Math Teacher Convicted for Linking to Pirated Answer Sheets

Ernesto
January 16, 2013
186
copyright,
math
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A Dutch teacher has been convicted for linking to pirated copies of math answer sheets stored on file-storage sites. The Amsterdam court ordered the teacher to remove the hyperlinks from his personal website and pay the litigation costs. According to the verdict the teacher facilitated students’ copyright infringements, this despite the fact that downloading for personal use is legal in the Netherlands.

math To assist students a Dutch high school teacher linked to pdf copies of answer books from his personal website.

The pirated answer sheets were stored on file-hosting services including Microsoft’s Skydrive.

However, instead of sending take-down notices to the hosting providers, the book publishers concerned schooled the math teacher in court.

The publishers, including Noordhoff, were not happy with the man’s defiant behavior and demanded that the teacher remove the links. They also claimed that the man was the initial uploader of the files.

In his defense the teacher argued that math answers are universal as there is only one right solution to a question, and that these answers are therefore free of copyright.

In a ruling yesterday the Amsterdam court disagreed. While answers to math problems may often be identical, the way the answers are explained can be crucially different, the court explained.

“Not only the formulation of the curriculum challenges the creator to make creative choices. This may also be the case in the construction of the answers. That there’s eventually only one right answer doesn’t change this,” the court writes in its verdict.

The court further explained that linking in itself isn’t copyright infringement, but that the links made it easier for others to pirate the answer books. As a result the court believes that the publishers were directly harmed by the teacher’s actions.

“In this context it is significant and can hardly be assumed otherwise, that Noordhoff will sell less and lose income because the answer books are made available on the Internet,” the court noted.

The teacher’s defense, that his website has no commercial purpose and that he’s aiding students, didn’t change the infringing nature of the links. The fact that downloading for personal use is legal in the Netherlands was seen as irrelevant.

A lower court initially ruled that the man was also the person who uploaded the pirated books, but the appeal court dismissed this claim from the publishers due to lack of evidence.

The teacher was found guilty of facilitating copyright infringement and the judge ordered him to remove the hyperlinks from his personal website and pay the litigation costs, which add up to several thousand euros.

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Guest

Good way to win people over to your side of the copyright argument?
Sue the tits off them!
I think not.
- scum are scum
  
  The tipping point will come. Getting closer to critical mass now.
  When the Anti-pirates are on fire….Not a single piss will put it out.
  Anti-pirates are not even worth pissing on.
  - Daniel
    
    Knowledge should be free and accessible to all. I swear to god, it’s as if they feel a storm coming and want to prevent it by keeping us in the dark. Afterall, knowledge = power.
    - dpdp
      
      yeap
      But unfortunately we all living in a world of shit where nobody care about progress, evolution , all care about only one God – MONEY
      For that they are greed , they killing , lie , manipulate , enslave , trying to stop people to have acces at information , education , trying to put monopoly and keep people stupid becouse stupid people is much easy to control ,to enlave and exploit like modern slaves , they need stupid obedient workers not smart independent people , they need slavers workers not people which have fair small business , they need monopoly not competitors in the market ,they need control the market , they need stupid people at least to buy theirs addictive shit , they want to keep all of us in the dark !
      
      So these greedy bastard parasites of humanity (copyright trolls , boss corporations, politicians etc ) know very well – free acces at informations / education it is dangerous for their business , becouse they loose control -and for they control /manipulation/power mean money (think about – people which have high level of education dont belive in their lies , cant be controlled , see the real dirty truth about that system and faith for real freedom )
      
      BOYCOTT ! Theirs power it is in our pocket (money)
      SPRED and SHARE INFORMATIONS – all kind of real educational , this will help others (maybe poor ,maybe ignorant ) to start to think ,to progress , to see real truth , to turn on the “lights ” in the darkness of stupidity , to fight for rights and freedom !
      In that way maybe in one day this world will stop to be theirs messy playground
    - Aceninja
      
      “Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master”
      
      – Commissioner Pravin Lal, Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri
- Bananas
  
  In my university you can make a copy of any book, and that’s commom where i live.
  - OneEyedWillie
    
    This does not make sense since you can use all this under FAIR USE as educational content.
    - You Not Listening
      
      OneEyedWillie can you read? Bananas said that at his or her university YOU CAN COPY ANY book. Maybe you should Learn to read?
    - OneEyedWillie
      
      I made this comment in a broad sense to this whole article.
    - frozar
      
      Where have you been? Fair use has been ravaged and raped by the courts.
- Guest
  
  Fuck Noordhoff
  Get all thier books from here:
  
  https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=intext%3A“Noordhoff+Uitgevers+bv.”+filetype%3Apdf+-site%3Anoordhoffuitgevers.nl
  
  Just add the title of the book ;)
  - http://cheapassfiction.com/ Aelius Blythe
    
    While you’re at it, let Noordhoff that people are not ok with them going after teachers for teaching. This seems to be the one to contact:
    
    Ms. B. Bruinsma, Corporate Communications Advisor
    Tel. 050 5226319 or 06 51703223
    Email b.bruinsma @ noordhoff.nl
    
    PUBLIC info from:
    http://www.noordhoffuitgevers.nl under Press (“Pers”)
  - john doe
    
    No man, you got it wrong.
    
    DO NOT SHARE THEIR BOOKS.
    
    Doing that is GOOD for them. Because it provides good word of mouth and popularity.
    
    You should do the exact opposite: BOYCOTT it:
    
    Do not buy, do not use, do not adopt
Ray

I wonder when their going to start shutting down libraries.
- http://twitter.com/DuckTheNWO ☠ NewWorldStoner ☠
  
  …and erasing memories of copyrighted content.
- ClueCluster
  
  That’s old-fashioned for them, they’ll probably start to burn servers,
  instead burning books, like the Nazis did.
  
  Well, maybe they won’t burn anything
  and they’ll just keep their style in the way it is, confiscating servers.
- Rfk535
  
  Or burning books because the contents vaguely resemble books that someone else has written. Wouldn’t surprise me one bit if someone like Dan Brown started suing everyone who uses secret societies as a plot device, or someone like Rowling suing anyone who uses magic in a modern day setting.
  - Ohfuk
    
    “Rowling suing anyone who uses magic in a modern day setting”
    
    I think that could be considered religion.
    - Fuck Religion I Mean Cults
      
      Dear me!!!! I see…I see cults!!!! Cults I tell cults!!!!! Rune for your life’s!!!!
      *waves arms in the air while running*
- bobmail
  
  @ray: “I wonder when their going to start shutting down libraries.”
  
  Hyperbole much?
  
  Are you really that silly as to think that?
  - Anyone
    
    TPB is nothing but a modern library
  - icec0ld
    
    Better believe it.
    
    Free access to copyrighted works and knowledge? It’s a lawsuit waiting to happen when they think they can get away with it.
    - GreenPirate
      
      What’s cooler than being c0ld?
  - FiggisFiddis
    
    BobTroll: clueless as usual.
    
    Eat a shitty dick, BobTroll, you floundering lackwit.
  - xpmule
    
    bobmail,
    its called what comes around goes around..
    your side acts the same way so don’t bitch when it’s shoved right back in your face.
    
    i wonder when their gonna start confiscating little girls winnie the poo laptops or dead people or old ladies ?
    
    phantom lost revenue strikes again..
    assumptions = evidence = file sharing victim
    
    how does a theoretical infringement justify sending someone to jail ?
    someone *might be able to possibly use this answer info and they *might be able to download them legaly but the court will for sure convict him.
    what type of brain dead moron logic is that ?
    
    hyperbole is nice like catch phrase but uhhh so what your comment is still a load bull regardless.
    
    i swear to god i don’t why you you even bother opening your mouth lol
    
    Say some more.. so i can make a fool out of you ;)
    ..again
    - http://gene-poole.tumblr.com Gene Poole
      
      i wonder when their gonna start confiscating little girls winnie the poo laptops or dead people or old ladies ?
      
      Wait… what?? Little girls ‘ dead people??
  - Scary_Devil_Monastery
    
    “Hyperbole much?
    
    Are you really that silly as to think that?”
    
    Did you by that mean whether he was silly enough to read up on his history?
    Publishers went all-out in order to prevent the creation of public libraries ever coming to pass. The motto used was a familiar one: That no one would buy books.
    And I’m amazed, given your alluded-to age, that you could have missed the continuing debates even before the internet era.
    
    And today you may want to see how that war is flaring up again with the invention of the E-book. Which in Sweden has meant that the cost to a library trying to stock an E-book is twenty times that of stocking a physical one, after everything else is paid for.
    
    Meaning, of course, that the legal e-book hasn’t caught on as a medium in Sweden and the most prolific venue to find them is The Pirate Bay.
    
    Now, for all intents and purposes, publishers are indeed trying to shut down libraries. Or at least to ensure that the most convenient package of media should not be available there. They always have.
    
    It actually isn’t hyberbole, or silly, given that your side of the copyright war has always been extremely hostile to the library as an institution and tended to treat these institutions much like TPB.
    
    What is hyperbole is the idea that government would sanction shutting down a library because of copyright claims, or that the general public would ever accept it.
    
    So ray’s statement becomes perfectly viable as long as he inserts a “try” in there.
    
    [EDIT] It’s even worse, now I think of it. If ray inserts a “try” in his statement it becomes history in fact, not a possible assumption.
  - JordanKratz
    
    Why would MAFIAA want to see places where you get to read stuff for free.That is not the MAFIAA WAY.
    Soon they will either shut them down or they will force a Rental Fee per day.
    Be glad TPB is here.It is our Library !!!
- JordanKratz
  
  Not to long when the only thing in a Library is a bunch of Computers with no paper books any longer.
  And there is at least one All-Digital Library here in USA and probably more than one.
  Bet it does not take them long to Demand a Rental Fee each time a Book (Electronic) is Rented Out.
dondilly

The ironic thing is that in days of old, teachers would just photocopy the solutions and distribute them to the class.

