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Woman Who Sold Access to Pirated Books on Dropbox Handed Suspended Sentence:
Pirated textbooks are relatively easy to find on the open web and via dedicated pirate sites. However, some people are creating their own libraries in an effort to make money, offering online access to such material in exchange for a fee.
[...] According to the [Rights Alliance (Rettighedsalliancen)] group, which acts on behalf of a wide range of copyright holders, publishers included, routine monitoring for pirated content drew its attention to an advert placed on Den Blå Avis (The Blue Newspaper), Denmark's largest buying and selling site.
For a fee of 20 kronor (US$2.91) it offered access to 115 digital copies of books usually sold by publishers including Gyldendal, Lindhardt and Ringhof, University of Southern Denmark, and Social Literature. The books were conveniently stored on Dropbox, with customers able to download them with minimum fuss. With assistance from local police, Rights Alliance was able to have the advert quickly removed but also managed to identify the seller, a woman from the Vanløse district of Copenhagen. The group said that the woman admitted to the unlawful distribution of the content, which included books dedicated to physiotherapy.
This week her fate was decided by a court in Nykøbing Falster, which reopened for business on Monday after a closure due to the coronavirus pandemic. Following a guilty plea, the court handed down a suspended sentence of 20 days in prison accompanied by a financial confiscation order.
(Score: 3, Informative) by anubi on Tuesday May 05 2020, @09:42PM (4 children)
It's one thing to share information for the benefit of the masses.
To me, charging for it is wrong. Just flat wrong.
Charging implies account credentials. Revealing account credentials is risky on the web, when so many internet businesses require agreement to pages of onerous "terms and conditions" in order to do business.
This is not sharing, at least not which I was taught in Bible School. When we were taught to share what we had, and others share with me. Nah, this is another business leeching off of someone else.
The legal risk I take by clicking "I agree" is usually enough to make me look elsewhere.
I give wide berth in my support of "piracy" in order to "protect the rights" of businesses to require onerous "terms and conditions" from those who still believe bending over and taking whatever comes is acceptable.
We had the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, but have yet to see the Digital Millennium Accountability Act, which would enforce refunds. Remember the pet feeders here a couple of days ago? Law is in place to protect IP holders, while all the people who bought the thing are left holding the bag. Circuit City taught me that lesson. Once you surrender a charge number, you take the risk. The law simply has not kept up with internet chicanery.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 05 2020, @10:09PM (2 children)
So your objection is not that she was taking other people's copyright material and selling it for her own profit (and I thought here you were going to make a statement about how you'd be ok with her giving it away because "information wants to be free" and all of that), but your only issue with it is the payment system that she accepts?
(Score: 2, Interesting) by anubi on Tuesday May 05 2020, @10:43PM
Yeh..the fact of requiring payment at all. I abhor the "ownership" of knowledge. To me, it's a public good.
If you want to have a trade secret, fine, don't display it in public and expect everyone else not to look.
This is why we have underwear. We all have trade secrets. Don't display in public and think laws are gonna keep cameras at bay.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Tuesday May 05 2020, @10:56PM
"Information wants to be free" is the wrong, and pejorative, phrase for what's really going on. A better phrase is "copying belongs to the masses now". Copyright is dead, and what we have now is zombie copyright, still shambling confusedly along. Publishers must come to accept that that business model is history, and turn to others.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 07 2020, @05:39PM
Yeah. I should be allowed to walk into your house and take anything I want off your shelves, because you should have to share with me.