Routes taken by UK prosecutors over supply of modified TV set-top boxes Prosecutors are turning to fraud charges in cases against people supplying set top boxes that can be used to access copyrighted material without paying for it because it makes cases easier for juries to understand. But a barrister who acted in one recent such case has told Out-Law.com that those conspiracy to defraud charges …
" cases against people supplying set top boxes that can be used to access copyrighted material without paying for it "
I presume that the every electrical goods retailer will now be prosecuted for supplying devices that can also be used for this purpose. They're called computers.
"I presume that the every electrical goods retailer will now be prosecuted for supplying devices that can also be used for this purpose. They're called computers."
Note this ridiculous old trope. On that basis, you'd end up prosecuting the electricity supplier, or maybe the builder of the house under which roof the modified set-top box is being used to breach copyright.
There is a very clear common sense difference in intent between selling a device that has been specifically modified to facilitate the breaching of copyright and which is knowingly sold on the basis of that facility and the case where a general purpose machine with many functions is sold even though it might conceivably be used for that purpose.
The law is not stupid in this matter. Judges (and, where relevant, juries) will consider the issues of intent and use on the basis of evidence. We do not, after all, prosecute cooks for possession of kitchen knives whilst we might very well prosecute somebody who was carrying one in the street with no good reason.
The City of London Police are about as bent as they come. They might get to wear cool capes when it rains, but they represent almost no residents and are paid for by the companies that have offices in the square mile in London.
We can expect, therefore that the Premier League, Sky and BT Sport essentially paid the City of London Police to find a way to prosecute a couple of people who sell these media boxes in the hope that it'll 'normalise' the procedure enough for ordinary police forces and the CPS to pursue later on. You'll note none of those organisations have gone anywhere near this so far - and for good reason as it's shaky ground at best. You'll also note that none of the infringement, or the sales, or the supposed fraud took place anywhere near the City of London.
Get rid of the City of London Police, make them part of the Met and stop corporations bending the law to their own ends.
If you or I park on double yellow lines in the City for even a few minutes, we can expect to receive a ticket.
Alternatively, paint a few stripes on your car, write "City of London Police" on the side and then park wherever you like, for as long as you like. No need to put any blue lights on, or have any burdens on you like maybe working on an emergency or anything else. And yes, I have proof of this - photo on my phone, and talked to the cops involved (who basically just got in the car and pissed off, as opposed to giving me any justification for their actions).
Trivial maybe - but my point about none of this actually taking place in the City of London is a *fact* that you can verify to your hearts content. No other police force in the country gets involved in other areas of the country unless some part of the case took place "on their patch". Now why would the smallest force in the country want to do things differently from all the others? What could possibly motivate them so strongly? Any ideas? Anyone?
Alternatively, paint a few stripes on your car, write "City of London Police" on the side and then park wherever you like, for as long as you like.
You'd rather they moved around via bus and taxi? There's bugger all public parking in the City, if they need to stop, they need to stop. If that's to pick up the sandwiches I'm cool with that - I wouldn't want to do their job. Would you? Spending all day dealing with various forms of criminal scum, having to deal with the injustice and harm inflicted on victims, and then there's ungrateful people like you whining that "they parked on a yellow line, not fair, not fair!"?
The police are human, they make some mistakes, there's a few bad apples, but most are trying to do a good job in difficult circumstances: Police officers parking on yellow lines isn't causing me to lose sleep at night.
It works the same as with an ambulance crew. Lets say they are not responding to a call, but need a coffee/sandwich/loo break.
Then a call comes in they need to respond to.
If they have parked right outside the corner shop they just run straight to the vehicle and get moving.
If they have parked in the nearest public car park 1/2 a mile away which requires payment at a machine to let your ticket open a barrier then things aren't looking good for the poor sod having a heart attack.
"But they get allocated breaks". Yeah. And when someone has an emergency when the only available vehicle near by is on break? They get sent anyway.
Bullshit, mate. They don't park wherever the fuck they see fit for as long as they see fit because they NEED to. They just do it because they CAN, as there's nobody to stop them. And they fucking KNOW IT. So cut the melodramatic crap and quit while you're ahead.
For the Civil Nuclear Constabulary, anywhere near nuclear material is their patch. The Ministry of Defence Police jurisdiction is anything to do with the MoD ie employees equipment etc whether it is on MoD land or not.
The key phrase is "national police lead". The CoLP know more about complex fraud investigations so presumably other police services are happy to hand the investigation over to them rather than pull a couple of CID officers off a burgulary and tell them to start reading Stones.