Also, i assume he teaches in a state school. If these books are required in a national curriculum why isnt the state buying the books or ensure materials are covered by either fair use or a state wide negotiation with the rights holder.

There is something seriously wrong if not with dutch copyright, the dutch education system when a teacher is penalised due to the governments failure to fund the education system. It is a travesty that the school and the wider education establishment hung him out to dry.
- mystrdat
  
  “teachers would just photocopy the solutions and distribute them to the class”
  
  Strong point.
  
  As for the ruling – yet again I see the false arguement that expects lost profits. There is 0 correlation between a copyrighted download (eg. “theft”) and a lost sale. If I couldn’t download a specific math book, it doesn’t mean I would go to the shop and buy it instead. In fact I can even tell you what I would do – Google a bit more or use WolframAlpha.
  - dondilly
    
    The point is that if a book forms part of the learning material ie set books for a national curriculum, most education authorities buy the books in bulk and as part of the deal fair use is extended to cover the books. The books would then be reused in subsequent years until the curriculum was revised or the books fell apart.
    
    If it were left to parents, kids from low income families would be
    Disadvantaged. The author/publisher would not only enjoy a copyright monopoly but an unfair advantage over other competing authors over an extended period of time.
    - ITakeAPotatoChipAndEatIt
      
      Agreed.
- Anonymous
  
  any scapegoat will do! as long as it isn’t anyone of a higher position that has to take the blame, it’s ok! mind you, even if it was someone from higher up the tree that had to take the blame, got convicted, as long as he said ‘sorry’, all would carry on as before. it’s only the ordinary people that get screwed!
- Scary_Devil_Monastery
  
  “The ironic thing is that in days of old, teachers would just photocopy the solutions and distribute them to the class.”
  
  As anyone can attest to who has been around a swedish university in the last twenty years, even the age-old practice of photocopying the actual gist of the course material as handouts has been cut down.
  
  As a result, many students actually can not afford to purchase the required student literature which can cost as much as their rent, month by month. And of that material the average class requires about 5% to pass the grade.
  
  Hence there is, of course, a flourishing market in second-hand books and filesharing sites dedicated to course literature.
  
  Given that the university library can afford to stock only a few copies, every semester starts by students in high academics deciding on which months they will be living on cheap pasta.
TheTundraTerror

I’m sorry, but what the fuck?
I’m going to go cry…
- Frankie098
  
  The tissues are on the table,help yourself!
- Pinocchio’s Grandma
  
  you’re not the only one, i’ve actually cried about this stuff before
  - Pinocchio’s Grandma
    
    its hard to NOT cry about something so fucked up
Dezzalnutz

He should just build a pirate box and continue sharing with in the school.
- dondilly
  
  Well, as history has a tendency to repeat itself, I think it safe to predict this publishers educational titles have just been guarenteed a listing on pirate bay. Dutch school kids might be lucky and find all their curriculum books on there.
  
  With this coming after Aaron Swartz’s battle over educational material came to such a tragic end, something tells me that sectors of the online community will ensure this publisher will regret their actions.
  - Guest
    
    Aaron Swartz was killed by the copyright extremists and terrorists.
    
    The vendetta is on.
    - JordanKratz
      
      I am still waiting to see all that shady MAFIAA Accounting leaked to the World.
      So, where is that info HACKERS of the World !!!
      Why have you not brought MAFIAA wikileaked yet ?
    - Whatever
      
      @JordanKratz
      
      Agreed. I was wondering that too for some time now.
      Are their networks hack proof or something ? Are hackers afraid ? Or afraid they are not smart enough to stay anonymous ? Maybe they only write viruses now.
      
      On the other hand some consoles are still not hacked and cracks for software are usually in the form of “evading/fooling” instead of actually removing those protections ( =malware ) nowadays.
      
      I think that maybe the age of hackers has ended.
    - Scary_Devil_Monastery
      
      @JordanKratz
      
      I’m sure hackers would love a shot at the MPAA/RIAA. But we aren’t talking about the Pentagon with a vastly centralized repository of nefarious plans conveniently filed in a locker saying “Top Secret”.
      
      Instead what happens is, hackers go after executive arms such as ACS:Law, as soon as one such has been identified.
      
      I have anohter theory as well which is that MPAA and RIAA themselves actually don’t use computers, no employee ever having figured out how to use the damn things…
    - Pinocchio’s Grandma
      
      “I have anohter theory as well which is that MPAA and RIAA themselves actually don’t use computers, no employee ever having figured out how to use the damn things…”
      
      oh snap! i think you’re correct, so unless we have a “james bond” among our ranks, i don’t see how anyone gonna get those papers out of there
- GreenPirate
  
  Svartkast Raspberry Pi
Anonymous

the fucking Dutch courts are getting ridiculous in their interpretation of the law and copyright law in particular, bending everything possible to be able to convict someone and rule in favour of the various entertainment and similar industries. how can copying be legal, but a person still get a guilty verdict against him for aiding in copying? was this case at the same court as other stupid Dutch legal rulings over copyright recently? wasn’t it found that the judge had similar affiliations to copyright organisations as the judge in TPB spectrials? no conflict of interest at all, then?
John Space

Teachers are universally hated, usually with no reason; this proves so once again.
scary ass mofo

can we please get our “empty media copy fee” back now?
NL = Fd’ * (UP)

If the math teacher posted ‘MathAnswersHere(dot)com’ on his personal webpage then is it still a ‘link’ or is it free speech?

Same question …
MathAnswersHere HASH ID: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Xult
  
  Does not add up.
- MontyMcDonahueSpikeMethusala
  
  Good point, but I think they’d argue that he was still facilitating infringement. It wasn’t that there were links on his site, it’s that the links helped students to infringe, so even if he posted a URL (the way you did) as a ‘hint’ to where to find the files the court in this case would most likely have classed that he was still aiding the students’ infringements.
  - 2013 – 29 = ?
    
    So then speaking the phrase ‘thepiratebay(dot)se’ is a crime in Netherlands.
    Writing the letters ‘thepiratebay(dot)se’ is a crime in Netherlands.
    Putting ‘thepiratebay(dot)se’ on a T-shirt is a crime in Netherlands.
    
    Thinking ‘thepiratebay(dot)se’ is a crime in Netherlands.
    
    And all the trolls rejoiced.
  - xpmule
    
    he was aiding -> POTENTIAL<- infringement !
    
    BIG difference !
    
    some people may have been legally able to download the material
    so that renders any conviction on him flawed from the start.
    judge fails basic logic.
    - Xult
      
      Big Brother….
      Orwell was right.
      The thought police!
  - Scary_Devil_Monastery
    
    By the same argument the chemical formula for methamphetamine is illegal as it enables drug manufacture.
    Selling a sufficiently powerful car enables speeding. And so on.
    
    The entire “enables” paradigm has to stop. Third-party responsibility exists in no other area of law to this extent, nor to such absurdity.
  - aidanjt
    
    Saying “hey, there’s something of interest over there” isn’t facilitating anything, other than a free exchange of information, i.e. speech. That’s all a hyperlink is, a reference.
http://twitter.com/DuckTheNWO ☠ NewWorldStoner ☠

Next they’ll make all education illegal, so that people are unable to learn about how badly they’re being fucked by the copyright system.
- utuxia
  
  couldn’t agree more. Pretty soon information itself will be illegal.
- Jon7272
  
  they tried that its called the catholic church
- Scary_Devil_Monastery
  
  Is this a bad time to point out that attempt have already been made to make the knowledge on how to break DRM illegal?
  
  Which in effect makes it illegal to learn math and computer language, of course. The suggestions were shot down but the important thing is that such legislation was actually proposed in both EU and the US.
- ScrewEwe2
  
  “…, so that people are unable to learn about how badly they’re being fucked by the copyright system.”
  
  and the educational system.
ThumbsUpThumbsDown

We are ALL in isolation when we confront the Power and Authority of the Monopolies that we must coexist with every day.

What we feel most about this Math Teacher’s plight is the palpable reality of his Isolation. Perhaps, he has 500 students; and, a thousand professional collegues in the School Administration, who shake their heads in disbelief at the injustice of it all; and, are immensely grateful that they themselves are not the subjects of whatever maddness empowers these Corporate Leviathans to tower so imperially over our lives; but, this teacher must find his way alone toward what strength will empower him.

We are ALL in isolation.

It is no accident, or afterthought, that our hardest Human challenge; what requires most courage and stamina from us, is the struggle with word or deed to reach accross the table or accross the world and find that Teacher whose experience is itself a complete lesson in what is wrong in the relationship between our governments and these Monopolies.

The most corageous and talanted among us break through this isolation; at least, to some extent.

They own the strong voices that ask the hard questions.

How was the Public Domain in Intellectual Property abolished?

How was the Public Domain replaced by a Perpetual Corporate Domain in Intellectual Property?

What are the actual legal foundations of Six Strikes?

How can we change or abolish the laws that empower these monopolies?

Aaron Swartz broke through his Isolation to ask these questions, loudly; and, brilliantly.

In his own crude way, Kim DotCom broke through the limitations of his background to ask these questions in a powerful way.

And, every day, the editors at TF and TechDirt emerge from their personal Isolation one word at a time to ask these questions yet again.

Of Course, the more we demand answers to these questions, the more we suffer the repression whose mission is to drive us back into that Isolation kicking and screaming.
- Anon
  
  get used to it.
  - HeyNonAnon
    
    We are, and we’re still never going to buy your crap. You don’t matter anymore. Bye bye.
  - ThumbsUpThumbsDown
    
    Naw! There’s 6 Billion of US preparing the skewer……
  - Guest
    
    Really, Anon? Not only are you for suing 9 year olds, you’re for suing people who teach 9 year olds that 2 + 2 = 4?
    
