"Pirate" turns himself in to police ...

[RoyGBiv]

Want to challenge the status quo? This is how you do it.

In order to force a change in the law, last month a man reported himself for breaching copyright more than a hundred times, hoping an anti-piracy group would take him to court. The group’s lawyer said they would respond by today – they haven’t – so the Danish copyfighter is now reporting himself to the police.

http://torrentfreak.com/anti-piracy-group-refuses-bait-drm-breaker-goes-to-the-police-091201/

The man's "crime," btw, is ripping his legally purchased DVD collection to his computer for archival purposes. This is legal in Denmark (and here, FWIW), but the technology require to circumvent the DRM to prevent copying is illegal.

[lpbk2713]

1. Good to see Kevin Mitnick is alive and well.

:eyes:

[RoyGBiv]

2. Not sure of the relevance ...

Mitnick was a fake hacker who had amplified social skills. Today he'd be little more than a script kiddie with a better personality than most.

And authorities went after him with a vengeance because, for the most part, the legalities were clearer and not as dubious.

Henrik Anderson isn't a hacker at all, rather an individual challenging contradictory law enforcement, which those authorities are so far reluctant to pursue, seemingly because they are rarely challenged so directly. In the US, RIAA/MPAA don't really want to go to court either. They want to settle or in those rare instances when people do challenge them, make the case go away. They are by definition a terrorist organization, wishing to achieve their goals through fear of being sued for exorbitant sums that few can reasonably pay.

[charlie]

3. Hey, lookit that

The Danes use the same bullshit Catch-22 as our beloved DMCA. I shouldn't be surprised, it's a marvel of disingenuous rot.

I'm one for compensation and some measure of protection for content authors. Idiots who use "information wants to be free" to ennoble their appetite for free shit always annoy me. The MPAA/RIAA and their ilk however, are nothing more than the Sopranos, have no business in this mess, and can't die quick enough. Good on Henrik, I hope he vexes the daylights out of them.

[RoyGBiv]

4. What?

You don't like the cyber equivalent of the DFH who runs around placing flowers in our network ports while chanting hymns about the civil rights of the free electron?

:)

You illustrate a cogent point. RIAA/MPAA long ago took control of the narrative and made their crusade seem to be about "protecting" content creators, the artists. Unfortunately, the most vocal contingent opposed to them, who did in fact see through their argument with acuity, bloody well let them by trying to argue that "piracy" isn't really a bad thing and disingenuously suggesting that people who spend all their time on P2P networks are just trading Linux ISOs all day long. That's bull, and everyone knows it.

Even the EFF, for which I have a great deal of respect, took this line for awhile in an apparent attempt to be more hardcore and purist than the ACLU was in defending Nazi agitators. I still agree with their premise, but their tactics and public face leave a lot to be desired.

It's never been about protecting piracy. I can get free, legal software all day long. I spend a significant amount of my income on books and know sources for a lot of free books. I buy movies and music, low emphasis on the latter because I think the music industry is mostly garbage these days and should be ashamed of itself for choosing to draw a battle line near that dreck they have the audacity to call art. And I use the library system and repurchase opportunities.

But it is, in a way, about free information. DRM and the DMCA that empowers its use limits everything, up to and including public documents. RIAA/MPAA wants to eradicate libraries, destroy the ability to repurchase, and force you to pay a fee just to read a headline or listen to the radio. With that as their goal, I reluctantly start to sympathize with some pirates, especially the type mentioned here, i.e. the one who really isn't doing anything wrong but just wants to be able to access his legally purchased material in whatever way he chooses, not the way some corporate mafioso tells him he can.