US Court Gives 15 Months' Jail, $415,900 Fine For Game Piracy 525
An anonymous reader writes "A Florida man has been sentenced to 15 months in prison and ordered to pay US$415,900 in restitution for selling video game systems that were preloaded with more than 75 pirated copies of games." If that fine sounds a bit steep, note that his profits on the devices "exceeded $390,000."
Term? (Score:5, Interesting)
I basically agree with you, however this does raise the question of length of copyright terms. If the original 14-year term (IIRC) were in effect, those games would now belong to all of us, and this fellow could sell his consoles without being accused of stealing somebody else's work.
So the discussion about this situation should at least include a debate on whether these games should still be under copyright at all.
For once they got it right (Score:5, Interesting)
Aside from trying to scare the ever living crap out of Joe Public, I can't see why the RIAA and MPAA bother going after the poor idiot who's sharing five songs from the new Brittany Spears album instead of going after the people like this who are actually making a profit violating someone else's copyright. Not only is it easier to track down the people who are doing it for profit, but you don't look like complete dicks when it turns out the anonymous person you tracked down through an IP address turns out to be a handicapped woman or someone who doesn't even own a computer.
I really don't mind the concept of copyright (although I do feel as though the duration should be significantly shortened to something of at most fifteen years.) and don't have a problem of not consuming any copyrighted media that has an asking price too much for my likes. I've never produced anything that I'd consider charging people to consume myself, but like the idea that if I ever did and decided to charge for it, I'd appreciate it if it wasn't spread across the internet or various other channels without my consent.
I don't really blame the casual infringers either. I understand that most of them are young and poor like I once was and usually can't afford the going rate for most works. I'd be fairly hypocritical of me to want them brought to justice when I've done exactly the same thing. I think that most people on slashdot feel the same, but there are a few people who have differing opinions. I think we should all draw the line when someone is actually taking your work and turning a profit through selling it without your permission.
I really wish the **AAs would take this kind of approach and train the killer legal dogs on the assholes that really deserve it instead of some poor college kids. I don't mind them releasing a commercial telling the casual file sharers who are distributing their copyrighted works that they suck, but the hardhanded legal action against these people is ridiculous.
Fair cop... (Score:4, Interesting)
In this case, I'd say the fine is a fair cop - though the jail term is a bit steep... it wasn't a minor copyright infringement - and it certainly wasn't for personal use.
As for the jail term - I'm generally uncomfortable with jailing people for anything but violent crimes (though I acknowledge it might sometimes be necessary in other cases too).
Re:Sorry Charlie (Score:5, Interesting)
He was selling these :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Player_Super_Joy_III [wikipedia.org]
In other words, he wasn't actively producing the pirated systems, or loading the games onto the consoles. He simply bought them wholesale from China, imported them, and re-sold them for profit in local malls. Doesn't make it right, but gives the story a slightly different twist in my mind.
To my knowledge, the games pre-loaded on this set are also currently out of production (but based on current retro-gaming trends may be re-introduced at a later date via online catalogs for existing consoles such as the wii).
In any case, another poster is correct. In my mind, most of these games are 14+ years old now, and not currently being sold by the original author. These two circumstances do lead me to question whether copyright law in this case really serves the interests of society.
Re:Some piracy is as bad as theft (Score:3, Interesting)
'how did he not deny someone the money'
The only way he denied them money was if the person paying him would have purchased the game from the copyright holder instead of the pirate. Unlikely.
Re:Some piracy is as bad as theft (Score:5, Interesting)
Or if the copyright holder didn't want these games on the market because they have newer games that they want to sell, which will now not be bought because people are buying these older pirated games instead. Likely.
Burden of proof. (Score:5, Interesting)
And again, we're dealing with old games, none of which (I'm assuming) are in production or even for sale anymore. So did this guy REALLY cut into the profits of the copyright holder(s)? Probably not. His crime was really using another's work as the cornerstone for his own product. I wonder if that's how the case was looked at, or if it was viewed as though he had deprived the copyright holder of sales also?