    Does it always smell this shitty around you? Because damn if you’re not the biggest asshole I’ve seen…
  - Pinocchio’s Grandma
    
    no YOU get used to it
- bobmail
  
  @ThumbsUpThumbsDown: Wow, another one. Do you really believe the crap you just wrote?
  
  The issue isn’t about public domain, it isn’t about anything else. The material the teacher intentionally pointed to was pirated, it wasn’t at the school, it wasn’t part of the school’s books. He knew it, and did it anyway.
  
  While apparently pirating for personal use isn’t entirely illegal in the country, helping people to pirate is. The teacher wasn’t arrested for the material, he was arrested for helping to distribute pirated material.
  
  When you try to create justifications or excuses why piracy on some scale is “okay”, you always will fail. Would you feel any different if he also linked to 10 pirated hollywood movies as “class material”?
  
  “And, every day, the editors at TF and TechDirt emerge from their personal Isolation one word at a time to ask these questions yet again.”
  
  Most of the stuff posted here is so slanted it’s remarkable it doesn’t fall off the screen. Mike Masnick is a smarter writer, but he is also as slanted as they come. They keep asking the questions, but like a strident and annoying anti-abortion protester, they sound more shrill and less meaningful every day.
  - Bobtard
    
    Do you /really/ enjoy being this universally detested, bobtroll, you shit-witted masochist?
    - Whatever
      
      “Most of the stuff posted here is so slanted it’s remarkable it doesn’t fall off the screen.”
      
      And you, as the inhumane (examples enough) self contradicting being, are still here reading and commenting to these posts ?
      
      I wouldn’t read a site, book or newspaper that is built on lies so again why do you even bother coming to this (obviously your favorite) site ?
      
      In the end you couldn’t have given a better description of yourself as a troll:
      “they sound more shrill and less meaningful every day.”
    - Whatever
      
      Sorry, Bobtard wrong reply button.
      
      It was supposed to be at the “bobtroll” message level.
  - icec0ld
    
    “The issue isn’t about public domain, it isn’t about anything else. The material the teacher intentionally pointed to was pirated, it wasn’t at the school, it wasn’t part of the school’s books. He knew it, and did it anyway.”
    
    So math answers are copyright-able material? Well fuck me, our entire school system is pirating with our smartest students committing the greatest number of copyright violations.
    
    This is insane and the situation for it is now literally on the door step of education providers.
    
    “While apparently pirating for personal use isn’t entirely illegal in the country, helping people to pirate is. The teacher wasn’t arrested for the material, he was arrested for helping to distribute pirated material.”
    
    Pirating for personal use is legal there. It’s entirely legal.
    
    I’d say this fell under personal use any way. It is on his site.
    
    “When you try to create justifications or excuses why piracy on some scale is “okay”, you always will fail. Would you feel any different if he also linked to 10 pirated hollywood movies as “class material”?”
    
    Piracy laws are never going to be black and white nor should they. Laws in themselves are never black and white. Justice and law has never been an inflexible set of rules else we would have no need of a court system.
    
    “Most of the stuff posted here is so slanted it’s remarkable it doesn’t fall off the screen. ”
    
    In my experience people only scream bias when they don’t like what they read/see. But as usual, you’re willing to make stupid and ignorant claims and be unable to back up a single point you make.
    - bobmail
      
      @icecold:
      
      “So math answers are copyright-able material? Well fuck me, our entire school system is pirating with our smartest students committing the greatest number of copyright violations.”
      
      Actually no, you are grandly misunderstanding. The math problems / answers themselves are NOT copyright, rather the work that they appear in is.
      
      If the teacher had put a list of questions and answers (no format, no context) on his own website, nobody would give a shit.
      
      It’s like the world “bullshit” isn’t copyright, but “bullshit” as a word can appear in a copyright work. That doesn’t make “bullshit” copyright, just the work it’s in.
      
      I know, it’s complex.
      
      “Pirating for personal use is legal there. It’s entirely legal.”
      
      yes, but encouraging others to pirate and providing the means isn’t. That’s the difference. Again, I understand these things are complex, but try not to swallow the spoon of crap whole… actually try thinking!
    - icec0ld
      
      @Bobmail
      “Actually no, you are grandly misunderstanding. The math problems / answers themselves are NOT copyright, rather the work that they appear in is.”
      
      So semantics?
      
      We both know that’s bullshit and the case sets an absolutely ludicrous precedent.
      
      “yes, but encouraging others to pirate and providing the means isn’t. That’s the difference. Again, I understand these things are complex, but try not to swallow the spoon of crap whole… actually try thinking!”
      
      Haha. No.The law doesn’t work like that over there. It’s fairly clear cut piracy is not a crime on the personal level and these laws only extend as far as the digital realm. Hard copies don’t fall specifically under said law, thus this case is vastly, vastly overreaching it’s jurisdiction of enforcement.
      
      “understand these things are complex, but try not to swallow the spoon of crap whole… actually try thinking!”
      
      If you’re going accuse someone speaking shit, one should insure they shit post as little as possible.
      
      Glass houses.
    - Scary_Devil_Monastery
      
      “Actually no, you are grandly misunderstanding. The math problems / answers themselves are NOT copyright, rather the work that they appear in is.”
      
      Really. So a simple copy-paste of a pdf text containing the exact same formulas and proof would be OK, then, in your lights?
      
      What exactly is the thing being paid for, then? The header page?
      
      Because, frankly, the idea that “format” or “context” is even relevant to math is ridiculous.
      
      “I know, it’s complex.”
      
      No, it’s manifestly insane. As is most of copyright in an era where the internet exists. And as Knut Harald has it, you entirely missed the point that apparently the law then says it is legal to download, but not to inform people where they can perform a legal act.
      
      That’s not complexity, it’s lunacy taken to the next level.
  - xpmule
    
    bobmail
    
    you said..
    
    “While apparently pirating for personal use isn’t entirely illegal in the country, helping people to pirate is. ”
    
    exactly thanks for helping me make my point lol
    
    fair use ?
    so its legal for students to download the material for personal school reasons or whatever so how is it that is a guaranteed admission of guilt in aiding piracy.. unless all 100% of possible downloaders could only do so by breaking the law his case is bull shit an the should have never been convicted of nothing !
    
    your logic fails again lol
    
    and yeah people mean what they say..not sure why you insist on repeating that question again and again.. dumb question but not surprising seeing who it comes from..
    
    slanted ya ya whatever honey..
    facts are facts period.
    
    say some more dumb crap so i can point out how your completely full of shit ..
  - http://profiles.google.com/pianogamer Knut Harald
    
    It’s legal to download the math answers, it’s only illegal to tell people where they can legally downloading them… common sense record!
    - 2013sUxAlready
      
      My brain just exploded O.o GENIUS!
  - Scary_Devil_Monastery
    
    “When you try to create justifications or excuses why piracy on some scale is “okay”, you always will fail. Would you feel any different if he also linked to 10 pirated hollywood movies as “class material”?”
    
    He could have simply linked to http://www.thepiratebay.se and the problem would still be that, as a teacher – he was convicted of the exact similaritude of the chemistry teacher who has taught his class to make “thermite” as an exercise in exothermic reaction.
    
    See, the reason that “knowledge” of any kind is in itself considered suspect is all we need as a justification to abolish any law which makes it so. Or to circumvent it.
    
    And for your side I have some bad news. How many of those young people in his class will emerge from this with a positive outlook on the merits of copyright? How many of their parents? How many who even read this in the newspaper?
  - Frankie098
    
    bob,no insult intended but please piss off,thank’s
  - Pinocchio’s Grandma
    
    “Do you really believe the crap you just wrote?”
    
    that’s what every single person on TF (except other shills) asks them self when they read your BS
Geust

Mayby this is the type of thing that all the Gun lovers in the US are talking about. Their argument to keep machine guns is to fight the corrupt government… well if this type of thing doesnt suggest a corrupt goverment then, what does?
Bastjef

Mooie domme kut dan..
Lastofthesavages

the old guy lobby’s arguement “guns don’t kill people, people kill people”
surely one could argue “links don’t download infringing content, people do”

I dunno …tis a world gone mad! Depressing isn’t it
- bobmail
  
  yes, and both arguments are technically right but both incredibly wrong.
  
  Without guns, nobody would be able to shoot anyone. Therefore, the gun has an integral part in the process of shooting, and as such, it does in fact kill people. If you don’t think do,you might consider the difference between pointing your finger at your friend and going “pow pow” compared to shooting a gun at him. I know which one will do the damage.
  
  It’s the same with links to infringing content. Without the link, would anyone infringe? If there was no way to know who had what files to trade, would you be able to pirate? At the end of the day, the rub is always there. But for X, there would be no Y. X is not the same as Y, but without X, there would be no Y.
  
  The world has gone mad because of a lack of respect for others, the rights of others, and the mad grab for “it’s my right, even if it blows out your rights”. It’s the old “your free speech ends at my nose”. You cannot just punch someone because you are able to. They have rights as well. Many people do it, because they don’t respect the rights of others.
  
  A disrespectful, heavily armed society is very likely to end up in tears.
  - xpmule
    
    It’s the same with links to infringing content. Without the link, would anyone infringe?
    
    you say ?
    
    uhhm yeah lol
    
    more broken logic.. try again ?
  - Scary_Devil_Monastery
    
    “Without guns, nobody would be able to shoot anyone. Therefore, the gun has an integral part in the process of shooting, and as such, it does in fact kill people.”
    
    Aside from what the NRA might have to say, your example fails completely in comparison to a link.
    
    A “link” of the type consisting of a torrent file is not a gun. It’s the information on a gun. Get back to us when you can shoot people with a blueprint.
    
    A magnet link is the title of the book in which said blueprint is stored, again examplifying.
    
