US Court Gives 15 Months' Jail, $415,900 Fine For Game Piracy 525
An anonymous reader writes "A Florida man has been sentenced to 15 months in prison and ordered to pay US$415,900 in restitution for selling video game systems that were preloaded with more than 75 pirated copies of games." If that fine sounds a bit steep, note that his profits on the devices "exceeded $390,000."
Sorry Charlie (Score:5, Insightful)
It obviously wasn't for "backup purposes only or home brewing. I say serves him right. Gives everyone else a bad name.
Term? (Score:5, Interesting)
I basically agree with you, however this does raise the question of length of copyright terms. If the original 14-year term (IIRC) were in effect, those games would now belong to all of us, and this fellow could sell his consoles without being accused of stealing somebody else's work.
So the discussion about this situation should at least include a debate on whether these games should still be under copyright at all.
Re:Term? (Score:4, Informative)
They would have gotten at least extended to 28 years. Hell, Nintendo is STILL selling them. People are STILL buying them. IMO they deserve those sales when they manage to make something that stays relevant for such a long time. Most games just fade into obscurity within maybe 3 years.
Besides, if they were really free for everyone it wouldn't be a selling point to pre-load them on a console.
Re:Term? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Term? (Score:4, Informative)
I'm just sayin...
Re:Term? (Score:5, Funny)
I think you got the words, but you missed the tone.
An aside on fonts (Score:3, Informative)
This is somewhat off-topic, but since you brought it up:
... go to any of the font collection websites, and you'll find all their fonts are free.
Well, no. The likes of Linotype and Adobe charge significant amounts for their fonts, and the major font collection web sites usually have deals with these big names. You can often buy the fonts cheaper through a reseller than direct, but it's still not free of charge.
These guys are in business, and as anyone who has ever tried it can testify, making a good font is a lot of hard work that a professional font designer usually expects to be paid for. On
Re:Term? (Score:4, Funny)
Indeed, who would pay for an aggregation of otherwise free software?
You never heard of Linux? [google.com]
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Touche'!
In my defense, many here truly don't believe that anyone would pay for something they can get for free. Many here think "free" equals "worthless", that only the RIAA makes recorded music worth listening to, that Linux isn't ready for the desktop, and refuse to drink anything but bottled water.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
While I have fundamental issues with copyright law as it exists in the US, I have to actually agree with your stance on this issue. If they are no longer making and actively seeking profit from an application, then it should be up for grabs. However, when the maker is still selling and profiting from it, then someone who is actively pirating software for his own profit should be prosecuted.
Re:Term? (Score:5, Insightful)
I disagree. Steamboat willie, the first Mickey Mouse cartoon, really ought to be in the public domain by now. It's a piece of our culture. It is because it became a part of our culture that Diseny has made billions of dollars on the property, but it is because it becomes part of our culture that it ought to be freed after a reasonable time to make a profit has elapsed.
Our language, and our culture requires the assimilation of the arts. That same assimilation can make people rich, but when an old man's childhood memories are subject to copyright, and will be until decades after his death, copyright has become an unreasonable limitation on our culture.
Best example: The birthday song my parents sung me on my 1st birthday will be copyrighted until after I'm dead. How is that just?
Better example? (Score:5, Insightful)
Best example: The birthday song my parents sung me on my 1st birthday will be copyrighted until after I'm dead. How is that just?
I may have a better example: Thanks to copyright and royalties, I have to suffer hearing shitty non-infringing happy birthday jingles at restaurants till death!
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
They're a part of our culture, but only to the extent that they're allowed to be.
You can only sing the song or reference the cartoon if you're willing to pay royalties, and it'll be that way until after I'm dead.
To me, that sounds like a massive sucking parasite. Lobby for perpetual copyrights, worm your way into our culture, then charge perpetually for access to our own culture. Don't sing that lullaby your mother put you to sleep with in a movie or documentary, because you'll be sued, even if you're on yo
Re:Term? (Score:5, Insightful)
Bullshit. You believe that a work should stay protected by copyright for as long as it sells?
Then the works of J.S. Bach would still be protected, putting music teachers all over the world out of business.
If "relevancy" is the measure of whether a work should have extended protection, pray tell, how the fuck do you measure "relvancy"? Is it relevant if it sells one copy a year? A thousand copies a year? A million? How about five copies a month?
Believing that it's a crime to sell a console filled with pirated video games is a long jump from granting everlasting property rights to "anything that keeps selling".
Re:Term? (Score:5, Insightful)
You have a fundamental misunderstanding about what the whole "copyright" regime is supposed to be for. It is not to "work once and make oodles and oodles of cash, like, foreveah!" (and the very fact that you seem to think so and others here agree with you is a sad testimony as to how far the whole idea has been corrupted by greed-mongering mega-corporations).
The purpose of copyrights is to "promote arts and sciences". To that effect the public grants a (naturally non-existant) temporary privilege to the artist for a time-limited monopoly on his works. In exchange for that monopoly, the time limitation (which is supposed to be wholly unrelated to how much money is the dude making) was originally set to expire after a sane period and the works were to enter the public domain.
