6 ms·

law evaluates intent. i'm not a lawyer, but i'm not an idiot either and it's pretty easy to read between the lines here. if the intent is to illustrate securit

law evaluates intent. i'm not a lawyer, but i'm not an idiot either and it's pretty easy to read between the lines here. if the intent is to illustrate security and encryption, there is no reason to invoke "copyrighted material" at all.

mden 13y ago
Unless you are using it as an example of how your solution works differently. Which they are. I don't see anywhere that they are claiming their business is for copyright infringement, in fact, it doesn't seem like it's for mass distribution at all unless you give out your key, and then you just defeat the point of the service.
- abbasmehdi 13y ago
  It's clearly positioned as an alternative to a tool that prevents copyright infringement. I don't think it is obvious that their intention here is not to present an alternative that facilitates infringement [0]. It seems like they are even proud of that [1]. [0] I am not saying it is good or bad, right or wrong. [1] Observing, not judging.
- mjs7231 13y ago
  They are not claiming you should use it for infringement. They are however advertising that it works great for infringement. "That’s how [they] like it" It doesn't really matter what you or I think anyway. If it came down to being sued by a copyright holder, a blog post like this is definitely not going to help their case.
  - ivanca 13y ago
    Of course it's not going to help; but mostly because humans are driven by emotion. Sharing copyrighted material is not a crime unless is an illicit sharing, that is, when you do not hold a license that allows you to do so. So there are many exceptions such as: when you download a song that explicitly allow copies for any of your own devices; the same applies when you are the copyright holder, or when the license does not cover the country where you live.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
windexh8er 13y ago
Disagree. They are simply stating a consequence of the design of Turtl: it's not possible (or not knowingly possible today) to understand if the end user is sharing copyrighted material. I don't feel that this is a point "feature" - it applies to any and all content by design and the intent is not therefore to provide a safe harbor of illegal material. Some people are looking for data protection in the cloud (trading the risk for the convenience). If companies like Turtl or SpiderOak didn't exist myself, and many others, would be forced to rely on similar solutions that are self-hosted. Is that intent? I don't think so. That would imply me locking my vehicle or house at night is some sort of indicator of nefarious activity. What really annoys me is that people go off the handle about intent and fall back to "the law" being the overriding position in these sort of arguments. Bull shit. I have content I've created that I don't want to share with the world. I shouldn't have any shame or feeling of guilt associated with protecting my assets (digital or physical). "Read between the lines" - give me a break. I hope that's not everyone's first perspective when they read positions as such. It's that line of thinking that's shifting us to a "guilty until proven innocent" mentality of usage of the Internet.
- khafra 13y ago
  > "Read between the lines" - give me a break. I hope that's not everyone's first perspective when they read positions as such. He wasn't talking about everyone's first perspective. He was talking about a judge in a copyright infringement lawsuit's final perspective.
  - einhverfr 13y ago
    This is true but the opinion in MGM v. Grokster is pretty clear: You risk being held liable for contributory infringement if you advertise infringement as a possible use for your product. There really is no other way to read that case, and despite technical differences between Ginsberg (really, really bad) and Breyer (really, really good), all 9 justices on the court agreed with that basic idea. Advertise infringing uses? Get held liable. What this means is one really should shy away from saying things that may be taken as advertising infringing uses. You can read the whole thing at http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/04-480.ZS.html http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/04-480.ZS.html Please do so.

mden 13y ago

Unless you are using it as an example of how your solution works differently. Which they are. I don't see anywhere that they are claiming their business is for copyright infringement, in fact, it doesn't seem like it's for mass distribution at all unless you give out your key, and then you just defeat the point of the service.

abbasmehdi 13y ago
It's clearly positioned as an alternative to a tool that prevents copyright infringement. I don't think it is obvious that their intention here is not to present an alternative that facilitates infringement [0]. It seems like they are even proud of that [1]. [0] I am not saying it is good or bad, right or wrong. [1] Observing, not judging.
mjs7231 13y ago
They are not claiming you should use it for infringement. They are however advertising that it works great for infringement. "That’s how [they] like it" It doesn't really matter what you or I think anyway. If it came down to being sued by a copyright holder, a blog post like this is definitely not going to help their case.
- ivanca 13y ago
  Of course it's not going to help; but mostly because humans are driven by emotion. Sharing copyrighted material is not a crime unless is an illicit sharing, that is, when you do not hold a license that allows you to do so. So there are many exceptions such as: when you download a song that explicitly allow copies for any of your own devices; the same applies when you are the copyright holder, or when the license does not cover the country where you live.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]

windexh8er 13y ago

Disagree. They are simply stating a consequence of the design of Turtl: it's not possible (or not knowingly possible today) to understand if the end user is sharing copyrighted material. I don't feel that this is a point "feature" - it applies to any and all content by design and the intent is not therefore to provide a safe harbor of illegal material. Some people are looking for data protection in the cloud (trading the risk for the convenience). If companies like Turtl or SpiderOak didn't exist myself, and many others, would be forced to rely on similar solutions that are self-hosted. Is that intent? I don't think so. That would imply me locking my vehicle or house at night is some sort of indicator of nefarious activity. What really annoys me is that people go off the handle about intent and fall back to "the law" being the overriding position in these sort of arguments. Bull shit. I have content I've created that I don't want to share with the world. I shouldn't have any shame or feeling of guilt associated with protecting my assets (digital or physical). "Read between the lines" - give me a break. I hope that's not everyone's first perspective when they read positions as such. It's that line of thinking that's shifting us to a "guilty until proven innocent" mentality of usage of the Internet.

khafra 13y ago
> "Read between the lines" - give me a break. I hope that's not everyone's first perspective when they read positions as such. He wasn't talking about everyone's first perspective. He was talking about a judge in a copyright infringement lawsuit's final perspective.
- einhverfr 13y ago
  This is true but the opinion in MGM v. Grokster is pretty clear: You risk being held liable for contributory infringement if you advertise infringement as a possible use for your product. There really is no other way to read that case, and despite technical differences between Ginsberg (really, really bad) and Breyer (really, really good), all 9 justices on the court agreed with that basic idea. Advertise infringing uses? Get held liable. What this means is one really should shy away from saying things that may be taken as advertising infringing uses. You can read the whole thing at http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/04-480.ZS.html http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/04-480.ZS.html Please do so.