- cross-posted to:
- legalnews@lemmy.zip
- cross-posted to:
- legalnews@lemmy.zip
Four more large Internet service providers told the US Supreme Court this week that ISPs shouldn’t be forced to aggressively police copyright infringement on broadband networks.
While the ISPs worry about financial liability from lawsuits filed by major record labels and other copyright holders, they also argue that mass terminations of Internet users accused of piracy “would harm innocent people by depriving households, schools, hospitals, and businesses of Internet access.” The legal question presented by the case “is exceptionally important to the future of the Internet,” they wrote in a brief filed with the Supreme Court on Monday.
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If someone is using municipal water in their meth lab, the whole city block shouldn’t have their water shut off
I heard this meth is transported over the interstate, so we should block that as well.
If someone is using meth in prison, the whole prison should be shut down.
Did I hear that correctly? Meth is absorbed within the blood? Drain everybody
Also need to stop the “oil burner” trade
The headline should read:
Despite best efforts and all odds, ISPs find themselves on the right side of history.
Only because it would hurt their bottom line.
Funny how we can only win when it’s corporations fighting each other.
Bottom line or not there are ways that ISP’s could mitigate the loss that would benefit their bottom like while hurting the consumer.
Example: 1000 users are now nor able to pay or use the internet because of Piracy. ISP says: oh we had 2000 users now we have 1000 easy we will just double the cost of internet on those 1000 users.
ISP’s are like any other company. Pointing it out doesn’t mean it is negative. They are a business ruin their business model and it impacts everyone. I am not saying you are wrong. I just think your comment tries to view this stance in a negative light in the context and something being a business with a bottom line doest not instantly make something negative or make something negative not worth fighting for.
I’m surprised ISPs haven’t found a way to start issuing fines and fees for alleged copyright violations.
Yeah, totally, unbiased reporting to advocate for those poor vulnerable ISPs…
I never understand how this community relates to copyright. It’s all the freedom of the high seas until AI gets mentioned. Then the most dogmatic copyright maximalists come out It’s all anti-capitalist until AI is mentioned and then the most conservative, devout Ayn Rand followers show up.
Some of it is about the "Why"s.
Netflix nearly stamped out piracy for a while there by being a vastly more attractive alternative. Between them and Hulu, and to a lesser extent prime(at the time) if it was streaming, you could watch it somewhere at a reasonable price for a marginally reasonable viewing experience that was at least as good as most TPB downloads.
Then the IP owners got greedier and decided to strike out on their own with the “everyone has a streaming service” model, which would be GREAT if they largely shared content, but they don’t.
The greed continues, not in order to adequately compensate creators, but to make a few handfuls of people not just rich but filthy rich. Every action they take suddenly becomes more penny pinching for more greed. At this point lots of the CONTENT CREATORS wish they had a better choice (how often do they say ‘please watch it this way, that’s just how they rank stuff, sorry’?)
Why is it the opposite with AI?
Because in comparison with stuff like streaming video or music platforms, AI is BARELY pretending to offer a functional service in exchange for the greed that’s behind all of the money they’re trying to force it to make for them.
And that’s just for one side of the debate.
Why isn’t the fact that AI is largely garnering the same responses even from DIAMETRICALLY OPPOSED GROUPS telling you something about how bad of an idea it is in it’s current incarnation?
Here’s my guess. Piracy provides a competition against the horrible practices of streaming and entertainment companies that doesn’t otherwise exist, forcing them to provide a better service.
Artists are just a single person making art and their service isn’t gobbled up by the capitalist machine and turned into something user unfriendly. They don’t usually make too much money, unlike huge entertainment corporations, either.
When it comes to piracy, individual content creators often don’t care as long as they get money to live. There have been people who work on video games or movies who say they don’t care if others pirate their work as long as others get to see it. But for AI, it copies and changes the work, stripping the art of its original watermark, and it sets itself up to be a replacement of the artist itself. It doesn’t just spread their work without having you pay for it, it replaces the concept of needing an artist altogether, but only by using their labor in the first place without paying them for it.
If piracy let movie studios replace the idea of needing individual content creators, writers, artists actors, etc then people would feel differently I think. As it is now, people don’t care about big studios, they care about the individual. Piracy currently only really harms the former and not the latter. AI is the opposite.
It’s all the freedom of the high seas until AI gets mentioned.
The issue isn’t quite so much copyright as privatization. And the distinction between “freedom on the high seas” and “AI” gets into the idea of the long term ownership of media.
One of the problems I run into, as a consumer of media, is that I can purchase a piece of content and then discover the service or medium I purchased it on has gone defunct. Maybe its an old video game with a console that’s broken or no longer able to hook up to my TV. Maybe its a movie I bought on a streaming service that no longer exists. Maybe its personal content I’ve created that I’d like to transfer between devices or extend to other people. Maybe its a piece of media I don’t trust sending through the mail, so I’d prefer to transfer it digitally. Maybe its a piece of media I can’t buy, because no one is selling it anymore.
