The men made millions of dollars streaming stolen copyrighted content to tens of thousands of paid subscribers, the Justice Department said.
Five men were convicted by a federal jury in Las Vegas this week for running a large illegal streaming service called Jetflicks, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.
Kristopher Dallmann, Douglas Courson, Felipe Garcia, Jared Jaurequi, and Peter Huber began operating the subscription service as early as 2007, the Justice Department said in a release Thursday. They would find illegal copies of content online that they then downloaded to Jetflicks servers, the release said.
The men made millions of dollars streaming this content to tens of thousands of paid subscribers, according to the Justice Department.
I don’t understand what you’re upset about. Is it word choice? What word would you have preferred?
Digital piracy is not stealing since nothing has been lost. In fact, something was duplicated. So the term stealing is not appropriate and should not be used to describe it. Copying / duplicating copyrighted material without permission is more appropriate. Also, distributing copyrighted material without permission can be used. But not stealing, no. Even stealing potential profit is a no or we were going to have to start punishing potential crime.
Technically, profit was lost.
Even that’s fairly debatable. The usual case of such “massive libraries of content” is that most of it isn’t even available to pay for; not provided by the content owner on any platform whatsoever (aka “vaulted”) or the content owner does not make it available in the country of the person that wants to view it.
Yes, and as I said before, if we were going to argue about lost profit then take 3D printing for example. Companies like GW don’t like it when someone uses 3D printed model. The physical plastic model itself is never stolen. In fact, someone can buy it and 3D scan it themselves and then share it. Some governments are considering banning it because it can be used to manufacture guns. Why did I compare the two? Because nothing was stolen, and in fact, something was made instead. Printing money yourself is also made illegal and you never stole someone else’s money.
If you recreate something that’s patented and selling it you can in fact get sued and yes the same logic applies, it’s profit the patent holder didn’t make for something the person you sold to should have bought from them.
Nonsense.
Nothing can be lost that wasn’t had in the first place.
So wage theft isn’t theft
Wage theft is the failing to pay wages or provide employee benefits owed to an employee by contract or law.". The wage is already yours to begin with. You are entitled to wage/payment for a work contract that you fulfill. The other party failing to fulfill their ends of the contract makes it theft.
“by contract or law” so just like the legal copyright owner already owns the “wage” associated with the distribution of content by law and they’re entitled to a payment in exchange for the right to distribute the things they own the copyright of and a distributor failing to pay them is therefore committing theft the same way that wage theft is theft?
You do bring up an interesting point. However, the wage in question is value tied to the work that you’ve done. It is inherently a payment for a service not goods. You cannot really “steal/duplicate/pirate” a service. How would it work anyway?
And, the copyright owner didn’t own any “wages”/profit just because you have copyrighted material. This is problematic because goods can be copied hence the need for copyright and patent law. You could get secondhand copyrighted goods and you don’t owe the copyright owner anything.
Oh but you’re ignoring that some people’s wage is linked to the distribution of copyrighted content, not all people who work on movies or music are paid a flat rate, artists and actors often get royalties based on distribution long after the fact so people illegally distributing the content are in fact doing wage theft by offering a service (that in this case they were paid for) without paying the wage owed to the people who accomplished the work and that are bound by a contract that makes them entitled to royalties for the rest of their lives.
Not even the law uses the verb stealing. It is infringement. Nothing any digital pirate does deprives the owner of their property. Remember, if buying isn’t owning, then copying isn’t stealing.