What level of racism is tolerated on Boards.ie?

Calina

aidan_walsh wrote: »

Aren't FACT British, and therefore nothing to do with Irish law? Do we even have an Irish equivalent?

Yep, I think they are called INFACT or something like that. It's been a while since I was at the cinema though and I've forgotten the blurb that you have to watch before every film.

At any rate, the data is hosted on Youtube and as a result, it's up to any concerned copyright holder to complain to Youtube which they do on a regular basis. Some of the record companies are particularly diligent in this respect.

DeVore

Gandalf23 wrote: »

I'm not going to argue the toss with DeVore on the technical aspects of this ... more clouding of the waters ... but imho the current law is shown by the TV-Links case (including the technical stuff that some people think makes this site immune ... it does not).

What about arguing the toss with me on the copyright explanation I linked you to? No?


I'd be very interested if FACT(or whoever) had an issue with us too, we have consistently banned and prevented genuine copyright theft.
(Do let us know how that works out for you though, yeah?)


Other then that you are simply a troll, seeking to get a rise out of people and then continuing the argument by either moving topics, or avoiding all those nasty "facts" people link you to.

DeV.

Gandalf23

aidan_walsh wrote: »

Aren't FACT British, and therefore nothing to do with Irish law? Do we even have an Irish equivalent?


A British website, and nothing to do with Irish law...

And the Copyright Assoc of Ireland too.

The TV-Links case is very relevant to Ireland ...

Stark

Talliesin wrote: »

Do you have a portrait in your attic getting smarter or something?

Instant classic.

Giblet

INFACT or whatever they're called now would have to get onto youtube, or your browser.

Talliesin

Gandalf23 wrote: »

Nice ...

Yes. Of course since you've done so you should by your own arguments be banned.

I'm sure you'll do the honourable thing and impose a ban upon yourself.

Terry

aidan_walsh wrote: »

Aren't FACT British, and therefore nothing to do with Irish law? Do we even have an Irish equivalent?


A British website, and nothing to do with Irish law...

Shh.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTbX1aMajow

Gandalf23

DeVore wrote: »

What about arguing the toss with me on the copyright explanation I linked you to? No?


I'd be very interested if FACT(or whoever) had an issue with us too, we have consistently banned and prevented genuine copyright theft.
(Do let us know how that works out for you though, yeah?)


Other then that you are simply a troll, seeking to get a rise out of people and then continuing the argument by either moving topics, or avoiding all those nasty "facts" people link you to.

DeV.

I've linked to my fair share of facts too.

I have a feeling that the copyright authorities in this country will be interested in the attitude of Boards.ie to copyrighted material. I'm willing to be proved wrong tho ... lets see what happens ...

AckwelFoley

Jesus H Christ, what ever happened to just been irish and ignoring the law?

AlmightyCushion

Terry wrote: »

Shh.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTbX1aMajow

I didn't know you were a fan of the it crowd, terry. That's a brilliant episode.

DeVore

While the CAI is a well respected organisation it is by its own admission (http://www.cai.ie/index.htm) just a limited company with directors and shareholders etc.

It has no governmental nor legal power. Its a good source to quote informed opinion on Copyright law but its not an executive branch of the goverment or anything.

DeV.

PS: Dont you think its ironic that you have linked the CAI, after *I* linked to them utterly crushing your Monty-Python-infringement argument? Thats the second time in an hour you have referenced something that was the complete destruction of your own argument, as being in support of it. You are slipping.

Gandalf23

DeVore wrote: »

While the CAI is a well respected organisation it is by its own admission (http://www.cai.ie/index.htm) just a limited company with directors and shareholders etc.

It has no governmental nor legal power. Its a good source to quote informed opinion on Copyright law but its not an executive branch of the goverment or anything.

DeV.

As I keep saying, lets see how interested they (and others) are in the attitude of Boards.ie to copyrighted material.

Terry

AlmightyCushion wrote: »

I didn't know you were a fan of the it crowd, terry. That's a brilliant episode.