Unlimited (for practical purposes) copyrights are a perversion of this idea and serve no communal purpose. A never-ending copyright has no societal justification (and in fact it is extremely dangerous to the society - just imagine someone still holding copyright on this thing called "the Latin alphabet" and charging everyone per word, which would be the case if copyrights were based on "sales" and "money earned" as you seem to suggest).
Any attempts to extend the copyright warrant only one sane response from the society: abolishment of the vast and unjustifiable privilege of copyrights. Facing utter corruption by the money resulting from abuse of copyrights of the responsible for this mess officials, a fully justifiable and righteous response by the society is to ignore copyrights (after all it is the society which grants such extravagant privileges to the authors), which is what is happening at a global scale, represented by phenomena such as the mass scale proliferation of P2P networks.
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The GP, just like you, is talking about perpetual copyright. Many things never become "abandonware" or do so after centuries of use, only when they become utterly useless. The point of copyright is not to let the authors to ride the gravy train until their works become so useless as to be irellevant, but to set a finite limit on the authors monopoly (and thus the efforts of the society to protect such monopoly) so that the society can enjoy the works free of charge when they are still useful. Otherwise the
Re: (Score:2, Redundant)
yes, I'm all for copywrite for a decade or 2 and perhaps after that giving the holders the choice to register their intent to keep the copyright for longer by paying a small fee but really things stat under copyright for a stupid ammount of time.
Companies rarely look more than 10 or 15 years ahead to work out how much money they can make off something so making copyrights last until the end of time isn't going to seriously increase the ammount of money the artists get for setting their work.
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bah! damn my awful spelling
*copyright not copywright
*stay not stat
*amount not ammount
Re:Term? (Score:5, Interesting)
What about only allowing intellectual property rights to individuals and not corporations?
I think it's long past the days where there was any use to the fiction that a corporation has the rights of personhood. It's been too badly abused.
The middleman problem (Score:5, Interesting)
I have sometimes suggested that as a means to restore sanity to the copyright market, a copyright could exist for a relatively long time when held by the original creator of a work, but immediately be reduced to a relatively short time the moment it is transferred to any other party. Such a transfer is typically a purely commercial deal, and often with a known quantity so there is little risk involved. This leaves the original creators free to create many works in the expectation that they will have a fair chance to exploit them in an open market, which I think would be an effective incentive to produce many works of good quality. It also means that all the middlemen like book publishers and record labels can't wind up being the dominant force at the expense of both the consumer and the artist, as often happens today.
I think many of the problems with copyright in practice today basically stem from this middleman problem. There are decent ethical and economic arguments in favour of both the consumer and the artist, and while different people will favour different ones (and often produce dubious post facto arguments about the origins and "purpose" of copyright to support their position), I think most people would at least agree that the copyright can be of benefit to both these parties. Middlemen, on the other hand, are of "artistic" value only to the extent that they benefit one of the other groups, and are eminently expendable and readily replaced.
An alternative possibility would be to prohibit transfer of copyright entirely, but provide a legal framework for legally binding exclusive distribution deals with a statutory maximum period that is quite short (I'm thinking months, or maybe one or two years, at most). This way, there would still be a clear mechanism for any middleman to make a return by offering his services to artists, but a middleman who didn't get a work distributed effectively and thus make more money for the artist (and as a side effect, allow more other people to enjoy the work) would risk losing his position, and leave an artist free to seek another distributor. Also, if a work really took off in popularity, this would leave the artist with the power to renegotiate a deal with his distributor, or to seek a better deal elsewhere, rather than (as happens so much today) just making arbitrary profits for a middleman who is just a cash grabber while not benefitting the artist any further. Surely the artist-centric approach is a better incentive to produce works that are likely to fetch a higher price because of their quality or appeal to a wider audience because of their general interest, which again are in the interests of both the artist and the consumer (and the middleman who is actually earning his pay) in this scheme.
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Yes! Why do you have to write something so insightful when I'm out of mod points?
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As a person, I love the idea.
As a future accountant, I fucking hate it. Make extra work for me, why don't you.
Re:Term? (Score:5, Interesting)
I agree. It also raises the very significant question of imposing criminal penalties in relation to what is in reality a civil offence.
This type of penalty is the direct result of the sustained campaign to impose extraordinarily severe penalties in relation to 'crimes' which in reality carry few of the hallmarks of what is traditionally regarded as criminal activity.
When you send someone to prison for that long for a crime which is trivially easy to commit, is of debatable morality, and which has a tenuous impact, at best, on anyone or on "society", then I think there is something very wrong.
Re:Term? (Score:4, Interesting)
I agree. It also raises the very significant question of imposing criminal penalties in relation to what is in reality a civil offence.
This type of penalty is the direct result of the sustained campaign to impose extraordinarily severe penalties in relation to 'crimes' which in reality carry few of the hallmarks of what is traditionally regarded as criminal activity.
It is a criminal matter becasue he converted someone else's property to his own use without there permission - just as if he had taken a piece of tangible property and sold it. It clearly had value - based on what he made in profits from the sale and he did not have the right to sell it.
