Court blocks $1 billion copyright ruling that punished ISP for its users’ piracy

One thing that leaps out at me about this ruling is that courts understand the internet a lot better nowadays. A decade or so ago Sony would have probably gotten away with the argument that Cox profited from the users' piracy; nowadays judges themselves use the internet and are going to go "lolno, they probably would have been Cox customers anyway. It's not like anyone pays for internet connection solely to pirate. And in most areas people don't even have a choice of provider, so how is Cox profiting from this?"

Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ @lemmy.dbzer0.com

snownyte @kbin.social

1y ago

arstechnica.com /tech-policy/2024/02/court-blocks-1-billion-copyright-ruling-that-punished-isp-for-its-users-piracy/

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1y ago

Court blocks $1 billion copyright ruling that punished ISP for its users’ piracy

arstechnica.com /tech-policy/2024/02/court-blocks-1-billion-copyright-ruling-that-punished-isp-for-its-users-piracy/

104 comments

Don't believe that you're always gonna be protected by some judge somewhere.
Get a proper VPN, dammit!
- In the end, you can't out-tech the law. You need rights.
  
  Your so-called "rights" won't hold to the pressure of massive media capital alone. It will erode away.
  
  tech the law. You need rights. I'm not sure we can right-out the system, we probably need both.
  
  The right to pirate?
- I just wish they would advertise the truth. VPN's are basically useless nowadays for everything except torrenting. Most websites once they detect a VPN address will just shut down. Go ahead and give Imgur a try with it turned on to see what I mean.
  
  Change your server to another location. ISP blocks VPN addresses that have been tagged.
  
  I use a VPN constantly and sadly a lot of sites add known VPN ip's to a ban list, I just reconnect my VPN and usually I get a good address but yea it sucks
- I’ve never been able to find a private tracker to join in like 20 years of this shit. Everything is closed off to registration and you basically have to find some guy in a dingy alley to suck off for the chance they might give you an invite.
  
  Hmu with that invite then please
  
  Private trackers just lessen the surface area. When the companies decide to lobby enough to change the laws you'll need to hide with private as well.
  
  They are on private trackers too. Just use a VPN.
  
  Yo! What exactly is different about private trackers? Like how does that help? Im lucky enough to have one but due to the seed ratio rules, I find myself downloading from my usual sites more frequently because I worry about seeding indefinitely.
  
  Private trackers are a false sense of security. If you’re able to get an invite to a private tracker, you really think a multi-billion dollar industry won’t also be able to get one?
  At most, private trackers offer more consistent content and more accurate seed/leech counts. But they absolutely won’t protect you from the lawsuits from media companies. If anything, being on a private tracker increases your chances of getting fucked in court, because enforced seed ratios means every single user is liable. Remember that leeching isn’t a crime, but seeding is. Because distribution is what the media companies care about, and that’s only accomplished through seeding. Just like how cops won’t typically be interested in busting a drug buyer, when they can bust the dealer instead.
  Your nice shiny 12.0 ratio means you’re getting fucked hard when the dildo of consequences finally arrives. And the dildo of consequences rarely arrives with lube.
  
  Folks need to learn how to rip. It’s a little more tedious but you can’t be tracked and the quality is almost always better. Even the most inexperienced can get started after a few hours of research and tinkering.
  
  "don't use public trackers"
  it's next to impossible to qualify for a private tracker
  let alone if the one you find has the stuff you want
  let alone making their so-called "ratio"
  ¿????
  
  "don't use public trackers"
  it's next to impossible to qualify for a private tracker
  let alone if the one you find has the stuff you want
  let alone making their so-called "ratio"
  ¿????
  
  Just use a debrid service. 10x better.
- Yo! What's a proper VPN these days? It seems like all the ones I used to trust went to shit.
  
  I've heard proton and mullvad are pretty good
  
  ProtonVPN
  
  I personally like Mullvad, their practices, and their straightforward price of 5€/month. They’re not going to try to lure you in with discounts by subscribing for multiple months or years. Now if Mullvad has gone downhill, someone chime in.
  
  Just self-host a VPN on a VPS so you can enable disk encryption and disable logging.
  
