5 ms·

Torrent Site User Who Transferred 120TB of Pirated Content Avoids Prison

36 points by gslin 4y ago

lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 4y ago
Who was the victim in this case? What was the harm actually inflicted upon them? Is there any evidence-backed reason to believe that there was actual harm done rather than that there might have been actual harm done? Spoiler: nobody, nothing, and no. Obviously it's good that this person was not sent to prison but it's only because this person plead guilty (read: was coerced into a guilty plea for fear of being sent to prison) of doing something that caused no practical harm. If one would like to provide a different perspective, this is where I get hung up: Is there any evidence-backed reason to believe that there was actual harm done rather than that there might have been actual harm done? If no, why is any punishment justified? If yes, what is that (evidence-backed) reason?
- NovemberWhiskey 4y ago
  We frequently criminalize acts that factually result in no harms in specific, individual cases, but can be assumed to be harmful if carried out universally. Should we not punish people who drive at excess speed on empty roads, or embezzlers who steal money but later return it, or drug dealers who sell only to moderate users?
  - mozman 4y ago
    > Should we not punish people who drive at excess speed on empty roads, or embezzlers who steal money but later return it, or drug dealers who sell only to moderate users? IMO: No.
    - carewell 4y ago
      (sorry, posted this comment in the wrong thread by accident) Do you think at least some of the content that was shared would have been purchased otherwise? We can't measure the impact directly but it's odd to assume that pirating content somehow does not affect the wellbeing of creators and other participants of the market. I can say anecdotally with 100% confidence that when I can't easily find a freely available copy of a movie to watch online I pay for it.
      - CommitSyn 4y ago
        Why do you search out pirated content when you can pay for it? Since I'm an adult with a decent paying job now, I pay for everything I can afford. I don't think I've pirated a program or movie in 5 years now.
        carewell 4y ago
        That's a completely different question, of course. But to answer: on many occasions I am not committed to a particular movie, so just watch it in the background for a while and might end up not finishing. Sometimes I don't want to deal with different services or even a subscription required to watch a single movie/show legally (Paramount+ on Amazon or a Netflix show). Again, if I have to I will pay, but the convenience of free movie websites is great. There are probably other reasons but I would be really surprised if my behavior was an exception. I can pay for movies but it's more convenient not to (sometimes).
        asdff 4y ago
        I'm against a $3.99 digital rental out of principal
        indemnity 4y ago
        When you live outside the USA? Some content you cannot get for any amount of money due to syndication deals, and providers like HBO have spotty availability. I already pay for Netflix, Prime Video, Disney+ and Apple TV+, but their content libraries are smaller outside the US by some margin. I pirate HBO and other services since there is no legal pathway to stream it where I live, and I’m not forking out to get it from whichever shitty local service bought the rights. Happy to pay once they actually offer it worldwide as a first party option!
      - realusername 4y ago
        The answer to that is pretty clear, there's never been a single research paper which manage to demonstrate a monetary loss.
        4y ago
  - lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 4y ago
    That's an interesting point but I would personally disagree with the premise that the behavior in the headline is harmful if carried out universally[0]. Digital media to some extent, and the public internet to a greater extent, broke copyright. To your point, it makes sense to prevent someone from trying to start a business using a bunch of stolen creative work, but this person's behavior was not to seek profit. Anyway, those first two examples are very good to demonstrate your point (I don't want to get into it because it's off-topic but I don't think the drug dealer example works as well as the other two). I do find myself thinking that punishment is still deserved in those cases for exactly the reason you suggest. [0] Specifically talking about the sharing of data, not how the data was initially acquired to be shared ("hacked" Netflix employee credentials). This person is not being prosecuted for how the data was initially copied, only for continuing to copy it.
    - NovemberWhiskey 4y ago
      In common law systems, there is often a differentiation between actions that are only crimes if there's a particular harm, and one where that requirement doesn't hold ... the former are "result crimes" and the latter "conduct crimes". e.g. in English law, the offense of "indecent exposure" (i.e. showing your genitals in public) used to require that this cause "obstruction, annoyance or danger" to at least one person - it was a result crime. The law was subsequently changed because I guess they decided it wasn't really necessary to have the prosecution carry the burden of proof on that; so it became a conduct crime.
      - lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 4y ago