He could have negotiated a licensing deal; but did not. This is not a contractual dispute; it's conversion; which has traditionally been considered a crime. Penalties are not only punishment but deterences as well - 15 months in jail will probably not only make him think twice before he does this again but deter others as well.
When you send someone to prison for that long for a crime which is trivially easy to commit, is of debatable morality, and which has a tenuous impact, at best, on anyone or on "society", then I think there is something very wrong.
Easy of commision has never really been a factor in deciding penalties for crimes; just becasue it is easy to con someone out of cash doesn't make it any less of crime than if you simply lift their wallet while they aren't looking.
As for "debatable morality" - the law as it stands says the copyright holders control how it is used. You cna disagree with the law, and think it needs to be changed (as I do) but as the law currently defines software programs as property. Property rights are pretty well viewed as important in our society, and using other's property without permission is generally not viewed as a moral act.
If you really think it has minimal impact; then you should have no problem with soemone taking OSS, modifying it, and releasing it as a commercial product without following the GPL requirements to relase the source. After all, you have lost nothing since you still have the orignal program so their actions have had no impact on you.
For artworks, a copyright can be held for 70 years (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:For artworks, a copyright can be held for 70 ye (Score:5, Insightful)
If an artist only produce a few "hits" in their lifetime, then they must have another job to pay the bill. If copyrights are here for the one-hitters, then something is wrong. Copyright is here to help creator to live from their arts not to go to in an early retirement after a few hits. If for example a singer can live from compilation of his old songs without creating new ones, then copyright doesn not promote creation and by it's own definition is not working.
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How big is the hit?
Some things are worth a lot of money. I don't think any professional athlete is worth $20 million or more, but the market disagrees. If they work for five years at $5 million a year, they never need to work again if they manage their money well. Corporate executives, raking in $1-25 million each year in salary and bonuses could easily retire after a few years. Why should an artist, who spends two years crafting a sculpture from a $200,000 block of marble, or one who spends that time w
Re:For artworks, a copyright can be held for 70 ye (Score:5, Insightful)
Where do you get off saying that something that doesn't physically exist belongs to someone else?
The whole concept of copyright is arbitrary. It was arbitrarily decided upon that, to offset the costs of creation, a short term monopoly would be provided on duplication of said creation so that the creator could attempt to recoup the costs of creation, if not make a profit.
However, without this creative work entering the public domain, no one else gets to use it in any way other than as a consumer. Maybe you don't think this is a bad thing, but there are those who disagree with that sort of stance vehemently.
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Because of the effort taken to produce it.
As for such an idea being arbitrary, you could make the same arguments for property ownership in general.
Lastly, I assume you're refering to things like sampling songs. Personally, I don't think that practice should constitute a violation of copyright. Nor do I think that fair use should be limited.
My main beef with the OP isn't so much a pro highly restric
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'My main beef with the OP isn't so much a pro highly restrictive copyright stance as it is a rejection of the bullshit quasi-populist idea content creators aren't entitled to continually derive and income from a past work.'
You are ignoring the REASON we grant an ARTIFICIAL monopoly to a content creator in the first place. The purpose is not 'give them their fair share'. Copyright exists only to inspire the creation of new content. If someone is not producing new content then society would be better served b
Re:For artworks, a copyright can be held for 70 ye (Score:4, Insightful)
COPYRIGHT MUST BE TO STIMULATE GOOD NEW WORK, NOT TO ENDLESSLY CELEBRATE PAST ONE.
copyright excuse is that it must promote the society advancement by encouraging good artist to produce more good works.
if an artist could not make enough good work paid enough to sustain himself it's unfortunate, maybe he is not good enough, not famous enough, the industry is not kind enough on him, or simply he is really not so much able to significantly improve humanity culture.
SO there are 2 possibilities:
- you make the industry pay him more (attention, the industry pay more the artist NOT the user pay more the industry)
- he simply is not good enough to sustain itself with his art so he must work like everyone else (at least part time) and make what it could during spare time.
it's unfortunate that maybe some good art piece could be missed, but the really good and driven artist had always worked even when starved and broke, if they were appreciated they somehow find a way to be paid, if they are not appreciated the future generation still has some of their pieces.
if a current artist that produce a single great hit is not paid enough to survive till his next hit (or is not really good enough to produce a next hit) there is no way that the society must pay him a lifetime pension!!!
REMEMBER: COPYRIGHT MUST BE TO STIMULATE GOOD NEW WORK, NOT TO ENDLESSLY CELEBRATE PAST ONE.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
First, I don't hate IP, but I do hate how our culture is being stolen by lobbyists who are extending copyright to unreasonable terms.
My parents, on my first birthday, sang "Happy birthday" to me. Because of the extensions given to copyright, I won't be able to sing that song publicly on my deathbed, because it'll still be protected. I see this as unreasonable theft of our culture. It's one thing to ensure artists get paid, it's quite another to give them a stipend and monopoly in perpetuity if their work be
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If the industrial plant I design continues to run for 100 years, I don't get a 100-year stipend from the company. Why should anyone else get an eternal pension for a one-off work?
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It would if you put that in the design contract and they agreed.
