You're Better Off Shoplifting → Re: WOW

In Reply to 'B's Comment:

BiTorrent uploads while you download, and you have ''distributed'' if you so much as sent 1 byte to another peer...

The site is illegal because in the USA, unlike most other countries, indexing illegal content of other sites, servers, peers, or even another site that "supports piracy" is illegal no matter how many disclaimers or "Internet Privacy Act's Signed by Bill Clinton" say otherwise. Look at ShareReactor.com, it had nothing more then a E2DK:// prefix followed by random numbers, and they took that down for doing nothing more then HTML. Regardless of what the actual law is, these companies have billions to pay off everyone from the judges to jury to george bush to let them do basically whatever the hell they want. 90% of the taticts they use such as hacking and stealing ip addresses would be considered invasion of piracy and would land a 14 year old in jail costing him use of his computer for life, however they seem to have more power then our own government and can take the law into thier own hands suing 8,500 people by hacking into a p2p network run mostly by private citizens and individuals, and stealing personal information without warrant or consent. I mean even in murder cases and all fingers pointing to a particular suspect warrants, ect are needed before they can set foot on thier doorstep, but murder is nothing compared to file-sharing i guess.
/end rant

I know, but in their web site hijack / defacement message, they did not discuss P2P or the typical two-way sharing of files that entails. They said "downloading". No one's been held liable or prosecuted or sued or threatened for downloading. No one. As far as I understand.

-- B

Because you can't be awarded $$$ in damages because you did not "steal" more than the cost of a DVD...

Plus, it is hard to prove that you WANTED that file or knew that it was illegal.

said by "B":

---

No one's been held liable or prosecuted or sued or threatened for downloading. No one. As far as I understand.

---

Yeah they're called pedophiles.

Now THERE's a person with a valid point. Thank you.

-- B

One thing I've learned about the law regarding communication devices, is that there is inherently no expectation of privacy. This means that the government doesn't necessarily need a warrant to gain the information they are looking for. They may "stumble upon it". Whether they stumbled upon it or intentionally intercepted it is the question.

For instance, if you are growing a crop of chronic in a small greenhouse in your back yard, and say one of the damn neighbor kids knocked out a pane of glass on the top of the greenhouse with a rock. Shortly after cops bust and seize you and your crop because they saw all your plants through that empty pane of glass from a helicopter, they can bust you without a warrant, because there is no expectation (and also because it's in plain sight) of privacy from the air.

The same notion has been held for cell phones and land lines (at least cordless phones). Have you ever picked up a stranger's conversation while you were talking on the phone with someone else? Well, sometimes the police can get valuable information this way and will actually monitor calls coming through as a matter of static on their radios.

So if I use Google or Yahoo's websites to do a search for insert_movie_name_here.torrent and it comes up with an index of sites that have that torrent file available for downloading, wouldn't Google and Yahoo be breaking the law too???

No sarcasm intended, just an honest question...

I guess a search engine could be held liable but the chances of that are slim to none, I'd assume. I think the search engine would argue that "we are not an interface or website providing information and search results solely for the purpose of violating copyright laws" and that's pretty much true. Google isn't synonomous with "torrents and file-sharing" whereas places such as lokitorrent are. Of course that's all just speculation but it brings up a good point.

Plus, Google could argue the following:

Content Linked to by Google

The sites displayed as search results or linked to by Google Services are developed by people over whom Google exercises no control. The search results that appear from Google's indices are indexed by Google's automated machinery and computers, and Google cannot and does not screen the sites before including them in the indices from which such automated search results are gathered. A search using Google Services may produce search results and links to sites that some people find objectionable, inappropriate, or offensive. We cannot guarantee that a Google search will not locate unintended or objectionable content and assume no responsibility for the content of any site included in any search results or otherwise linked to by the Google Services.

Good question nonetheless and it's an intersting discussion.

True, but does it matter that LokiTorrent was synonomous with "torrent and file-sharing"? There are legitimate uses of torrent-ed files, such as using bit torrent for grabbing Linux distros., other open-source & shareware packages, and even music & movies that have moved into the public domain (no copyright).

As for the possibility of a search engine such as Google being protected by that one paragraph disclaimer, I somehow doubt it would stand up to scrutiny if the issue were pushed. LokiTorrent's site was basically a search engine (albeit, just for .torrent files) and they posted a disclaimer that was probably 50 times the size of Google's; it didn't stand up to scrutiny & pressure from the MPAA.

BTW, it's nice to finally have an interesting discussion with someone about this as opposed to what I got the last time I posted something along these lines; which was basically a few idiots/flamers telling me "boo-hoo!". Glad to see there are still intelligent people on here who enjoy a good discussion.

True - lokitorrent was basically a search engine for .torrent files. I didn't think of that, but you're absolutely right. I think Google or Yahoo! would still argue to no end saying that their service was just a service that automatically spidered sites and if the owner of a particular domain let that domain to be spidered, then that's not their fault (and you can't really blame Google's servers and spiders for doing their jobs). There's probably a really fine line as to what's legal and what's not regarding copyrighted material.

I remember a little while ago, BBR posted a news article that said a person was being sued for posting a link to an MP3, even though he didn't host it (I can't seem to find the link right now, but I believe it was a Swedish person and I remmeber it being a news article).

quote:

---

BTW, it's nice to finally have an interesting discussion with someone about this as opposed to what I got the last time I posted something along these lines; which was basically a few idiots/flamers telling me "boo-hoo!". Glad to see there are still intelligent people on here who enjoy a good discussion.