        This distinction is not something I'd heard of before, so thanks for the explanation. It seems to me that I fundamentally disagree with this idea of a conduct crime. Prosecutors should be expected to prove the harm that was caused by the actions for which a person is having criminal charges pressed against them. (I don't know of anything like this in American law; per my understanding, if you do the thing that's written down as not to do, you did bad.) If it's expected that it will be obvious what the harm is, then it can be expected that proving it (or convincing a judge of it) will be easy. Anyway, maybe I'll be able to come up with a counter example but I'm coming up blank currently.
- carewell 4y ago
  Do you think at least some of the content that was shared would have been purchased otherwise? We can't measure the impact directly but it's odd to assume that pirating content somehow does not affect the wellbeing of creators and other participants of the market. I can say anecdotally with 100% confidence that when I can't easily find a freely available copy of a movie to watch online I pay for it.
  - lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 4y ago
    > pirating content somehow does not affect the wellbeing of creators and other participants of the market Why are we assuming there's a viable market? People are trying to sell something that's worthless[0] and they're whining when other people offer it for free. I get that someone had to go through the trouble -- admittedly it's usually a fair amount of effort -- to make the thing that others want but, unfortunately, they didn't make something from which they can expect to profit. I think many people would prefer that to be different but that is just how it is (from my perspective). [0] This is controversial, and thus the likely point of disagreement for most. If the only thing I need is 1 copy of The Little Mermaid (and a computer) to make 1e9 copies of The Little Mermaid, then The Little Mermaid doesn't have value as a thing to be sold.
    - carewell 4y ago
      So no books, movies, music - anything that can be duplicated digitally - has value as a thing to be sold? I am sorry, I am not sure this is a genuine argument. Why does digital duplication make any difference? When you are buying a physical book you are not paying just for the paper and the printing process. So the remaining part of the cost - writer's check, publisher's check, etc - is what you should be paying for when consuming things digitally (plus the cost of streaming, storage and whatnot). > Why are we assuming there's a viable market? Because there is? There is a proven, big, viable, essential market for creating and distributing ideas.
      - lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 4y ago
        You seem to be understanding me correctly. When one buys a physical book, they are paying for the paper and the printing process. That is the barrier to entry for producing such a copy for sharing, distinctly different from producing a shareable copy of, e.g., a .mp4 file. This person did not have this barrier to entry and therefore they did not see value in selling what they copied. The work does not have value in a market unless the value is propped up artificially as is currently being done by copyright law. > I am sorry, I am not sure this is a genuine argument. If it helps, these markets were clearly viable when certain resources were required to copy and distribute works. The difference with today is the public internet and the proliferation of personal general-purpose computers that people like to keep on themselves at all times. It's new and it's causing market disruptions. Finally, I'll say that many people will choose to give money for things even if they aren't otherwise required to pay: Humble Bundle, Patreon, Youtube, Twitch, etc. People donate to the Wikimedia Foundation only because they are asked, to the point that that the organization now has an order of magnitude more money in the bank than Wikipedia's annual operating costs (recent funding controversies aside, they donate because they think it helps keep around something they'd like to see stick around).
- boredemployee 4y ago
  unless using rhetoric, we still dont know how to deal with copyright/piracy/digital art in 2022
an_aparallel 4y ago
i think the issue with torrenting/"downloading" which isn't touched upon in my experience is as follows: we live in an age where the barrier to content creation is next to nothing. For music production (an area I'm fairly knowledgable) we have a plethora of free DAWs, free incredible instruments, very affordable recording hardware, excellent sub $200 microphones and so on. The explosion of creator content is incredible. It's almost not necessary to listen to something more than twice in this day and age, as just when you've finished listening to today's hype, tomorrow's hype is around the corner. If i use bandcamp's recommended album pricing of USD$7 and round to $10 (im from AUD) for some easy maths. Say i am exposed to 10 albums a day which frankly is very easy...that's $100. If I'm exposed to 10 albums per day, 7 days a week, that's $700. If i multiply this by 52, that's $36,400 per annum. That's more or less minimum wage. You might think "10 albums a day is ridiculous", so - i'll half it for you...is $15,200 a year for digital files - a good value proposition, assuming I will listen to these files probably 3 times each? Max? If the artists creating this kind of content cant afford to pay for it themselves to get the inspiration required to create it...who does this model work for?
- asdff 4y ago
  It's a huge piece of irony, considering plenty of these major artists were influenced from listening to mix tapes or cds passed around by friends.
  - an_aparallel 4y ago
    a further piece of superior irony is trent reznor being famously notorious OINK tracker user, then becoming head of Apple Music at one point :)
- Beaver117 4y ago
  Not everyone gets to make money from content creation. But if the content is good people will naturally donate to keep the creator creating. The fact that adblockers didn't wipe out YouTuber shows it.