Why should anyone else get an eternal pension for a one-off work?
Thank you for putting this is sharp relief. This was my problem with the OP. This all boils down to jealousy. A pseudo-populist idea that since you don't work in a fashion that gets royalties, then no one else should.
That sentiment doesn't even make sense in
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Sure, for a time. Eventually, however, the work should pass into the hands of society.
Think about it this way: Society pays for the police who protect an artists copyright, and for the courts who enforce the copyrights. Society pays to jail people like this who violate copyrights. The artist is allowed a limited monopoly on their work for a period of time, subsidized by all society.
That being the case, it's only just that after a period of protection, society get something back, and that 'something' is acce
Re:For artworks, a copyright can be held for 70 ye (Score:5, Insightful)
Should their great grandkids be entitled to a cut from each copy sold?
As it stands if an author dies before his works become popular then someone who never did a tap of work on the book gets bags of money for nothing.
Why are authors/artists "special"?
If a mathamatician writes an equation which later gets used in designing cars to to make them safer- why does he not get a cheque for each car sold while a musician who writes a piece which later gets encoded on magnetic strips or optical disks and is used to make the environment in the car slightly more pleasant get a pile of money for each copy of the magnetic strip sold?
Both works are creative, both works have value, both works are used in items sold for profit.
What make artists more special than scientists?
My great grandfather helped the a friend who invented reinforced concrete by doing the math for him, why am I not being handed a check for every reinforced concrete building? What makes those math equations less special than "happy birthday"?
Or inventors even? inventors get a chance to make money off their inventions but patents expire much more quickly than copyright, why? why are inventors less special than artists? You seem to think it's right that a singer should be able to live off a single hit his whole life...and his grandkids should be able to do the same.
But why shouldn't the great great great grandkids of the inventor of the mouse trap still be getting money for every mouse trap sold?
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I'd say, let's ignore technology for a second. There are ways to violate copyright that don't have anything to do with technology.
For example, I could pick up a guitar and play "happy birthday" at a kids birthday party, and I could be sued. The song is over 100 years old. It's a part of our culture. It's a part of history, but I can't publicly perform it without breaking the law. Odds are I won't be prosecuted, but the song "happy birthday" brings a record company 2 million dollars per year in revenue. I se
Re:For artworks, a copyright can be held for 70 ye (Score:5, Informative)
Sorry but that's some bullshit argument.
Look at the artists that DO in fact still perform after more than 20 years (which aren't that many) and look at how they make their cash. Take The Rolling Stones for example. They wrote a great deal of songs but only a few of them were actual "hits". If their music became public domain, like say, every kid that picks up a guitar learns how to play one or two of them, their business model should be fucked.
But instead their popularity is unbroken and people pay hundreds of dollars for concert tickets to see them live. I bet the "Running Noses" cover band doesn't make millions of dollars just because they now could legally perform any old song.
You've been braindwashed by the shit definition of what performance and "business" means for the music industry. All these guys care about is to acquire rights to something, lock it away in a drawer and let it collect money for them. That's about the whole "business model" of the industry.
Meanwhile, some people have realized that music is intrinsically connected with the person playing it, people want to see Mick fucking Jagger sing on stage in "The Mummy 4" and not to some stupid kid that knows how to play Jumpin Jack flash half way through.
If you are actually the composer of a piece of music then I would assume that you are a talented musician and that you should be able to defend your work artistically against copiers. If you are not that talented and can't keep making better music than people trying to copy your stuff
End of story, no musician needs to collect royalties for a song they wrote 70 years ago. Usually they are dead by then. Copyright lawyers and relatives on the other hand do want copyright terms to be as long as possible, of course. If you sat in one place, never doing anything but you had that slip of paper in the drawer that guaranteed you money
Bullshit I tell you, Bullshit I say. Wake up.
Good day, fine sir.
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So let me get this straight. The Rolling Stones write and record "Start Me up" prior to 1975. They release it three times, twice in collections, and finally in 1981. It is their misfortune that it will be in demand by Microsoft for their Windows 95 marketing campaign? What... because they didn't have the "foresight" to hold of on releasing it so less than 14 years would pass? THis song is still in demand by people. It is considered a signature piece representative of Keith Richards. It is still used
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
>But you never know when something is going to be in demand. Some company like Microsoft should never be able to go "Jackpot! I can use that >formerly copyrighted material in this marketing campaign, I can make millions because it is still popular, I won't have to pay a dime for it, AND >the artists who made it is still alive to see me make millions off their work." According to you, this is exactly what should have happened.
So a company like Disney shouldn't have been able to say: "Jackpot, we'll
Re:For artworks, a copyright can be held for 70 ye (Score:4, Insightful)
So? You're free to ignore them and choose alternate sources of entertainment.
If everyone followed this logic then nothing would ever change. What about "If you don't like your government then you're free to choose another country to live in"? And "If you don't like priests molesting children you're free to convert to Islam"? Moreover this is not a debate about giving people free entertainment but amending laws which go counter to their purpose.
And copyright lawyers have exactly what interest in the length of the copyright?
