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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 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.