36 points by gslin 4y ago

Who was the victim in this case? What was the harm actually inflicted upon them? Is there any evidence-backed reason to believe that there was actual harm done rather than that there might have been actual harm done? Spoiler: nobody, nothing, and no. Obviously it's good that this person was not sent to prison but it's only because this person plead guilty (read: was coerced into a guilty plea for fear of being sent to prison) of doing something that caused no practical harm. If one would like to provide a different perspective, this is where I get hung up: Is there any evidence-backed reason to believe that there was actual harm done rather than that there might have been actual harm done? If no, why is any punishment justified? If yes, what is that (evidence-backed) reason?

NovemberWhiskey 4y ago
We frequently criminalize acts that factually result in no harms in specific, individual cases, but can be assumed to be harmful if carried out universally. Should we not punish people who drive at excess speed on empty roads, or embezzlers who steal money but later return it, or drug dealers who sell only to moderate users?
- mozman 4y ago
  > Should we not punish people who drive at excess speed on empty roads, or embezzlers who steal money but later return it, or drug dealers who sell only to moderate users? IMO: No.
  - carewell 4y ago
    (sorry, posted this comment in the wrong thread by accident) Do you think at least some of the content that was shared would have been purchased otherwise? We can't measure the impact directly but it's odd to assume that pirating content somehow does not affect the wellbeing of creators and other participants of the market. I can say anecdotally with 100% confidence that when I can't easily find a freely available copy of a movie to watch online I pay for it.
    - CommitSyn 4y ago
      Why do you search out pirated content when you can pay for it? Since I'm an adult with a decent paying job now, I pay for everything I can afford. I don't think I've pirated a program or movie in 5 years now.
      - carewell 4y ago
        That's a completely different question, of course. But to answer: on many occasions I am not committed to a particular movie, so just watch it in the background for a while and might end up not finishing. Sometimes I don't want to deal with different services or even a subscription required to watch a single movie/show legally (Paramount+ on Amazon or a Netflix show). Again, if I have to I will pay, but the convenience of free movie websites is great. There are probably other reasons but I would be really surprised if my behavior was an exception. I can pay for movies but it's more convenient not to (sometimes).
      - asdff 4y ago
        I'm against a $3.99 digital rental out of principal
      - indemnity 4y ago
        When you live outside the USA? Some content you cannot get for any amount of money due to syndication deals, and providers like HBO have spotty availability. I already pay for Netflix, Prime Video, Disney+ and Apple TV+, but their content libraries are smaller outside the US by some margin. I pirate HBO and other services since there is no legal pathway to stream it where I live, and I’m not forking out to get it from whichever shitty local service bought the rights. Happy to pay once they actually offer it worldwide as a first party option!
    - realusername 4y ago
      The answer to that is pretty clear, there's never been a single research paper which manage to demonstrate a monetary loss.
      - 4y ago
- lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 4y ago
  That's an interesting point but I would personally disagree with the premise that the behavior in the headline is harmful if carried out universally[0]. Digital media to some extent, and the public internet to a greater extent, broke copyright. To your point, it makes sense to prevent someone from trying to start a business using a bunch of stolen creative work, but this person's behavior was not to seek profit. Anyway, those first two examples are very good to demonstrate your point (I don't want to get into it because it's off-topic but I don't think the drug dealer example works as well as the other two). I do find myself thinking that punishment is still deserved in those cases for exactly the reason you suggest. [0] Specifically talking about the sharing of data, not how the data was initially acquired to be shared ("hacked" Netflix employee credentials). This person is not being prosecuted for how the data was initially copied, only for continuing to copy it.
  - NovemberWhiskey 4y ago
    In common law systems, there is often a differentiation between actions that are only crimes if there's a particular harm, and one where that requirement doesn't hold ... the former are "result crimes" and the latter "conduct crimes". e.g. in English law, the offense of "indecent exposure" (i.e. showing your genitals in public) used to require that this cause "obstruction, annoyance or danger" to at least one person - it was a result crime. The law was subsequently changed because I guess they decided it wasn't really necessary to have the prosecution carry the burden of proof on that; so it became a conduct crime.
    - lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 4y ago
      This distinction is not something I'd heard of before, so thanks for the explanation. It seems to me that I fundamentally disagree with this idea of a conduct crime. Prosecutors should be expected to prove the harm that was caused by the actions for which a person is having criminal charges pressed against them. (I don't know of anything like this in American law; per my understanding, if you do the thing that's written down as not to do, you did bad.) If it's expected that it will be obvious what the harm is, then it can be expected that proving it (or convincing a judge of it) will be easy. Anyway, maybe I'll be able to come up with a counter example but I'm coming up blank currently.
carewell 4y ago
Do you think at least some of the content that was shared would have been purchased otherwise? We can't measure the impact directly but it's odd to assume that pirating content somehow does not affect the wellbeing of creators and other participants of the market. I can say anecdotally with 100% confidence that when I can't easily find a freely available copy of a movie to watch online I pay for it.
- lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 4y ago
  > pirating content somehow does not affect the wellbeing of creators and other participants of the market Why are we assuming there's a viable market? People are trying to sell something that's worthless[0] and they're whining when other people offer it for free. I get that someone had to go through the trouble -- admittedly it's usually a fair amount of effort -- to make the thing that others want but, unfortunately, they didn't make something from which they can expect to profit. I think many people would prefer that to be different but that is just how it is (from my perspective). [0] This is controversial, and thus the likely point of disagreement for most. If the only thing I need is 1 copy of The Little Mermaid (and a computer) to make 1e9 copies of The Little Mermaid, then The Little Mermaid doesn't have value as a thing to be sold.
  - carewell 4y ago
    So no books, movies, music - anything that can be duplicated digitally - has value as a thing to be sold? I am sorry, I am not sure this is a genuine argument. Why does digital duplication make any difference? When you are buying a physical book you are not paying just for the paper and the printing process. So the remaining part of the cost - writer's check, publisher's check, etc - is what you should be paying for when consuming things digitally (plus the cost of streaming, storage and whatnot). > Why are we assuming there's a viable market? Because there is? There is a proven, big, viable, essential market for creating and distributing ideas.
    - lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 4y ago
      You seem to be understanding me correctly. When one buys a physical book, they are paying for the paper and the printing process. That is the barrier to entry for producing such a copy for sharing, distinctly different from producing a shareable copy of, e.g., a .mp4 file. This person did not have this barrier to entry and therefore they did not see value in selling what they copied. The work does not have value in a market unless the value is propped up artificially as is currently being done by copyright law. > I am sorry, I am not sure this is a genuine argument. If it helps, these markets were clearly viable when certain resources were required to copy and distribute works. The difference with today is the public internet and the proliferation of personal general-purpose computers that people like to keep on themselves at all times. It's new and it's causing market disruptions. Finally, I'll say that many people will choose to give money for things even if they aren't otherwise required to pay: Humble Bundle, Patreon, Youtube, Twitch, etc. People donate to the Wikimedia Foundation only because they are asked, to the point that that the organization now has an order of magnitude more money in the bank than Wikipedia's annual operating costs (recent funding controversies aside, they donate because they think it helps keep around something they'd like to see stick around).
boredemployee 4y ago
unless using rhetoric, we still dont know how to deal with copyright/piracy/digital art in 2022