Its all in the handshake when dealing with police, and lets not forget they know where their bread is buttered when it comes to pursuing some "crimes", lets face it if you generate a lot of tax through the employment of lots of people (G4S, Serco, Tesco to name a few) or from skimming lots of transacations (think any financial act), you'll soon see who the Police decide to offer up to the CPS.
On the point of Nuclear police, I dont see many hanging out on Brownsea island near a certain mine or a variety of beaches like Budleigh Salterton, preventing people from taking Uranium - Vandium nodules for a little bit of home made enrichment.
On the point of Nuclear police, I dont see many hanging out on Brownsea island near a certain mine or a variety of beaches like Budleigh Salterton, preventing people from taking Uranium - Vandium nodules for a little bit of home made enrichment.
Bet someone starts knocking on your door when you build a gas centrifuge as well.
I have proof of this - photo on my phone, and talked to the cops involved (who basically just got in the car and pissed off, as opposed to giving me any justification for their actions).
So no proof at all then, just an assumption that they were up to no good because they wouldn't explain themselves to a random stranger? If it had been the cops making that sort of assumption about someone people would be up in arms about them being "jumped up little dictators"...
" Now why would the smallest force in the country want to do things differently from all the others?"
Because it isn't the City of London Police, it is Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit which happens to have its headquarters in the City of London but is actually a National Police Unit in much the same way as the Special Branch has its headquarters with the Met but who's remit is nationwide.
Indeed, to quote from them.
"The Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU) is a specialist national police unit dedicated to protecting the UK industries that produce legitimate, high quality, physical goods and online and digital content from intellectual property crime.
The unit is operationally independent and launched in September 2013 with £2.56million funding from the Intellectual Property Office (IPO)...
... and is based within the Economic Crime Directorate of the City of London Police, the National Lead Force for Fraud"
The City of London Police are about as bent as they come
Having been involved at the very fringes of some of CoLP investigations, I have a fair idea of what they do, and I'd say they have to do a lot of work to a very high standard, dealing with some of the slipperiest crooks on the planet.
Also, whilst I think neither of us have any sympathy for rich companies like Sky, or the football clubs, and the jail sentences seem remarkably severe, this is still about the theft of intellectual property. If you're proposing that this case shouldn't have been brought, what threshold do you propose, below which IP theft isn't a crime, and above which it will be?
Your assumption that the CoLP are at the beck and call of City businesses is also not really true - CoLP are there to protect those corporations from law breakers, but equally to pursue those corporations if they are involved in criminality. In my experience, when CoLP let investigations drift, it isn't because the CoLP are doing favours, it is because the government intervene to tell them to lay off. Like their inaction against RBS over West Register and the "pre-pack" asset seizures. CoLP were making slow but steady progress, but senior politicians and civil servants told the police to lay off, because government didn't want even more dirt and expense in relation to RBS (despite whistleblowers taking the evidence directly to the offices of Cameron, Osborne, and Cable).
Get rid of the City of London Police, make them part of the Met
You want to combine the primarily white-collar investigators of CoLP with the bungling, electrician-slayers of the Met? And you have missed the fall out from Leveson on the Met being in Fleet Street's pocket? I might mention the the name of Ian Tomlinson as another stain on the Met, their failures on counter-terrorism (admittedly successes as well, but they failed on 7/7, on 21/7, Glasgow Airport et al, Lee Rigby), The only people worse than the Met are South Yorkshire.
CoLP work far better for not being part of the Met, and if anything, the change should be the other way round. Let the Met do routine policing and security, but give CoLP responsibiliuty for the white collar crime, fraud at least for all of London, and I'd go as far as saying crappy quasi-police forces like NCA and SFO should be wrapped into CoLP with a national remit.
Copyright infringement is a form of larceny. The copyright skeptic Justice Breyer said in the SCOTUS Grokster appeal "deliberate unlawful copying is no less an unlawful taking of property than garden-variety theft."
We chose to handle this form of dishonesty under the copyright acts rather than the theft acts for reasons of policy.
@Doctor Syntax,
Not only not theft, but merely facilitation of infringement by others. And even then it is simply providing the tools for others to break the law, if they so choose, like providing a lock picking set or a hammer to someone.
Incidentally, why is our hard earned tax being used to prosecute some sole trader on behalf of a multi-billion pound multination company for what should be a civil rather than criminal issue?
Working at the fringes has not provide awareness of the fundamentals of law.
Generally, the legal definition of theft involves the unauthorized taking of another's property. Even though we use the phrase 'Intellectual Property' making a copy of a protected work does not involve taking that property - it involves violating the owners right to control copying of the property. Theft does not occur and no crime is committed, it is a purely civil offence.