  Mullvad
  This message is sent through mullvad
  
  Edit: looks like I need a new VPN...
  I use private internet access (pia). It's reasonably priced, really good for the number of devices, and I don't believe they keep logs. At least it used to be that way, but I haven't checked that since I signed up a decade ago. I have had zero issues with anything or anyone while using it for any reason. Uptime is basically 100%. Also has mobile support if that matters.
Ain't nobody going to talk about that guy in the thumbnail eating a CD while wearing that hat? Stock photos are weird.
- That’s how true hackers read the data without a cd-rom drive.
  
  i thought he was munching it into shape so it would fit the floppy drive.
- I miss r/WTFstockPhotos
  
  Create a Lemmy version! Be the change you want to see.
- And now with AI they can get even weirder, specially if they trained it on already weird stock photos.
- What do you mean, how do you pirate stuff online? Surely you got the hat on? I mean, I can see biting a hard drive might be more appropriate but the hat, come on, the hat!
When will Sony be sued for stealing their customer's legally purchased digital media
- February 31st.
  
  Too long. I hope on Feb 30
  
  Oh that's very soon then! :D
Internet is a utility and should be treated as such.
- Up next Sony sues Pacific Gas & Electric for profiting off of piracy. All those torrents were powered by Pacific Gas & Electric.
  
  Sues corning for making all that glass that transmitted the piracy.
- I agree but the average person doesn't even know what that means.
- If you were a true american you'd be for privatization of all utilties
  /s
Billion? What are they smoking???
- Ikr? It's like they're counting every act of digital piracy ever to be their lost profits when that's obviously not the case.
  
  It's not "like", that has been the argument with these piracy cases for ages. If I pirate 100 movies, it obviously means that if I couldn't have I would have gone to the shop to buy each and every one of them. It's even worse for anyone caught distributing the downloads, where a site host can be hit with this logic for every user download ever.
  Apparently these days they are claiming that movie and TV piracy costs the US film industry $29-71 billion a year and the US GDP a cool $115 billion in total
  Because, you know, we have all that money just floating in our pockets now thanks to piracy.
Media Corporations should not have a say in disconnecting users from the internet based on copyright infringement. The right to social participation is part of a basic human right - self-determination. Today, the majority of interactions with society involve communication via internet in one way or another, so that access to the internet is vital for enabling social participation.
- Yeah, it's somehow comparable to a scenario where they had the power to decide you can't use uber/taxi, or postal services, because you used it to transport the HDD you're using for your private collection of copyright-protected media.
  
  You're right, but looking at this analogy backwards tells us the problem isn't the ability for Uber/ISPs to ban users--this happens and isn't a problem with Uber-- it's that Uber, unlike ISPs, doesn't hold a monopoly on feasible means of transportation. We can't reasonably expect a business to act outside its own best interests, so it's insane to allow a business to exist in such a form. Short term, sure, regulate; but really, nationalize it.
Spoons made me fat!
I live in Brazil, there are many problems here and stuff. But at least no one gives a fuck about piracy, lol. Never needed a VPN for torrents, not gonna need anytime soon.
- If I'm not mistaken, Brazilian law allows people to download and make digital copies of copyrighted material, so long as it's for personal use. I should probably look into that sometime
- It's like that in many countries. The USA is just kind of shit in this regard.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
A federal appeals court today overturned a $1 billion piracy verdict that a jury handed down against cable Internet service provider Cox Communications in 2019.
If the correct legal standard had been used in the district court, "no reasonable jury could find that Cox received a direct financial benefit from its subscribers' infringement of Plaintiffs' copyrights," judges wrote.
The case began when Sony and other music copyright holders sued Cox, claiming that it didn't adequately fight piracy on its network and failed to terminate repeat infringers.
Cox's appeal was supported by advocacy groups concerned that the big-money judgment could force ISPs to disconnect more Internet users based merely on accusations of copyright infringement.
If not overturned, this decision will lead to an untold number of people losing vital Internet access as ISPs start to cut off more and more customers to avoid massive damages."
In today's 4th Circuit ruling, appeals court judges wrote that "Sony failed, as a matter of law, to prove that Cox profits directly from its subscribers' copyright infringement."
The original article contains 543 words, the summary contains 172 words. Saved 68%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
- Dear Lemmy.world. can you kill ALL bots? they're the first sign of a website going to shit.
  
  You know you can just turn off bots in your profile settings... right? That is an option here.
  
  At least these bots are not "the" bots you think they are.
Really Cox should be paying pornhub.com for such strong "customer acquisition" support imho
1 billion dollars over pirated music? Who pirates music amymore

104 comments

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