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from the Have-you-ever-read-a-book,-magazine,-or-newspaper?-Which-ones? dept.
Music-industry lawyers plan to ask potential jurors in a piracy case whether they read Ars Technica.
"Have you ever read or visited Ars Technica or TorrentFreak?" is one of 40 voir dire questions that plaintiffs propose to ask prospective jurors in their case against Grande Communications, an Internet service provider accused of aiding its customers' piracy, according to a court filing on Friday.
[...] Record-label attorneys also want to ask potential jurors if they "know what a peer-to-peer network is," have "ever downloaded content from any BitTorrent website" such as The Pirate Bay and KickassTorrents, obtained music or video from "any stream-ripping service," been "accused of infringing a copyright," or "ever been a member, contributor or supporter of the Electronic Frontier Foundation."
The full list of questions by each party were made available by TorrentFreak as pdfs:
Have you now, or ever been, a member of the Pirate Party?
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Wednesday February 05 2020, @03:51AM (11 children)
Even more to the point, how can you make a copy of something you don't have? The one making the copy has to be the one who already possesses something to copy.
No problem is insoluble, but at Ksp = 2.943×10−25 Mercury Sulphide comes close.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday February 05 2020, @04:03AM (10 children)
(probably an unfortunate use of words. Otherwise, 'have access' and 'have possession' and 'have (legal) ownership' are different contexts for 'to have' and their specific meaning do matter).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Wednesday February 05 2020, @05:37AM (9 children)
My point was that the one making the copy has to be the uploader. You can't copy what you don't have.
The media companies rave on about "illegal downloads" all the time, but as far as I know they don't bring cases against downloaders.* It is always against the uploader. I assume they really don't want to test the law on this.
*I am excluding here those blackmail companies that sent settlement offers to people pirating porn. The threat there was really "give us money or we'll tell everyone what sort of weird porn you like".
No problem is insoluble, but at Ksp = 2.943×10−25 Mercury Sulphide comes close.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday February 05 2020, @06:10AM (3 children)
This time is a bit different from all the "go after the uploader/downloader".
TFS
TFA
So, directly, they may have never tried to go after the downloader (I doubt it, but lets assume it's right; I don't have time to dig after such cases)
However, it looks like they do (now?) have a specific problem with the downloading part.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Wednesday February 05 2020, @08:41AM (2 children)
Those questions from TFA are to potential jurors not defendants. Of course they are going to want to exclude downloaders and people sympathetic to copyright infringement.
They always have a problem with downloading, but in this case they are once again not going after the downloaders. They are going after the company they say facilitated the downloads.
I'm not claiming it's an absolute, but the majority of cases where people are sued you will find it is for uploading. The ones that don't seem to be are usually for BitTorrent, where they can credibly claim that being in a swarm meant supplying copies to others in the swarm. My suspicion is that they really don't want a legal judgement that explicitly says "downloading is legal, it is the uploader that made the infringing copy".
No problem is insoluble, but at Ksp = 2.943×10−25 Mercury Sulphide comes close.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday February 05 2020, @09:04AM (1 child)
If they consider downloads as not-illegal, they have no case against someone that facilitated something not-illegal, do they?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Wednesday February 05 2020, @11:24AM
A has a pirate copy of a movie. B does not.
Grande Communications possibly facilitates something.
A and B now both have a copy of the movie.
There is no question that a copyright infringement occurred. The questions are did GC facilitate it and is that illegal? (or civilly liable - they are being sued not charged)
The question they are avoiding is did A or B commit the infringement?
I think they think the answer is A, but as long as that is never declared in court they can keep claiming that downloading is illegal.
No problem is insoluble, but at Ksp = 2.943×10−25 Mercury Sulphide comes close.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Wednesday February 05 2020, @10:53PM (4 children)
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Thursday February 06 2020, @12:46AM (3 children)
You could just as easily, and more logically, argue that the server is making a copy and sending it to me.
There was one copy. The server had it. Now there are two copies. The server must have copied it and sent it to me.
Hence the reluctance of the IP trolls to test it in court. If they lose the case then their entire "illegal downloading" shtick gets defenestrated.
No problem is insoluble, but at Ksp = 2.943×10−25 Mercury Sulphide comes close.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Thursday February 06 2020, @01:46AM
If you hadn't initiated the request, then the server wouldn't have sent a temporary copy of the bits to you , which you then converted to a new copy of bytes in more permanent storage. So you still have a copy. Also , the server cannot have intent - it was obeying your request.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Friday February 07 2020, @12:34AM (1 child)
U.S. copyright law defines a "copy" as a physical object embodying a work of authorship (Title 17, U.S. Code, section 101). The act of "reproducing" means turning a physical object into a copy. When you download a work from the Internet, you are reproducing the work, turning your computer's HDD or SSD into a copy of that work.
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Friday February 07 2020, @02:06AM
That's a better arguement than Barbara's, but it still leaves the question of who created the copy. Did the remote server give you access to copy bits from its drive, or did you give the remote server access to write bits to your drive?
Either way it still seems to be something they don't want to test in court. This is understandable, there are many more downloaders than uploaders. They want to be able to use the law against uploaders while still using the "illegal download" rhetoric against downloaders. Settling the dispute as to who made the copy would eliminate one of them.
I think it's changed now but back in the 90's when pirate DVD's were being sold at flea makets in Australia, the cops had to actually prove the copying to lay any charges. They could sieze the DVD's but if the seller simply claimed they bought a big box of them off some guy in a pub they could walk free. The law only protected the right to make copies, once they were made owning and selling them was not illegal.
No problem is insoluble, but at Ksp = 2.943×10−25 Mercury Sulphide comes close.