UK cops arrest six alleged BitTorrent music uploaders

The Boro

Altho The Boro, if memory serves, is awash with filthy drugs and criminal gangs which must of greater concern to the police and public, the record companies, no matter how large they are, are entitled to have their intellectual rights defended. I cannot see how anyone can justify bittorrents etc as they are overwhelmingly used for the unauthorised distribution of someone else's property.

So does anyone know the arrested parties and what their operation consisted of?

Re: fraud yes!

Oddly enough, when I asked the police, they couldn't say what constituted fraud.

'course I don't have wodges of cash or connections to their Super, so they don't want to do the work.

New York

Used to be called "New Amsterdam". So it wasn't named after York in the UK.

Why it got changed to New York from New Amsterdam I don't know.

Re: there's a Cleveland in the UK?

when I was young it took me a while to figer out that the washingtion in the news was not the one near newcastle

Why is prosecuting someone who is accused of breaking the law wrong?

While not necessarily agreeing with methods and laws used by the record industry I don't see that they are wrong to try to stop people copying their property (and with current artist/record company deals it is theirs, rightly or wrongly)

Similarly with the police, are they wrong to investigate a crime? Yes, murder may be worse, but by that token they should be spending all their resources inventing a time machine to go back and stop Hitler/Stalin/Pol Pot (insert favorite genocidal maniac). Part of the reason for the "breakdown of society" is that low level anti-social/anti-societal behaviour is no long nipped in the bud before it turns into murder.

And thats speaking as someone who has fileshared.

Re: Why is prosecuting someone who is accused of breaking the law wrong?

Because when Sony "stole" IP from the Open Source project LAME, the police didn't bat an eyelid.

Because such infraction is, where monetary renumeration is not the point, there's no criminal problem, only civil one.

Because the losses (as someone else pointed out) must be fabricated, else the revenue figures once Oink was taken down should have gone up measurably but it hasn't.

I've used filesharing (mirroring Linux). My sisters have (WoW updates).

"entitled to have their intellectual rights defended"

However, insofar as copyright is a quid-pro-quo exchanging the rights of the public (that makes the product worth anything) to the rights of the author, why don't we, the public, get our intellectual rights defended?

Such rights expire well beyond our deaths, even for things that we heard soon after birth. Each extension of copyright steals more rights from the public and the public get nothing in exchange. Are we not being robbed?

We had the right to works for Fair Dealing/Fair Use. We had the right to make a turning copy (how many paytards knew that?). We had the right to own the music or videos we bought. We used to have the right to refuse a contract and not have to pay a penalty.

All these intellectual rights we had have not been defended.

Who will defend them? The government should, but won't. The ruling elite do not listen to the plebian masses. At least not until it's too late for a meeting of minds.

This is not justice

Virtually everyday the news reports another stabbing or shooting of a child in our cities. The criminal elements are running riot in these lawless city centres, anarchy and the gun/knife/drugs rule. REAL CRIME WITH REAL VICTIMS.

The government appears to be doing nothing, when any simpleton could come up with the anwers to what is needed. In the mean time children are being STABBED and SHOT virtually everyday.

So why are the police wasting their resources on file sharers? Are they the REAL CRIMINALS? Are they stabbing children, mugging old ladies? No. Copyright theft (if it even exists as such?) is a civil NOT a criminal issue. The record companies should fight their own battles, NOT AT THE TAX PAYERS EXPENSE.

Police should be on the streets, where they belong, putting away the yobs, murderers, drug dealers, gang members etc etc. not messing about cherry picking easy targets.

Like car drivers, torrenters and p2p'ers will be easy pickings, ideal for a bit of extra revenue and meeting government crime rate targets. In the mean time many people fear leaving their own homes because of the threat of violent crime in our society.

RE: New York

I am sure it was once all new and shiny, but as it is now many hundreds of years old, I think they should drop that whole 'New' bit from 'New York' as it no longer applies.

