A possible way to stop media companies from taking legal action against piracy

[NIK]

The rightsholders whose works are packaged would need to be part of a movement or group which monitors legal cases of this type, and then collectively take action against anyone who uses information gained from one of these exchanges in litigation.

That would be "copyright trolling". Such cases are being thrown out of one court after another all around the world. See US Copyright Group, "Ben Dover" in the UK, etc.

Does anybody even follow my idea?

You've tried to help, and we've given you the respect of trying to help you.

Replying to everyone who disagrees with you and takes the time to try to explain why with "you just don't understand" makes you sound like a whiny child. You are not the Isaac Newton of the worlds legal community. You have not discovered a brand new legal principle that has never occurred to any lawyer in the world ever. Or filesharer. Or filesharing client developer.

The reason you haven't seen your "defence" used is that it is legally unsound.

[skepticle]

I propose an extra trust system added on top of torrents in order to discourage anybody from joining the torrents and collecting evidence of people sharing copyrighted work for the purposes of submitting that information to a court of law with the intent to fine or charge people for piracy.

The best way to explain my idea is with an example. By the way, I posted this first in General at https://pirates-forum.org/Thread-A-possi...9#pid28059 but nobody is really engaging the idea there very usefully and I've refined the idea a bit so here goes:

Let's say I have a digital artist friend who sells digital copies of their pictures for $1000 a piece. (just go with it for now, it's an example) They submit to me 50 of their pieces of art, for use in a "trust" package that I include when I put together a torrent to share. They own the copyright on these pictures, but have allowed me to use and distribute them for free, for the purposes of trust.

I modify my bittorrent client to check any torrent for this type of trust file. If it exists, my client requires ALL peers it EVER connects to to provide the entire trust package first before I send them anything at all. This way, the only peers that I ever send any part of the rest of the torrent to, are those who have sent me copyrighted works first.

My artist friend licenses the use and possession of his art as such: he allows anyone to own and distribute his work, the only exception being that he does NOT allow ANYONE who records or releases information about file sharers to own or distribute it. In that case he demands full payment for his art. This is perfectly within his rights as the copyright holder.

What this means, is that each person who joins the torrent must first "get their feet wet" in copyright infringement by proving that they are willing to risk infringement suits if they bear witness to a court. In giving evidence, they will have incriminated themselves and provided all the evidence necessary for my friend to make a similar suit against the witness. Even if a media company uses third parties to gather their information, those third parties have to submit their evidence to a court, which automatically implicates them.

The only thing necessary for this to work to discourage "torrent trolling" is a few artists willing to submit their work for this purpose, the writing up of a license explaining who is and is not allowed rights to use and distribute the work, and a few custom rules added to bit torrent clients. It could work as a completely opt-in system, and be perfectly compatible with normal, unmodified torrent clients, but would not ever send any other pieces to any peers that hadn't already proven themselves with the trust file. Eventually somebody would try to use evidence from one of these secured torrents in court, and when they do, they would incriminate themselves. A lawsuit could be launched against the witness. There would be no need to collect any evidence, because the witness would have already submitted their evidence in court. All that would have to be done in a court would be to reference the evidence that THEY submitted, explain how this trust system works, and it automatically proves that they stole and distributed OUR trust package first, and broke the rules of our copyright holder's license agreement. It would not take many of these cases succeeding before it became clear that ratting on copyright infringers exposes one to exactly the same charges under this system. With enough works compressed into the package, it could be made to be VERY costly for anybody to do so. In my example it's only $50,000 worth of theft per peer that verified the trust file, which is going to be the same number of people that the witness is reporting on. It could be made to be MUCH more.