Really though, I think the only way to be fair about this is to ask the customers whether or not they would have purchased any of the 75 titles and which ones. Heck, some of them may have even owned them... We're talking about Super Mario Bros, Duck Hunt, etc.. I guess the copyright holder could pass the time/cost of collecting that information to the defendant in the final settlement. That seems like a relatively fair way of doing things, although pretty tedious.
Re:Term? (Score:5, Interesting)
I agree. It also raises the very significant question of imposing criminal penalties in relation to what is in reality a civil offence.
This type of penalty is the direct result of the sustained campaign to impose extraordinarily severe penalties in relation to 'crimes' which in reality carry few of the hallmarks of what is traditionally regarded as criminal activity.
When you send someone to prison for that long for a crime which is trivially easy to commit, is of debatable morality, and which has a tenuous impact, at best, on anyone or on "society", then I think there is something very wrong.
For artworks, a copyright can be held for 70 years (Score:4, Interesting)
Then fix copyright, I guess? (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, then fix copyright, I guess. There's nothing particularly wrong about this case, as far as the law is concerned. If Disney gets copyright extension after copyright extension, just so it can keep some old films hidden for PR reasons, then I guess Nintendo gets the same rules.
I mean, if we all decided (you're a democracy, right? If not, fix _that_ first) that we're ok with people making money for 50 year old works, then it seems to me it's only fair that Nintendo gets to make money with stuff that can't be older than 25 years. (The NES launched in 1983, so games for it can't be older.) What's sauce for the goose, and all that.
Honestly, the Disney case rubs me the wrong way a lot more than this. There it's used to effectively take some works out of the culture pool, which is the exact opposite of what copyright was supposed to _do_. It was supposed to offer an (indirect) monetary incentive to encourage people to publish their works, _not_ to be a way to make already published work disappear.
Nintendo, by contrast, seems to actually use copyright as it was intended. AFAIK a lot of those games are available emulated for some of their other consoles. That copyright extension effectively encouraged them to put some work into keeping some of those games available for more people. That's what copyright was supposed to _do_.
And before you go, "OMG, but you could just download an emulator from somewhere else"... well, that may be true for the NES and SNES, but look at how it takes longer and longer to emulate newer consoles. We've already had the PS3 for a while, and emulating the PS2 is still iffy. It's one thing to emulate an 8 bit CPU with just about enough instructions to count them on your fingers, and a graphics chip which barely scans the RAM as it is, and it's getting to be quite another to emulate the newer ones. For the graphics chips we don't even know the details of the architecture and the opcodes. At any rate, it's getting to be more and more to emulate them, and it's taking longer and longer. We may well soon get to appreciate it, if the vendor writes an emulator himself.
But, at any rate, it's what copyright was supposed to do.
Duly noted, they make more money in the process. Well, that's how copyright was supposed to work.
I'd rather fix the Disney loophole first.
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Sorry Charlie (Score:2, Interesting)
First, I called Nintendo about this at least five years ago - probably longer. Perhaps the older games were fresher in my mind at the time.
Two, it's not just the content of the cartridge. The plastic joysticks are recasts of the Nintendo 64 controller and the Sega Genesis controller. Even if an eight year old kid couldn't name all of the pirated games on the ROM inside that machine, he would probably recognize the N64 controller. At the time that those were initially out, the Wii was not out yet, and lots of people were still playing their N64's (including myself). Oddly enough, I didn't call Sega.
Three, if the seller didn't know that they contained illegally loaded games, how could he have any reasonable expectation of selling them? Generic games don't move big numbers unless they're preloaded on a cell phone.
Maybe it was just obvious to me because I'm a fanboy, but the Power Player machine is one of the more clear-cut copyright violations that I've ever seen openly sold in stores. Sure, I'd expect this sort of thing sold at the Flea Market Mall in the low-rent part of town, but not in the big Simon malls right before Christmas. Sure, I bristle a little bit about GI Joe and Power Ranger knockoffs at the dollar store, but it never made me actually dial the phone and rat someone out. I'm now mad that Amazon is selling them - but this goes back to the fact that Nintendo (or whoever) shouldn't be going after some dude in Florida as a long term solution. If the problem was actually to be solved, the appropriate authority would work on preventing their import in the first place. We can't stop China from making them, since I get the feeling that copyright laws work differently there. My gut feeling is dude in Florida committed some worse crime, and this article is media spin/plea bargain.