    Now if we assume your arguments above to be true as far as magnet links and torrent files go then we are left with the inescapable conclusion that a public library is an instrument of mass murder.
    
    In the real world and as far as real law is concerned, the one and only person who should be held responsible for a murder is the one who uses a gun to shoot someone. The gunsmith may go down for illegally manufacturing a firearm, but pray tell us a good reason why the person drawing the blueprints or owning the book in which they appear should be held guilty for illegal manufacture of a firearm?
    
    Or would you care to try this exercise using an example which would actually fit what a magnet link or torrent actually does?
  - 2013sUxAlready
    
    Let’s assume people are more than flesh and blood. Let’s assume we do in fact “have” free will – the so called CHOICE. Would you also argue against that? Simply because people kill people with GUNS that the gun in particular MADE the decission to shot?
    Guns, Torrents, Computers, Books, Movies … whatever they might provide for the individual are either consumables or tools. The way one uses those tools or gathers his information trough consumables depends on the individual. These things do PROVIDE a variety of choices and decisions to be made by the user. Do you really want to argue that a non-living object (gun) acts as the murder rather than the enabler (im not even sure on that one)?
    
    Better get rid of your twisted pseudo-moralistic views of the world. (Never ever came to the realization that people on here hate you for what you try to push on them?) Bullshit is what it is indeed. Just like copyright.
  - ScrewEwe2
    
    “Without guns, nobody would be able to shoot anyone.”
    
    You can shoot Arrows at people without a gun.
    - Scary_Devil_Monastery
      
      All you need to manufacture a lethal shooting weapon is, in a pinch, an iron pipe, a pack of condoms, and ball bearings.
      
      I must say bobmail’s argument on where liability begins makes wonderful ammunition against birth control, the metal industry and plumbing.
guess

It was answer sheets, not the whole fucking book. Copyright idiots.
Guest

“The fact that downloading for personal use is legal in the Netherlands was seen as irrelevant.”

Okay, so in effect, isn’t this ruling illegal?

The publishers must have bribed the fuck out of the Amsterdam court to make them hand out a guilty despite the teacher having broken no laws.

“Well, everything you did was perfectly legal but the court finds that irrelevant…”
- Anyone
  
  that’s how the “justice” system works these days
  if the courts would actually follow the laws we’d be in a much better place
- JG
  
  From my understanding of the Dutch legal system, he did, in fact, violate Dutch copyright laws….
  
  Downloading for **PERSONAL USE** is legal. However, it stops being personal use & starts being illegal when you share the content with others (or at least that’s my take on a previous TorrentFreak article regarding Dutch law).
  
  He was fine when he downloaded the content himself, but the moment he put links on his website so others could download the content as well, he shared the material causing it to no longer be personal use, and thus made it illegal.
  
  My question, though, is…. Are there any educational use exceptions built into the Dutch copyright laws? I don’t recall the specific requirements, but I do know the US’s laws do allow teachers certain exceptions in reproducing materials to use in the classroom for educational purposes. I would hope the Dutch legal system allows for similar exceptions as well, and I’d like to believe that the only reason this is an issue is because the files were accessible not just to his students, but to anyone world-wide who stumbled across his website. If he hosted the files on the school’s intranet where only students could access the files, and not John Q. Public on the other side of the globe, then probably it would have fallen into an educational exception and there would have been no issue.
  - Eurofag
    
    Good comment/post. With laws like this in place the sharks will be looking for any and every angle to attack on. He could have told the students to download it for their personal use instead of linking to it and it would’ve been legal.
  - bobmail
    
    @JG: You are correct. Distribution is not legal, and that is what the teacher was doing.
    
    “My question, though, is…. Are there any educational use exceptions built into the Dutch copyright laws?”
    
    Irrelevant. At best, the teacher should have downloaded his “legal” personal copy, and printed the relevant sections for distribution, bypassing the situation entirely. When you start to try to make exceptions for this sort of stuff or that sort of situation, you create giant loopholes that less than honest people will use to abuse the laws and get their free stuff.
    
    The key point here is that the teacher should have known better. The failure for the teacher to consider the implications of his or her actions is a real problem, and not a good lesson for the students if left unchecked.
    - wait a sec
      
      hold on, you just said he should have printed them for distribution. But its supposedly illegal right? copying is copying. so its not an exception, its the same. Please elaborate on your “this is ok, but not this” stance.
    - icec0ld
      
      Load of tosh.
      
      Lawsuit is akin to claiming that the answer to 2+2 has proprieties that can exclusively belong to a select group of people.
      
      This is a perversion of everything copyright actually stands for and trespasses the very thing we should be fostering. Knowledge. I can’t think of anything more immoral and so out of touch with the human race as this.
    - bobmail
      
      @wait a sec: Okay, this is a little complex here, so let’s give it a try:
      
      It’s called scale and context.
      
      Basically, the answers would be a small section of the book. He can easily take the content of those answers, cut and paste them into his own document (because, as Icecold has stridently pointed out, 2+2 is not copyright), printed it out, and given it to students without issue.
      
      Instead, he gave them each a full copy of the book.
      
      Now, in the context of copyright law, you also get into the question of “educational uses”. That is another ball of wax, and since I am not specifically familiar with all of the Dutch law, I am assuming that they have some similar construct to the US fair use concepts.
      
      More over, you have to move away from a question of black and white, all right or all wrong. It’s hard to express here in useful terms the idea of “too small to care about”. Nobody cares if you let your friends come over to watch the DVD you bought. Nobody cares if you happen to make a copy of a song for your sisters ipod, even if it is technically illegal it’s not the issue. “Piracy” at a very low level is just not something worth going after. Many of the restrictions, attempts at drm, and such are because some people aren’t able to control themselves, and rather than inviting a few friends over to watch a movie, they feel the need to share a digital copy with a billion people online. Scale and context are very important in all of this, something that is sadly lacking in much of the discussion here (yes, talking to you icecold!).
    - icec0ld
      
      “Instead, he gave them each a full copy of the book.”
      
      Correction. The answer book. Not the whole book full of questions and resources.
      
      “More over, you have to move away from a question of black and white, all right or all wrong. It’s hard to express here in useful terms the idea of “too small to care about”. Nobody cares if you let your friends come over to watch the DVD you bought. Nobody cares if you happen to make a copy of a song for your sisters ipod, even if it is technically illegal it’s not the issue. “Piracy” at a very low level is just not something worth going after. Many of the restrictions, attempts at drm, and such are because some people aren’t able to control themselves, and rather than inviting a few friends over to watch a movie, they feel the need to share a digital copy with a billion people online. Scale and context are very important in all of this, something that is sadly lacking in much of the discussion here (yes, talking to you icecold!).”
      
      “All right, or all wrong” is a black and white issue. They’re the same thing and you cannot frame everything in such restrictive and binary terms. It’s why we have courts to sort this out and making things “simple” is going to lead to cases of sheer injustice equivalent to outright robbery of innocent people.
      
      To me, this should be a “too small to care” situation. Instead they want 3 ring circus, not a court case and most certainly not justice. This should be a non issue instead of waging a war on education.
      
      Indeed the scale of this so called infringement should be taken into context… as insignificant and inconsequential.
      
      A classroom of children. A handful of people. A book with no information beyond the fucking answers to math questions, questions btw not in the answer book meaning without the actual book, one could discern very little from.
    - xpmule
      
      This is like taking health advice from an aids victim / leper lol
      
      When you spout ridioulous drivel on here on a regular basis why on earth should we take anything you say seriously ?
      
      No matter how big the hole in your logic is you plow along with the same old bullshit time after time.
      
      and your ALWAYS wrong you state matters of fact but have your facts riddled like swiss cheese with holes. and if there is a hole it means your statement is bullshit.. again.
      
      i’m not one for name calling but i think your dumb and i’m not saying that to be mean or anything i just think you lack some basic intelligence the average person has that you do not.. i don’t know about anyone else but i’m not gonna put up with lectures from some idiot on the internet.
      stfu and get lost.. go to school or something then come back and play with the big kids son.
    - Scary_Devil_Monastery
      
      “At best, the teacher should have downloaded his “legal” personal copy, and printed the relevant sections for distribution, bypassing the situation entirely. When you start to try to make exceptions for this sort of stuff or that sort of situation, you create giant loopholes that less than honest people will use to abuse the laws and get their free stuff…”
      
      So what you are essentially saying is that the teacher was perfectly within his rights, except that he supplied information on how to perform a fully legal act instead of performing the legal act himself?
      
      And the rest of your argument is a justification on why the baby should rightly be tossed out with the bathwater.
      
      Do you even realize how your logic would impact every other aspect of our lives? Copyright is one GIANT blundering exception to how law works in just about any other area of relevance.
  - Who
    
    “Downloading for **PERSONAL USE** is legal, However, it stops being personal use & starts being illegal when you share the content with others” ok that’s ass back words as how is the file NOT getting shared to start with? I mean if one can download it who’s to say some one else cant?
    - bobmail
      
      Let’s say you and I go to school together. I get this years textbook, you get last years, and there is one problem that has changed slightly that is going to be part of this years course. So I photocopy the page and give it to you. Not really a big deal.
      
      Now, if I put it online and tell all my classmates to not bother buying the new book, and instead to download the full new copy, the range is different.
      
      Scale. It’s an amazing thing.
    - icec0ld
      
      @Bobmail
      “Let’s say you and I go to school together. I get this years textbook, you get last years, and there is one problem that has changed slightly that is going to be part of this years course. So I photocopy the page and give it to you. Not really a big deal.
      
      Now, if I put it online and tell all my classmates to not bother buying the new book, and instead to download the full new copy, the range is different.
      
      Scale. It’s an amazing thing.”
      