All I do is watch tv all day.
You would be surprised at what shows I am a fan of. I just don't bother with the tv forum all that much.

Anyway;

As reported in the Guardian, last Thursday a 26-year-old Cheltenham man was arrested and the site, tv-links.co.uk, was closed . According to the Gloucester police, the arrest was carried out for alleged violations of Section 92 of the Trade Marks Act.

The man was not charged and the case remains under investigation, says Eddy Leviten of the Federation Against Copyright Theft. He likened the activity of TV Links to someone who advertises a car that is not theirs. "The main issue is that the original material is stolen," he alleges. TV Links was collecting links to movies such as the new Nancy Drew film that were allegedly illegally recorded in the cinema and then hosted on Chinese websites, he said. The federation is pursuing the websites that host the material, but it is difficult to pursue sites not under English jurisdiction.

The law governing the case is not clear. Section 92 of the Trade Marks Act is frequently used by the federation to pursue illegal CD and DVD copiers, but lawyers said the act relates to goods and has not been applied to audio-visual material that is not on a physical disc or other storage media.

Under US law and the MGM v Grokster case in 2005, the US Supreme Court found Grokster liable for "inducement", encouraging others to infringe copyright. However, English law does not recognise inducement. But this case turns on the issue of linking and the Trade Marks Act. Out-law.com, the blog of international law firm Pinsent Mason says: "It is not clear how the provision of links will be prosecuted as a criminal offence."

Alex, writing on the Impact blog from UK law firm Freeth Cartwright, agrees. "On the facts that we know so far, it is difficult to see how the providing of links to infringing copies of TV shows gives rise to a civil or criminal liability under UK law," he said.

The Trade Marks Act may not fit the alleged crime. "The Trade Marks Act makes the unauthorised use of trade marks in relation to goods an offence; but this is a law that was written to catch counterfeit goods," said Kim Walker, head of intellectual property at Pinsent Masons. "The provision of links is surely a service, not a sale of goods. It seems an unlikely way to deal with the problem."

Alex at Freeth Cartwright says: "Such links might constitute an offence under other parts of copyright law (distributing infringing copies or communicating copies to the public in the course of business), but it is again difficult to see how the facts meet these offences."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2007/oct/25/piracy.intellectualproperty

Giblet

Well let's just see what x & y think about this shall we? I'm sure they'll be interested in boards.ie stance on this matter is.



I bet they won't give a toss. Go ahead an "tell on boards.ie" though. Jesus you sound like a little child telling on his older brothers. Pathetic little threats which will go nowhere.

Terry

Giblet wrote: »

Well let's just see what x & y think about this shall we? I'm sure they'll be interested in boards.ie stance on this matter is.



I bet they won't give a toss. Go ahead an "tell on boards.ie" though. Jesus you sound like a little child telling on his older brothers. Pathetic little threats which will go nowhere.

TV-Links, a website hosting links to TV Shows and movies, has been shut down, and the police have arrested the site's administrator. According to FACT, the man was arrested "in connection with offences relating to the facilitation of copyright infringement on the Internet." The man has been released pending further investigation.

TV Links is one of the growing number of websites who do nothing but aggregate links to TV shows. It is not a pirating site as such as it does not contain any content, but one could certainly argue that it serves to facilitate copyright infringement. The interesting legal question of the week is: does providing links to infringing material constitute copyright infringement? The ORG-Legal mailing list has been abuzz with legal analysis of just this question.

The question of linking has had a long and interesting history in copyright law. The issue has been the subject of some debate, but the assumption for the last ten years has been that links as such do not infringe copyright law. The two most cited linking cases have not actually dealt with the subject of linking. Coiepresse v Google was really mostly a trade mark dispute, and Shetland Times v Wills was mostly about deep linking and whether or not web pages were literary works.