I don't know either but most of them are in favor of long terms, so there must be a reason.
If you don't like it, don't buy it
GP is not in favor of abolishing copyrights but shortening the term. The argument is not about stuff that is actively marketed and available. It is about obscure stuff that you can't easily buy and "artists" making 3-4 hit songs and then sitting on them indefinitely without further activity.
It's up to them how they want to make their money.
It's not. They can make money on vintage stuff only because WE (the society) are letting them by instituting copyright laws.
Copyright was never intended to be anything less than the life of the author
First, citation needed. Second, "Life of the author" is a shitty measure because:
1. It discriminates against people who create late in their life.
2. It makes determining whether a given work is copyrighted difficult if the author is obscure. You need to know his/her death date, and that is an information that is not supplied with the work itself, while the year of creation / publication usually is.
3. What happens if an organization holds the copyright? Does it ever expire? (I don't know here but probably some aspects of cipyright are non-transferable)
4. What about works by multiple authors?
survivorship is an important issue in Western society, so the term has extended to ensure preservation of benefit.
I don't know what you mean. What preservation of benefit? Why we should preserve the benefit of authors' descendants at the expense of society when the authors are long dead? What did the descendants do to deserve special rights to protect them?
For 95% of the entitled
The discussion is not about the 95% of people but the 5% elite of "content producers" that long copyright creates.
Then fix copyright, I guess? (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, then fix copyright, I guess. There's nothing particularly wrong about this case, as far as the law is concerned. If Disney gets copyright extension after copyright extension, just so it can keep some old films hidden for PR reasons, then I guess Nintendo gets the same rules.
I mean, if we all decided (you're a democracy, right? If not, fix _that_ first) that we're ok with people making money for 50 year old works, then it seems to me it's only fair that Nintendo gets to make money with stuff that can't be older than 25 years. (The NES launched in 1983, so games for it can't be older.) What's sauce for the goose, and all that.
Honestly, the Disney case rubs me the wrong way a lot more than this. There it's used to effectively take some works out of the culture pool, which is the exact opposite of what copyright was supposed to _do_. It was supposed to offer an (indirect) monetary incentive to encourage people to publish their works, _not_ to be a way to make already published work disappear.
Nintendo, by contrast, seems to actually use copyright as it was intended. AFAIK a lot of those games are available emulated for some of their other consoles. That copyright extension effectively encouraged them to put some work into keeping some of those games available for more people. That's what copyright was supposed to _do_.
And before you go, "OMG, but you could just download an emulator from somewhere else"... well, that may be true for the NES and SNES, but look at how it takes longer and longer to emulate newer consoles. We've already had the PS3 for a while, and emulating the PS2 is still iffy. It's one thing to emulate an 8 bit CPU with just about enough instructions to count them on your fingers, and a graphics chip which barely scans the RAM as it is, and it's getting to be quite another to emulate the newer ones. For the graphics chips we don't even know the details of the architecture and the opcodes. At any rate, it's getting to be more and more to emulate them, and it's taking longer and longer. We may well soon get to appreciate it, if the vendor writes an emulator himself.
But, at any rate, it's what copyright was supposed to do.
Duly noted, they make more money in the process. Well, that's how copyright was supposed to work.
I'd rather fix the Disney loophole first.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
you're a democracy, right? If not, fix _that_ first
If you ask me, if you're in a democracy, you need to fix that as well.
Re:Sorry Charlie (Score:5, Interesting)
He was selling these :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Player_Super_Joy_III [wikipedia.org]
In other words, he wasn't actively producing the pirated systems, or loading the games onto the consoles. He simply bought them wholesale from China, imported them, and re-sold them for profit in local malls. Doesn't make it right, but gives the story a slightly different twist in my mind.
To my knowledge, the games pre-loaded on this set are also currently out of production (but based on current retro-gaming trends may be re-introduced at a later date via online catalogs for existing consoles such as the wii).
In any case, another poster is correct. In my mind, most of these games are 14+ years old now, and not currently being sold by the original author. These two circumstances do lead me to question whether copyright law in this case really serves the interests of society.
Mario still has a bed time (Score:4, Insightful)
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How in the hell did he make $400K selling those???? I am obviously in the wrong business (aside from the whole "getting caught" bit).
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I'm known to download a few games illegally from time to time, and yes I probably shouldn't do that. I've been doing it for almost 2 decades now, though less so these days, because I know what most games are about these days.
But I've never been as much an asshole as to actually put them all on an image and sell systems pre-loaded with them.
Fail all over for this guy. The punishment fits the crime. I, for one, know the difference between downloading a piece of software illegally for just mys
Re:Sorry Charlie (Score:5, Insightful)
Get yours now! http://www.amazon.com/Super-Power-Player-Joystick-Game/dp/B000AXWEVU [amazon.com]
I'll be Jeff Bezos won't be going to jail any time soon.
Re:Sorry Charlie (Score:5, Insightful)
Are you out of your mind? Going to jail for selling old games?
This is the kind of sentences that actually turn normal people into real criminals. What is he going to do when he gets out of jail, no job, probably unable to get one, out of money, etc?
