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| 15 Year-Old Boy Faces File-Sharing Prosecution Posted: 20 Jul 2011 02:43 AM PDT For an old-timer like me, 15 years-old is a distant dream of a growing interest in the opposite sex but too much homework to do anything about it, a developing adult mind restricted by loving parents who prefer to keep a child, and a general desire to be older and all that entails. It also meant some of the best computing memories ever. 8 bit machines crawling along with brick-sized modems powered by lists of random phone numbers culled from BBSs, each one dialled in the hope that no human would answer, but the comforting tone of a computer – any computer – instead. There can be little doubt that, in hindsight, some of what my friends and I did was illegal. But the thought of being arrested and facing prosecution for our ‘fun’ never crossed our minds – my main preoccupation was the arrival of a stupid-sized telephone bill and furious parents. Online ‘fun’ these days, more than 25 years down the line, is a very different affair, a lesson currently being learned by a teenager from Sweden. According to a report from GP.se, a 15-year-old boy from Gothenburg is now facing prosecution for allegedly sharing files online. He was tracked by “international movie companies”, most likely the MPA/A, who subsequently reported him to Swedish authorities. Prosecutor Frederick Ingblad said that the teenager, who will be assigned a lawyer, is accused of downloading and then making available 30 movies online. Sweden, which has a culture of file-sharing, has traditionally been gentle with infringers but following the meteoric rise of The Pirate Bay and the subsequent fallout, has succumbed to international movie and music industry pressure to get tough. If the volume of news stories are any barometer, Sweden now punishes more file-sharers than any other country in Europe. The punishments can be harsh, ranging from fines to imprisonment of up to 2 years. While this teenager will probably ‘only’ pick up a fine, is state punishment the correct way to deal with a 15 year-old for his non-profit file-sharing? Is it proportional for his final years in school to be troubled by a prosecution for an activity that represents normal activity for people of his age group? One can’t help but think that a slap on the wrist is in order here, rather than a full-on prosecution. Anything other than that would be a PR failure for the movie companies. But maybe the movie studios, in this case being represented by Svenska Antipiratbyrån, feel that an example should be set, that 15 year-olds up and down the country should be made aware that they are committing a crime, a crime that will not go unpunished? Finally, a parting thought. While in Sweden we’re now looking at the prosecution of a teenager for movie sharing, in the studios’ own homeland – the United States – the same file-sharing offenses will shortly result in a strongly-worded “copyright alert” instead. |
| Suppressed Report Found Busted Pirate Site Users Were Good Consumers Posted: 19 Jul 2011 08:19 AM PDT The June raids against Kino.to, which involved as many as 250 police and other authorities, dwarfed even the 2006 raids against The Pirate Bay. Following the event the Kino.to site displayed notices which stated that the site had been “closed on suspicion of forming a criminal organization to commit professional copyright infringement." While noting that several operators of the site had been arrested, it also criticized the site’s users. "Internet users who illegally pirated or distributed copies of films may be subjected to a criminal prosecution," read the warning.
But were the site’s users all criminals hell-bent on destroying the movie industry? According to a report from Telepolis, a recent study found the reverse was true. The study, which was carried out by Society for Consumer Research (GfK), found that users of pirate sites including Kino.to did not fit the copyright lobby-painted stereotype of parasites who take and never give back. In fact, the study also found that Internet users treat these services as a preview, a kind of “try before you buy.” This, the survey claims, leads pirate site users to buy more DVDs, visit the cinema more often and on average spend more than their ‘honest’ counterparts at the box office. “The users often buy a ticket to the expensive weekend-days,” the report notes. In the past similar studies have revealed that the same is true for music. People who pirate a lot of music buy significantly more music than those who don’t. Obviously it would be of great interest to see the report in full, but it appears that is not going to be possible. According to an anonymous GfK source quoted by Telepolis, the findings of the study proved so unpleasant to the company that commissioned the survey that it has now been locked away “in the poison cupboard.” GfK says it has a policy of not revealing who they conduct research for if their clients don’t want to be exposed. However, they do carry out research for the movie industry. Telepolis go a stage further and call that work “lobbying”. The GfK source says that the study shows “If you download films, you have an increased interest in the cinema”, which only highlights how stupid it would be for the authorities to carry out their implied threat of prosecuting Kino.to users. Source: Suppressed Report Found Busted Pirate Site Users Were Good Consumers |
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