Under the Torrent model, I can give or get a copy of a piece of media I already own in a format that my current set of devices support. Like with a library.
Under the AI model, somebody else gets to try and extort licensing fees from me for a thing they never legally possessed to begin with.
I see a huge distinction between these two methods of data ownership and distribution.
Everyone is different.
I personally think copyright and patent laws need to die. If you can’t protect your own secrets, don’t rely on taxpayer resources to do it for you.
White-collar workers were cool with machines and poorer nations taking blue-collar jobs. Now that it threatens them and their money, the hypocrisy is on full display.
Americans would not want the price of produce to get higher but a) it relies on employing undocumented labor and b) it’s very hard to find American citizens these days willing to do that kind of hard physical work.
White-collar workers were cool with machines and poorer nations taking blue-collar jobs. Now that it threatens them and their money, the hypocrisy is on full display.
Heh. Yes. It’s even beyond hypocrisy. Many will outright say that automation is supposed to churn over these “dirty, boring” jobs while making their own lives better. Even finding themselves on the receiving end of progress, they don’t call for a better social safety net. No, they just want to get rent for their property. I wonder how much copyright industry has to do with the steady move to the economic right, through its huge influence on culture.
It’s almost as if the people here favor individual rights over corporate profits.
You have a corporation that doesn’t want to spend money to care for individual copyrights, or even lose customers over it. That describes ISPs. Still, people side with the corporation.
When you say individual rights, you, of course, mean copyrights; intellectual property rights. Giving property such a high priority is such a clash to the otherwise anti-capitalist attitudes here. It’s not just pro capitalist. It’s pro conservative capitalist.
I don’t think anybody here is siding with ISPs. We’re just happy to hear that they’re having difficulties policing piracy.
When I say individual rights I mean any and all rights an individual has or should have. In the case of piracy, an individual should have a right to entertainment media at a reasonable cost. The more corporations increase the cost of media access, the more piracy proliferates. In the case of AI, an individual should have the right to earn a living. Corporations are using the works of individuals to ultimately increase their own profits without due compensation to the individual.
I don’t know how you got to pro conservative capitalism from a single anti-corporatist statement, but it likely took you several leaps of logic that I’m not going to even try to follow.
Yeah, that’s what happens when you decide on issues separately instead of following a consistent set of principles. I, personally, try to follow a consistent set of principles, with as few caveats as I can muster. Here’s my take:
- copyright should be much shorter, perhaps back to the original 14 years w/ a single optional renewal of 14 years - principle: information should be freely available; caveat: smaller creators shouldn’t get immediately screwed by a large org with more publishing capacity
- ISPs should only provide internet, and if a law is broken, LE should go after individuals - principle: personal responsibility, ISPs aren’t responsible for how you use their service, they’re only responsible for providing a consistent service
- piracy is wrong, but it shouldn’t be prioritized - principle: piracy is a form of theft, since you’re accessing something you don’t have a legal right to; caveat: there’s no evidence that piracy actually reduces sales, and some evidence that it improves it, so let it be
- AI is copyright violation because it has been shown to be capable of reproducing entire texts, so AI companies should compensate creators - principle: copyright, as above; exception: personal use should be fine (similar argument as piracy), but commercial use is profiting off another’s work directly
I think everyone should decide what their principles are, and frame every time they deviate as an exception to those principles instead of just taking every issue at face value. If we don’t have that foundation, everything becomes way too subjective.
I take my principles from libertarianism (NAP), not from objectivism (Ayn Rand), and I make exceptions based on utilitarianism.
My line with AI is between AI for profit and AI for fair use.
Hmm. That’s not how the US legal concept Fair Use works. What do you mean when you say fair use?
I would infer from what they wrote that they mean anything not for profit. Seeding isn’t “fair use” in the legal definition.
Yeah stuff like fan art, modding games, etc
AI for that kind of stuff is pretty fun
Yes, but it’s still not quite clear. Arguably, when you pirate rather than paying, your profit is the money saved on the purchase. Courts tend to see it that way.
Besides, Meta releases its models for free and I don’t see them getting less flak. In fact, when they were sued by the NYT corporation looking for a profit, people still sided with the profiteers.
Personally I think AI training is free use. I also think AI is a fad and generally used as a way to scam people.
However, artists complain about AI because it pulls from their business (in theory.) Artists generally don’t complain about piracy by the end user because the artist is usually still credited in someway (signature watermark etc.) and piracy doesn’t generally stop other people from paying for their art. AI in theory steals their jobs.