Re:Term? (Score:5, Interesting)
What about only allowing intellectual property rights to individuals and not corporations?
I think it's long past the days where there was any use to the fiction that a corporation has the rights of personhood. It's been too badly abused.
Re:For artworks, a copyright can be held for 70 ye (Score:3, Interesting)
>But you never know when something is going to be in demand. Some company like Microsoft should never be able to go "Jackpot! I can use that >formerly copyrighted material in this marketing campaign, I can make millions because it is still popular, I won't have to pay a dime for it, AND >the artists who made it is still alive to see me make millions off their work." According to you, this is exactly what should have happened.
So a company like Disney shouldn't have been able to say: "Jackpot, we'll use this story by Hans Christian Anderson, that one by Alexandre Dumas [etc. etc. etc. ad infinitum] to base a movie on since it's still popular and there is no more copyright on it" ?
Yet they could, and then they gained copyright on their derivative work. Now the company that has made the MOST MONEY OF ANYBODY EVER out of using public domain works is fighting like cats in a sack to keep THEIR works from ever becoming public domain in turn.
Basically, it's hipocrisy, the very same companies that MADE a fortune out of what went into the public domain before, is now using those fortunes to ensure they never contribute to it themselves. The purpose of copyright is to make the public domain as large as possible - anything else has nothing to do with the conversation.
Should artists earn for years or just once off ? It doesn't matter one IOTA to the debate of what copyright should be. What matter is WHAT WILL MAKE THE PUBLIC DOMAIN THE BIGGEST. A copyrighted work benifits one person or company only, a public domain work benifits all of society now and for eternity. The purpose of copyright is to make the public domain bigger.
If lifetime royalties will make it bigger over-all, then life-time royalties it is, if not, then it's once-off.
I would say the best balance may be something like partial public domain after 5 years (where only commercial uses/copying remain restricted so normal folk aren't affected) and complete public domain release after 10 for MOST types of works. I also agree with Richard Stallman that copyright should classify works and copyright terms should vary. Software should have no copyright at all, opinion pieces and editorials should have eternal copyright (since derivative works and other public domain uses make no SENSE there and can in fact REDUCE the value of the piece to society).
Re:Term? (Score:4, Interesting)
I agree. It also raises the very significant question of imposing criminal penalties in relation to what is in reality a civil offence.
This type of penalty is the direct result of the sustained campaign to impose extraordinarily severe penalties in relation to 'crimes' which in reality carry few of the hallmarks of what is traditionally regarded as criminal activity.
It is a criminal matter becasue he converted someone else's property to his own use without there permission - just as if he had taken a piece of tangible property and sold it. It clearly had value - based on what he made in profits from the sale and he did not have the right to sell it.
He could have negotiated a licensing deal; but did not. This is not a contractual dispute; it's conversion; which has traditionally been considered a crime. Penalties are not only punishment but deterences as well - 15 months in jail will probably not only make him think twice before he does this again but deter others as well.
When you send someone to prison for that long for a crime which is trivially easy to commit, is of debatable morality, and which has a tenuous impact, at best, on anyone or on "society", then I think there is something very wrong.
Easy of commision has never really been a factor in deciding penalties for crimes; just becasue it is easy to con someone out of cash doesn't make it any less of crime than if you simply lift their wallet while they aren't looking.
As for "debatable morality" - the law as it stands says the copyright holders control how it is used. You cna disagree with the law, and think it needs to be changed (as I do) but as the law currently defines software programs as property. Property rights are pretty well viewed as important in our society, and using other's property without permission is generally not viewed as a moral act.
If you really think it has minimal impact; then you should have no problem with soemone taking OSS, modifying it, and releasing it as a commercial product without following the GPL requirements to relase the source. After all, you have lost nothing since you still have the orignal program so their actions have had no impact on you.