I'm okay with this. (Score:5, Insightful)
There is a massive difference between pirating something and selling someone else's copyrighted work. The minute you turn piracy into a for-profit operation is when criminal copyright infringement makes sense.
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Yeah, how dare he sell games that no-one else is interested in selling.
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Yeah, how dare he sell games that no-one else is interested in selling.
How do you come to that conclusion?
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Player_Super_Joy_III [wikipedia.org]
That's what he was selling. NES games.
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NES SMB is being sold? Really? In any case, it was published in 1985, Nintendo has had 23 years to sell it. They've been incredibly successful. That's long enough. It should be in the public domain. Hell, it should have been in the public domain years ago.
Re:I'm okay with this. (Score:5, Insightful)
FTFY
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so if I sell something I didn't create and collect 100% of the profits I'm a criminal?, I guess I won't be able to sell any of my possessions then
Wow, I think you are having trouble with the term Profit. The only way that you can be selling your personal possessions for 100% profit is if you stole them.
Re:I'm okay with this. (Score:4, Funny)
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Piracy is always a for-profit operation. It's just that the profit isn't always financial
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By that logic I shouldn't be allowed to help my neighbor fix his car 'cause I know he'll invite me to his BBQ afterwards.
Some piracy is as bad as theft (Score:3, Insightful)
This is not giving a copy to your friend, this is a direct theft of value from the software writers. Call it "copyright violation" or call it "selling someone's work without paying them for it" this was wrong.
Well... (Score:2)
The argument from 'pirates' is extremely varied, but it usually involves no profit, in which case, it becomes less black and white. If you 'pirate' something that you wouldn't have purchased anyway and don't share it with anyone, then no one is really hurt. I can actually sympathize with that. BUT, people LOVE free stuff and 99% of the time, that jus
Re:Well... (Score:4, Insightful)
'One could argue though, that if none of his customers had planned to purchase the original work, then not much harm was done. But that's unrealistic and impossible to *prove*...'
In the US justice system the burden of proof is SUPPOSED to be on the one claiming harm, not the one claiming there was no harm. I would argue that it is not unrealistic that the people purchasing from him would not have purchased from the vendor but likely.
Most of the people I know who consume pirated material have thousands of songs, hundreds of movies, dozens of games, etc. Those same people would NOT have bought tens of thousands of dollars worth of content if they had to pay for it. That collection might turn into one game, two movies, a few CD's, if that.
Burden of proof. (Score:5, Interesting)
And again, we're dealing with old games, none of which (I'm assuming) are in production or even for sale anymore. So did this guy REALLY cut into the profits of the copyright holder(s)? Probably not. His crime was really using another's work as the cornerstone for his own product. I wonder if that's how the case was looked at, or if it was viewed as though he had deprived the copyright holder of sales also?
Really though, I think the only way to be fair about this is to ask the customers whether or not they would have purchased any of the 75 titles and which ones. Heck, some of them may have even owned them... We're talking about Super Mario Bros, Duck Hunt, etc.. I guess the copyright holder could pass the time/cost of collecting that information to the defendant in the final settlement. That seems like a relatively fair way of doing things, although pretty tedious.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
'how did he not deny someone the money'
The only way he denied them money was if the person paying him would have purchased the game from the copyright holder instead of the pirate. Unlikely.
Re:Some piracy is as bad as theft (Score:5, Interesting)
Or if the copyright holder didn't want these games on the market because they have newer games that they want to sell, which will now not be bought because people are buying these older pirated games instead. Likely.
It's a form of "opportunity cost" (Score:2)
The cost of old product selling (at any price) has its potential in the lost sales of new product (at any price).
Many people don't recognize opportunity cost in the whole "piracy argument" when it comes to actually buying pirated goods, since that money could have gone towards anyone (those pirated from or otherwise) that is legit.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opportunity_cost [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:2)
Just to clarify this, if your name is Joe and you spend $100 of your annual $30,000 salary on a pirated DVD with Windows XP and Photoshop CS3 on it, you have removed "$100" of income that could be used for legit software purchases, game purchases, etc. So even though the assumed victims are Microsoft and Adobe, it could also be Bungie, or EA, or Sony, or Apple, etc.
Therefore, paying for pirated items will nearly always an appreciable opportunity cost, since most people do not have unlimited or virtually-un
Re:Some piracy is as bad as theft (Score:5, Insightful)
Okay, one of you people that claim piracy is always okay, riddle me this. If this person profited by selling a piece of software that took money, time, and labor to make, how did he not deny someone the money they should have made?
Because these games are old enough that they should be in the public domain. More than a fair return for them has already been made.
Copyright is supposed to be an incentive to create new works, not a license to print money.
Re: (Score:2)
I don't really think this is an acceptable line of thought. I think once you purchase something, it should be yours ongoing. That is, if you purchase Pink Floyd - Dark Side of The Moon on record in the 70s, you ought to be able to have it in ANY format you want. That means, if you want the MP3s someone else has recorded from their record, you deserve them. As to remastered versions for new media, it makes sense if you want those (vs the old) to have to pay for them.
