US court rules Reddit doesn’t need to identify users who pirate movies::In future, we could see more cases where Hollywood goes after individual internet service providers and websites to detect online pirates

96 points

hollywood and streaming providers can all collectively fuck themselves. they make it more and more idiotic to do so legally and then wonder why people pirate.

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36 points

I mean they want to pirate people and expect everyone else to be okay with it.

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37 points

All the more reason to use a vpn even for casual browsing I guess. Never know when someone wants to overstep and turn the most trivial thing against you. Even if this is the case now that its been denied, what’s to stop this happening elsewhere or at another time? The fact it’s been tried once means it will be tried again. No thanks to that.

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4 points

I have to think that even if something went to court there is 0 connection to me saying “I pirated xyz” and being able to connect that to real life.

Nothing that is said on Reddit or Lemmy is sworn on a bible true true true.

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5 points
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It may not be “sworn on a bible true true true” but it could be used to help build up evidence along with other sources or identify people to target for further investigation.

Absolutely shouldn’t be enough on it’s own to be able to get warrants or forces companies like Reddit to give out private information… but there’s be a line somewhere between “someone said they downloaded a movie” and “someone has admitted to committing or planning a horrible violent crime” where law enforcement would be justified in getting warrants. It should follow strict oversight and justification like warrants for “real life” things (I say “should” as in the moral should… no idea how good US laws are around this stuff or how well they are followed”)

Edit: they would also need to justify that the comments seem to be actually true or are likely to be true… chasing down every idiot who says something stupid on the internet would bankrupt any police force and not help anyone.

Also… use a VPN! governments & police are overreaching and individual privacy is important to protect.

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33 points

See my problem with stories like this is everyone walks away thinking “the good thing happened.” But this isn’t a resolution. It’s halfway there. In a sane society if you make an obviously insane request like this for a bullshit and insane reason you should face consequences for even trying. And I know that makes people uncomfortable and “but the legal system!” comes up a lot. I don’t care. Change it. The CEO and every lawyer that ok’d this request from the court towards reddit should bare minimum be fired and probably fined/face their own criminal charges for even trying this shit.

To me this is effectively the same as finding a diary on the ground that says “I smoked crack and sold a gram to my sister in 10th grade” and some overzealous insane person tries to have a court force somebody who saw them drop the diary to reveal the identity so they can be prosecuted for a “crime” far in the past which very well may never have happened. I mean, if we’re going to have a dogshit legal system, and we do, the least we can ask from the multibillion dollar thieves (the capitalist corporations) is they do their own goddamn detective work. No, don’t find hypothetical posts. I can post that I shot JFK. I time traveled over 2 decades before I was born and I did it. Is the problem with trying to use anonymous “confessions” not surface level obvious? There is no evidence beyond the confession! And I’m no lawyer, but generally speaking a confession alone won’t convict anyone. Actual evidence is required. Assuming this shit was actually done, piracy occured, the ISP won’t keep any sort of logs that long and the odds of their harddrives containing that specific media years later? Doubtful. Maybe the judge breaks the law and allows a more broad warrant not just limited to specific movies. I think a skilled attorney gets that evidence tossed anyway since it was gathered illegitimately. Basically it SHOULD BE goddamn nearly impossible for them to ever prove anyone ever did anything like this without the person walking down to the local FBI office with their harddrives in hand, ISP logs and a written confession of all the shit they pirated since middle school. Maybe mention the time they stole gummy bears from their cousin in 3rd grade too.

I dunno, this shit just pisses me off because it’s so brazen and also just so fucking lazy. Like, put some fucking effort into being assholes for fuck’s sake. Trolling through decade-old reddit posts where some dude vaguely referred to his ISP letting him pirate is the best a billion dollar studio can do? It’s just sad really. The CEO and lawyers should voluntarily resign, go home into a dark room, and commit seppuku. We should really bring that tradition of failed higher-ups having at least the dignity to fall on their own sword (literally) back.

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9 points

This reminds me of that silk road documentary. The feds knew they had nothing until they had the creator with not only his laptop I hand, but also open, because the second he closes it and it’s password protected there’s no legal way to prove it was him.

I certainly agree with your line of thought and my beliefs align with them.

My concern is the change in the internet. When I first got online in the early 2000s it really felt like the wild west. It was difficult to find the content you were looking for, however everything was right there for you to find. Sites like google did wonders to centralize sites and make it so much easier to find what you were looking for, and explore areas you wouldn’t have found otherwise.

Capitalism creates change. The benefit of that is to their shareholders. For the last 100 years I do believe it has drastically improved the quality of life for most all of us. However there is an increasing gap as the ultra wealthy, my ceo included, continue to get filthy Rick, while the share of the rest decreases as an overall percent.

We’re certainly in am interesting period. I hope it gets better. I don’t have faith it will. I also don’t want a massive revolution because that often involves a reset and large scale human suffering.

Anyway my rant is over. Sorry for any spelling mistakes. Cheers.

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2 points

I’m with you for all of it except the capitalism bit. I think it’s just as naive to say that capitalism caused all that. As it is for ML communists to attribute all their developments and advances solely to Vladimir Lenin’s ideology. These things were happening all over the world at the same time. And in wildly different economic structures. I think it’s important to remind those that Lively worship capitalism. The Soviets kicked our ass in the space race all the way up until the very end. We managed to one of them at the end with the moon landing. But every step of the way they were ahead of us. And for all the harms Vladimir Lenin’s ideology caused. It wasn’t the complete and utter hellscape presented to us in the West.

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6 points

If reddit doesn’t have to then why would an ISP?

This is precedent setting.

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1 point
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