I think this could change the landscape of file sharing prosecution. Thoughts?

skepticle

EDIT: Thanks kjf, I couldn't move the thread, I was writing that as this one was moved to Law forum, I thought the other forum would be appropriate but I didn't see the Law forum. Sorry.

kjf edited Feb 22, 2014 17:22 pm this post because: Rewording the same idea does not require a new thread. Threads merged

[skepticle]

1) you used a copyrighted work without authorization
2) you edited copyrighted work without authorization
3) you distributed a copyrighted work without authorization
4) you committed the first three offenses with the intent to bring a fraudulent suit against another party
5) you don't have the vast amounts of capital that you are going to need to back up your claims in a court of law (money talks, bullshit walks)

1) This is what is happening on TPB, and on torrent sites around the world. Yes. This is what I am trying to protect people from prosecution about.
2) Actually, I don't think we would even need to put the files together. You could just include a .??? file in the torrent along side the work, and modify your bittorrent client to require that file first from all peers.
3) See 1
4) I'm not talking about any fraudulent suit. I'm talking about clear cut licensing rules made by artists who have submitted their work. There is nothing fraudulent about it. Any suits brought against the witness by the artist would be just as valid as the original suit against file sharers.
5) True, I don't. But many electronic freedom groups are fighting copyright prosecutions, and there are lawyers and other people who might volunteer their time and resources for a project that could halt these lawsuits. This is a consideration, not a reason it wouldn't work.

---

NIK, I disagree that this is anything like copyright trolling. It's totally different. I'm talking about artists who are using their copyright rights selectively, as they have the right to do, based on whatever philosophy they choose to ascribe to. If I say that I give full rights to any self-identified Christian to copy and distribute my work, but forbid any Satanists from owning or distributing it, that is my right as the copyright holder. It's the same thing, except differently defined groups.

[stormium]

5) True, I don't. But many electronic freedom groups are fighting copyright prosecutions, and there are lawyers and other people who might volunteer their time and resources for a project that could halt these lawsuits. This is a consideration, not a reason it wouldn't work.

they are fighting copyright cases for political reasons AND they aren't going to take a case that is going to weaken their position.

[SteRipper]

they are fighting copyright cases for political reasons AND they aren't going to take a case that is going to weaken their position.

The funny part about that, is that most anti-piracy groups can't tell the difference between a case they can win, over a case they have no chance of winning.

Any cases that they do win, are not really victories in any aspect, as the ACTUAL rights-holders NEVER see any real return, because the monies awarded are too high for anyone to pay in the first place. The original creators of the content in question never see a dime of that money, and the propaganda wheel keeps on spinning, along with the Bull**** comments from said groups.

The anti-piracy "movement" is nothing more than a very elaborate, over-dramatized extortion scheme, run by a bunch of unintelligent, hot aired morons, who refuse to try something new, and know very little about how basic technology works.

That last part was not from anger, but from reading a LOT of articles on the subject of how anti-piracy groups "work". While the idea op suggested sounds good in theory, it's not one that will work in application.

The best option, as KJF suggested, is to get a VPN.

[NIK]

NIK, I disagree that this is anything like copyright trolling. It's totally different.

It is a deliberate and blatant attempt to circumvent the law, and Judges don't humour people who try that.

But since you're not interested in learning anything I'm not going to waste any more of my time trying to teach you anything. I'm out.

[joew771]

If you steal a car and then hide a bunch of your own property in the trunk, and then the police arrest you for grand theft auto and confiscate the car, you don't get away with it because they took some of your stuff along with it when they confiscated your car and they 'stole' your stuff too. That's not how the law works.

[AardvarkFirefly]

I believe that the media companies are posting bogus movies themselves so they can collect the IP addresses themselves and then report it to the ISPs. Even if the movie files are bogus, this proves intent. If the movie is real, it proves stealing. If you can show in court that you did not complete the download or that you downloaded it but did not share it, it still proves stealing - unless you have purchased a copy of the movie, you can successfully claim you wanted a backup already formatted for portability purposes = innocent.

My suggestion is to file an anti-DRM petition on the White House website to dismantle the DMCA because it has done nothing to discourage pirating and that pirating has done no damage to the media companies. In fact, when Apple started paying artists for songs played on their iTunes Cloud, it included payments for media that had originally been pirated. Example: I pirate an album, then I subscribe to iTunes Cloud. Apple interprets that to a legitimate copy and the artist gets their negotiated royalty from Apple every time they deliver the song to the iTunes subscriber (one time). This legitimizes pirated media and this blows the piracy violations out of the water. Since the artist was compensated, there was no crime.

Thoughts?