufficiently cost effective, they might have made a profit on that transaction. Hence, from their point of view, the unlawful copy is, in effect, depriving them of revenue/profit, and deprivation of revenue/profit is roughly equivalent to stealing something of equivalent value. I realise this is an unpopular view with many people, and I don't claim it is right. I am merely describing the situation.
Personally, I believe the length of copyright to be unreasonably long, but in my case, rather than making unlawful copies, I simply don't see the film, listen to the audio, or read the text protected by copyright. There are plenty enough of other things to do - like posting to Soylent News.
The people making unlawful copies are expending effort to do so, which could have been used to do other things; and they use equipment that has a capital cost - digital copying is not free, but very, very low cost, and what we see is a difference between what copyright holders charge for a copy and what people are prepared to pay for a copy. It is notable that once lower cost copies of audio became available with services like iTunes, Pandora and Spotify, a lot of people found them cheap enough.
I believe that people and corporations should be rewarded for creativity, but the current system of copyright is very imperfect.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 18 2017, @09:36AM (10 children)
That is still not stealing.
(Score: 2) by Wootery on Sunday June 18 2017, @10:01AM (6 children)
Sure, it's a different offence in the eyes of the law, but the word can be used in a metaphorical sense. You don't need intellectual property law for that guy stole my idea to make sense.
People who nitpick about it "not really being stealing" are generally just lazily ducking the hard work of defending copyright infringement.
We see the same thing with, say, Jews aren't a race, so antisemitism isn't racism. Well, sure, but it's still wrong.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 18 2017, @11:36AM
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Sunday June 18 2017, @09:12PM
The metaphorical sense frames the argument in a way that misleads jurors about the law's letter and spirit, as Judge Kathleen Williams of a U.S. district court in Florida ruled [torrentfreak.com]. If you mean "copyright infringement", say "copyright infringement".
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Monday June 19 2017, @03:04PM (3 children)
People who claim it is stealing are engaging in intentional abuse of language in order to score political points. It's propaganda. There is a perfectly good word for this act, it is "copyright infringement".
Yeah, we've all heard someone say that, and usually the response is either "Yeah, so why aren't YOU doing it?" or "Don't be stupid." People would generally recognize that copyright infringement isn't something deserving of the massive fines and jail sentences being handed out. So the industry refers to it as "stealing" because people accept that theft should be punished -- because it causes injury to someone else. But with copyright infringement that isn't necessarily the case.
(Score: 2) by Wootery on Monday June 19 2017, @04:07PM (2 children)
But in a sense, copyright is a broadening of the concept of theft. It expands the domain of ownership rights and entitlements, and rightly so. You may be right that use of the word 'stealing' can be for cynical reasons, but it's not always.
Copyright infringement is, generally speaking, wrong. So is theft. There exist exceptions in both cases.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Monday June 19 2017, @04:50PM (1 child)
(Score: 2) by Wootery on Tuesday June 20 2017, @08:15AM
Sounds like we agree then.
(Score: 1) by pTamok on Sunday June 18 2017, @11:35AM (2 children)
Well, of course, you are right in the best sense: that is technically right.
Certainly, in my jurisdiction, stealing is pretty much defined as:
Removing, with intent to permanently deprive, a possession from it's rightful owner.
There is a great deal of case law around the meanings of Removing, intent, permanently, deprive, possession, and rightful owner. You would need a specialist lawyer to navigate through all of it properly.
On the other hand, it is copyright infringement, which may be a civil tort, or a criminal act, depending on the circumstances. Calling copyright infringement stealing is is an unhelpfully imprecise shorthand used by many people. No matter what it is, the way current laws are set up, copyright infringement is wrong. The democratic way of getting this changed is to vote for people who will amend the law. Withdrawing from the Berne convention, the WIPO Copyright Treaty, the Rome convention and the WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty probably isn't high on many politicians list of priorities. The other thing you can do is buy only copyrighted items that are licensed specifically to allow sharing and redistribution. There are several such licences.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 18 2017, @11:40AM
Enforcing a law that majority do not support is futile. Sure, people could, in theory, vote and change them, but really, who would allow them to do that until it crashes and burns?
(Score: 2) by weeds on Sunday June 18 2017, @02:31PM
Thank you for that clarification. I will say "copyright infringement" rather than "stealing" from now on.
Get money out of politics! [mayday.us]
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Sunday June 18 2017, @09:57PM (1 child)
Is that always practical? Let's say your grocery store plays proprietary music over its public address system when it isn't in use to make an announcement. Part of what you pay for groceries goes toward a royalty for performing this music. Years later, you write and record a song that accidentally happens to be similar to something you heard in the grocery store. Now you're liable for copyright infringement because your having heard the song gives you "access", which when combined with substantial similarity equals copying.
(Score: 1) by pTamok on Monday June 19 2017, @07:00AM
You are right, it isn't practical to be fundamentalist about it. In principle, I should shun places that have bought performance licences etc. But just as every supporter of the free software movement doesn't act like RMS, not every Muslim is Wahhabist, not evey Christian is Calvinist (or Amish), and not every Jew is Ultra-Orthodox, I may have views about copyright, but I'm not a complete arse about it.
I'm happy enough to buy second-hand CDs, and be a member of a public library where I can borrow copyright protected material. That's probably sending some revenue back to 'big media', but like the law, I don't consider such trifles. Sherry trifles, on the other hand...