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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: 5, Insightful) by PartTimeZombie on Tuesday May 05 2020, @10:50PM (7 children)
The thing that gets me (apart from your points) is that I have never heard any good argument for why copyright infringement is a criminal offense at all.
It ought to be a civil matter surely.
(Score: 5, Touché) by Grishnakh on Tuesday May 05 2020, @11:34PM (3 children)
No, it shouldn't. Copyright infringement means that politically-connected corporations (the "copyright cartel" if you will) might make less money, and this is unacceptable in America, so these companies paid good money to the legislators in Congress to criminalize these actions and enact enormous penalties to deter people from committing them.
The system is working as designed, and that's why this should be a criminal matter.
(Score: 5, Touché) by PartTimeZombie on Tuesday May 05 2020, @11:41PM (2 children)
Ah. Right.
So, the TL;DR might be: If you don't like it, buy your own congress.
(Score: 4, Funny) by darkfeline on Wednesday May 06 2020, @02:59AM (1 child)
I don't think I can afford a congress, can I pirate one instead?
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Wednesday May 06 2020, @05:04AM
You wouldn't download a congress would you? [youtube.com]
(Score: 3, Funny) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday May 06 2020, @04:44PM (1 child)
Until you mention CHINA, then suddenly intellectual property rights become super important....
(Score: 4, Interesting) by DannyB on Wednesday May 06 2020, @07:49PM
China is going to use our own IP laws against us. Especially patents.
We will come to regret our attempts to make China abide by our IP insanity. Especially software patents.
Would a Dyson sphere [soylentnews.org] actually work?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 07 2020, @05:36PM
Then surely all matters at law are only civil and not criminal. As all such distinctions are arbitrary, based upon what society as a whole chooses (or tolerates) to make lawful or not.