Australian Police Caught Pirating Movies
Written by Ben Jones on April 07, 2008A recent audit of computer systems belonging to the South Australia Police has found that hundreds are being used to “share” films. In a move smacking of hypocrisy though, officers involved will not be charged.
According to The Australian, during an audit of computer systems by the South Australian police force’s IT branch, police computers belonging to hundreds of police officers were found to contain movies.
The origin of these movies is not clear, but it is probable that they’ve been downloaded via p2p at some point, either on these systems, or on the personal systems of officers and transferred over.
Senior officials of the SA police force have been made aware of the findings, including its commissioner Mel Hyde. However, police sources have told press that there will not be any investigation into this, citing the large numbers of police officers involved.
The Australian Federation against Copyright Theft (AFACT) has said it will write to the commissioner to seek an explanation, presumably as to why the police officers are being let off with what it considers a heinous crime. Quite ironically, AFACT boasts of “working closely with police” - perhaps this closeness has shown the police officers involved just how unimportant and meaningless this so-called ‘crime’ is in the grand scheme of things.
If the officers do go unpunished, it could create a favorable precedent for filesharers in South Australia. If police officers, who are expected to be held to a greater level of accountability regarding the law, show this level of contempt for the current copyright laws, are unpunished, it will make it harder to convince a court that regular citizen should be punished for similar acts.
On the other hand, if the officers are punished under the law, which allows for upto AUS$60,500 (About US$55,700 or 35,500Euro) per infringement and up to 5 years imprisonment, the ability to effectively police the state will be severely diminished.
Either way, this case will bring to a head the vastly disproportionate penalties for an act that, as yet, has never been proven to be even financially damaging. One thing is certain, when even the police officers join large numbers of citizens in flouting such laws, the law’s place in society should be called into serious question.
The South Australian police force had not responded to requests for comment at the time of publication.
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Farkenel! That doesn’t work either! Let’s see if this one will.
http://ndarc.med.unsw.edu.au/NDARCWeb.nsf/resources/NDARCFact_Drugs4/%24file/CANNABIS+AND+THE+LAW+FACT+SHEET.pdf
Hey Torrentfreak! The site is cool but it seems to not like dollar signs in URLs! :D
“In a move smacking of hypocrisy though, officers involved will not be charged.”
In a move smacking of hypocrisy, you are perpetuating this myth that piracy is a criminal offence.
Aussie ftw!
Bent Fukin Cops, Bent fukin laws.
Thats why both police and major copyright holders deserve no respect.
hahaha…. I thinki might move to SA!!
[quote comment="334126"]“In a move smacking of hypocrisy though, officers involved will not be charged.”
In a move smacking of hypocrisy, you are perpetuating this myth that piracy is a criminal offence.[/quote]
No-one said CRIMINALLY charged. charges ccould refer to restitutions of fines imposed, OR even disciplinary charges made internally within the force. As I believe your post atttempted to point out, there are more types of charges than just criminal.
#24
maybe he is talking about Nimbin, it’s not allowed but they even got a hemp bar, and they sell it on the streets whit the police just walking by, No worries
[quote comment="333942"]Mostly movies and TV eps…There is a good reason why. Unless it’s a blockbuster movie or TV show/series, Australia won’t get it for anywhere up to 1 month - 5 yrs later. Even if it’s a blockbuster it can on occassion take up to a few months for it to be shown in Australia.
The most popular afternoon soap opera drama in Aus is some american thing, and what’s shown in Aus is 4 yrs behind what is in america.
[/quote]things are changing…. more films are being released outside America first(Sunshine, 88 minutes….) though its better to be in the USA(if out in movies first, watch in movies…. if out in other countries first, p2p_
Not surprised at all - every man, woman and child who taped ANYthing off the TV was violating our copyright laws until they were changed last year.
The 6 month to 5 year wait for content to be officially released in Australia is the killer here. The big question is WHY DOES IT TAKE SO DAMN LONG? Aussies are grabbing torrents of American and British shows within minutes of the broadcast finishing, so why the f*** can’t our TV stations do the same and air the show the following day?
It’s NOT legal to do drugs in SA. If they find one hemp plant in your backyard they will confiscate it (for their own use presumably) and issue a fine.
wow, incredible SCOOP.