There is a vast difference between a crime and a civil offence, and why Federation Against Copyright Theft is a very misleading term.
KODI previously known as XBMC (X Box Media Centre).
The biggest problem is that KODI will suffer (and grow) because of this. I have met a few people who say they watch "free" movies that are just now in the movie theatres because they purchased a box that has KODI.
This is akin to R4/N5/DSOne and all of those other cards that would let you play copied games on a NintendoDS. I purchased two of the things for the kids, made backups of every cart we had and then let the kids have one single card in their DS that wouldn't get lost (as it was never removed!). Due to the ability of these cards to play copies however, they became illegal. Owning one is not currently illegal, just buying or selling them. My cards also had lots of neat user-made programs/apps on them (like mp3 player).
I support them locking up the sellers who install things that help push piracy. I hate the way that content is locked and the price that often gets charged, but that doesn't mean I support stealing it.
I know someone who was selling "imported" KODI boxes and he has handed over his Facebook account to SKY after they sent him legal notice that he was selling hardware that was being used to infringe. I asked at the time if it was just a vanilla install or if he had specific apps/channels set up to view content and he suggested it only tuned into European servers that showed things legally (I took it to mean he knew he was doing wrong).
The downside of the plods doing the work for content providers is that we will see things like KODI or PLEX come under fire for making life easier for users. Roku, Sky Now, Apple TV = will probably be our only "legal" choices if they had their way.
Finally found the previous reg article on the subject
... requires another party to conspire with. Like when, it is alleged, Murdoch bought the tech firm that developed the smart card encryption system used by Canal+ and other broadcasters - some time later, consumers were routinely downloading new card images and thus depriving Sky's competitors of revenue. That would fulfil the definition of conspiracy, if it did in fact happen that way. It was reported by Private Eye many years back.
if it did in fact happen that way
It didn't happen that way.
There were allegations against Sky made by Canal+ which went away when Murdoch so generously bought the loss-making Telepiu broadcaster that Messier wanted rid of.
Disclosure: I was working for C+T at the time (but not in anything to do with CA).
Vic.
The problem here is the phrase "pre-loaded". A standard Kodi box only allows access to legitimate streams, either subscribed or free to air. It's the installation of add-ons such as SALT or Exodus that is an issue.
These add-ons exist solely to search filesharing sights for films and tv shows and installing these before selling the box could quite rightly be seen as facilitating fraud.
selling the box could quite rightly be seen as facilitating fraud.
here here. And the people buying these boxes dont even know they are breaking the law. (yes. they are.) and it wont be long before the boxes just become thin clients of the pirates own streaming servers which have their own subscription payment system.
Quick reg poll - how many of you are under the delusion that "Streaming is ok if you dont download and save it" ? The amount of otherwise normal - functioning , IT literate , sensible grown ups who think that is staggering.
"And the people buying these boxes dont even know they are breaking the law"
I stirred up a right hornets nest when I finally lost patience with constantly seeing "All SKY and Virgin channels for a fraction of the cost" on my FB feed and suggested people keep this dodgy stuff to themselves --- hundreds of posts asking WTF I was talking about and it was all perfectly legitimate.
If I build a fence around a pitch and call it a football ground, I can charge people to enter the ground to watch a match, but can I sue the people who don't enter but watch the match by looking through gaps in the fence? No, of course not. My fence, my problem to block the gaps.
Can I sue the guy outside the fence who is renting step ladders that let people look over the fence?
Can I sue the guy who invites his mates around because his apartment overlooks the fence?
How about if the fence is made of gold plated unobtainium and cost me millions and makes me billions?
If I build a fence around a pitch and call it a football ground, I can charge people to enter the ground to watch a match, but can I sue the people who don't enter but watch the match by looking through gaps in the fence? No, of course not. My fence, my problem to block the gaps.
That might seem obvious, but change "a match" to "having sex with my wife in my bedroom" and ask if people peering in through a gap in the curtains are behaving legally? What about the ones who've poked a webcam though the window & are streaming the activity?
The problem isn't as simple as "if I don't stop them seeing something it's my problem", but one of "is the something intended for general viewing, and what rights do I have to restrict it?".
I'd not be surprised if the ball-kicking people somehow categorised a football match as a 'performance' in the same sense as a Neil Diamond or Iron Maiden gig.
Therefore they can claim to own the IP of the 'performance' and carry on in exactly the same way as say EMI demanding a takedown of video of an artist's gig somewhere (even in a public park) as the content of the media contains a performance of their IP.