      It isn’t the scale on trial here. It’s the limits of what can constitute the most stretched definition of copyright-able works,
    - Whatever
      
      @bobsnail
      
      So you are daft or rich enough to buy a whole new book while having the previous one just because there is just ONE different picture in it.
      
      You really are the MAFIAA to support multiple payment for the same information.
      
      If some changes were made in the book they should actually patch all existing books for free.
      
      Scale: if everyone in the class copies it to the next person you have a chain of 30 and a scale of 1! In the scale of torrents the uploader who seeds once to 100% the scale is ALSO 1. Actually your MAFIAA argument makes sense for the defense in bittorrent file sharing cases. Now the defense can argue that it was only copied once.
Nn

Haha copyright of math answers now I’ve heard everything xD
- utuxia
  
  Fibonaci should have filed a patent.
- xpmule
  
  Microsoft patented the color Blue.
Maldoror

University lecturers write their own lecture notes and road-test them in class. Why not do the same for highschool and OpenSource the shit out of it! Setup a website with freely available materials and a password-protected area for teachers. A wiki or something like that. It’s so easy to set up it’s not even funny!
Who

YEP this copyright horse shit, IS some seriously fucked up shit.

not sure how dutch copyright law is wrote up but, in the US, AND according to copyright law, schools are soposta be exempted from it.

I can just see it now……teachers that do this all the time *in the US* will now be subjected to copyright infringement and loose there jobs.
just because the copyright holders see other copyright holders getting away with this SHIT elsewhere, they will pull the same crap.
Dragonfire

How in the hell do you get a copyright for answers to a university test?
My sperm is copyrighted but I am sure there are some ladies out there that have used it for their own purposes.
outraged

The rich need to quit crying. You have enough money!
Go enjoy your life with your profit gained from ripping us off.
Thinking they are all high and mighty when there are over 7 billion people on this planet. The rich are a joke to all, with selfish desire to amass wealth until there is none left to gain.
- SpunkingInTheFaceOfThe1%
  
  When there is none left to gain they’ll simply print more money and then destroy everything in their way to get their hands on it. That’s how fucked up they are – their greed has no bounds.
ADAM

NNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!! THEY’RE ALL GONNA LAUGH AT YOU! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!! THEY’RE ALL GONNA LAUGHT AT YOU… THEY’RE ALL GONNA LAUGH AT YOU
- CarriesMum
  
  THEY CAN SEE YOUR DIRTY PILLOWS!
Booger

This is why the education system needs to just do away with. More home schooling and private schools.
iMeZiv0x

Personal Use. It was non-commercial use of an answer sheet. Now if he charge his students to read it, it would be the correct action. However, since no law has been broken; the defendant did not share the link publically, nor did he make a profit from this. This is an exact argument of mis-interpretation of the law and he has every right to sue on defamation grounds.
Andrew Lee

A war on educational documents is pretty fucking sad if you ask me… These people should be thrown in prison for trying to slow down the evolution of humans through information.

Information should be free at any cost.
- Anon
  
  “Information should be free at any cost.”
  
  Then devise an equitable way to fund the real world expenses in the creation of this “information” for free and you’ll be pirate hero for a day.
  - Duh
    
    A copy is pretty cheap.
    - Anon
      
      Yeah. It’s the years of education, study and the hard, often difficult work to create the original that’s so expensive.
      
      That’s why they sell copies. :-)
    - Anyone
      
      @Anon
      
      Linus Torvalds is doing pretty good
      so do Larry Page and Sergey Brin
      
      if you want examples in music, ask Trent Reznor
      
      if you want examples in literature, ask Neil Gaiman (I’m pretty sure I linked you his video before, just to be extra safe: http://youtu.be/0Qkyt1wXNlI )
    - WWW
      
      @Anon At this point in history, there is no excuse anymore not to adopt an open source and public-domain-licensed approach to pay it and contribute to it collectively, and there is also enough experts, and generic information sources, both paid and unpaid, to build not just an encyclopedic repository of information, but one that shows how to actually implement all kinds of technology, from start to end.
      
      That’s exactly what the world is lacking.
      
      Even, why not charge an initial fee, but also, allow copying it without prosecuting that? The motivation here would not be becoming obscenely rich by attempting to charge for the same item over and over, but the most important thing here is to build a public domain information and implementation force. Then, everyone can earn money in their jobs, now having learned new things from these resources.
      
      There is no loss, and a lot for the world and humankind to win.
      
      As for me, I already put things for free, from my own authorship, as far as my capabilities and knowledge allow. I think it is about time to just do it so much more aggressively now than ever before, and everyone else with something to teach should too.
    - SoundnuoS
      
      @WWW
      
      This is a nice idea, however a system like this does not exist at this point.
      How do we ensure the continued production of educational materials until such a system is (hypothetically) in place?
    - Scary_Devil_Monastery
      
      @SoundnuoS
      
      “How do we ensure the continued production of educational materials until such a system is (hypothetically) in place?”
      
      We had better hope that question solves itself. Because copyright law by it’s very existence causes far too much harm to reasonably be allowed existence.
      
      The time to look for and implement an alternative is now – because for the last twenty years information technology has kept progressing to the point where observing copyright is by far more inconvenient than by going with the default.
      
      It’s like asking everyone to keep taking the car in an age where everyone can fly. It’s not working. The case mentioned above is one of many where it has turned out to be a case where providing information on how to do something perfectly legal is in itself illegal.
      
      That this can happen in the first place is that copyright needs to run roughshod all over common rights simply to exist and because of this how copyright can be implemented has become complex past the point where neither the common man, let alone a university professor, has a chance of knowing whether what he does is legal or not, in his everyday life.
    - SoundnuoS
      
      @Scary_Devil_Monastery
      
      >We had better hope that question solves itself.
      
      I’m sorry, but that’s not really good enough. If you’re proposing the dismantling of a system that has enabled an accelerated growth in (pop) culture and technology you really have to have some idea of what to replace it with.
      
      If the chances of investors recouping their investments get smaller (which is what removing copyright and patent law would cause) how do you make sure you still get someone to put up the money for continued innovation and production?
      
      Some of this is expensive stuff. It’s not just some guys with a computer doing open source.
    - http://gene-poole.tumblr.com Gene Poole
      
      Once again (and I know I’ve told you this before) It’s nobody’s responsibility to make people money except for the industry themselves. It’s not my job to give them a working business model, especially when they claim it won’t work without even trying it.
      
      The actions you are seeing these last ten years and on are the death throes of a dying industry. filesharing is not going away, and they’re not getting their profit margins back to the levels they were in 1999, no matter what they try, no matter how much they legislate. This is the new reality. They can either try to adapt, or they can die out and be replaced with a market that finds a way to make it work.
      
      That is simple economics. They can blame their customers as much as they want, but at the end of the day it’s not going to change.
      
      So no, it’s not SDM’s job, not my job, not anyone’s job to tell them what to replace their system with, it’s theirs and theirs alone. They can either adapt to the current world order, or they can refuse to and fight it as they have been already, and keep using the system that once worked and no longer does.
      
      The ecosystem has changed, and were I a fish living in a lake that was drying up, I could evolve, grow lungs and legs, or I could wait for the pond to dry up.
    - Pinocchio’s Grandma
      
      “how do you make sure you still get someone to put up the money for continued innovation and production?”
      
      doesn’t matter, whoever’s willing to do it will figure out the solution themselves
    - SoundnuoS
      
      @Pinocchio’s Grandma
      
      Unfortunately you don’t seem to have quite the nose length potential of your grandson and you’re clearly unable to see beyond it.
      Anyone else care to offer a solution, because in the long run, if IP-law gets removed there’s some serious shit at stake here?
    - http://gene-poole.tumblr.com Gene Poole
      
      Don’t need to offer a solution. I don’t steal a copy, I manufacture a duplicate using my own resources. The fact that the resources are negligible is just a reflection of the wonderful information age we live it.
      
      But if you’re asking me to show Quixote how to effectively knock down the windmills, I have news for you, Pancho: not my problem. Someone should convince them that it’s futile, but it’s not going to be me; I’ve got better ways to spend my time.
    - Scary_Devil_Monastery
      
      “I’m sorry, but that’s not really good enough. If you’re proposing the dismantling of a system that has enabled an accelerated growth in (pop) culture and technology you really have to have some idea of what to replace it with.”
      
      You might as well have placed conditions on under what circumstances absolute theocracy should be abolished in europe during the 16th century.
      
      If computers and the internet stay or technology progresses at all – then the system you are thinking of will become as redundant as the horse-and-cart.
      
      If this is not “good enough” then I must inform you that it doesn’t really matter what you, I or anyone else thinks of that issue.
      Unless you have a magical way of putting the last thirty years of electronic progress back into pandoras box, and ensuring no one ever moves from that point, then that system you speak of will keep on being steadily eroded.
      
      It’s not filesharing. It’s the entire communications network and the ability of all people to communicate which is overturning the current paradigm. Even back in the 16th century “copyright” only worked because really, no one actually had the ABILITY to violate it.
      
      Copyright cartels have this strange vision on how to socially engineer everyone back into the paradigm of the past. And this is like persuading everyone to only walk on foot in an age where bicycles, automobiles, trains and airplanes are commonly available.
      
      Where culture is concerned, if you hear or see something you think is good, your first reaction is usually, instinctively, that you want to share it with as many people as possible. It’s still the same survival trait which allowed humans to form tribes to start with.
      
      That system you speak of is kept alive today mainly on very heavy legislative artificial respiration. Dying more with every new line of code written somewhere and by every new fiber cable laid. It will not revive and eventually it will just start to rot on you.
      
      You are not going to be able to either socially engineer humanity in so fundamental a way that the change to human nature would make the leap into functional communism look laughably easy in comparison, nor will you be able to stop technological progress.
      
      That means finding out what you will replace the current system with is really up to you. You guys in the media should be the marketing experts. All we techies can do is tell you how technology and human nature work together.
      
