Finnish Anti-Piracy Group Demands Payment, Silence

[ZAFDeltaForce]

No, that's not it.

You can download anything you want, ever, and it's fine. People are obliged to ignore laws that are irrelevant, such as copyright. This is how the world moves forward, and becomes right. Do not tolerate that which you do not accept. You will do what you please, as long as it doesn't physically or mentally hurt other beings. Breaking copyrights do not.

As much as I support what you say, I'm afraid your words do not hold water in front of a judge.

 

[Minox]

My concern is that the file was not actually downloaded, yet there was (that I think to be) blackmail involved.

Anti-Piracy and blackmail goes hand in hand. Since courts don't stop them from doing so they manage to extract far much more money through blackmailing possible victims instead of actually intending to take them to court.

 

[Guild McCommunist]

Wow, it seems that they enforce some harsh measures to Finnish piracy once and for all.

 

[NightsOwl]

I wonder what would've happened if she tried to download a legal torrent instead. (although Linux distros and Humble Bundles are the only ones I can think of at the moment)

OCRemix is full of music (GBs worth). All of it available for free, and it's quite damn good too. C:

 

[Taleweaver]

No, that's not it.

You can download anything you want, ever, and it's fine. People are obliged to ignore laws that are irrelevant, such as copyright. This is how the world moves forward, and becomes right. Do not tolerate that which you do not accept. You will do what you please, as long as it doesn't physically or mentally hurt other beings. Breaking copyrights do not.

What the...? How...? NO!

Okay...either you're being overly sarcastic and cynic, or I'm in serious disagreement here.


Here's the thing: "work" can be split up into two categories: either it's mostly intellectual, or it's mostly physical. Depending on the task at hand and your own skill, either can be easy, moderate, hard or extremely hard. Thus far, all is fair. If you're doing it for someone else, the reward should be fair (usually money, but gratification, acceptance or being educated go a long way).

Your little speech may have been meant as an interpretation of the basic rules of satanism (Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law), but you actually made it a big fuck you to all intellectual work out there. Because intellectual work has in its nature that it can be replicated. And in case of digital data: it can be duplicated VERY FUCKING EASY.


You say copyright laws are irrelevant. They're not. If everyone would do it, the artist or company making it would have nothing. And because there is usually an investment cost, that rapidly leads to less artists or companies. And those who remain change the system so it actually makes a reason (eg. bands that charge more for tickets or start copying others because there's a better payoff than being innovative).

Is that "right"? Is that "moving forward"? No. It's neither right nor wrong. The personal freedom you gain is counterweighted by the lack of innovation.


I could go on ranting, but I think I've made my point. Copyright laws aren't there for the fun of it, but to stimulate people to create something. And that post...it may sound like a cool motto to live by, but it's actually very ignorant to those same people it claims it doesn't mentally or physically hurt.

 

[Eerpow]

What is it with people mixing up Scandinavian counties? We don't even use Euros in Sweden.
Not surprised companies are taking advantage this, I wonder how many already got charged like this without reporting it.

 

[Minox]

What is it with people mixing up Scandinavian counties? We don't even use Euros in Sweden.

Finland isn't even a Scandinavian country. It's part of the Nordic countries, but as far as Scandinavian countries goes only Sweden, Norway & Denmark are included.

 

[Eerpow]

Finland isn't even a Scandinavian country. It's part of the Nordic countries, but as far as Scandinavian countries goes only Sweden, Norway & Denmark are included.

Haha true didn't cross my mind when reading the quote in the OP. What's up with that article?

 

[Pleng]

And this is why we can never have good things....

That argument is flawed, in the fact that we have loads of nice things.

 

[Just Another Gamer]

It's sad that companies need to resort to this bullshit in order to let the rich get richer. If anything this encourages me to not even bother thinking morally about using torrents and others just because either way the consumer will be ripped off if they do things the "legit" way in the first place.

 

[Fear Zoa]

I've always wondered when the whole piracy thing would end up, there's not enough money in the world to sue all of us who pirate. At least not since they charge like 500% what the item you pirated was worth.

So it seems they are stuck with threats and "making examples" of people who don't know much about piracy.

 

[Qtis]

I've always wondered when the whole piracy thing would end up, there's not enough money in the world to sue all of us who pirate. At least not since they charge like 500% what the item you pirated was worth.

You got the money part wrong. The 600€ was asked by settling the matter before even filing court papers. If this went to court, Finland has it just as bad as the rest. Pretty much anything from 0 to infinity can be given out as compensation charges.. :I

 

[Qtis]

I thought you could download something provided that you own it and looks like the girl now owns it so isn't she not free from paying now?

Technically downloading could be seen as legal in some cases and countries, but uploading is pretty much illegal everywhere. In this case, the girl happened to also upload the data via BitTorrent. That's where the thing goes wrong according to Finnish law.

Also Finnish copyright law lets you own a digital copy of everything you have, but you just have to keep the original. Funny thing here is that we pay a small fee on basically every storage media from C-casettes to DVDs and HDDs. Hell they're even thinking of expanding the fee to mobile phones, cloud storage, etc. just to make "home copying" legal(= copying your stuff to another format without paying the right holders).

 

[Rydian]

Isn't what I said true? It says so on many ROM sites at least. Might not be true for movies or music though...I don't know

No, it's not true. Don't listen to the guy who's telling you to do what you want, he's not saying it's legal (he's not taking laws and such into account). In many countries you're allowed to MAKE a backup copy, but not distribute. Downloading one off the internet is not making it, you're getting a copy of somebody else's (not your own), and as pointed out when you torrent something, you're uploading it as well.

I wonder what would've happened if she tried to download a legal torrent instead. (although Linux distros and Humble Bundles are the only ones I can think of at the moment)

Ocremix, Nitronic Rush and other indie games, WoW client updates (yes, they use a torrent service so the update servers don't crash every time), etc... but those wouldn't have fake trackers out there designed to do nothing but lure people in for blackmail.

EDIT: Well, fake seeds.

 

[Qtis]

I wonder what would've happened if she tried to download a legal torrent instead. (although Linux distros and Humble Bundles are the only ones I can think of at the moment)

Actually funny thing is that Spotify is a modified BitTorrent client with streaming. All clients upload all the songs that are being listened to or enable as offline. Just like any other P2P client with simultaneous download/upload.

Related note about it on Torrentfreak: http://torrentfreak.com/spotify-a-massive-p2p-network-blessed-by-record-labels-110617/

 

[aalokishere]

@qtis and @Rydian thanks for clearing that up..............thank god this place is not as strict in this laws