Courts Sentence Men for Pirating Thousands of Movies and TV Shows, Including Via Plex (torrentfreak.com) 78
An anonymous reader shares a report: Following the dismantling of several private trackers in 2020, a man has been sentenced for sharing thousands of TV shows and movies via now-defunct torrent site DanishBits. In a separate case, another man has been convicted of sharing 9,440 movies with a relatively small circle of family and friends using the popular Plex media server.
Whew! (Score:5, Funny)
Courts Sentence Men for Pirating Thousands of Movies and TV Shows
Weird headline! I thought all men in general were being sentenced as a group, and I was headed to jail for the wonton movie sharing of others.
Turns out it's just a handful of men, not all men! Whew!
Re:Whew! (Score:5, Funny)
#notallmen
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They may have been movies about Chinese food. We don't now.
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Courts Sentence Men for Pirating Thousands of Movies and TV Shows
Weird headline! I thought all men in general were being sentenced as a group, and I was headed to jail for the wonton movie sharing of others.
Turns out it's just a handful of men, not all men! Whew!
Damn it, I already ordered a lifetime supply of soap-on-a-rope. What am I going to do with it now?
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The Plex server part interests me the most, really (Score:5, Interesting)
TFA: "In December 2019, Rights Alliance filed a criminal complaint against a Denmark resident after discovering he was running a Plex server containing copyrighted content. It was a Plex server running on a NAS-server and operated from a Mac Mini. The owner and operator of the Plex server shared the content with friends and family. They were sent a password by mail,” the group explains. While the Plex software is entirely legal, like other media software it can be put to illegal uses. Prosecutions are extremely rare, especially when people only share their libraries with close friends and family, but in this case Rights Alliance felt a criminal case was warranted."
What's the rest of the story here? I mean, practically everyone I know running a Plex server has some copyrighted/commercial content shared on the thing. If nothing else, that's just because a lot of people use one as their digital backup of physical DVDs or music CDs they own and ripped. (It's really practical, from the standpoint you can just put the originals away for safe-keeping in boxes, and have access to the content itself without having to physically bring the disc(s) along with you.) And once you've done that, chances are good you'll open it up to share it with some good friends or other family members who ask about it. I mean, it's not that different from letting them sit on your couch and watch the shows or listen to your CDs on your home stereo.
I think that's why almost nobody is ever prosecuted over that use of Plex. It doesn't really lend itself to "mass piracy", especially when a lot of users might be asking your server to hardware transcode content on the fly, and that limits how many people you can serve the content to.
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I'm guessing there was some money exchange involved in access.
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Exactly! Frankly I'm going to assume the small circle of friends was hundreds and the prosecution was more than justified just because the summary is so half-arsed.
Re:The Plex server part interests me the most, rea (Score:4, Informative)
According to SØIK, the movies were made available “to at least 21 users via a server” and for this offense, he was sentenced to 30 days probation. TorrentFreak requested additional information from anti-piracy group Rights Alliance which has now revealed a completely different type of case."
So.. 21 friends? This seems excessive effort for such a small time criminal mastermind. WTF is rotten in Denmark these days.
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So.. 21 friends? This seems excessive effort for such a small time criminal mastermind. WTF is rotten in Denmark these days.
The only thing I could think of is that maybe it used to be 22 friends, and the owner didn't know about former friend #22's major political connections before kicking them out.
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Most countries don't allow large settlements for minor stuff like copying a DVD. Here in Canada, they can sue for the price of the DVD (actually a hundred dollars) with a max of a five thousand dollars. They do lie and claim that they'll sue you for a lot.
Commercial pirating can result in jail time
Sometimes it is worse like after we got the music levy on cassettes and blank CD's. When they tried suing someone for pirating music, the courts ruled it was legal due to the levy as the levy was a payment to the
Re: The Plex server part interests me the most, re (Score:2)
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And have been for the longest time it seems, though the new CUSMA may have changed the dynamics.
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Well as long as not more that one connection, was viewing any particular slice of content at any one time, there is no crime. Is that not true.
The horror someone shared content, execute them. Even lending a DVD you own to someone should be punishable by imprisonment and a major fine. So what is the difference between lending someone a DVD or allowing them to access a digital backup of a DVD you own, accessing it, one at a time.
The difference psychopathic greed. A diseased society, that values entertainment
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Dane here. We don't really have circles of friends numbering in the hundreds. If he was serving to that many people they were friends, family, coworkers, and most importantly friends, family, and coworkers of the aforementioned.
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Bigger question - how was this discovered?
Sounds like someone informed on him, or he was hacked.
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Or his "small private circle of friends" has a different meaning of "small" than common usage.