      “…you really have to have some idea of what to replace it with.”
      
      No. what we need to do is have some idea of how to make technology more and more user friendly and how to educate people in what ways such technology can be used. If possible, underscore the ways this technology can almost without effort by person A lift or ease some burden from person B.
      
      Coming up with ways to replace one market model with another is your vocation. Not mine. Even when, as a techie, the vocation to which I dedicate my efforts is rendering the one to which you dedicate yours redundant.
      
      That, in a nutshell, is the real core of the conflict here. You are trying to preserve a status quo which is incompatible with the future. And trying to shoot the messenger who tells you this won’t fly.
    - SoundnuoS
      
      @Scary_Devil_Monastery
      
      The thing is, technology has always needed controlling through legislation when the results risk being too destructive. Imo calling for copyright to be changed just because it can be circumvented by technology is risky.
      
      You mention communism, which is the example I was going to use. If IP-law gets removed, a lot of the financial incentive for innovation (and production when it comes to culture) is removed.
      This pretty much was the case in the former Soviet Union and it’s hard to argue that they weren’t lagging behind technologically. A large part of that problem has to be attributed to a lack of private enterprise participating in the innovation process.
      They had some very high level “classic” culture (ballet, classical musicians, etc.) because the state supported it financially. Pop culture as we know it, not so much. Culture has a hard time existing in a financial vacuum.
      
      The weird thing is everyone is expecting the status quo to continue even if IP is removed. Music and movies will continue to be produced in the same amount and the same quality even if the financial support isn’t there. Technological innovation will continue to be done at the same speed even if the financial support isn’t there. The internet fairy will wave her magic wand and make it all happen.
      
      This is living in denial imo. People have to realise that if they want something, then they need to support it. If investments are to be made then investors have to be able to see returns on investments.
      The alternative is to move to some kind of communist system where we all chip in collectively through taxes. This however doesn’t seem to be a very popular idea, which is a bit strange since the logical endpoint of the anti-government, sharing is caring sentiment that seems to be the norm here, is some kind of anarcho-communist society.
      
      Here’s a snapshot from Spain this summer, the happy country where downloading and uploading is permitted and it’s a good illustration of what is likely to happen when money runs out:
      http://www.billboard.biz/bbbiz/industry/global/spain-s-music-industry-in-crisis-as-music-1007631152.story
      
      Somewhere in the middle is a short statement that spaniards buy less than half an album per person versus 3-4 in other EU countries. How will any IP-reliant business survive if the ones who want it won’t pay and the state (which in the end is all of us) can’t pay?
      
      This is one of the things anyone calling for the removal of IP has to think about. Another thing is all the jobs in the economic system tied to IP-reliant industries. It’s not just one guy at the top pushing a button and out pops a new record, movie or medicine. There’s god knows how many people whose livelihood (and tax-paying ability) is directly or indirectly tied to the fact that IP exists.
      
      If you can’t figure out an alternative solution to this, what makes you think anyone having to decide on the future of IP can? After all, the consensus around here seems to be that government officials and politicians aren’t very smart.
    - http://gene-poole.tumblr.com Gene Poole
      
      People have to realise that if they want something, then they need to support it.
      
      http://www.kickstarter.com/
      
      https://bandcamp.com/
      
      http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090719/2246525598.shtml
      
      sorry? I don’t really see your point.
    - SoundnuoS
      
      @Gene Poole
      
      If piracy becomes the de facto norm then selling your music on bandcamp won’t be of much help, because people will be conditioned to think of records as a free product. (See the bit about album buying in Spain)
      We’ve also just seen a survey that shows that merchandise is the most insignificant income stream a musician can have. People just aren’t that interested in t-shirts. And why should they be? It’s the music that’s interesting.
      
      I wrote a bit about kickstarter in another post but I’ll dig it up and repost:
      
      Most people suggesting kickstarter as a replacement for IP seem to come from a software and open source background where, frankly, the cost of development isn’t that high. This is stuff that can be done with a few guys and some computers. It’s not replacement tech for mobile phones, or new medicines or new and improved fertilisers or anything in that vein.
      
      It also doesn’t solve the problems facing the cultural sector. The explosion we’ve had in popular culture in the postwar era is imo due in huge part to the fact that it has been sellable.
      
      Everyone likes to feel superior about Hollywood, but the box office doesn’t lie. The public is getting exactly what they want.
      Weirder and more marginal movies have nowhere near the numbers something like the latest James Bond has.
      
      The same goes for music. The most commercialized artists are (generally) the biggest sellers. Once again the public gets exactly what they want.
      
      The more unusual stuff still used to get made however (and sometimes still does) in both movies and music because someone thought it was worth the risk. There was a possibility it could sell enough to be at least somewhat profitable, and even if not, the big sellers had pulled in enough to justify the risk.
      
      The focus on safer bets we’ve seen in the last decade especially in the music business (more covers on records, Idols etc) is imo because of the problem piracy has caused. There’s no longer the extra money to spend on riskier ventures.
      
      Kickstarter type indie publishing of the unusual stuff should be a good idea, right?
      
      There’s a few reasons I don’t really trust this to work out.
      
      The fact that the public seems to be getting exactly what they want is one of them. How do you sell the more unusual stuff if it still needs a budget of 50 mil and most people want the stuff with the big explosions?
      
      Imo, people funding Kickstarter projects think exactly like the publishers. “What’s in it for me?”
      You need to have a name and/or throw a very good pitch in order to get funding.
      That dubstep death-metal gamelan symphony could have been the greatest thing ever, but since everyone thinks “Why the hell would I want something like that?” it will never get made.
      
      Often people don’t know that they would want something before it’s already made. This goes especially for cultural products imo.
      Relying on kickstarter projects for funding could easily lead to greater homogenisation of culture than what were seeing today.
      
      Since most people probably won’t fund very many kickstarter projects at the same time, the competition between projects will also be intense and likely to lead to a large number of good projects never getting enough money.
      
      Another reason is that kickstarter projects can be illegal in various places. In Finland some have been tried, but they don’t qualify as legal fundraising, and this leads into why I don’t really like kickstarter from a consumer pov.
      
      The first reason is that it has a great potential for fraud. Throw a brilliant pitch, raise a million bucks, move to the Bahamas.
      
      The second reason is that the temptation for the producer to save as much as possible in order to have some money for himself will be greater than in a project where the producer has to polish it in order to sell it.
      This could lead to the situation where the consumer does get the product, but it’s crap since so many corners were cut.
      
      I said this in another thread, but the sale of records, movies and books is a remarkably democratic way of selling art.
      It spreads the cost out among everyone buying. Something very popular will automatically be of higher value than something less popular, with more people buying.
      
      It is crowd funding after the fact, with the publisher assuming all the risks.
    - http://gene-poole.tumblr.com Gene Poole
      
      tl;dr.
      
      I can’t help but notice that as soon as someone offers a suggestion (because you insist that it’s up to those of us who say that the old way isn’t working to come up with a new solution), that you spout off 800 words of why it won’t work. That’s a sound strategy to turn the tables and put people on the defensive, as long as nobody notices.
      
      Here’s the simple fact:
      
      http://falkvinge.net/2011/01/31/how-shall-the-artists-get-paid/
      
      Specifically:
      
      In most of the world, we have a market economy. That means it is up to each and every one of us to find a paying job; I will not and can not dictate how a particular person is going to make a living. In a market economy, everybody need to find their own way to contribute to the economy and make a living off of it.
      
      The instant somebody goes from playing their guitar in the bedroom and at parties to wanting to make money off of it, they are no longer an artist, but an entrepreneur and a business owner. The same rules apply to them as to every other entrepreneur on the planet: They need to provide something which somebody else is prepared to pay for.
      
      If they can do that, they need no law to sustain their business. If they can’t do that, no conceivable law can save their business.
    - SoundnuoS
      
      @Gene Poole
      
      I forgot. Tl;dr argument > all.
      
      Tl;dr summary:
      
      If piracy becomes norm it will condition people to think of music as free -> It will become even harder to sell. See Spain.
      Study shows no one wants t-shirts = selling t-shirts not substitute.
      
      Kickstarter:
      Mainstream rules. Selling odd stuff through kickstarter hard since fanbase small. Expensive productions likely to fail. If kickstarter becomes only option -> intense competition -> many good projects likely to fail. Likely to lead to less diversity.
      
      Kickstarter illegal in Finland. Why bad from consumer pov? Because 1. Fraud 2. Greater likelihood of crap quality since payment made in advance.
      
      Why propose kickstarter since current model is kickstarter model without payment in advance?
      
      That should be it. For a more elaborated argument read the long version.
      
      The Falkvinge snippet is kind of silly, because makers of movies, records and books do provide something people are willing to pay for. What they need is the same protection any business owner has when it comes to having their products taken for free.
    - http://gene-poole.tumblr.com Gene Poole
      
      My purpose in mentioning kickstarter and bandcamp weren’t to try to come up with an alternative revenue source for an entire industry. My point was to illustrate that people are more than willing to support something they agree with. Just look at the Humble Bundle.
      
      The entertainment industry, the middle men of the RIAA and MPAA, with their lobbying and their inability to actually represent the artists of today, that are only looking to maintain their profit margins in an age when the public are not buying the bullshit hype anymore, do not have the public’s good faith. Nobody agrees with their goals anymore, except the very gullible.
      
      (that’s you)
    - SoundnuoS
      
      @Gene Poole
      
      You’re not really arguing against the points I make here.
      
      Imo the people who believe in Kickstarter as some kind of saviour can also be accused of gullibility.
      
      Here’s another look at it:
      http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2012/10/haunts-kickstarter-failure-highlights-the-risks-of-crowdfunding/
  - icec0ld
    
    Why?
    
