World's First Jail Sentence for BitTorrent Piracy 280
Rob T Firefly writes "Hong Kong newspaper The Standard reports on what seems to be the world's first case of a BitTorrent movie pirate being sent to jail. (Others have been jailed for related crimes.) After losing his appeal against a November 2005 conviction, Chan Nai-ming, a 38-year-old BitTorrent user known as 'Big Crook,' has begun serving a prison sentence for making the films 'Daredevil,' 'Miss Congeniality,' and 'Red Planet' available for download via BitTorrent. His appeal was based on the fact that he did not profit from the piracy." From the article: "[Appeals Judge] Beeson noted [convicting magistrate] MacIntosh, in handing out the sentence, was fully aware of the noncommercial nature of the case, but measured the seriousness of the case by the harm done to the moviemakers — not by the gain made by the offender. Chan, and those in the chatroom, 'were aware of the possible criminal implications of uploading films to the system,' Beeson wrote. She also noted the sentence was already drastically reduced, from a maximum of four years, to three months, in order 'to reflect the novelty of the conviction.'
Just what is "Uploading" in this case? (Score:4, Interesting)
If this actually applied to simply seeding the file as a peer (i.e. downloading via BitTorrent and leave the client running), then there's more of a potential chilling effect, as it sets a precedent for downloading-via-BT being the equivalent of distribution.
Re:Please remind me again (Score:3, Interesting)
He broke the rules, and it being punished for it.
Rightr now, society says the punishment is jail.
Hopefully society will change where a judge will be able to come up with punishments that aren't so expensive to institute.
Re:Please remind me again (Score:3, Interesting)
Actual harm done (Score:4, Interesting)
I imagine that the moviemakers actually did lose sales on these products, because most of the people that downloaded and watched these movies probably realized how bad they were and lost interest in purchasing them.
These companies want you to be blindfolded, and purchase based on 30 second blurbs with a catchy voice saying exciting things. When people see product they can make an actual informed purchase (or non-purchase).
Re:I don't know what's worse (Score:3, Interesting)
I was living on campus that year, in student housing. Early in the year, figuring some sort of file-sharing was useful within the house, I set up two public shares, one read-only and one write-only. A folder where I could post things and a dropbox. Within a few months I'd forgotten about the dropbox.
Sometime the following year I was cleaning up the system and stumbled across the folder. Embarrassingly, I discovered two very large MPEG files containing the movie, Entrapment. Apparently someone had found a writable share, uploaded it with the intent to transfer it somewhere else, and discovered they couldn't get the file back. (This was exactly why I made it write-only in the first place -- so it couldn't be used as a transfer point).
I told my brother about this, and he laughed and said, "At the very least they could have pirated a good movie!"
Re:Just what is "Uploading" in this case? (Score:3, Interesting)
Last I checked, since the protocol works such that having that file in that folder implies consent to upload the file, then yes, it is the equivalent of distribution. The question is only whether or not the distribution is illegal. It seems hard to argue that distribution takes place unless you can prove that you somehow turned off that feature.
One correction (Score:3, Interesting)
s/society/government/g
There. That fixes the argument. There is a big difference between society and government. Society is simply a collection of people, whereas government is the ruling force of a jurisdiction of land. In some cases the society and government are somewhat intertwined, whereas in other cases the government is far removed from the society that it is governing.
Re:Please remind me again (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Just what is "Uploading" in this case? (Score:3, Interesting)
Assuming that you need at least, say, 75% of the file for it to be even semi-watchable, I would suspect that with the distributed nature of bittorrent, very few peers or seeders actually distribute enough of the file to any given person for it to really be that "person A got the movie from person B".
Only in China (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Just what is "Uploading" in this case? (Score:3, Interesting)
Now what if I have the whole file, but I never share out enough to anyone that they would watch the file just with what I've shared?
I'm certainly not qualified to answer any of these questions, it's just sort of my brain wandering off into a tangent.
Re:wow (Score:4, Interesting)
(No offense. I do believe it happened, but... it happened. Making fun of Bush now is a lot like beating up a man with broken arms and legs. Sure, you could, but... why bother? What else can you do to him that hasn't already been done?)
But as far as bad taste goes, look at any list of top sellers in any field.
Whaddya know, 8 million people bought Madden 0X again, even though it's the same game as last year, with a new guy on the cover!
Hmmm... Bill O'Rielly's book on the best-seller list? O R(iel)LY?
Hey! (Popstar who can't sing)/(Rap artist who sings about crimes he never did) just went quintuple super ultra platinum again! At least until everyone forgets him by next week.
Also, try walking into a fashion or decoration store sometime. I'm against the death penalty, but if bad taste were legal and I were a judge, I'd send half of the USA to the gallows.
Re:Just what is "Uploading" in this case? (Score:3, Interesting)
This could be interpreted at least two ways. You could say that it is like a car with no engine. Technically it's still a car, even though you can't operate it. This is likely what a large corporation would use for an argument. Let's turn it around now, what if you have just the engine. Are you still in possession of a "car" even though most of its parts are missing ?
Back to piracy: If I'm sharing 99% of a file, but the file is unusable, I am probably going to get sued for piracy. Now if I were to share only the 1%, I'm still technically committing piracy. In both instances, the result is unusable. In both instances, I am distributing a portion of copyrighted content. In both instances, it can't be proven that what I am distributing is actually someone's copyrighted work. Repairing the file by replacing the missing bits could be construed as fabricating evidence, because we start out with a useless file, and after reconstruction it is now a playable movie. Well what if I am on trial for a stabbing murder, but the only "weapon" I'm carrying is a banana, so the prosecution "repairs" my banana by tying it to a machete, turning it into an illegal death banana. Yes it's loony, but to a non-technical person they are one and the same. The difference is most people know the difference between a knife and a banana, common sense takes over. Not nearly as many people know the intricacies of digital encryption and steganography and we're left having to trust the "expert", who is on someone's payroll.
Re:Please remind me again (Score:3, Interesting)
Now compare this to the punishment for shoplifting. If the punishment were proportional, shoplifting a can of soda would get you a millisecond or seconds of jail time (not long enough for the cops to even get handcuffs on you) and a fine of perhaps ten cents - and you get to keep the soda.
Re:wow (Score:3, Interesting)
Alternatively the death penalty could be used on him, but I object to it on a moral basis. But the fact is, Bush is not lame at the moment - he's still the president unfortunately.