I mean, Plex is 95% of the way to creating a streaming service, minus the authentication and a few other things, so it's possible to provide monthly access to it to a few hundred people or more in exchange for a small fee. You buy in, you get the password and you can stream away - probably even download for later offline
Re: The Plex server part interests me the most, re (Score:3)
I kind of doubt it would include anything resembling a large set of users if he was hosting it on a mac mini.
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Eh... if you limit it to direct play only and disallow transcoding you'd be surprised how many streams you can cram through relatively little hardware. Your bottleneck actually becomes your Ethernet connection rather than the processor. If the box is just streaming the media directly then those boxes can scale pretty far. For reference, I use 20mbps as a rough guide for 1080p content... so if reading from a NAS and streaming then double that. Of course, you can also add a USB network interface even to a Mac
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that's just because a lot of people use one as their digital backup of physical DVDs
I use my physical discs as backups to Plex/SMB/etc but I don't go advertising or sharing anything. Ripping protected DVD or Blu-Ray content is still illegal under the DMCA even if it never gets shared.
Re: The Plex server part interests me the most, re (Score:1)
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Yes it is, since 2012 Canada has some of the strongest anti-circumvention law in the world. Thanks Harper.
Your probably thinking of music CD's where copying for your own use is legal.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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You honestly think he legally acquired all 9440 movies? Yeah...no.
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My wife likely has that many DVD's and Blurays. All bought legally, mostly 2nd hand where sometimes the local thrift store sells them at 10 for a dollar (usually a dollar a piece). So those 9440 movies could have only cost a hundred dollars.
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For the math-impaired, "10 for a dollar" and "9440 movies" is "about a thousand dollars", NOT "a hundred dollars"....
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Riiiight, and the fact that he was implicated in the use of that torrent site totally makes this more plausible than him acquiring them illegally.
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"Discovering." How did that happen? Port-scanning, social (they asked him and he told them), or what?
60 days in an very easy lockup! (Score:2)
60 days in an very easy lockup!
Re:60 days in an very easy lockup! (Score:5, Insightful)
60 days in an very easy lockup!
Rather silly way of looking at it when any average employed adult being forcibly removed from their job for two months, won't likely have one to come back to. You saying your employer would understand?
Not to mention that rude bastard named Bill Collector, who patiently waited for the impound truck to get your car out of the driveway so he can pitch a tent and wait for your convicted-criminal butt to get done with your involuntary "sabbatical".
30 days probation (Score:5, Informative)
Here in the USA they would use the $250k per infringement figure and multiply that by 9440 for a settlement. We can pay off the national debt in no time!
More evidence of plutocracy (Score:5, Insightful)
Some bloke who pirates cartoons gets a stiffer penalty than Wells Fargo and Boeing executives.
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I'm shocked, Shocked! Well, not that shocked.
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Some bloke who pirates cartoons gets a stiffer penalty than Wells Fargo and Boeing executives.
psssst - Hey - I know a guy who can get ya some illegal Pepe le Pew cartoons. The good illegal stuff. You in?
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Our laws under-penalize top managers as written. Also, our convoluted legal process does indeed favors Plutocrats because they can afford an army of lawyers to navigate the convolution.
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It's like, you know, share a Michael Jackson's song, get 5 years in jail ; kill Michael Jackson, get 4 years in jail.
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Here in the USA they would use the $250k per infringement figure and multiply that by 9440 for a settlement. We can pay off the national debt in no time!
When the RIAA was suing for insane amounts of money against little girls, college students and grandmas, they were winning their cases, getting insane judgements against people who would probably never make that much in their lifetimes, it turned out to be a losing move. The victims were represented pro bono, were going to appeal every case as far as they could until they couldn't any more - then claim personal bankruptcy, and were giving the RIAA a black eye, and costing a mint in legal fees. That's the r
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Well it ain't Disney that's doing it, so who is? Do mind that even though Sleeping Beauty is public domain, their interpretations of the characters are not.
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Only because 3D printing isn't quite there yet. Once I can, I'm doing it.
Stop lying (Score:2, Informative)
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For the thousand time: They were NOT stealing. Copyright infringement is not stealing.
What a lot of humans lack these days, is perspective.
Either they don't know how to, or simply don't give a shit.
In other words, spit your bullshit line to the starving artist and let me know how that goes.
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In other words, spit your bullshit line to the starving artist and let me know how that goes.
If the starving artist has a problem, they should take it up with the record company who stole all the money they were owed. Not my problem. I didn't pirate their music. I've never heard of their sorry asses.
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> In other words, spit your bullshit line to the starving artist and let me know how that goes.