BUT, being legally challenged for shit
Finite Copyright? Less lazy inventors! (Score:3, Insightful)
"Then, 12 years later someone says, "Oh, sorry! Your rights to that device are up! Ours now bitch!" and hauls it away."
Physical property != to IP. Going by your analogy, that person would have had 12 years to market the product and find a place in the market for it, build units, sell them, etc. Nobody would come in and seize their current inventory.
Also as the original inventor he would retain any attached trademarks, could market new versions with improvements (instead of laying on his/her laurels for 12
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Patents are 17 years.
Copyrights WERE 17 years. They're now 140+ years.
The idea behind Patents and Copyrights is Article 1, Section 8, Clause 8:
"To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."
Does excessive time promote the progress of sciences and arts? Is 140+ years "limited times"?
Companies bought legislation to extend the time to current. We the people only have one real weapon: d
For once they got it right (Score:5, Interesting)
Aside from trying to scare the ever living crap out of Joe Public, I can't see why the RIAA and MPAA bother going after the poor idiot who's sharing five songs from the new Brittany Spears album instead of going after the people like this who are actually making a profit violating someone else's copyright. Not only is it easier to track down the people who are doing it for profit, but you don't look like complete dicks when it turns out the anonymous person you tracked down through an IP address turns out to be a handicapped woman or someone who doesn't even own a computer.
I really don't mind the concept of copyright (although I do feel as though the duration should be significantly shortened to something of at most fifteen years.) and don't have a problem of not consuming any copyrighted media that has an asking price too much for my likes. I've never produced anything that I'd consider charging people to consume myself, but like the idea that if I ever did and decided to charge for it, I'd appreciate it if it wasn't spread across the internet or various other channels without my consent.
I don't really blame the casual infringers either. I understand that most of them are young and poor like I once was and usually can't afford the going rate for most works. I'd be fairly hypocritical of me to want them brought to justice when I've done exactly the same thing. I think that most people on slashdot feel the same, but there are a few people who have differing opinions. I think we should all draw the line when someone is actually taking your work and turning a profit through selling it without your permission.
I really wish the **AAs would take this kind of approach and train the killer legal dogs on the assholes that really deserve it instead of some poor college kids. I don't mind them releasing a commercial telling the casual file sharers who are distributing their copyrighted works that they suck, but the hardhanded legal action against these people is ridiculous.
Re:For once they got it right (Score:5, Insightful)
People who make a profit have the money to fight back. Casual infringers tend to be easily cowed into settling.
To spook the commoners (Score:2)
Obviously, it is to terrify Mom's/Dad's/Grandma's/Grandpa's/Un-Techies. I suspect their campaigns have made millions think twice about downloading music and movies.
Rough up 100 people, make some money to pay for your lawyers--at least partially--and frighten thousands to millions into not downloading. Or, at least cause people to not sit 24x7 saturating their bandwidth archiving all music that has been made.
Fair cop... (Score:4, Interesting)
In this case, I'd say the fine is a fair cop - though the jail term is a bit steep... it wasn't a minor copyright infringement - and it certainly wasn't for personal use.
As for the jail term - I'm generally uncomfortable with jailing people for anything but violent crimes (though I acknowledge it might sometimes be necessary in other cases too).
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
What always makes me wonder about these crimes... what did he think was going to happen? I guess this sentence is good if it stops other, completely clueless, individuals from do
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
What always makes me wonder about these crimes... what did he think was going to happen? I guess this sentence is good if it stops other, completely clueless, individuals from doing this same thing.
He probably spent too much time posting on Slashdot, arguing about how IP should be nobody's property, got modded +5 Insightful so many times that he thought he could use the same arguments in a court room.
I'd like to think that, anyway :)
Not your average bedroom piracy. Serves him right (Score:3, Insightful)
If those NES games had been songs, however, he'd be several million dollars in the hole and jailed for two-digit number of years, not months.
Prison? (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't know why you'd imprison him though. I mean, it's a "white collar" crime and there's no threat posed to society by him simply through physical contact.
I'd say enough people are in prison already without adding copyright related criminals into the mix. I agree he should be fined (since his crimes were essentially financial ones) but I don't see the point of prison.
Re: (Score:2)
There is a threat of him committing the same crime again, isn't there? Not likely to do so while he's in prison. I don't know where this idea comes from that any crime involving physical violence is necessarily worse than any non-violent crime. Perhaps this doesn't apply in this case, but lets say you have a guy who steals $1,000,000 through "white c
jail != prison (Score:5, Insightful)
Ahh, the wisdom of Florida's courts. This is probably the most harmless white-collar crime ever, and yet the man gets 15 months in prison. No better way to turn an ordinary citizen into a hardened criminal. If it was jail, it would be a little more understandable, but since he is going to a Florida prison (among the worst in the country), may God have mercy on him. Minimum security prisons (if DOC is nice enough to send him to one) aren't a cake-walk either.
Seriously, fine the man, put him on probation with a suspended sentence before sending him to prison for an utterly victimless crime.
Re:jail != prison (Score:5, Funny)
Seriously, fine the man, put him on probation with a suspended sentence before sending him to prison for an utterly victimless crime.