One of the reasons why the linking question has been kept alive has been because of the WIPO Copyright Treaty, which reads in article 8 that "authors of literary and artistic works shall enjoy the exclusive right of authorizing any communication to the public of their works, by wire or wireless means, including the making available to the public of their works in such a way that members of the public may access these works from a place and at a time individually chosen by them." It seems clear that this article tries to cover online piracy, but as some commentators have remarked, it is not an easy fit against linking. Bittorrent in particular does not seem to be covered by the provisions on the communication to the public.

If the law on linking is so thin and tenuous, how is it possible that this man was arrested? We are not just talking about a civil lawsuit, we are talking about criminal liability here. Copyfighter extraordinaire Becky Hogge from the Open Rights Group phoned the Gloucestershire police, and they informed her that the man had been arrested under Section 92 of the Trade Marks Act 1994. Trade mark law? Yes indeed! Welcome to IP Maximalist land: when copyright law does not allow you to make a tenuous claim to an action that may or may not be illegal, use an entirely different area of Intellectual Property Law that allows you to get away with the most outrageous criminal claims.

I have now become so accustomed to abuses against copyright law that I thought nothing would ever surprise me, but this one has. I would believe that the criminal offence typified by s92 of the Trade Marks Act is very specific, the offender must commit the infringing act "with a view to gain for himself or another, or with intent to cause loss to another". I believe that the only part of s92 that would apply to this case might be paragraph 3:

"(3) A person commits an offence who with a view to gain for himself or another, or with intent to cause loss to another, and without the consent of the proprietor—
(a) makes an article specifically designed or adapted for making copies of a sign identical to, or likely to be mistaken for, a registered trade mark, [...]"

Even this would be an extremely convoluted reading of the act. Daithí Mac Síthigh has commented that apparently this is one of FACT's favourite criminal sections, as it is listed in their site, and also has been used before. Why? because it allows for some draconian sanctions:

"(6) A person guilty of an offence under this section is liable—
(a) on summary conviction to imprisonment for a term not exceeding six months or a fine not exceeding the statutory maximum, or both;
(b) on conviction on indictment to a fine or imprisonment for a term not exceeding ten years, or both. "

Ouch! Perhaps FACT could suffer the fate of IFPI's dot com domain, which has been snatched by Pirate Bay.

Update: A search engine in China has been cleared of linking to infringing content, which lends strength to the proposition that linking is not infringement.

http://technollama.blogspot.com/2007/10/tv-links-clampdown.html

In fairness, the highlighted bit doesn't apply to Irish law, but neither does the tv links thing. Or FACT. Fact.

AlmightyCushion

Terry wrote: »

All I do is watch tv all day.
You would be surprised at what shows I am a fan of. I just don't bother with the tv forum all that much.

I wish I had the luxury of watching tv all day. Damn boss expects me to actually earn my money. What a jerk. It's a great tv show, though.

Gandalf23

Giblet wrote: »

Well let's just see what x & y think about this shall we? I'm sure they'll be interested in boards.ie stance on this matter is.



I bet they won't give a toss. Go ahead an "tell on boards.ie" though. Jesus you sound like a little child telling on his older brothers. Pathetic little threats which will go nowhere.

The truly pathethic thing here is the double standards that are being shown here. I have seen people being banned for copyright issues and now boards.ie seems to think there is nothing wrong with copyright infringement.

And I bet some people will be very interested in this

Gandalf23

From http://www.thenewfreedom.net/wp/2007/10/19/tv-linkscouk-raided-owner-arrested/


Apparently, not only the owner has been arrested, but some of the moderating staff as well. One senior mod, who lives in Ireland and not the UK, was arrested and held for five hours. He had this to say on a forum:

“Well I may aswell post here now. I was an SMod on tv-l, ive been in a police station for the last 5 hours been questioned about my involvement in the site. Apparently they can charge me for involvement in organized crime!!! WTF!!!! The scary thing is that im not even in the UK, im in Ireland, which is governed by FACT (Federation Against Copyright Theft) the police operation was massive scale, I was on tv-l just as it went offline, no warning whatsoever. AFAIK Sin (site owner) is still been held. All I know for sure is that the sites gone (for now anyway)… and that we (mods) could, in theory (if it goes this far) be sued £100,000,000, which FACT are saying is what the industry lost as a direct result of the site. Needless to say, im a little concerned atm”

He doesn’t say he’s been charged, but it sounds like they’re doing some tough interrogation, threatening to charge him with organized crime and a hundred million pound lawsuit.

