The same copyright barons pushing SOPA, the awful internet, are enormous hypocrites, TorrentFreak reports. They want the law as a means of stopping online piracy — but maybe they should start with their own employees.
A Russian BitTorrent tracking firm traced pirated movies and television show downloads back to IP addresses from Sony, Fox, and NBC — as TF points out, “these are the same companies who want to disconnect people from the Internet after they’ve been caught sharing copyrighted material.”
This shouldn’t surprise anyone. When studios push fascist copyright law, they’re speaking on behalf of their shareholders, not the thousands of people they employ. Those people are ordinary people, who, yes, sometimes pirate albums, movies, shows, and games, like millions of other ordinary people around the world. But the hypocrisy is more than superficial. We shouldn’t ever let companies that can’t control their own miscreant employees shape federal legislation for all of us. [TorrentFreak via BB]
S0ULphIRE
Wednesday, December 14, 2011 at 9:52 AMtru dat
TSH
Wednesday, December 14, 2011 at 9:55 AMSurely those companies will have IT policies that say something along the lines of “no porn, nothing illegal, personal use limited to lunchtime”. But this doesn’t alter the fact that with SOPA (and correct me if I’m wrong here) a rights-holder could literally disconnect a Universal Studios facility from the Internet if someone torrents some pr0n.
Ryan
Wednesday, December 14, 2011 at 9:59 AMI though movie studio sometimes seeded torrents to get access to the list of IP Addresses that are downloading it.
DarkAura
Wednesday, December 14, 2011 at 10:02 AMRyan, I thought this was the case as well. So that’s what were most likely seeing here. Which says something in its self.
wsDK_II
Wednesday, December 14, 2011 at 10:14 AMRight, so they are still doing the wrong thing.
and should be fined.
as much as possible
light487
Wednesday, December 14, 2011 at 10:33 AMYup. This has always been an arguement in all the cases where they have seeded the copyrighted material for the purposes of catching the pirateers.
Essentially, two wrongs don’t make a right.
Add to that the fact that by doing that they are enabling others to pirate the very same material they are trying to protect.. those cases generally start to fall apart after that admission.
Hulka
Wednesday, December 14, 2011 at 12:27 PMRyan, I too understand that the studios do this, but I can assure you that they do not use their own Corprate network or known IP ranges. They farm this seeding plan out to third parties, especially so that blocking applications can be circumvented. I think the author is on target with the differentiation between the ‘Company’ and the people who work there.
Matt
Wednesday, December 14, 2011 at 10:34 AMHow is it piracy if they own the copyright?
I would imagine it’s more a case of seeding and/or downloading, in order to record IPs of other downloaders.
doubleDizz
Wednesday, December 14, 2011 at 5:24 PMI think this one is the only comment that matters here.
Big Windows
Wednesday, December 14, 2011 at 12:01 PMWould that be entrapment?
gadgizmoideroid
Wednesday, December 14, 2011 at 12:48 PMNo, it’s blackmail… Entrapment is what cops do to thieves.
ben
Wednesday, December 14, 2011 at 1:12 PM“we hard to destroy the village to save it…”
lolwut
Wednesday, December 14, 2011 at 2:16 PMit’s not a crime if we doing it for the greater good…..
the greater shareholders good i mean…
Nigel
Wednesday, December 14, 2011 at 4:32 PMBut that’s how copyright and intellectual property law works. The rights holders enforce it on whoever they want (because it’s their material), they’re under no obligation to enforce it one everyone, although people are liable if they don’t seek permission prior.
The justice system acts as their instrument in these cases, and also works to make sure that what the holders assert is true and in contravention of IP legislation.
In other words, if they were to be filesharing their own copyrighted material, and they hadn’t broken their own DRM to do so, and they weren’t also pirating anyone else’s material in the process, there’s actually nothing ‘wrong’ with what they were doing, although I’ve always wondered whether being a peer and sharing data with other peers could arguable be an implicit permission gifted to other third parties involved in that particular torrent. I don’t know if there’s a legal precedent where this has come up and been dealt wit..
MD
Thursday, December 15, 2011 at 4:00 PMThat may be true of Copywrite.. (which is automatically granted to all Print and AV media, and enforceable by government legislation)
Patent and Trademark IP MUST be shown to be enforced, or the company or individual looses the right to the IP. If Apple Knows that their registered trademark is being infringed upon, and they don’t attempt to enforce their rights, they can loose the right to enforce their registered trademark…
“Taking action against a person who infringes your IP rights is known as enforcement. The value of IP rights is directly related to the ability of the owner to enforce them.
Effective enforcement of IP rights is necessary to maintain their value in legal terms, as an ongoing deterrent and to retain the ability to attract commercial value.
Rights that cannot be enforced may be considered worthless, because ownership of them does not prevent other people from using them in any practical sense.”
http://www.ipaustralia.gov.au/ip-infringement/enforcing-your-ip/
awallafashagba
Wednesday, December 14, 2011 at 4:57 PMperhaps they are just snooping on how its being done / quality / etc ??
Mark
Wednesday, December 14, 2011 at 4:59 PMYou think that’s amazing, well in Adelaide, South Australia, the police were caught pirating movies on the police department’s computers. No police were prosecuted; there were too many cops to prosecute. No joke