Court quashes subpoena for names of users who talked torrenting in 2011 thread.

Reddit beats film industry, won’t have to identify users who admitted torrenting::Court quashes subpoena for names of users who talked torrenting in 2011 thread.

  • AlphaOmega@lemmy.worldEnglish
    211·
    1 year ago

    In the article, not one comment mentioned “piracy”. They only mention “torrenting” which is not illegal and has absolutely nothing to do with these movie companies. They are grasping at straws here

    • JollyTheRancher@lemmy.worldEnglish
      7·
      1 year ago

      While I do not think they were in the right to have the users “unmasked”, my understanding is that the users in question were talking about how the Austin internet provider, Grande, was good for torrenting, so the attempt to unmask the users wasn’t meant to get the users in trouble but to show that Grande benefitted financially from a lax policy towards pirating, so them not mentioning piracy in their comments wasn’t necessarily the end of the conversation, if they were willing to say now that it was in reference to piracy. I do think it sounds like grasping at straws, but I imagine the potential value they were hoping to get from Grande was worth that grasping to them

      • Boinketh@lemm.eeEnglish
        4·
        1 year ago

        How the FUCK is piracy supposed to be the ISP’s problem? That’s like going after a florist because someone bought their flowers and then illegally planted them around the neighborhood.

        • Spotlight7573@lemmy.worldEnglish
          5·
          1 year ago

          The DMCA safe harbors have a requirement that in order for an online service provider (eg the ISP) to be protected from liability for copyright infringement that the ISPs have a repeat infringer policy to (eventually) stop the copyright infringement of their users by discontinuing service to them. Without the DMCA safe harbors the ISP would potentially be on the hook for copyright infringement. With high statutory damages for infringement, that’s a lot of potential money for the group suing the ISP, hence why they would want evidence showing the ISP didn’t have a repeat infringer policy or did have one but failed to enforce it. Testimony from a pirate saying how great the ISP was because they didn’t ban them even after multiple notices would help establish that.

        • Takumidesh@lemmy.worldEnglish
          04·
          1 year ago

          It’s actually more like walking into a gun shop, telling the owner you plan on committing murder with the gun they sell you, and he continues to sell it to you.

          The key difference being that the provider knew that your intention was illegal, and they continued to allow it to happen.

          The ethics of this are debatable of course, but in general, it seems that facilitating a crime is generally seen by most governments as ‘aiding and abbetting’ and is considered a crime itself.

          • Boinketh@lemm.eeEnglish
            5·
            1 year ago

            You don’t tell your ISP that you want to do something illegal. Your computer tells your ISP’s computers to connect it to an IP address. If the ISP checks on your activity, they might see that you’re torrenting things. Should the postal service also crack open all of your packages to see what’s inside, lest they be held accountable for what you’re shipping or receiving?

            Torrenting is not inherently illegal. You can torrent something that isn’t copyrighted if you really want to. The ISP does not know for sure whether or not you’re doing something illegal unless you’re using unencrypted communication like a dumbass.

            If you own a bar that the mafia sometimes uses as a meeting place without your explicit knowledge, did you facilitate their crimes? If so, how? If not, why should ISPs be treated any differently?

            Holding ISPs accountable for piracy opens them up to being held accountable for other crimes committed by their users. In the famous Dominion v. Fox case in the US, should the ISPs that served Fox’s website or the cable companies that enabled their show to be sent to viewers be held accountable for Fox’s defamatory statements?