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Record Labels to Ask Potential Jurors: Have You Ever Read or Visited Ars Technica or TorrentFreak?

posted by martyb on Tuesday February 04 2020, @06:33AM   
from the Have-you-ever-read-a-book,-magazine,-or-newspaper?-Which-ones? dept.

Phoenix666 writes:

Ars Technica:

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:

• Questions by the record labels.
• Questions by Grande Communications.

Have you now, or ever been, a member of the Pirate Party?

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Original Submission

• Re:Clarification for "Downloading is not illegal" Re:Clarification for "Downloading is not illegal" (Score: 1, Troll) by barbara hudson on Wednesday February 05 2020, @10:48PM (2 children)

  by barbara hudson (6443) <barbara.Jane.hudson@icloud.com> on Wednesday February 05 2020, @10:48PM (#954461) Journal

  So what? You didn't pay for it. Was there a copyright notice in the trailer? Then tough shit. It's not entrapment because they're not law enforcement.

  Same as if I leave my bicycle outside unlocked and you take it - you're still a thief. Same as if someone leaves their car unlocked with the keys inside - you take it, you're a thief.

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• Re:Clarification for "Downloading is not illegal" (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 05 2020, @11:13PM

  by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 05 2020, @11:13PM (#954478)

  I'm sure he will give the video back if he gets caught.

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• Re:Clarification for "Downloading is not illegal" (Score: 2) by exaeta on Thursday February 06 2020, @05:22PM

  by exaeta (6957) on Thursday February 06 2020, @05:22PM (#954791) Homepage Journal

  That's not how it works. The law prohibits distributing media in violation of copyright, not receiving it. Viacom was legally able to distribute their own stuff. Thus it is not "pirated" and not even close to entrapment. Entrapment requires someone to trick you to do something illegal. Since copyright only concerns the distributor, not the receiver, the exchange is completely legal.

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  The Government is a Bird

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