Re:For artworks, a copyright can be held for 70 ye (Score:3, Interesting)
First, I don't hate IP, but I do hate how our culture is being stolen by lobbyists who are extending copyright to unreasonable terms.
My parents, on my first birthday, sang "Happy birthday" to me. Because of the extensions given to copyright, I won't be able to sing that song publicly on my deathbed, because it'll still be protected. I see this as unreasonable theft of our culture. It's one thing to ensure artists get paid, it's quite another to give them a stipend and monopoly in perpetuity if their work becomes part of the cultural zeitgeist.
I design control loops in a paper mill. If a bag of cement built with my paper builds a highly successful theme park, I'm not entitled to a lifetime stipend. Why should musicians or writers, who will spend no more time or effort on their craft, be entitled to such a stipend?
Back to your question, let me re-frame it for you. If you write a few popular songs and have 130 years of royalties to look forward to, why bother writing anymore songs? The limited term is required to ensure creators have an incentive to continue creating. If giving people a lifetime paycheque ensured they'd be productive artists, then there'd be thousands of incredible artists coming from the welfare system.
Re:For artworks, a copyright can be held for 70 ye (Score:3, Interesting)
Sure, for a time. Eventually, however, the work should pass into the hands of society.
Think about it this way: Society pays for the police who protect an artists copyright, and for the courts who enforce the copyrights. Society pays to jail people like this who violate copyrights. The artist is allowed a limited monopoly on their work for a period of time, subsidized by all society.
That being the case, it's only just that after a period of protection, society get something back, and that 'something' is access to the work itself. It's simply ceasing to protect the non-natural right to control the reproduction of a work.
My work is instrumentation, automation, and control engineering. Nearly everything I learned in college was once patented. The bourdon tube, the transducer bridge, PID control, I could go on for years. If patents were treated like copyrights, I wouldn't be able to know anything, because despite the fact that all these inventions are long outdated, they'd still be held by companies trying to milk their ancient inventions for every dime. Instead, after a time where the creator had a chance to make a profit, the inventions became the property of society, and now engineers like me can use this massive body of knowlege to solve new problems.
The middleman problem (Score:5, Interesting)
I have sometimes suggested that as a means to restore sanity to the copyright market, a copyright could exist for a relatively long time when held by the original creator of a work, but immediately be reduced to a relatively short time the moment it is transferred to any other party. Such a transfer is typically a purely commercial deal, and often with a known quantity so there is little risk involved. This leaves the original creators free to create many works in the expectation that they will have a fair chance to exploit them in an open market, which I think would be an effective incentive to produce many works of good quality. It also means that all the middlemen like book publishers and record labels can't wind up being the dominant force at the expense of both the consumer and the artist, as often happens today.
I think many of the problems with copyright in practice today basically stem from this middleman problem. There are decent ethical and economic arguments in favour of both the consumer and the artist, and while different people will favour different ones (and often produce dubious post facto arguments about the origins and "purpose" of copyright to support their position), I think most people would at least agree that the copyright can be of benefit to both these parties. Middlemen, on the other hand, are of "artistic" value only to the extent that they benefit one of the other groups, and are eminently expendable and readily replaced.
An alternative possibility would be to prohibit transfer of copyright entirely, but provide a legal framework for legally binding exclusive distribution deals with a statutory maximum period that is quite short (I'm thinking months, or maybe one or two years, at most). This way, there would still be a clear mechanism for any middleman to make a return by offering his services to artists, but a middleman who didn't get a work distributed effectively and thus make more money for the artist (and as a side effect, allow more other people to enjoy the work) would risk losing his position, and leave an artist free to seek another distributor. Also, if a work really took off in popularity, this would leave the artist with the power to renegotiate a deal with his distributor, or to seek a better deal elsewhere, rather than (as happens so much today) just making arbitrary profits for a middleman who is just a cash grabber while not benefitting the artist any further. Surely the artist-centric approach is a better incentive to produce works that are likely to fetch a higher price because of their quality or appeal to a wider audience because of their general interest, which again are in the interests of both the artist and the consumer (and the middleman who is actually earning his pay) in this scheme.