The Internet delivered a whole new world of personal communications - and with it the ability to download music and movies at the click of a mouse. Unfortunately it also took us into a dark, gray world of legal uncertainty.
A consortium of film producers is seeking damages from Internet provider iinet because they claim that this provider did not warn those downloading movies that they " may breach copyright ". They cite the lack of such a warning as a form of complicity in encouraging a breach of the law.
An earlier Federal court case on this same subject failed, and if this suffers a similar fate then there is the prospect of the film people resorting to " plan B " - and that should worry all those people who have been enjoying downloaded films.
The music industry adopted a similar " Plan B " some time ago - and this had disastrous results for those who had the misfortune to be randomly picked by a computer for prosecution. The industry went after a handful of ordinary people who had downloaded music without either paying a fee or obtaining permission from the recording studio - and prosecuted them to the max to obtain the ultimate in damages.
Individuals had findings against them to the tune of millions of dollars. Of course there was no hope of the copyright holders collecting even a fraction of this - because the victims were ordinary people with very ordinary assets.
The whole idea was not to collect money, but to create panic in the community and make people too afraid to take the risk - and therefore stop downloading and go back to buying their music from the legitimate music shop.
The problem is that ordinary people have no idea what is legitimate and what is illegal when it comes to obtaining films and music on the internet. Legally much of the trade in intellectual rights - covered by copyright - is yet to be legally explored in the courts, hence what we do today may be subjected to what some distant court decrees tomorrow !
That is a sobering thought when you next sit at your computer - and decide your entertainment needs !
No comments:
Post a Comment