Giblet

I'm happy to wait on the official word from Boards.ie and from FACT on the legality or otherwise of your act. Should be very very interesting ...

I'm happy to let FACT and the legal guys make a judgement on this one. And I'm amazed you seem to be justifying the embedding/hosting/linking of copyrighted material on boards.ie tbh

I'm still interested to see what FACT and the others who enforce copyright law in this country will think of Boards.ie seeming to condone copyright material on its site. Is Boards.ie still in the top 30 of all sites visited in Ireland ? FACT will definately be interested methinks ...

I have a feeling that the copyright authorities in this country will be interested in the attitude of Boards.ie to copyrighted material. I'm willing to be proved wrong tho ... lets see what happens ...

As I keep saying, lets see how interested they (and others) are in the attitude of Boards.ie to copyrighted material.

And I bet some people will be very interested in this

Are you gonna bark all day little doggie? Or are you gonna bite?

Terry

Gandalf23 wrote: »

The truly pathethic thing here is the double standards that are being shown here. I have seen people being banned for copyright issues and now boards.ie seems to think there is nothing wrong with copyright infringement.

And I bet some people will be very interested in this

Youtube forbid copyrighted material.
You can help them by reporting what you believe may be a violation of their TOS.

Click at your own peril.

Terry

Gandalf23 wrote: »

From http://www.thenewfreedom.net/wp/2007/10/19/tv-linkscouk-raided-owner-arrested/


Apparently, not only the owner has been arrested, but some of the moderating staff as well. One senior mod, who lives in Ireland and not the UK, was arrested and held for five hours. He had this to say on a forum:

“Well I may aswell post here now. I was an SMod on tv-l, ive been in a police station for the last 5 hours been questioned about my involvement in the site. Apparently they can charge me for involvement in organized crime!!! WTF!!!! The scary thing is that im not even in the UK, im in Ireland, which is governed by FACT (Federation Against Copyright Theft) the police operation was massive scale, I was on tv-l just as it went offline, no warning whatsoever. AFAIK Sin (site owner) is still been held. All I know for sure is that the sites gone (for now anyway)… and that we (mods) could, in theory (if it goes this far) be sued £100,000,000, which FACT are saying is what the industry lost as a direct result of the site. Needless to say, im a little concerned atm”

He doesn’t say he’s been charged, but it sounds like they’re doing some tough interrogation, threatening to charge him with organized crime and a hundred million pound lawsuit.

I was that senior mod.

DeVore

Gandalf23 wrote: »

As I keep saying, lets see how interested they (and others) are in the attitude of Boards.ie to copyrighted material.

Yes, you've said very little BUT that in the last 2 hours.

Amazingly, you whinged when you werent getting a "decent discussion" about a topic and now you sound like a little girl with a skinned knee having gotten one that doesnt align with your point of view.

If you believe my (and CAI's!) analysis of the copyright law is wrong or faulty then please say so. If a copyright owner were to complain to us about breach of copyright we would act on it (ie: if someone attached copyright material to a post). We even delete posts and ban users that link to obviously copyright protected material (such as music on the music forums).

What I'm not about to do is ban linking because it MIGHT link to protected material. Nor am I going to remove links to Insubstantial Copying, because thats protected by law.

Now, which bit of the above do you think they will have a problem with? Because I can tell you that I bet they wished every site was like us!!

DeV.

Gandalf23

Giblet wrote: »

Are you gonna bark all day little doggie? Or are you gonna bite?

Woff woff! I'm gonna bite ...

