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From Slashdot | MPAA is Awarded $110 Million In TorrentSpy Case

Perspective (Score:5, Insightful)

by abscissa (136568) on Wednesday May 07, @08:22PM (#23331882)

To put this is some perspective, the US has offered Burma (Myanmar) $3m in aid.

Re:Perspective (Score:5, Insightful)

by icedevil (450212) on Wednesday May 07, @08:28PM (#23331952)
Homepage

TFA mentions that the MPAA was awarded $30,000 per infringement. So following your lead the US thinks the people of Burma are worth $30 per person (assuming the 100,000 figure is somewhat accurate.)

A wicked idea to pay them back (Score:5, Funny)

by Weaselmancer (533834)
on Wednesday May 07, @10:08PM (#23332704)

Give them three pirated Britney Spears albums. Apparently that’s worth about $110 million according to the RIAA.

Re:Perspective (Score:5, Insightful)

by Anpheus (908711) on Wednesday May 07, @09:23PM (#23332424)

The era of perpetual copyright was brought on by a few individuals that refused to invent and create any longer, and instead sought to make money indefinitely off the nostalgic value of their works.

I’m looking at you, Disney.

And to you, c6gunner, I’m not saying that copyright shouldn’t exist, but perhaps… the original 14 year timeframe was adequate. The film, Iron Man, made $100,000,000 in three days of sales, in 14, 50, or well over one hundred years can Hollywood justify why it needs to retain the sole distribution rights to something that was envisioned by someone who has already died? (Referring to the 100+ year copyright terms most countries have these days.)

Re:LOL (Score:5, Informative)

by arkhan_jg (618674) on Thursday May 08, @03:26AM (#23334614)

Vicarious copyright infringement is actually a specific offence of indirect copyright infringement in the US. It’s where someone has a direct financial interest in the infringing actions being committed by another and has the ability to control it, even if they do not know that the infringement is taking place and do not directly take part in it.

The other form of indirect infringement, contributory infringement, requires (1) knowledge of the infringing activity and (2) a material contribution — actual assistance or inducement — to the alleged piracy.

These are the laws that were used to bring down napster. In the US, because of these laws, running a tracker is actually pretty illegal. It’s assisting others to breach copyright even if you yourself don’t, and the tracker itself has no copyrighted material.

And yes, google should be worried. By indexing the content of sites such as torrentspy, they potentially open themselves up to the same charges. They bought youtube specifically to get in on the lawsuit by viacom, so they could help affect the judgement.

Note, one of the big differences with the piratebay is that sweden does not have offences of contributary or vicarious copyright infringement, so running a tracker is legal there.

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