Artists do tend to think they're quite special. I did a charity rural broadband install today where the residents don't even have a working front door and their yard contains all the cars they used to drive - you get the picture.
The parents both work, but I doubt they get paid much more than minimum wage and they never get paid more than once for their effort.
The point of copyright was to protect artists from
Re:Stop lying (Score:4, Insightful)
Honestly? Been an artist myself, albeit not starving. Known some who were. None of them (nor I) would have given a rat's ass about the second dude with the Plex server. Maybe somebody else gets to hear about our music.
Music companies, on the other hand, we had no illusions about. First up against the wall, come the revolution.
Re:Stop mincing words (Score:5, Informative)
Copyright exists to ensure the public can enjoy the arts. That's the root purpose. To enforce the right of first sale, so that artists can get paid. In other words, copyright is the implementation, not the goal. The works are meant to be submitted to the library of congress, and then to go into the public domain after a reasonable time has passed.
Copyright is not meant to enrich the right holder forever, nor is it meant to allow the right holder to force the cessation of publication.
The crime the fine article describes is not theft, it is a different crime.
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As a friend put it: "Intellectual Property as a concept is meant to start the engine, not run it."
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Actually, modern copyright came about to advance learning, or in America, the Arts and Sciences, by giving a limited term monopoly and then the work going into the public domain. It's right in the name of the original copyright act, "An Act for the Encouragement of Learning, by Vesting the Copies of Printed Books in the Authors or Purchasers of such Copies, during the Times therein mentioned." passed in 1710.
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The purpose is written into the Constitution of the US. Everything that springs from that is literally an implementation detail.
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And the writers of the American Constitution copied the original (written in 1708 IIRC) mostly. Sure they changed the library from Oxford or Cambridge and changed the wording from learning to advancing the Arts and Sciences, which at the time covered advanced learning. Anyways for us non-Americans, your Constitution's description of copyright is just rehashing what was written 70 odd years earlier. As for Belgium, I'm sure they don't follow the American Constitution besides getting some ideas from it and I'
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To steal something is to take a thing away from someone else. Stealing a corvette and making a perfect copy of your neighbor's Corvette are both likely illegal, but only one is stealing. Copyright infringement isn't murder either, by the way. Or arson. We have different crimes for different things.
Was the Plex guy stealing though? (Score:1)
If I run a plex server, and upload DVD's I bought, that's obviously not stealing, from a moral sense.
I could also invite people over to watch those movies at my house, also not stealing.
If I invite them to join in a zoom chat where I show them video of my screen, still not stealing...
So why if I have a few friends watch that video remotely from my home server, does it jump to stealing? If I were talking with them on the phone as they watched it, would it no longer be stealing? What if I went to use the ba
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> So why if I have a few friends watch that video remotely from my home server, does it jump to stealing?
Do you have 9,440 ripped discs on your home server?
Plesk sounds like a red herring in all this.
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Do you have 9,440 ripped discs on your home server?
No but I know people who own more than that many DVDs. We don't even know what all the videos are, and some of them could be separated out tracks from a single DVD.
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Is it illegal for me to loan a disc to my cousin or brother? Why is it illegal for me to stream it from my house to them? Its the same thing. Except I protect my movies / investment from getting damaged when I give them access to my media server. It is limited on how many streams it can handle by gpu
re: If you couldn't afford to buy the movie... (Score:2)
The artists and producers really need to get over this flawed idea that it's always "theft" when their copyrighted content gets shared.
The reality is much more like what's stated in the post I'm replying to here -- but it doesn't even make a difference if the person with the copy "could afford" to buy it instead or not. In the big picture, the way all of this stuff REALLY works is:
Millions of people crank out content, trying to compete for a finite amount of money people are willing to spend on it for "ent
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> They were stealing.
FALSE. Copyright Law, specifically USC 17, Chapter 5, Sections 501 - 513 [copyright.gov], defines copyright infringement. The word "steal" NEVER APPEARS in Title 17 of the United States Code [copyright.gov] (which includes the Copyright Act of 1976 and all subsequent amendments to copyright law) because stealing and copyright infringement are TWO DIFFERENT THINGS.
* Stealing means you deprive the original owner of their physical possession(s).
* Copyright infringement does NOT deprive the original owner but you hav
"The Rights Alliance" and its history (Score:5, Informative)
Rettighedsalliancen changed their name from Antipiratgruppen. Antipiratgruppen got too much bad press, including a "correction" from Advokatsamfundet, the Society of Lawyers.
One of the main lawyer behind Antipiratgruppen, Johan Schlüter, was convicted of fraud.