It should now be called Newer York, Younger York, Son of York, Not Quite As Old As The Other One York, York Jnr. or York 2.0

Encryption Keys and Passwords

In the broader sense of forcing "suspects" to hand over the encryption keys and passwords, what would happen if you had the following setup for logging into your accounts.

On creating your password, you type a password into it then get somebody else (girfriend, wife, sibling etc) to type a password directly after yours. On logging in, you can only get in if both of you type your passwords in the same way, but not disclosing each others passwords.

Surely the authorities demanding the password would be stumped, as the other person wouldn't be a suspect, and therefore you have duly given them your password, but that doesn't make the complete string. They still can't get in, and can't make the other person a suspect without proof...

Anybody know if this would be sufficient? It would be a hassle, granted, but would be a good way of securing against this preposterous ruling.

Of course you could just tell them that was the situation and get the other person to agree to saying they have the other password :)

@CC

When they decide to move to a new planet they'll set up a new new york new new england,.....could be a real ass to figure out where someone means if they have a stammer.

@Russell Preece

Police would ask other party, other party either complies or refuses, if they refuse they are then acting suspiciously, or worse concealing evidence.

Now, what if the password were biometric and the police shot off the hand that held the fingerprint while you were getting on the tube?

Re: RE: New York

Well, since it's America, surely it should be York II. Pronounced "York the second".

section 49?

Section 49 of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act can be used by police to force suspects to disclose encryption keys and passwords. Failure to comply with with a section 49 order carries a prison sentence of up to five years.

I presume this is section 49 of Terrorism act - and from what I can see regardless of actual crime all are treated under terrorism act

This place is doomed i tell ya

@AC

>Why aren't the Cleveland plods working on task that are of greater importance to the locals?

Some are working on some tasks exclusively, some will be working on many tasks concurrently. Your insistence, is that actually they should work on the old lady being mugged totally ignoring the other offence that you don't feel people should be prosecuted for.

So rather than some bullshit about "why aren't the police working on x instead of y".

Why don't you just say "I don't think y should be illegal."?

It's a crap argument, stop using it.

To answer your moronic arguments about what the police should be up to, the police should be investigating crimes - as many of them as they are able.

BTW I suspect your accusation that the Chief Constable of Cleveland is corrupt are probably libellous.

RE: RE: the police only care about high profile crime

"I have heard and seen this befor. People complaining about the police not doing anything when they dont tell the Police anything."

So why do we have all this CCTV?

Or are you saying that the police are only interested when jo public hand over all the evidence required so they just have to turn up, take someone away and fill in a couple of forms?

@Michael - @julian "real" criminals

But the Police SHOULD know the difference between civil law and criminal law.

Leave civil law matters to private prosecutions, and pursue criminals under . . . guess what? . . . criminal law.

Get them on to the BT copyright offenders!

No, I'm talking about BT: British Telecom.

They have been taking the content you asked for from a site and replaced adverts for charity sites or products for ads that generate revenue for BT.

That there is a copyright offense, unless they've got the agreement from the site to change their pages...

At least Google add their crud around the page and don't kid on it's the original.

(Eagerly awaiting SOCA accessing Phorm and BT....)

Buy direct from the seller?

Music companies create too much law and have too much power.

A good idea would be to remove the power in the first place by not giving money to artists who use the main distributers and buying direct from the source instead. That way the distributers wouldn't get wealthy and monopolistic enough to have this much power. Simple as that. If we can't buy from the source, then we don't buy.

Anyone know of any sites that offer a "buy direct from the artist" with an option to listen to the music beforehand? Might be nice to see what else is out there that isn't mainstream.

In this digital age I really don't see the point in some environmentally unfriendly piece of plastic that can only hold 20 songs on it anyway.

Re: Fraud

There's not enough info in the article to say what the suspected fraud is, but I expect it's associated with pre-release works. Lying to obtain them perhaps?

Surely the caution kicks off with "You do not have to say anything..." but you do don't you? In quite a few offences as well now, there's the driver of your car thing for instance.

new york

named after Duke of York ,James Stuart (the second son of Charles I); which funny enough is a title usually given to the second son of the British monarch so not really after the town.