PirateBay Verdict

[tamaranth]

There is one question very conspicuously missing from the BBC's online coverage so far:

So, is everything on PirateBay an illegal download?

That'd be a big fat NO, then.

My last three PirateBay downloads, all of which seem to me no more illegal than taping off the radio*:
- Primeval S03E03 (UK television, first broadcast Saturday: ITV, if that makes a difference)
- SF Library's Tepper section (attempting to grab e-text of a book I own 2 copies of -- one was on loan, one's in storage)
- Haydn - Nelson Mass (I have a CD somewhere but could not locate it)

edit to add
I was not intending the above as a list of legal downloads -- hence the phrase 'no more illegal than taping off the radio', which, yes, is illegal -- but as grey areas. Here are some less-grey areas:
- Lawrence Lessig's Free Culture (PDF)
- complete works of Shakespeare as text files
- Rachmaninoff playing his own Piano Concerto #2 (1931)



There's definitely a great deal of pirated material available online, and there are many grey areas: I think it's disingenuous to report the matter as though everything downloaded is pirated content, robbing artistes of their rightful reward.

*for my younger readers: 'radio' is what we had before streaming music on the interweb; 'taping' is a means by which sound could be recorded onto magnetic tape. Kind of like ripping an MP3 but slower and less robust. Retro chic!

Comments

[drplokta]

Actually, all of those are illegal for you to download. They probably shouldn't be, but they are.

[hawkida.livejournal.com]

I was about to say the same. Just because you've got something on vinyl doesn't give you the right to help yourself to a CD version. The first and last might be legal if your originals were the source material and nobody else had a copy, you'd just happened to transfer them to your computer. I think scanning and OCRing a book is a greyer area, though.

[tamaranth.livejournal.com]

I agree that I have no legal right to help myself to a copy of something I already own. I just don't agree that there is a sound reason for prohibiting me from downloading a duplicate of something I have paid for. (I am extremely impressed, for instance, with the Rough Guide travel books, which permit you to download an e-copy of a guidebook you've brought as Book).

Also, perhaps I should have emboldened 'no more illegal than taping off the radio' -- which is illegal, and thus should be read as agreement that yes, my downloads are illegal.

[drplokta]

If you agree that your downloads are illegal, then I'm not sure why you mentioned them to support your suggestion that not everything downloaded through torrents hosted on Pirate Bay is illegal.

[tamaranth.livejournal.com]

It wasn't actually to support my suggestion, though I'd argue that they are not the brand-new blockbuster movies and albums that tend to be mentioned in the news. Hmm, shall amend the post and add items that I have downloaded legally.

[hawkida.livejournal.com]

I am pretty sure that for personal use, taping off the radio isn't illegal, though. Same as videoing a TV show.

[tamaranth.livejournal.com]

a brief forage online indicates, to my surprise, that taping / videoing is not as illegal as it used to be (or perhaps was alleged to be: "Home taping is killing music!"). There's still plenty of grey area about how long you're allowed to keep your recording and what you're allowed to do with it. Also seems to be grey area about ripping CDs for personal use.

I suspect where I've been going wrong is looking narrowly at the Net Result (I have a copy of something I already own, for my personal use) rather than the ramifications (by downloading a torrent I am hosting that torrent for the content-less hordes).

[hawkida.livejournal.com]

I always thought that "home taping" was about borrowing stuff from your mates and copying it. I don't think transfering music of your own to another format for personal use was ever technically illegal.

er, you might be surprised ...

[tamaranth.livejournal.com]

I don't think transfering music of your own to another format for personal use was ever technically illegal.

Hmmm ... as far as the following article (January 2008, but no followup) implies, it's still illegal to rip a CD:
Copying CDs could be made legal ... "The changes would apply only to people copying music for personal use - meaning multiple copying and internet file-sharing would still be banned." (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7176538.stm)

I think it's still illegal to make a tape of an LP or CD you own.

And I'm pretty sure that taping off the radio (or TV) is still illegal except to allow you to listen to a broadcast later: a quick scan of legal jargon here (http://www.statutelaw.gov.uk/content.aspx?LegType=All+Legislation&title=copyright&Year=1988&searchEnacted=0&extentMatchOnly=0&confersPower=0&blanketAmendment=0&sortAlpha=0&TYPE=QS&PageNumber=1&NavFrom=0&parentActiveTextDocId=2250249&ActiveTextDocId=2250367&filesize=7279) indicates as much.

And I'm sure there was something about the price of blank tapes being hiked up so's to include some form of levy which would be paid, somehow, to someone ...

Anyway, cogent contemporary comment here -- Bow Wow Wow's C30 C60 C90 GO (http://www.metrolyrics.com/c30-c60-c90-go-lyrics-bow-wow-wow.html):
Off the radio, I get a constant flow
Hit it, pause it, record it and play
Turn it, rewind and rub it away

Policeman stopped me in my tracks
Said, "Hey you, you can't tape that
you're under arrest 'cause it's illegal"

[marypcb.livejournal.com]

in the US, fair use allows you to make a personal copy; inthe UK ripping your CD to MP3 has been technically illegal but never prosecuted. There was a reccomendation last year to change the law - probably that BBC story T links - but I haven't seen any legislation go through on it.

The law is famously an ass on some things, and the US protections are presumed to be worldwide - but the RIAA did used to go around prescuting grannies.

[marypcb.livejournal.com]

Home taping is skill in music!

if you want to dig into this, look at things like the countries that have blank media levies that go to the record labels to compensate them for piracy... time shifting, personal use and so on are generally treated as exempt; distribution breaks them out of that.

And the kneejerk identification of torrent = pirated content is annoying indeed.

