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.
Reproducing is not stealing. Not in the dictionary sense. Not in the legal sense. Not at all.
I don’t condone selling stuff without the rights, but manipulative language like that has no place in journalism. It’s pure propaganda pushed by parasitic corporations, and it undermines our collective ability to discuss and reason about the issues.
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.
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.
Hence why I said it is not stealing
Edit just for clarity. I said stealing potential profit explicitly. So you cannot sue for that, but rather sue for patent infringement.
Just because it’s called patent infringement it doesn’t mean it’s not technically the same logic as theft that justifies it…
I’m using the word “technically” for a reason :p
People use “technically” when they know they’re not explaining themselves correctly but don’t want to go into further detail and may be completely wrong.