The main people who complain about traditional piracy are the executives of companies that purchased copyright on artist’s works through contracts that do not favor the artists.
The supremes: oh! Yes! We are on your side ISPs! The MPAA and RIAA will now be allowed to sue individual users directly bypassing courts.
Have fun! You got them boys! You got that 98 year old grandma! Get her house! And that minority girl trying to download the new Beyonce songs? Deathrow! 1 per song! All the single ladies our ass! You wouldn’t download a car! We’re the Supremes! Watch us! But first Trump is president starting now, and poor kids shall get no food in school! They wouldn’t be poor if they got food! Oh and women…we did the abortion thing already darn!..no vote for women! Marriage age 6 now, overruling all states laws.
Let’s get you back to your room Mr. Thomas.
imagine getting banned from the one monopoly ISP available to you in your entire city. what do you do after that? sell your house?
Even though I hate Starlink, it would be an option.
What I would do however is try and ask my neighbors. If neighbors don’t work, I’d just hack their Wifi.
Another option would be to contact other ISPs and tell them your neighborhood/village/city is ready for an alternative. It’ll depend on many factors whether or not this would be successful, but I have seen it happen in the past. Just takes a few different households to contact them and they’ll start doing market research.
Getting somebody with a different last name to try and get a new contract would be possible too. But it could be considered fraud.
I actually just use my phone for internet and haven’t had a landline ISP for 2 years now.
Visible, $25/month has saved me so much money and they even sent me a free phone.
It’s insane that people (okay, mostly corporations) try to argue internet access is not a utility. What happens then? Does your home value decrease? Or does the next purchaser have to petition the ISP to convince them they are a different, non-infringing customer and hope they reverse the ban??
This happened in the apartment I just moved into. I had to call to verify my identity and they had to unblock something on their side due to the previous tenant ostensibly not paying.
I’m guessing it would be tied to your name. the new tenants would have service, but you might have to move to a different state or something.
Yup, but in our case, I think it’s my phone number (at least that’s what they use for my account number). So I could probably sign up again if I change my number.
Why don’t they start with OpenAI and other LLM vendors, because they are the biggest copyright infringement abusers of all time?
Because they’re also rich. Laws are for the poors.
ISPs are rich too?
Which is why the Supreme Court is hearing the case. Two wealthy industries fighting out who gets to extract the most wealth.
In Canada they absolutely are lol
There would be no more internet access for anyone anymore if that were allowed.
Soooo many insecure networks out there ripe for the picking if you know what you’re doing and have the tools available. And the tools are often free, not costing any money. From there, those networks are the places people will go to commit their “piracy”.
And what exactly is piracy? If I purchase an album on iTunes but choose to download it on ThePirateBay, is that really piracy? Because I have done that when the music THAT I FUCKING PAID FOR is no longer available for me to download off of iTunes and Apple won’t give me a refund for said music purchase. People do it for games that include shitty DRM and don’t allow them to easily install on another device like Linux too.
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I like the end result that ISPs are pushing back on this, but don’t mistake this for altruism on their part.
Their businesses make money selling internet service. Were they to support cutting off those accused of piracy, they would be losing paying customers. Further, the business processes and support needed for this to function would be massively expensive and complicated. They’d have to hired teams of people and write whole new software applications for maintaining databases of banned users, customer service staff to address and resolve disputes, and so much more.
Lastly, as soon as all of that process would be in place to ban users for piracy accusations, then the next requests would come in for ban criteria in a classic slippery slope:
- pornography
- discussions of drugs
- discussions of politics the party in power doesn’t like
- speaking out against the state
- communication about assembling
- discussion on how to emigrate
All the machinery would be in place once the very first ban is approved.
Plus, you aren’t disconnecting a person, but a whole family or business.
And since many areas in the US only have one provider, you force that family to cancel all streaming services they might have. It’s a lose-lose-lose situation.
I think a big problem we don’t want to address is now that we’re so interconnected, internet access is a necessity that should be classified as a utility. You can’t just cut off someone’s electricity without notification or process because they did something bad with it and it should apply here too
Not if they get their universal digital ID system in place. It is the wet dream of tyrants of all kinds.
What. Is this something that’s been on the horizon?
I agree with all this, but I think it is all to say: ISPs support Net Neutrality when it behooves them.
Yeah but that’s capitalism in a nutshell, isn’t it?
I think it is also the user they disconnect for piracy tend to pay more. They tend to be more premium customers also why should they enforce what happens on their lines. It is an illegal search and seizure. Let the government get a warrant prove something is illegal then the ISP can disconnect them.
Yeah who else is going to pay for 1GB speeds knowing the most they’ll ever get is 400MB
Sony can’t have your electricity cut off if you pirate. Because electricity is a utility.
ISPs want it both ways. They want the legal protections of a utility without the obligations.