    It is not the customer and consumers obligation to help entrepreneurs and businesses make money. They should ensure their own survival or they have no place in a capitalist market
    - Retard
      
      Exactly. If they want to hide behind some kind of system to make their money, screw ‘em. And we’re all slightly guilty of a system. We’re all a part of unions of some kind, we all have to dress a certain way or some times lie in order to get some action. But at the end of the day, it’s the work we put in that should be what we are paid for. WORK.
  - AnonTard
    
    How do you ‘fund’ free?
  - Scary_Devil_Monastery
    
    “Then devise an equitable way to fund the real world expenses in the creation of this “information” for free and you’ll be pirate hero for a day.”
    
    http://sourceforge.net/
    
    Here you go. You’ll find that everything in there has had it’s “real world expenses” covered.
    
    Or were you talking about the example given by the OP? In that case, since most basic research is actually funded from the get-go, everything has already been paid for once.
    
    Or could it be that you just did not want an answer?
  - xpmule
    
    sure grab your cell phone and snap pictures in a museum ..bingo you have a free copy.
    
    broken logic bullshit again.. say more dumb crap so i can piss all over it..
Copywrong

This copyright crap is starting to make me angry !!

Whenever they adjudicate this nit picky nonsense it makes me think of all the important cases they could be looking at that certainly have a higher priority than this silliness.

But that’s ok, let’s waste some more time on this sort of stuff and backlog the important cases. We have all the time and money in the world, right? Also, let’s make the educational process as inconvenient and as expensive as possible.

Idiocy.
- xpmule
  
  good point !
Stoke On This Copyright Shills

Noordhoff can jackmeoff.
john doe

But it’s not the textbook being shared, it’s just the answer sheet, isn’t it? What the hell then?

If Netherlands teachers have any pride, they should DROP adoption of textbooks by that publisher.

BOYCOTT this CRAZY publisher.
- Scary_Devil_Monastery
  
  You would think “fair use” covered minor excerpts.
  
  And I hope everyone realizes that the tacit outcome here is that any student expected to use any part of a cumbersome and expensive work will be expected to spend more money than they have on aquiring course materials.
  
  Which means that any sensible university will start to abandon such publishers as otherwise they end up unable to fill classrooms.
  
  [EDIT] Just thought back to my own university days and found that lo, that’s exactly what happened. Thriving secondhand book market and all.
  - Frankie098
    
    “Just thought back to my own university days and found that lo, that’s exactly what happened. Thriving secondhand book market and all.”
    
    The same thing happened when I was at Uni.
    - Scary_Devil_Monastery
      
      And a frantic exchange of material on the early BBS, naturally.
Knowledge Liberator

Liberate all information from copyright monopolies and debt-inducing “higher” education.

Access to knowledge should be free and open, it should never be based upon money and debt.

End the exclusivity and elitism of knowledge.

End informational slavery.
Tabba

“In a ruling yesterday the Amsterdam court disagreed. While answers to math problems may often be identical, the way the answers are explained can be crucially different, the court explained.”

So if some peep is watching me teach my class and decides that the way I am teaching my students is similar to the way he describes it in his book then I am going to jail?
- john doe
  
  Welcome to the copyright mafia world!
- bobmail
  
  “So if some peep is watching me teach my class and decides that the way I am teaching my students is similar to the way he describes it in his book then I am going to jail?”
  
  No. why would you think that?
  
  However, if you write a book and use the same problems and the same wording to explain them, you will likely have troubles.
  
  Context, another amazing thing.
  - icec0ld
    
    How is this relevant to context?
    
    What you are doing is called hyperbole.
    
    Now, I’ve given your post context. What a great word. Have you only just discovered it?
  - Scary_Devil_Monastery
    
    Given that various copyright enforcement have tried to demand public licensing fees over people over humming tunes in public, using them as ring signals, and using the car radio in their vehicles, then john doe actually has a point.
    
    Teaching, you see, is as commercial a venture as they come.
    
    Add to this how copyright law and intellectual property laws in general are written to circumvent many prior restrictions (Every gene in your body is, for example, patented – or rather the intellectual link is. Meaning that you are not free to do research on material from your own body. The most intrusive and offensive use of IP I’m aware of).
    
    The only reason a teacher can teach with impunity is because as of yet there are no lawyers intent on finding an angle of attack.
    
    This is another very bad part of copyright law – in many cases, any accusation means you must defend yourself, and more often than not the actual interpretation of the law is so ambiguous no bookkeeper would like to place odds on the outcome. The difference between “right” and “wrong” becomes so blurred it’s impossible to tell the difference.
    
    And that was what happened to the teacher above. He was providing information on an exercise the execution of which was fully legal. And for that he was sentenced for copyright infringement. Because the law is a conflicting mess trying to balance two irreconcilable opposites.
    
    “Context, another amazing thing.”
    
    And the context still remains that a teacher was convicted over providing information on how to legally achieve something.
    Stop trying to use a word if you don’t know what the word means, Bobmail.
    - SoundnuoS
      
      From what I just googled gene patenting is actually up for review in the US supreme court atm.
      
      My first reaction is that genes if something should be considered public domain but this is the case from the patent holders pov:
      
      “Myriad devoted more than 17 years and $500 million to develop its BRACAnalysis® test. The discovery and development of pioneering diagnostics and therapeutics require a huge investment and our U.S. patent system is the engine that drives this innovation,” Peter Meldrum, Myriad’s president and CEO, said in a statement. “This case has great importance for the hundreds of millions of patients whose lives are saved and enhanced by the life science industry’s products.”
      
      It’s clearly not on an open source or kickstarter type level, so how should the ruling be if the patents are necessary to get anyone to do potentially lifesaving research?
    - Scary_Devil_Monastery
      
      “It’s clearly not on an open source or kickstarter type level, so how should the ruling be if the patents are necessary to get anyone to do potentially lifesaving research?”
      
      On that one I have both answer and an example which today still makes me choke with rage.
      
      At the end of the human genome the University I was attending was in an uproar. Every state-sponsored study in Breast Cancer had to be put on hold because the link between breast cancer and the Brc1 gene had recently been patented and every public research institute performing studies had received notification to “cease and desist”.
      
      See, roughly 80% of basic research takes place as part of university and postdoc programs, meaning that the research is already sponsored by tax money. As a direct result of gene patenting, breast cancer research was on hiatus for years in Sweden. You are left to play extensively with only the stuff you can be certain is not already licensed.
      
      It’s amazing what you can learn from various strains of common E.Coli, but the murky rules in place turns researchers into armchair copyright lawmen by necessity.
      
      And this sticks in the craw since a lot of the research providing patent results are in fact bases heavily on a publicly funded base. I do not know to which extent Myriad was state-sponsored but in general, quite a lot of advanced research sees state funding. In Sweden for instance, if a company needs research done the cheap way is to fund, in part, a doctorate thesis on the subject which means the state sponsors the majority.
      
      This is a problem even today. You can’t even start a study on genetics without first consulting a legal team on whether or not the specific link you are investigation already has a patent. Worse, even if the research pans out, different rules then apply on whether or not you can actually get it published.
      
      This is not restricted to mere research of course. Cuba was actually a provider of cheap vaccine and enhanced grain to third-world countries in south america, Africa and Asia ten years ago. Then came a threat of sanctions and the cheap unbranded vaccines ceased to exist as an alternative in favor of medication no local could afford. To date the cost of patents has been a few hundred thousand dead infants in India and Africa.
      
      When we look at Africa, Merck only recently granted a “subsidized” form of AIDS vaccine to be distributed, but before that they heavy-handedly tried stomping out the knock-offs. Given how AIDS works on a malnourished individual in an infection-rich environment you can more or less put almost every african dead of AIDS since the first invention of the vaccine on the tab of patents.
      
      If we are looking at principles that should apply then the actual body ownership of individuals must trump any consideration which could be given to anyone researching the properties of said body.
      
      And if we are looking at actual use of patents there is no way to get around the fact that patents have ensured the failure to easily prevent hundreds of thousands of deaths in the third world.
      
      I grew up believing, like many other people, that Big Oil and Guns were the big moral black holes in the world. Then I started finding out what harm was caused by Pfizer, Merck, and Monsanto. Companies whose entirely livelihood revolved around the means to preserve life. And found them standing like real-life caricatures of the “Merchant of Venice”, demanding death on global scale as long as their precious “Intellectual Property” was respected.
    - SoundnuoS
      
      @Scary_Devil_Monastery
      
      Yes, I tend to agree with you on the subject of genes being patentable. That however is not a reason to throw out the whole of IP-law when it’s quite possible to look at individual areas and judge if they should fall under it or not.
      
      The fact is, patents can be used to stop cheaper alternatives from reaching the market. This is the reason patents on drugs are limited to 12 years in the US.
      The flipside is that because patents exist, and are profitable, there’s more research going on than the state or the universities could fund themselves.
Richard

4 x 6 = …
I am not giving you the answer because the number 24 appears in a mathbook and is therefore copyrighted.
- ScrewEwe2
  
  So, do you know the answer to 6 x 4?
SoundnuoS

This is a tricky one. If they’d have been behind some kind of password system, with the password known only to his students, then I’d be inclined to say this should pass for fair use (depending on what laws and deals are in effect for fair use in Holland).
If, on the other hand, the materials can pop up for anyone doing a google search and be accessed world wide, then it gets harder to argue fair use.
- Scary_Devil_Monastery
  
  But we are still looking at a situation where the teacher informs his students about a perfectly legitimate way for them to obtain their copies of the answer sheet.
  
  But telling them about this perfectly legal way is in itself illegal?
  
  “If, on the other hand, the materials can pop up for anyone doing a google search and be accessed world wide, then it gets harder to argue fair use.”
  
  That’s actually the very definition of the case. The stuff was publicly available on TPB and downloading is legal in holland. Telling people about a legal way to obtain information…is not legal.
  