"technology might be adapted and used for unlawful purposes should not necessarily mean the technology itself is unlawful."
Mostly it isn't. Actually very often you can use tech illegally without modification:
Kitchen knives, copiers, computers, cars, JCB diggers.
Copyright infringment is a civil issue - i.e. media company sues the infringer and, if proved, there is a civil settlement - i.e. damages. Costs generally get paid by the loser. However, as the infringer is generally just some average Joe with very little in the way of assets, the media company will very likely end up out of pocket even if they do win. They don't like this.
By invoking criminal fraud charges the media companies get to see people who facilitate infringement put away for very long periods of time (great for deterrent purposes) and the bill gets picked up by the crown. You can see why the media companies would love this to become the norm.
I agree that the previous civil route is somewhat lacking in justice, but surely I can't be the only one who's a bit worried to see the policy and CPS wilfully bending the definition of criminal laws for the benefit of private companies.
<tinfoil>
It should also be pointed out that whilst they're currently only going after those that sell devices intended to facilitate copyright infringement it's not a stretch to believe that once this is normalised they'll start using the same techniques to prosecute the buyers of said devices. And If they get away with that they'll widen the net to individual users who have set up their own equipment. The end of this process makes VPNs illegal for private individuals "You set it up for privacy purposes only? A likely story. You're nicked son, for possession of equipment designed to facilitate fraud".
</tinfoil>
as they are unmodified and come with no means to convert when you walk out of the store.
But watch your mail box - a couple of days after you buy a converter a lumpy envelope arrives and the wherewithal to access all the forbidden channels is revealed with very complete instructions.
The 'conversion' process is easy enough for a child to do it. And for continued monthly updates, just watch your e-mail or SMS messages.
I don't actually use the service as I don't have a TV in my residences!
I think we'd all agree that conspiracy takes two or more people (the Unreliable Source agrees, for what *that's* worth).
How long before this becomes the (lone) seller and the buyer rather than the seller and his mate?
(No "joke" icon because it's not meant as a joke, not much, anyway...)
The seller just needs to ensure that the box is not sold with the infringing software, but that it can easily be loaded onto it via an Internet download by the purchaser.
I recall buying a Dream Box some years ago. I asked if it could be used to watch encrypted channels without a card. In a very carefully phrased reply, I was told by the seller that he was obviously not permitted to sell equipment that could "hack" subscription channels, and the box was pre-installed with basic software, but that I could do a web search to find firmware downloads that would provide "additional features". Within 5 minutes I had found where to get software that automatically fetched the keys to decrypt many of the major satellite channels (apart from Sky, which uses a pretty hack-resistant encryption method).
ISTM that that particular seller has not broken any laws.
SKY is the facilitator of copyright infringement because they "facilitate" this by making their undecryptable boxes that makes others want their piece of TV (news, sports, entertainment etc) which was free before but out of bounds for many an innocent soul. SKY has 2 bites at the cherry (by charging millions from subscriptions and billions from advertisers). Surely, if I have to listen to your opinions and rightwing propoganda, YOU have to pay me for the privilege ! Wankers. Who in their right minds would want to pay to watch FOX news (propoganda)?
So one could argue that they are a party to this facilitations and inducements, by forcing others to seek alternatives. (Thanks the Chinese for facilitating the cheap technology for the masses). GO sue them too ! Isnt that a good social thing? Championing consumer rights at low costs ?
AND, the law is still an ass, fed by these multinationals, who are answerable to none.
Is this just a "TV box" (android device with HDMI output & remote) with Kodi on it or something more dubious?
Kodi comes with various addons by default (though of course a box seller might be adding other addons which could make it more of an issue)
If it's anything like the TV box I have then there are zero instructions on how to use Kodi / any of its addons, so not exactly easily facilitating anything dubious in terms of copyright - someone would have to do a bit of research before they could infringe.
Before FACT come in their pants as I have mentioned Kodi - I use Kodi to play stuff from networked PVR via DNLA on TV (in a room with no aerial lead) in different room from PVR & have added on stuff like iPlayer etc to watch other content I have not recorded (though C4 on demand player is a waste of space as refuses to install on a rooted android device, so presumably C4 encouraging copyright violation by preventing watching their content & could encourage some people to illegally obtain C4 content elsewhere so maybe C4 need a talking to from FACT)
All a bit dubious, by "infringing" logic FACT could make illegal non UK VPN providers: After all, someone could use a US based VPN to thwart US TV company location checks and so watch content on the website of a US TV company
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