I want to tell u about another fact. Even the children of record industry bosses, use Filesharing Softeare to download songs.
SA police commisioner : err…ummm…..to catch…..to catch this…the file sharers,errr…..we have to think,…and…errr to act like file sharers,yeay,that’s right,and that what we are doing.
police? FILE SHARING COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL?
of course they do. everyone does.
haha awesome cops, they’re normal people like everyone else, i hope they get away with it. i hope they fix the fucked up laws.
in brazil not only the police but the army and govermment uses pirated SOFTWARE. not all, but some of them
[quote comment="333928"][quote comment="333922"]Shows how many people arn’t using Peerguardian then. They wouldn’t have been able to connect being donut munchers and all.[/quote]
As I said, in the entire 3rd paragraph, it’s unclear if they downloaded the films throught he police network, or at home. If the latter, than Peerguardian wouldn’t have worked at all. This is the main reason why it doesn’t work.
There is only one way to have peerguardian actually work, and thats to have it block the range 0.0.0.0 to 255.255.255.255 - anything else just doesn’t stop people, because you never know who’s behind a home IP address. Thats the fatal flaw bluetack’s supporters keep conveniently forgetting. More on this topic through soon.[/quote]
Gettum!! Fucking pricks at BlueTack know this bit of info but they still swear up and down that they are the best program to use to protect your self. People don’t be idiots. They are liers and theifs. Making us Pirates look good. As for the pigs and the movies… even if they did download them… we go back to the bit about Downloading for personal viewing is not illegal. Now if their was evidence showing that the officers were UPLOADING, then we can laugh and start thinking of defences we can use for such. But at the same time im sure that all the officers didn’t put that on their systems… Infact their is a small yet unconfirmed rumor that it was the IT’s that planted it.
i live in south Aus, and all of a sudden i feel the burden of guilt lifted. :D
The aussies are quite reasonable, remember when sony TOLD the government stop allowing ps mod chips, or we will stop shipping the ps to you. And sony were promtly told, If your gonna stop the shipping of the ps, then you can stop shipping ALL of your products to here. Sony said…. errrmm!!! can you not take a joke. Come on boys we were only kidding.
Back on topic, exactly where were these so called files stored. In a folder named SHARED FOLDER or simply on the HDD under MY PERSONAL VIDEO folder.
And why is it so surprising? The police are just people. And no man in his right mind can seriously consider filesharing a crime.
They do what everyone does and why shouldn’t they? :-)
I dare someone to say it doesnt matter where the files were stored!!!!
@21 Yeah, but there is so much empty space to monitor you could have a big shed somewhere and noone would ever question what was in it.
Nice to see some news from home.Doesn’t surprise me at all!!!!.
South Australia is the best place to be,even though i’m not there at the moment,after all we are the cannabis capital of Oz so why the fuss about d/ling some vision or some sound.Let’s hear it for the crow eaters mighty boys in blue
[quote comment="333942"]
A number of hollywood movies i’ve been waiting to see in Aus in the last year have been shown in Aus up to 6 months later than not just america, but most of the world. Had to wait 6 months longer than most of the world for a big budget hollywood Jet Li movie to show in Aus. After a few months I just went and downloaded the damn thing in DVD quality before it even reached cinemas in Aus.
Even when we do get them in a reasonable time and can even get the DVDs, who is going to pay upwards of AU$100+ for a boxed set of 3-4 eps of a popular tv series? If you wait a year then maybe you’ll be able to get a whole season of said tv series for the same price…if they still sell the thing[/quote]
This is a very pertinent point. ‘The Industry’ and its distribution networks neglect to address in the age of the ‘Global Village’. If they could sort their act out maybe so-called ‘piracy’ would not be so much of an issue.
Give us what we want, when we want it.
So? I pirate too, and I’m sure many more do so - but that doesn’t make it legal. You can’t possibly want stealing (yeah, yeah - protest as much as you want that they still have it - you’re stealing their product) to become legalized!
Before long we’ll have people stealing each others blueprints and whatnot.
The police officers should not have gotten off so easily.
You approach this the same way every legalization propaganda group approaches it: “If they can do it, why can’t we?”. Instead of this, bring arguments to its contribution to society. Laws are laws, and should be followed.
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