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The Australian Communications Minister is proposing "game changing" laws crack down on Piracy by forcing search engines such as Google to filter content results thereby removing the path people have to finding illegal content online.
[...] Under the proposed laws to be introduced to Parliament today, authorities will also be able to force search engines like Google to stop "unashamedly facilitating crime" by promoting pirate sites that allow internet users to illegally download music or films.
Graham Burke, chief executive of Australian film company Village Roadshow, last night hailed the new laws as game-changing for the industry while slamming Google for acting "as evil as Big Tobacco" in its online behaviour.
"We stand ready to be co-operative with Google. We see good Google and bad Google. But bad Google is as evil as Big Tobacco was 30 years ago. They know what they're doing. They know they're facilitating and enabling crime and it's time for them to clean their act up," he told News Corp.
He accused Google of "unashamedly facilitating crime" by taking people to criminal pirate websites.
Does the Australian government really need to give weapons to special interest groups to enforce civil laws the majority of people do not support?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Friday October 19 2018, @02:46PM (8 children)
Above post is part of the story. It falls short of pointing out that copyright infringement is a CIVIL MATTER, to be enforced by the copyright holder. Uncle Sam, or "The State", or "People" have no interest in copyright enforcement. The copyright holder is responsible for investigating, finding, and prosecuting civil infringements, not the police department, or any other branch or level of government.
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Friday October 19 2018, @04:00PM (3 children)
Below a certain threshold, copyright infringement is indeed only a tort. Above that threshold, a single act can constitute both a tort and a crime. I don't know the Australian law, but in the United States, the threshold is $2,500.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday October 19 2018, @04:17PM (2 children)
Alright - and how many files are worth $2500? That woman who was prosecuted, and ordered to pay millions of dollars certainly didn't download or share $2500 worth of songs. Jamie, something or other - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitol_Records,_Inc._v._Thomas-Rasset [wikipedia.org]
24 songs aren't worth $2500 bucks, to anybody, unless you happen to be selling the rights in their entirety.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 19 2018, @04:41PM (1 child)
The vulturous parasites that comprise the RIAA's legal teams cannot suffer enough. If a judge had asked them "So, is it your position that each song is worth more than you charge per hour?" they would have had to admit their inflationary tactics or commit perjury.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday October 19 2018, @04:49PM
RIAA should be outlawed on the basis of collusion. The various companies represented by RIAA are colluding in many different ways, basically to entrap people.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Friday October 19 2018, @05:54PM (3 children)
Well I agree with you in spirit.
Uncle Sam, or "The State", or "People" have no interest in copyright enforcement.
Unfortunately for us, this is in the constitution:
Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 of the Constitution: “To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.”
I say we dust off and repeal it from orbit. It's the only way to be safe.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 19 2018, @07:51PM (2 children)
I think the strict interpretation of that part of I:8:8 is what is lacking.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Friday October 19 2018, @08:51PM (1 child)
Also, does "securing ... the exclusive Right" really "promote the Progress"? That assumption should not go unchallenged, and indeed it's been demonstrated many times that it is wrong, even backwards.
(Score: 2) by dry on Saturday October 20 2018, @03:42PM
Well, when the original copyright act was passed, back in 1710 or so, the idea was that by giving a limited monopoly would see more works go into the public domain, and therefore advance learning by having a large freely available public domain. (The original ACT was named something like an Act to promote learning, which the Americans changed to promoting the useful arts and sciences, which at the time covered most education).
If copyright terms were still a reasonable short time, I think it would still be true that people would be incentivized to produce works and a few years later those works would be public domain and others could build on them.
The problem is the reasonable time has been replaced with as long as possible and the original idea that everyone could benefit from the public domain has gone away. Look at Disney who routinely sues people for using the public domain because they can claim that the derivative works are being infringed.