---

I completely agree! I'm not the person who will tell you what is right or what is wrong. I have my standards and you do, too, and I won't degrade you based on whatever decision you decide - that's your thing to do It's nice having a conversation with someone who is willing to discuss it intelligently, too

Totally agreed, what makes that right but not other sites right. i think that this is all B.S and thank god i live in canada and dont gotta deal with this s**t. also mr. joshNJ by using a tivo u are doing the exact thing other people are doing by downloading the shows without commercials cause if i have my stuff straight Tivo takes commercials out when u record?

no you "don't have your stuff" , whatever that means, tivo doesn't download anything and it doesn't remove any commercials

Google does a lot of things that any lesser mortal would be cease and desisted out of existence if they tried (like their image search, their cached pages...). The fact is that Google is big player with a market valuation of some $56 billion.

Money talks.

Microsoft is a convicted monopolist, and so what?

No one is going to go after Google because they are too big. The LokkiTorrents of the world, however, are another matter. The stock market isn't going to react if you shut them down. $40,000 doesn't get you much.

that has nothing to do with it, google doesn't do anything like bittorrent sites, google does a blanket search of every linked page it comes across no matter what the content is (although they can remove by hand). bittorrent sites specifically get their links added by hand.

CNet had a detailed article about one of Google's more dubious features, its cached pages, way back in 2003. From the article:

Legally, what could differentiate Google from other archival sites that record pages is that it is a commercial site and that it has enormous scope and influence on the Web.

»news.zdnet.co.uk/interne ··· 9,00.htm

And this was before their IPO. They've only gotten bigger.

Face it: the big players don't play by the same rules.

Again, Microsoft: they are a convicted monopolist, how much punishemnet did they get?

Microsoft is not a monopoly, although it wouldn't matter if they were. A company only grows because of their customers, if the company was really that bad they wouldn't have gotten to the point that they are at today, and they would go out of business.

The courts ruled Microsoft a monopoly. There is no question about that. Microsoft was also found guilty of predatory business practices by abusing their monopoly power. Again this is fact and is not speculation. The EU also found Microsoft to be a predatory monopoly. What more facts do you need?

The got where they were because they were relentless to their competition. Most major companies got where they were that way. In the business world you don't get to be the biggest one on the block by being nice. It's not even about having the best product or service. It's about taking out the competition.

Really?

In this day & age of electronic media & multimedia, wouldn't you consider DOWNLOADING to be defined as: the the transmission and storage of electronic data from a remote location to a local location?

This is how we 'download' data from the internet (websites, p2p, ftp, etc.); we receive the data from a remote computer(s) and store it on the hard drive of our own computer.

Isn't this what we are doing with DVR units (Tivo, Comcast DVR, DirecTV Tivo, etc.)?

Our DVR units receive data (audio/video in a digital format) from a remote location (the cable head-end or a DirecTV satellite) and store it on a local hard drive (inside of the DVR unit).

If it were only a standard cable box or satellite receiver, we would only be streaming data; but since it is being saved to a DVR unit's hard drive it is actually being downloaded since it can be viewed, copied, or manipulated at a later date.

So saying that, is in fact a false statement.

no, tivo records an analog source only, doesn't do anything with digital, and DOES NOT DOWNLOAD VIDEO, and if it did it wouldn't download pirated stuff anyway

Really?? Most of my friends who have Tivo boxes have the ones that are integrated into a DirecTV receiver. I don't remember DirecTV transmitting any data in an analog format, I thought DirecTV feeds were digital. I forgot about the stand-alone Tivo units not having any form of digital inputs on them.Again I ask the same question: "Really?". Re-read my definition of DOWNLOADING in my previous post. All that i said was that the act of my Comcast DVR saving a movie or tv show to it's internal hard drive should be considered downloading, in the truest form of the definition: storing a local copy of data transmitted & saved from a remote location.

I said nothing about DVR units downloading "pirated stuff", all that I said was that a DVR unit (like my Comcast 6412 DVR box) is receiving & saving data (video/audio) from a remote location (Comcast's head-end or broadcast facilities).

BTW, Comcast DVR's are capable of downloading (receiving & saving video/audio) from the Comcast broadcast facilities (the remote location) in a DIGITAL format. The Comcast 6412 DVR unit is a combination dual-tuner analog/digital/HD cable set-top box with an integrated hard drive based DVR.

So, I apologize for inferring that your DVR unit(Tivo) was capable of receiving & saving video/audio in a digital format. I'm just used to what's offered to me by my DVR unit.

"Our DVR units receive data (audio/video in a digital format)"

Receiving data in a digital format IS downloading. Picking up an MP3 from Kazaa and the like is receiving data (audio in digital format). The reason Tivo isn't a problem with broadcasters is the timeshift ruling on fair use so it's immaterial how they do it.

what other units do is irrelevent, the argument started with p2pliterz saying that I personally was downloading with tivo, this has nothing to do with a dvr on comcast or directivo, i don't have those.

Sorry, I thought the idea of the forums on this site was for a free exchange of ideas and opinions, as long as they pertain to point of the initial postingAgain, Sorry. I was just trying to make a point by making the discussion applicable to owners of any DVR unit, not just the portion of those users that have Tivos.

As a few mods have said in other forums on this site, the forums are for any visitor here to post information they feel is relevant to the topic at hand; if the discussion is so closed that others can't post their opinions, than take the discussion to either IMs or email.