4 ms·

The UK has a "common carrier" statute (there termed "mere conduit", which, more poetic, innit?) which the defendant lost claim to by (a) exercising control over

by aes256 15y ago

The UK has a "common carrier" statute (there termed "mere conduit", which, more poetic, innit?) which the defendant lost claim to by (a) exercising control over who could post what videos to his site and (b) idiotically posting copy on his website about how people were "saving money" by watching movies through his site instead of at the theater. That is a major point of contention. The prosecution argued the "mere conduit" exemption does not apply because O'Dwyer "was intimately involved in deciding who was allowed to post links on the TVShack websites, which links would be posted [...]" but it is not immediately clear that by doing so he forfeited the exemption. The applicability of the exemption hinges on the interpretation of "transmission", for example. In a case such as this, who initiates the transmission of copyright infringing material? Is it the cyberlocker service that hosts the copyrighted files? Is it the link aggregator site like TVShack that links to the cyberlocker service? Is it the search engine that links to TVShack that links to the cyberlocker service? You see where I'm going here. Nor is it immediately clear that by selecting who could post links on the site, O'Dwyer forfeited the exemption. The regulation states a service provider is exempt if (amongst other requirements) it "did not select or modify the information contained in the transmission" Does selecting posters of links to transmissions constitute selecting information contained in the transmission?

tptacek 15y ago
I don't know about the UK, but yes, selecting posters of links does potentially forfeit common carrier in the US (the law is not source code, so none of this is black/white; it depends on the circumstances). But in this case, two points bear mentioning: first, there's more evidence about his intent to profit from copyright infringement than the manner in which he ran his site, and second, it kind of insults one's intelligence to suggest that TVShack was an innocent mistake. He was "informed" of this in 2010, when his domain was seized. Presumably, the money was too good for him not to start up again.

by aes256 15y ago

tptacek 15y ago

I don't know about the UK, but yes, selecting posters of links does potentially forfeit common carrier in the US (the law is not source code, so none of this is black/white; it depends on the circumstances). But in this case, two points bear mentioning: first, there's more evidence about his intent to profit from copyright infringement than the manner in which he ran his site, and second, it kind of insults one's intelligence to suggest that TVShack was an innocent mistake. He was "informed" of this in 2010, when his domain was seized. Presumably, the money was too good for him not to start up again.