Excuse me, sir, but this wasn't a "victimless crime". I was credited for Additional Audio Programming on NES Slalom, and the $0.0000015 I have been denied from this man's activities puts an immeasurable strain on my personal finances. Have you noticed the economy we're in?
Re:jail != prison (Score:5, Insightful)
Welcome to US of A: Where illegally copying a game gets you jail time while driving intoxicated gets you community service.
The land of free, where anyone with enough money never needs to goto jail for any crime.
Re: (Score:2)
He would have gotten a base sentence of three years and similar fines in, say, India. (S. 379 of IPC)
It also appears that country keeps trying to completely prohibit booze..
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle-old/435/indiacourt.shtml [stopthedrugwar.org]
Perhaps you should experience freedom and move to the country in your name, thus escaping the cruel, upside down nature of US law. ;)
Doubtless there would be any argument here (Score:2)
I think even the most "software should be free" person out there would agree that this is proper if all of the reported facts are accurate.
But then again, I don't think it's particularly mysterious as to what the general consensus here is on the subject -- individual, not-for-profit sharing is okay. Making money from it is not. It is the very definition of "software piracy."
Wish I read about the "Power Player" before... (Score:5, Insightful)
...it sounds like a neat little device. Come to think of it, I may have seen a few of these things in malls and flea markets or something similar not long ago. I believe one version of such a device offered a bunch of really old games like Atari 2600 games, and there have been others.
This man did not make these devices. He did not load the software onto the devices -- they shipped to him that way. He sold devices he imported. While for many people born and raised in the US, it would seem very obvious that such devices would be of dubious legality, to this guy it's hard to know whether or not he knew it was wrong to begin with. "Ignorance of the law is no excuse" -- okay... especially if you're the President of the United States violating the nation's Constitution. But seriously, this guy just bought and sold. He may not have had a full understanding of what he was selling and that it wasn't legal in the U.S. (It this device legal in other countries? That would be interesting to know!) Supposing this guy had no knowledge that these devices were actually illegal in the U.S., and had no prior offenses, don't you think it would be more fair to simply have the profits seized?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
jail time though? (Score:2)
seriously aren't your jails over flowing with enough non violent criminals. 390,000 amounts to pocket change for the game industry, so much so i'd argue it's petty cash. it should be enough that he has this huge debt to pay, top it off with 15 months community service every weekend (cleaning the freeway verge or some shit)
if it wasn't for the jail time (Score:2, Insightful)
I think the sentence is fair, the financial reward of the crime was removed and the guy deserves some time. I mean this is above and beyond lending your friend a copy of your stuff for "off site backup". He was out to make a profit and doing pirating in large scale.
A slap on the wrist (Score:2)
No, it doesn't seem steep. Rather, it seems like a slap on the wrist. Piracy for profit isn't even comparable to what the rest of us do.
Land of the free, ha? (Score:3, Insightful)
Regardless of the subject of my comment, there is a saying:
There's no greater flattery than imitation.
- this can be rephrased like so: There's no greater flattery than copying. Really, it's the same thing. But I guess there is no greater flattery than a payment.
Re: (Score:2)
trolls are pretty annoying too
Re:A Decent Application of Copyright laws. (Score:5, Insightful)
Excuse me, but no. Not everyone does agree with you and it's disingenuous to proclaim that they should.
Every game for the NES should now be out of copyright. 100+ copyright terms for these works is just, simply, unjust.
Re: (Score:2)
I disagree too.
I think that copyright is so totally stuffed at the moment. This is essentially a new product, a new market for an old product or whatever. If he wanted to get a license from nintendo for the games/idea they wouldn't let you.They are as tight assed as apple when it comes to sharing.
So in this case copyright should have expired, and then fairly these guys came up with a new way to make money off an old idea... The exact thing that copyright is supposed to protect. Innovation. Sure they didn't
Re:A Decent Application of Copyright laws. (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, as a citizen of a democracy, it is my right to decide what should be law and what should not.
Unfortunately my rights are being stomped on by people buying my political representatives.
But don't worry, sooner, not later, globalization will end these ridiculous restrictions on trade called "copyright" that the western nations are trying to push as beneficial to the rest of the world.
Re:A Decent Application of Copyright laws. (Score:5, Funny)
You assume wrong smart arse.
NOT A RETIREMENT FUND (Score:3, Insightful)
The copyright laws are supposed to be neither an inheritance nor a retirement fund. The claim is that they exist to encourage the artist to produce more works. If it were not for the little problem of evil bastards copyright would correctly expire when the artist does.
This is also why copyright should be short, if it's too long, like now, the artist loses any incentive to produce more works if the current is a hit.
Re: (Score:2)
A. No, I do not agree that this is a proper application of copyright law. Almost all those games are out of print - even if I wanted to pay someone for most of them, I couldn't. Just because there is a law that says it is illegal does not mean the judge had to apply the law to its fullest extent. I think Nintendo sued mostly to protect its name, not for game copyright reasons; they didn't want their name associated with crappy glued together hardware.
B. Restitution to whom? Many of the companies that made t