an_aparallel 4y ago

i think the issue with torrenting/"downloading" which isn't touched upon in my experience is as follows: we live in an age where the barrier to content creation is next to nothing. For music production (an area I'm fairly knowledgable) we have a plethora of free DAWs, free incredible instruments, very affordable recording hardware, excellent sub $200 microphones and so on. The explosion of creator content is incredible. It's almost not necessary to listen to something more than twice in this day and age, as just when you've finished listening to today's hype, tomorrow's hype is around the corner. If i use bandcamp's recommended album pricing of USD$7 and round to $10 (im from AUD) for some easy maths. Say i am exposed to 10 albums a day which frankly is very easy...that's $100. If I'm exposed to 10 albums per day, 7 days a week, that's $700. If i multiply this by 52, that's $36,400 per annum. That's more or less minimum wage. You might think "10 albums a day is ridiculous", so - i'll half it for you...is $15,200 a year for digital files - a good value proposition, assuming I will listen to these files probably 3 times each? Max? If the artists creating this kind of content cant afford to pay for it themselves to get the inspiration required to create it...who does this model work for?

asdff 4y ago
It's a huge piece of irony, considering plenty of these major artists were influenced from listening to mix tapes or cds passed around by friends.
- an_aparallel 4y ago
  a further piece of superior irony is trent reznor being famously notorious OINK tracker user, then becoming head of Apple Music at one point :)
Beaver117 4y ago
Not everyone gets to make money from content creation. But if the content is good people will naturally donate to keep the creator creating. The fact that adblockers didn't wipe out YouTuber shows it.