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BBC reports that computer programmer Philip Danks for has been jailed for 33 months after recording Fast And Furious 6 from the back of a cinema after a judge in Wolverhampton ruled that the defendant uploaded the movie, which was downloaded 700,000 times. As well as putting the film on the internet, Danks offered to sell copies of the film using his Facebook profile.
The judge who sentenced Danks said his behavour was "bold, arrogant and cocksure". Police said that Danks had continued to illegally distribute movies after his arrest in May last year. Fraud investigators quickly traced him after they noticed his online ‘Thecod3r’ tag attached to the video was identical to his profile on dating site Plenty of Fish. Danks was arrested by police after a special ‘webwatch’ team was set up by LA-based Universal Pictures, who raided his home in Bloxwich, Walsall on May 23 – less than a week after the video surfaced online.
The court heard that despite making some money from sales of the film on Facebook and by personal delivery his real motive was ‘street cred’. "The first person with a pirated version attracts much kudos," said Ari Alibhai, prosecuting on behalf of the Federation Against Copyright Theft. "He wanted recognition from the community."
(Score: 2) by RaffArundel on Tuesday August 26 2014, @01:21PM
First - thanks for the civil discourse, it is a shame this has fallen off the homepage as it has spawned some interesting discussion.
Can some of the extra from massively overfunded projects be sent to struggling projects? Just how to decide which projects are worthy would be a huge problem.
You can't - or rather the first time you funnel my money for your make-life-better-for-everyone project to gweg_'s psychotic eat-the-rich project without my express consent is the last time I give money to any kick-starter type project. In reflection, I'm pretty sure if that was possible, I wouldn't even give you the money in the first place. It also makes me wonder if you are still on the hook for the rewards - so I want your first edition deluxe smells-like-mahogany game, but you pawn me off to someone else, and I get a t-shirt... All really bad ideas in my mind. The closest I can come to a working solution is that the original project can "release" your funds and you have the option to (easily) apply it to another project or (with a little more difficulty) get it refunded. If you make the latter as simple as the former, no one would probably bother with the former - so yes I am manipulating the user for your idea.
Is there a sort of equivalent to arXiv for works of fiction?
First, from wikipedia on arXiv: Most are copyright to the author, and arXiv has only a non-exclusive irrevocable license to distribute them.
Near as I can tell, the answer is - the entire blogsphere if you are just going to give away your work of fiction. Since we are talking crowd funding patronage, I am unaware of anything like Subbable on YouTube for books, unless Subbable allows you to "subscribe" to blogs.
Patronage has problems. Fraud leaps to mind as a big one. But Copyright has far worse problems.
I'm not convinced, because of this one simple issue - I can own a copyright, but I cannot be a sole patron. That means I have to compromise my vision for the masses (or for the Industry) because they own my well being.
I'd rather beat the stupid out of copyrights than throw them out. I'd start with the expiration issue - clock starts when the work first appears, no more "X after death" and we definitely need a time period that is reasonable, say 10 years since it is a nice round number. Next, only the creator can hold the copyright, but they can choose to licence it however they want - just get it in the contract. You like CC(something) - go for it. You want a NO USE EXCEPT WATCHING/LISTENING/READING - write it up and use it! Do something with the trademark laws so that companies (ehm... looking at the Mouse) stop subverting copyrights to protect their brand.
Once upon a time, the Publishing and Distribution Industry was the only way to get works out there in front of the consumer - that is still true today if you consider YouTube or Steam or Amazon the "publisher" or at the very least the "distributor". This industry also did a lot for the work (editing, production, shipping, marketing etc.) so it wasn't unreasonable to be compensated for it. The problem is TFS is pretty damning - that moron went way beyond reasonable use so even discussing this topic of better copyrights under the conditions let alone abolishing them.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Tuesday August 26 2014, @02:55PM
Where I'm coming from on redistribution is that people are too focused on super stars. A few big names get disproportionately rewarded while the field scrapes by. Star athletes owe a lot to all the other athletes. Can't look good in a competition without someone good to compete against. But people don't want to hear from the guys who never won a championship. Like the song says "no time for losers". Sadly, this sidelines and buries a lot of excellent work. Neither patronage nor copyright are solutions to that problem. Redistribution is an ugly bandaid for it. What else can be done? Perhaps in education, make history more balanced and broad. It would also help if the media didn't focus so much and so exclusively on The Leader. Our entire government sometimes seems a one man show with a President doing everything, and getting blamed for everything no matter how ridiculous, while no one else accomplishes anything. Anyway, I think I shouldn't have talked about redistribution at all, it's getting away from my main point that copyright is bad, bad, bad.
What really bothers me about copyright, even more than the waste of publishing in obsolete formats, and holding us all back on being able to have the digital public library, is the "mother may I" attitude of the whole system, the default "no". It's even worse for patents. Can't do anything without permission. Have to get permission first. Check that you aren't stepping on someone else before you do anything, because that would be so unfair to them. And if you go ahead without permission, you will be punished. Intentionally or not, that advocates and promotes a submissive attitude in the public, which is terrible for initiative and drive. I would rather have a system in which the default is "yes". Yes, do it, and we'll work out appropriate compensation afterwards. Even better if compensation can be calculated and paid out by impartial 3rd parties, from funds collected through levies or taxes. Free artists from having to deal with business matters. Take that camcorder into the theater and go for it. Especially, edit it too, if you like. Perhaps many box office bombs could have been turned around if fans were free to make alterations.
And, back to human nature again. Another big thing that makes copyright so bad is it plays into our instinct to avoid loss. So also does our language. What does it mean to say "my idea"? That I thought of it first? Is "my idea" the same as "my car"? No, but because we use the same words for these 2 different meanings, we confuse ourselves. Patents and copyrights get us thinking possessively, thinking that an idea can be owned, exclusively owned. Then we easily get all worked up that somehow, we're suffering a loss, that a copy is a harm no different than a theft. So we all go nuts, jealously trying to guard "our" works from "thieves", hiring mercenary lawyers to go after the pirates. We'll forgo a gain of 10 to avoid a loss of 1. The consequence is that we all lose. It's like the old argument for disarmament. Two mutually hostile nations would both be better off if they made peace and didn't devote so many resources to their militaries.
While I think reform would help, and the ideas you suggest of shortening copyright to 10 years, and making them not so transferable are good ideas, I think abolishment is both better and ultimately unavoidable. Even if I wanted to save copyright, I really don't think that's possible.