5 ms·

Seems at best this is entrapment (assuming there is indeed a civil equivalent), and at worst this is outright fraud and extortion. I honestly can't see why they

by larrik 15y ago

Seems at best this is entrapment (assuming there is indeed a civil equivalent), and at worst this is outright fraud and extortion. I honestly can't see why they would actually file a suit on these. Sending the initial letters makes sense, but actually sending it to court is insane.

tptacek 15y ago
This wouldn't be entrapment even if law enforcement personnel conducted the string.
- mikecane 15y ago
  NYPD leaves a wallet on the ground. Someone picks it up with the intent to find the owner and return it, but the NYPD swoops in as soon as it's in hand and charges the person with theft. This has actually taken place in NYC. Law enforcement does do entrapment.
  - tptacek 15y ago
    This is incoherent on two different levels. First, I didn't argue that law enforcement didn't entrap people. They clearly do. I argued that passively advertising infringing content on eDonkey isn't entrapment. Second, no matter what these apocryphal NYC cops did, picking up a wallet on the street isn't a crime. The argument over "entrapment" never enters into the picture. You would need a very poor criminal defense lawyer indeed to deploy the affirmative defense of entrapment over such a trivially refuted charge. You will not be convicted of theft simply for picking up a wallet.
    - mikecane 15y ago
      Apocryphal? You couldn't be bothered to Google? Just one item: http://gothamist.com/2006/07/21/lucky_bag_opera.php http://gothamist.com/2006/07/21/lucky_bag_opera.php >>>I argued that passively advertising infringing content on eDonkey isn't entrapment. Oh sure it is! If the file had been properly labeled, the person would not have engaged in the illegal act. Just looking for illegal files is not yet a crime. Most everyone who's used Google or any other search engine would be in jail. People browsing YouTube for clips would be in jail.
      - tptacek 15y ago
        This isn't responsive to either of my comments, and I'm not sure you read the original story either, since the defendant in this case did more than simply search for an infringing file; moreover, I'm not sure you've researched how entrapment works, since you'll find police interventions far more intrusive than "listing a file on eDonkey" have survived entrapment claims.
        mikecane 15y ago
        If you can't see how it's responsive, we need go no further with this.
      - anigbrowl 15y ago
        Apocryphal? You couldn't be bothered to Google? It's good manners for the person who makes a claim to support it. Incidentally, the charges were dropped in that NY case, suggesting a lack of legal understanding among the subway cops: http://www.thevillager.com/villager_178/luckybagstingcharges.html http://www.thevillager.com/villager_178/luckybagstingcharges... As for your argument, that makes no sense. 'Just looking' implies doing a search but not downloading any of the files. Taking the woman's story at face value, how could she have opened the file and discovered it to be porn if she had not downloaded it first? If the file had been properly labeled, the person would not have engaged in the illegal act. On the other hand, if the label had been accurate then the downloader would have just been infringing the copyright of a Ryuichi Sakamoto album rather than a porn movie. The bait-and-switch tactic alleged here looks extremely questionable (it appears to violate something called the 'clean hands' rule, though that may not matter if the plaintiff is only seeking statutory damages). But you've got to admit that 'I was trying to infringe a different work' is a pretty pathetic excuse, not much better than saying you took a wallet which you believed to be full of cash but threw it away in disappointment when it turned out not to contain any. You seem to be arguing from the belief that anything downloadable should be presumed to be in the public domain by default. Let's say the mislabeled file had in fact been a Ryuichi Sakamoto album, which is what the woman says she was looking for, and which is in fact copyrighted. At what point do you think her exploration would have crossed the line into infringement, if ever?

by larrik 15y ago

tptacek 15y ago

This wouldn't be entrapment even if law enforcement personnel conducted the string.

mikecane 15y ago
NYPD leaves a wallet on the ground. Someone picks it up with the intent to find the owner and return it, but the NYPD swoops in as soon as it's in hand and charges the person with theft. This has actually taken place in NYC. Law enforcement does do entrapment.
- tptacek 15y ago
  This is incoherent on two different levels. First, I didn't argue that law enforcement didn't entrap people. They clearly do. I argued that passively advertising infringing content on eDonkey isn't entrapment. Second, no matter what these apocryphal NYC cops did, picking up a wallet on the street isn't a crime. The argument over "entrapment" never enters into the picture. You would need a very poor criminal defense lawyer indeed to deploy the affirmative defense of entrapment over such a trivially refuted charge. You will not be convicted of theft simply for picking up a wallet.
  - mikecane 15y ago
    Apocryphal? You couldn't be bothered to Google? Just one item: http://gothamist.com/2006/07/21/lucky_bag_opera.php http://gothamist.com/2006/07/21/lucky_bag_opera.php >>>I argued that passively advertising infringing content on eDonkey isn't entrapment. Oh sure it is! If the file had been properly labeled, the person would not have engaged in the illegal act. Just looking for illegal files is not yet a crime. Most everyone who's used Google or any other search engine would be in jail. People browsing YouTube for clips would be in jail.
    - tptacek 15y ago
      This isn't responsive to either of my comments, and I'm not sure you read the original story either, since the defendant in this case did more than simply search for an infringing file; moreover, I'm not sure you've researched how entrapment works, since you'll find police interventions far more intrusive than "listing a file on eDonkey" have survived entrapment claims.
      - mikecane 15y ago
        If you can't see how it's responsive, we need go no further with this.
    - anigbrowl 15y ago
      Apocryphal? You couldn't be bothered to Google? It's good manners for the person who makes a claim to support it. Incidentally, the charges were dropped in that NY case, suggesting a lack of legal understanding among the subway cops: http://www.thevillager.com/villager_178/luckybagstingcharges.html http://www.thevillager.com/villager_178/luckybagstingcharges... As for your argument, that makes no sense. 'Just looking' implies doing a search but not downloading any of the files. Taking the woman's story at face value, how could she have opened the file and discovered it to be porn if she had not downloaded it first? If the file had been properly labeled, the person would not have engaged in the illegal act. On the other hand, if the label had been accurate then the downloader would have just been infringing the copyright of a Ryuichi Sakamoto album rather than a porn movie. The bait-and-switch tactic alleged here looks extremely questionable (it appears to violate something called the 'clean hands' rule, though that may not matter if the plaintiff is only seeking statutory damages). But you've got to admit that 'I was trying to infringe a different work' is a pretty pathetic excuse, not much better than saying you took a wallet which you believed to be full of cash but threw it away in disappointment when it turned out not to contain any. You seem to be arguing from the belief that anything downloadable should be presumed to be in the public domain by default. Let's say the mislabeled file had in fact been a Ryuichi Sakamoto album, which is what the woman says she was looking for, and which is in fact copyrighted. At what point do you think her exploration would have crossed the line into infringement, if ever?