  I believe this is the point still.
  - SoundnuoS
    
    This does seem to be a confused situation. Hard to say exactly how confused without knowing the exact laws and circumstances. This should have easily been a fair use case if he’d just photocopied the pages.
    
    Imo the mistake made by the dutch is to make personal downloading legal in the first place. Having half of copyright infringment legal and the other half illegal opens up for weird situations like this.They seem to be aware of the potential consequences of completely removing copyright, but still try to have their cake and eat it too.
    - http://gene-poole.tumblr.com Gene Poole
      
      So…..the industry should give up the levies on blank media, computers, hard drives, phones, etc and go back to suing people? I’m sure they’d like to repeal the laws, but the tariffs they’d fight to keep around.
      
      That’s the thing. It’s legal in the Netherlands because they’ve paid for the right, and all the money (and it’s from one to five euros per, not exactly a piddling tax. By comparison in the US and Canada it’s .20 cents per item) is paid out to the entertainment industry. They won’t give up that peach now that it’s there, they’ll fight tooth and nail to keep it yet push to have the law repealed. Funny how you mention trying to have your cake and eat it too, it works both ways.
    - Scary_Devil_Monastery
      
      “Imo the mistake made by the dutch is to make personal downloading legal in the first place.”
      
      So what you say is that instead of the dutch allowing a “fair use” provision, the government should directly allow private entities to abolish or circumvent the property and communications right of their entire citizenry?
      
      I agree that the dutch opted for a bad solution. The spanish do not have problems of this kind as their judges have explicitly ruled that downloading and uploading copies are both OK.
      
      Or at least they had no problems up until the Sinde law. We’ll see how that one goes.
    - SoundnuoS
      
      @Scary_Devil_Monastery & Gene Poole
      
      Yes, because as I’ve argued, property rights to the content can’t be had for the price usually paid (especially if nothing has been paid in the first place). None of the people downloading are downloading from someone who has the right to redistribute. Sharing with your 6 billion best friends isn’t really fair use.
      They don’t want to remove copyright, but allowing downloading effectively removes a lot of what copyright is meant to do when it comes to protecting the financial interests of the creators.
      And as for why I think it’s smart to protect that interest, see the longer post on this page.
      
      If downloading gets forbidden again and the tax on media was raised as a consequence of it being allowed, then the tax should be removed.
      Taxes on media isn’t the best solution either. They are hard to distribute fairly and the value of the content you can place on the media is usually more than the tax.
    - http://gene-poole.tumblr.com Gene Poole
      
      Here’s the thing: This entire concept of “allowing downloading”, “allowing filesharing”, it’s a moot point. It assumes there’s a way to disallow it.
      
      Seriously, set the penalty for filesharing, for commiting copyright infringement to a sentence punishable by death. give people the death penalty for downloading Metallica’s hits (fuck you, Lars) or sharing the hurt locker. It’s pretty much the end game we’re eventually headed to anyway at this rate
      
      It won’t change a fucking thing. First people will play innocent and say they didn’t know. When that fails, they’ll take to hiding their communications through proxies, encryption, whatever. When a technology comes along (because I don’t believe DPI can actually catch this) that can break encryption and proxies, and people are caught again, someone will mass distribute a technology that obfuscates communication to make it look like HTTP. or transfer in another format. When that’s put to a halt someway or another, and a firewall is raised in every country, then people will jump onto darknets like i2P or freenet. When freenet is monitored, somehow, then wireless mesh networking will become more prevalent and people will start setting up their own cell towers with routers on their roofs.
      
      This war will never be won, because the people will never comply. It’s their culture, nobody has a right to possess it, and the genie is out of the bottle. it’s not going back in, no matter how much it’s fought. Even if we’re in a totalitarian state where we are monitored Big Brother style every second of the day, there will be a revolution by the people, taking back their rights, and it will start with secretly passing along a book or video that’s deemed forbidden by the authority in power.
      
      So get out of that mindset, piracy is not going away. it will never get any harder to share information than it is right now, it’s only easier from here every year as technology advances, and you cannot change the human need to share. You can only adapt to the changed environment.
    - SoundnuoS
      
      @Gene Pool
      
      The point of the strikes schemes is to make piracy enough of a hassle for the “regular” internet user, so that he’ll switch to using some of the legal options instead. Kind of how speeding tickets impede your freedom to drive as fast as you want.
      
      Technology always develops with the need of the times so we don’t know (at least I don’t) what new solutions could appear.
      
      Anyway, I hope you’re wrong and piracy won’t become the norm, because in that case we’ll be headed for Soviet levels of entertainment diversity within a generation or two imo.
      Which will mean more Idols and X-factors and advertisments thrown at you. How much advertising does one want to fill the world with anyway?
      
      And it’s not just “their” culture, it’s the culture of the people who create it as well. Without them the culture wouldn’t exist and the internet would be a fringe phenomenon.
    - http://gene-poole.tumblr.com Gene Poole
      
      so that he’ll switch to using some of the legal options instead.
      
      you already know the answer to this. Instead of pressuring people to change through threats and intimitadtion, give them a reason to buy. Compete with piracy. It can be done, and it’s a lot cheaper than litigating against the entire population and lobbying for bills that get shot down by the masses.
      
      And it’s not just “their” culture
      
      No, it’s everyone’s culture, that’s the point. But locking it up does what, exactly, for society? How does that promote the useful arts?
    - SoundnuoS
      
      @Gene Poole
      
      Competing with free is very hard. Competing with something that isn’t operating under the principles of a fair market shouldn’t even have to be considered.
      
      It promotes the useful (subjective) arts because it gives creators a possibility to sell their products, thereby making it easier for them to focus on creating. The possibilty of creating stuff being at least part of making a living will also help in enticing new creators into the game.
    - http://gene-poole.tumblr.com Gene Poole
      
      Competing with free is very hard.
      
      sourceforge. Linux. pretty much anything open source.
      The Humble Bundle. Steam. Fuck man, Evian for christ’s sake. It’s easy to complain that it can’t be done if you’re not willing to try.
      
      As far as fair market, I don’t think you understand the term. “Fair Market” means not imflating the price point to pay for a technology that was paid off decades ago. “Fair Market” refers to a market in which the entrepreneur sees a need and matches his product to fit it, not tries to get the law changed to stop people from doing the same thing they’ve been doing for centuries.
      
      thereby making it easier for them to focus on creating.
      
      If you’re creating for a paycheck, then you’re in the minority. People have been creating for centuries, without the option of copyright, and that didn’t stop them from trying. There is no shortage of people that want to create…no, scratch that, that can’t ~help~ but create, because the need is driving them.
      
      Your argument falls apart at the very first inkling of analysis.
    - SoundnuoS
      
      @Gene Pool
      
      Open source competes with free…..by being free?
      Movies and music can be compressed so games have a slight upper hand sizewise when it comes to filesharing. They also usually have some kind of copy protection and then you have to really trust whoever provides the crack to not supply you with an unexpected “gift”.
      
      And if this article has anything right, it seems the pc game market isn’t that healthy: http://www.forbes.com/sites/davidthier/2012/08/22/ubisoft-ceo-yves-guillemot-pc-gaming-piracy-levels-up-at-95/
      
      Ever think about why so many games try to have an online component that costs money these days?
      
      We already talked about trademarks. The idea of trademarking a file is silly.
      
      In a fair market, price is based on demand and everyone doing the supplying has to operate under similar conditions (which in this case is compensating the creator). Piracy doesn’t operate under these conditions and therefore can’t be considered fair competition.
      
      People create for various reasons. People publish for 2-3 reasons. The ego gratification, the paycheck and possibly from the need to communicate something. Once production starts to cost serious money it becomes hard to justify publishing and creating for reasons of ego and communication alone.
      
      Your analysis isn’t that thorough.
aidanjt

The US passed it via the DMCA. The UK also has anti-DRM cracking law as well, sadly.
Hogspace

Hopefully he will be motivated to carry on the fight and win at a higher appeal.
It’s pretty clear this is a political and commercial verdict and anti citizen.
Anon

God he is actually right the answer is universally FREE by the nature of it. The solutions exists freely by the nature of the problem given. Mind bender that one to politicians but a jack off for a solicitor. Fucking cumming in his pants over a loop hole find. You can just imagine the room when they got the idea to say this shit – right (cartmen voice) fuck you guys I am off for a wank.
http://www.facebook.com/hans.donnerborg Hans Donnerborg

the word Fahrenheit tells modern young some, but for us “dino”s from previous mellenia it has another ring.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fahrenheit_451
in here from 1966 we are dealing with a society that prevents knowledge by burning books / the homes theese books were hidden.
this verdict tells me that we are on that track !!!
- Scary_Devil_Monastery
  
  You are just now getting to that point?
  
  For those of us old farts who grew up watching the budding internet, “Fahrenheit 451″ became reality when the copyright cartels first started in on torrent sites.
Rikeus

Every University math teacher I’ve ever had always just scanned the assigned chapter and it’s corresponding answer pages and uploaded them to Blackboard (a university web app for course materials), adding the footnote that the scans are “not to be used unless you already own the book”. And of course none of them ever really mean it, and nobody thinks twice about it. When they make math textbooks $200 each and insist on making us buy a new one each year, on top of the already exploding tuition fees, what the hell do they expect us to do?
- Scary_Devil_Monastery
  
  Sell your mother’s organs and your kid sister into prostitution?
  
  Here’s the thing, the people who put that price tag know full well that the material isn’t usually “optional” and so they will put the price at whatever range can be considered “payable” by any means necessary.
  
  This is one aspect known as “free market”. The other – consumer pressure – being sadly lacking.
Guesta

Great, students will now tell their students they can’t do their work or finish a test because they might get sued.
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Math Teacher Convicted for Linking to Pirated Answer Sheets

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