The solution is to give them the legal protection they want by declaring them a utility.
I wonder if would you get your electricity cut off if you plugged in a 750kW industrial oil drill in your backyard
The people who sell electricity are surprisingly happy to sell you electricity. If you happen to do something horribly wrong and don’t burn your house down, an electrician will be happy to do the repairs. If you have 200 Amp service and draw the full 200 all year long, the most significant reaction would probably be getting a personalized Christmas card.
The 200A main breaker on most homes would trip a little above 50kW. Could you even start up 1000hp without 3 phase?
I wanted to exaggerate for comedic purposes, I had 500MW written initially 😄
Those moments when you can’t decide if someone’s username means they’re a science nerd or a Venture Bros. fan.
Me_irl:
Who in their right Minds would want to be a nerd but not a venture brothers fan?
I’m not certain but there’s a high probability that that Venn diagram is just a circle
Go Team Venture!
It’s like the other side of the diagram has disappeared from the mateeeeeriiiiiaal plaaaaannneeeeee!
Not everyday i agree with ISPs but here we are. Guilty of and accused of are two very different things. Innocent until proven guilty.
Hell, I don’t even want to ban users guilty of piracy. Oh no! Sony and it’s BILLIONS of dollars will surely be affected by pirating their dvd of a movie! Heavens to betsy!
Hell, I don’t even want to ban users guilty of piracy.
Yeah, if someone shoplifts from a store, the punishment/penalty should not involve confiscating the car they drove to the store, lol.
You joke but that’s how Sony feels when you buy a used DVD… They just can’t admit it publicly
They must HATE me…There’s a thrift shop just up the street from me. I bought Deadpool on DVD/Bluray combo pack. Still sealed new from factory, for $2.50.
I buy lots of DVDs there. My sisters say my collection is rediculous. She means it in a bad way, like I need to get rid of some stuff. But hell, when it’s $2.50, why NOT buy like 20 movies in an afternoon? And why NOT do that same thing several times a year? Although I will admit I’m running out of room…help! My apartment is filled with DVDs, and I can’t see the walls anymore!
Next step: rip them all to a NAS and install something like Jellyfin. That way you can enjoy all of that content, but without having to swap discs.
That’s what I did, and now everything sits in a box hidden away somewhere in case my NAS dies or something.
I aspire to be like you! I finally am going to have a DVD player and I am absolutely THRILLED. No joke. It’s going to be fantastic.
Not as fantastic as an old VCR since it’s like 2% harder to fast forward through the ads. But pretty close!
…you wanna come over and watch ghostbusters?
Absolutely!
Not for potato supreme. I’m sure labels and sony bought vacations for those sub human coup supporting shits
Never dehumanize fascists or fascist-sympathizers (redundant but ok), it’s always important to remember that bad faith actors or their stooges are human and cannot be entirely eliminated from society, which is why people that fight for positive change have to set the rules such that bad faith actors’ actions are either quickly recognized and mitigated, or have society structured such that even those motivated solely by unempathetic selfishness can only achieve status by masking and contributing positively anyway.
I am not familiar with that, I’m guessing potato supreme is a username or something?
It’s an Idaho-exclusive new dish at Taco Bell.
Well it sounds delicious, and definitely not guilty of piracy
No, of course not. Piracy would sour the cream.
Probably a delicious baked potato dish. Not sure whether cheesy potatoes really care if you’re guilty of piracy, they just want to be eaten.
Heartbreaking: Worst Corporation(s) you know, just made a good stand
Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.
A broken digital clock is never right.
Unless it’s a 24 hour clock.
So an average of 1.5 times?
So Sony wants to punish ISPs for continuing to “allow” illegal things to happen? Hmm remind me again which company it is that has had so many data breaches that users have come to just expect it? Sounds to me like if they are allowed to pursue attacking internet providers then they themselves should start seeing lawsuits for continuing damages until such time as Sony is able to successfully recover all stolen personal data and other parties can no longer use it for profit.
Looks like an old-politician idea to me; a generation late. Nowadays, cutting internet is as bad as cutting electricity.
It still makes me feel some type of way that Sony (a Japanese company) gets so much sway over US business and policies. It’s something I thought about a lot when Microsoft was trying to close its deal with Activision. I don’t care much either way about multi-billion dollar conglomerates (or trillions in Microsoft’s case) butting heads but it did strike me as odd that a foreign company had that much of a hold on the deal. I get that piracy of media is frowned upon but like the ISP’s are arguing here, the affects of cutting off access to their clientele would have a lot of negative impact. I once again sit here wondering why a foreign company should have that kind of power over American citizens… you know?
May I introduce you to Nintendo?
This may have something to do with it. One hand washing the other, as the saying goes.
There’s got to be a way to just decriminalize piracy