[andrewducker]

Also, generally it's the people "making available" that are prosecuted - because they're the ones that are breaking copyright by giving away free copies of things when they aren't entitled to. Downloaders are more rarely in trouble.

[tamaranth.livejournal.com]

On that basis (which, for clarity, I'm not disagreeing with) it's the torrent concept -- with their implicit file-sharing, reciprocity, 'downloaders become hosts' model -- that's the problem, more than the act of sharing a file. By downloading via torrents, I am making available what I have downloaded for my personal use.

[andrewducker]

Absolutely. Torrents mean sharing back with the "community", and most other file-sharing software also shares stuff you've downloaded.

[marypcb.livejournal.com]

unless you leech, and leechers tend to lose out in terms of bandwidth; hence also security problems (like Japanese nuclear plans ending up on P2P).

[andrewducker]

That wasn't BitTorrent though - you have to be using something that automatically shares files on your drive to end up with that kind of security leak.

[marypcb.livejournal.com]

it was a Japanese peer-to-peer file sharing service that autoshared the full My Documents folder rather than a sub-folder; I tend to think it's a difference of degree rather than quality, because I'm not sure that everyone who uses P2P (irrespective of protocol) remembers that they're sharing as well as receiving.

[tamaranth.livejournal.com]

so, 'no more illegal than taping off the radio' then?

I agree that the second and third are illegal, but the status of downloaded TV broadcasts seems considerably hazier.

[birdsflying]

erk, another 'weeeelll, actually...' comment. ITV is private broadcast (one could attempt to argue re: having already paid for Beeb content via license fee but that is unlikely to go far in current precedent) and format shifting/own copy on one format is still grey area/illegal. But, as usual, I am not a lawyer, I just play one on TV do their research. :g:

[marypcb.livejournal.com]

also Beeb licence is geographically limited to the UK, so they can make money selling Dr Who to the US and they offer the iPlayer content so they can say at least they're trying. The first creative-commons-licensed BBC content came out recently - shame it wasn't that interesting but it's nice to see the first steps.

what we need is universal download subscriptions for video; everyone would actually make *more* money from it. Napster subscriptions are a money-spinner. but it's a big transition from the DVD money teat to a service and subscription economy.

[tamaranth.livejournal.com]

I do use iPlayer for BBC stuff -- I'd use it more if it was as reliable as a torrent :) And yes, absolutely agree that download subscriptions are the way forward, regardless of geographical location etc. Happy to pay a tenner a month to emusic for music downloads, though only because they have a suitable catalogue: would be equally happy to pay for video / TV download.

[tamaranth.livejournal.com]

It's that grey area re TV that I'd really like clarified. I don't own a TV (though I do now live in a house with one) and have really only started watching TV programmes since I discovered the joys of torrents.
As far as I can work out there's a kind of hierarchy of illegality (and this is only counting current shows, never mind old broadcasts converted from video or whatever):

ITV and Channel 4 worst of all; BBC not much better (would it be better if I bought a TV license? why?); US TV that might end up on cable eventually is still bad, but not as bad; closest to legal would be overseas TV that won't be shown here at all.

Is all mad. MAD. I want someone to tell me why it would be fine for me to record Primeval on TV -- I think this is generally considered to be legitimate, yes? -- but not to download it from EZTV or similar.

[tamaranth.livejournal.com]

by 'record Primeval on TV' I mean, of course, 'record onto a video tape or a DVD'

[marypcb.livejournal.com]

Japanese shows that are not exported are no subject to copyright; if they are exported copyright applies. this is startling sensible.

iPlayer does say somewhere that you should only use it if you have a TV licence (what about us licence payers holidaying abroad then).

the problem is not just your personal copy and the potentially lost DVD revenue from when you didn't buy the series (with a minor theme of if you were watching live you'd sit through adverts - on video you fast forward, on live TV people change the channel, but the advertising industry has been going la la la can't hear you for decades now). it's that you have not the analogue, degraded copy of a VHS video (or the degraded analogue-to-digital copy of the downsampling DVD recorders that replace VHS; Sky downgrades the signal on the port of the Sky box that lets you record off the box) but a digital, high quality copy that's good enough to keep - and good enough to share. Digital copies are the genie out of the bottle, copied and handed around everywhere; doom, says the content industry, ignoring lots of counterexamples (Baen for a start).

the legal difference is more about ignoring someone who takes an apple to eat as they walk around the supermarket in favour of nabbing the shoplifters and the market traders selling packets of biscuits that fell off a lorry; all illegal, not all prosecuted.

[marypcb.livejournal.com]

they're illegal; they might be morally acceptable, utter common sense and possibly covered by the same 'fair use' etc doctrines as VCR time-shifting, but they all break the copyright agreements of the original.

[incy.livejournal.com]

of course one slight difference was that Pirate Bay sold advertising (and hence made money) on its services. This slightly changes the moral acceptable argument IMHO (if you are a teenager with no money who tapes a song off the radio or you video/pvr a programme to watch later is I think morally different if you are not making a profit distributing something you have no rights to)

[marypcb.livejournal.com]

once I saw the hubris of taking a bus to court I didn't find myself wanting to follow the case that closely, but did it go into whether they were turning a profit or covering hosting costs for the search pages?

[incy.livejournal.com]

it is hard to know if they are making a profit or not unless the produce accounts (and you can always just up salaries instead of paying profits or use it too fund political candidates), but reading this suggests it is a business:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/03/02/pirate_bay_prosecutor_demands_one_year_prison_sentence/

[marypcb.livejournal.com]

sounds like profit all right. also, I had no notion that one of the PB4 was a neo-nazi - following the links on that page. worrying how the PB fans on the register dislike that being reported...