Finland - 9 year old copyright pirate hounded

[Mousey]

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Guess it's not just the US that goes to extremes....

('Winnie the Pooh laptop'.... LOL cracked me up....)

 

[sapit222]

hehe, was a funny story.

 

[Nate]

I was curious of what lead to this... This is what I found

This summer one Finnish family has received a message from Helsinki’s (Finland) Copyright Protection Organization Copyright Information and Anti-Piracy Centre. The letter said that Internet account was reported to contain the presence of illegal activity – distribution of pirated content. The family was immediately offered to settle the conflict: pay the €600 fine and sign a non-disclosure contract. The father did not respond to the threats as apparently neither he nor his wife used torrent resources to illegaly download copyright property. He was also confused by the legally binding non-disclosure contract, which required him to keep silence about the payment he was asked to make.

The story didn’t end just like that, however. In November the family received a visit from the police, who had a search warrant. It was found that the real infringer was their 9-year old daughter, who tried to download her beloved Spanish pop singer Chis’ (real name – Christel Martina Sundberg) album from Piratebay. The girl thought the downloads had failed and her parents bought her the latest album from the store. It turned out that the downloads did not fail and were in fact malicious trackers, which flagged her home internet protocol (IP) address as an infringer.

The 9-year old got her Winnie the Pooh laptop seized as evidence in this serious case for her crimes against humanity. According to her father, this case is a pure absurd, as the money used in expensive litigation should be rather used for educational purposes…

Nate

 

[Mousey]

I was curious of what lead to this... This is what I found

This summer one Finnish family has received a message from Helsinki’s (Finland) Copyright Protection Organization Copyright Information and Anti-Piracy Centre. The letter said that Internet account was reported to contain the presence of illegal activity – distribution of pirated content. The family was immediately offered to settle the conflict: pay the €600 fine and sign a non-disclosure contract. The father did not respond to the threats as apparently neither he nor his wife used torrent resources to illegaly download copyright property. He was also confused by the legally binding non-disclosure contract, which required him to keep silence about the payment he was asked to make.

The story didn’t end just like that, however. In November the family received a visit from the police, who had a search warrant. It was found that the real infringer was their 9-year old daughter, who tried to download her beloved Spanish pop singer Chis’ (real name – Christel Martina Sundberg) album from Piratebay. The girl thought the downloads had failed and her parents bought her the latest album from the store. It turned out that the downloads did not fail and were in fact malicious trackers, which flagged her home internet protocol (IP) address as an infringer.

The 9-year old got her Winnie the Pooh laptop seized as evidence in this serious case for her crimes against humanity. According to her father, this case is a pure absurd, as the money used in expensive litigation should be rather used for educational purposes…

Nate

That's what really gripes me... they had bought the CD.... so im my mind, the copyright nazis have no case because she has a right to a copy of that damned album. Much ado and gov. expense over nothing..... sheesh

 

[Nate]

That's what really gripes me... they had bought the CD.... so im my mind, the copyright nazis have no case because she has a right to a copy of that damned album. Much ado and gov. expense over nothing..... sheesh

Its exactly what I was wondering? How does it really work?? Does a bought original entitle you to copy or Download? I always assumed so.

Freaks are selling pirated DVD's everyday in many places yet they take on the average household. Many of the users who download never distribute the material but rather use it for entertaining toddlers and the family. Piracy is piracy, but Piracy with the intent of financial gain is what should be targeted.

Nate

 

[vinylweatherman]

Another epic fail.

They should have halted the action as soon as they became aware of the potential for a PR meltdown. Instead, they beefed up their action to what seems an overly aggressive level, which only made matters worse than they would have been had they just taken a firm, but low key approach. They also seem very keen on these "gagging orders" so that the true scale of their excesses is not made public. This case would never have come to light had the father just paid up. This is blackmail, not law enforcement. The whole bunch can rot in hell as far as I am concerned. There is no proportinality between crime and penalty here. What about all the companies who inflict far worse terror onto their customers through their own incompetence coupled with their belief that like God, they cannot possibly have made a mistake. They hound a pensioner to death over the gas bill for the factory next door, or break down the door to disconnect a homeowner's gas supply they don't have, or issue a court summons for repayment of £0.00 outstanding on the account. They don't get arrested, have their homes raided, etc. They get a slap on the wrist, told to say sorry, and take steps to ensure it doesn't happen again, the customer may even get a £25 goodwill gesture for their inconvenience.

This story may indicate that they have effectively stamped out the worst excesses of piracy, but to justify their existence they have to keep on producing cases to chase. This case seems to be an act of desparation as they couldn't find something more substantive, not even the grannies sharing 10,000 files are around any more.

Google seems to be just as much to blame, as it fed the 9 year old the pirate bay results rather than a legal means of downloading. A 9 year old may well know how to install software, follow Google results, etc, but they are likely to trust that the consequences would be no greater than finding that the source is no good, or that the download is poor quality. It even hints of entrapment, as it seems the tracker links were SEOd to appear close to the top of a Google search, even though for experienced pirates, such tracking links would be pretty unpopular as they would probably be able to detect they were not quite right.

Google CAN and DOES censor search results, as well as drop those that are not what they appear to be. Google should be making it clear that links to sites such as Pirate Bay are "high risk", and advising users not to click on the results. I see such Google warnings on all sorts of search results, and often it isn't obvious that there is anything dodgy about them, such as a shopping link, or information site.

This could not happen in the UK, at least not to a naive user, as pirate bay has been blocked by court order. Whilst the search results still appear, clicking them brings up the block page which makes it clear that the links are to unauthorised content. If you know how to circumvent the blocking, you are not a naive innocent user who just happened to stumble upon it.

Most cases like this are big company vs big company, such as Samaung vs Apple, both claiming that each other breached the others copyrights. Whilst pursued with vigour, these are big companies who have the power to engage in a fair and balanced fight, much to the delight of the lawyers involved. Apple vs a 9 year old kid would not be seen as a fair fight, so why do the movie and music conglomerates think it is.


These big companies risk losing the support of those who understand their side of the argument, and why their fight against unrestricted piracy is a just one.

In the end, we don't actually NEED anything that they produce, we have just been conditioned by decades of marketing into believing that we DO.