Giblet

DeVore wrote: »

Yes, you've said very little BUT then in the last 2 hours.

Amazingly, you whinged when you werent getting a "decent discussion" about a topic and now you sound like a little girl with a skinned knee having gotten one that doesnt align with your point of view.

If you believe my (and CAI's!) analysis of the copyright law is wrong or faulty then please say so. If a copyright owner were to complain to us about breach of copyright we would act on it (ie: if someone attached copyright material to a post). We even delete posts and ban users that link to obviously copyright protected material (such as music on the music forums).

What I'm not about to do is ban linking because it MIGHT link to protected material. Nor am I going to remove links to Insubstantial Copying, because thats protected by law.

Now, which bit of the above do you think they will have a problem with? Because I can tell you that I bet they wished every site was like us!!

DeV.

"oh ee oh ee oh ee, i'm telling jo-ey"

Giblet

Gandalf23 wrote: »

Woff woff! I'm gonna bite ...

Be sure to paste your correspondence. I enjoy a good laugh.

Calina

so if I get this right, a discussion on racism has metamorphosed into a series of accusations that boards.ie condones copyright theft based on a link to a third party website in another jurisdiction on the part of someone whose opinion has been widely disagreed with.

Leaving aside the substantive issue of copyright theft which is a subject in its own right, something sounds awfully petty and wrong about this scenario.

It leads me to wonder if the concept of "agreeing to disagree" has somehow metamorphosed into "I'll get you back".

Gandalf23

DeVore wrote: »

Yes, you've said very little BUT then in the last 2 hours.

Amazingly, you whinged when you werent getting a "decent discussion" about a topic and now you sound like a little girl with a skinned knee having gotten one that doesnt align with your point of view.

How do you know I'm not a little girl? Do you like the thought of that?

DeVore wrote: »

If you believe my (and CAI's!) analysis of the copyright law is wrong or faulty then please say so. If a copyright owner were to complain to us about breach of copyright we would act on it (ie: if someone attached copyright material to a post). We even delete posts and ban users that link to obviously copyright protected material (such as music on the music forums).

What I'm not about to do is ban linking because it MIGHT link to protected material. Nor am I going to remove links to Insubstantial Copying, because thats protected by law.

Now, which bit of the above do you think they will have a problem with? Because I can tell you that I bet they wished every site was like us!!

DeV.

I'd say they will have a problem with the copyrighted material on boards.ie tbh.

Talliesin

Gandalf23 wrote: »

The truly pathethic thing here is the double standards that are being shown here. I have seen people being banned for copyright issues and now boards.ie seems to think there is nothing wrong with copyright infringement.

And I bet some people will be very interested in this

And?

Sorry, the thing you are finding pathetic is that we are neither saying "my god! he's right!" on the one hand nor calling you racist epithets on the other, either of which would have rubbed your ego in different ways.

Instead we're just laughing at your attempts to make disingenuity an Olympic sport.

It's not big and it's not clever.

I don't really think your use of Schenck v. United States above means you're a racist. Rather the important thing is that in my playing the same trick of stretching a few things to make out that someone holds views quite opposed to those they have consistently held (like boards.ie's consistent policy of not facilitating copyright violations) is really, really, easy. The first quote I picked at random and there you are using a case where someone was imprisioned for opposing US involvement in a war in which racism was a very real factor in both why and how it was fought.

Playing your game is as easy as falling off a log, it doesn't mean you've won any sort of points over anyone, it's a doddle and anyone can do it, even you (hey, while quoting Schenck v. United States doesn't make you a racist, it was still pretty stupid).

The thinly-veiled threats aren't scaring anyone. Indeed, I think that's probably the reason why the general rule of sitebanning people who threaten the site isn't being applied - nobody can take the threat seriously enough to ban you for it.

Gandalf23

Guys and gals, I'm sorry but I have to run off for a few hours ... pressing matters.

See you all later for more fun ...

Giblet

I hate watching a man drown.

See you all later for more fun ...

At your expense, no doubt.