The Fine City, Mentality and Education
Well, everyone (or almost everyone who has had some form of interaction with the newspaper and/or the anime industry) has heard about the ODEX/AVPAS shit that has been happening.
I do not want to touch on the right and wrong of things, since there are 2 very differing views and whether 1 or the other, my opinion and stand of things would be wrong. Whatever it is, I offer one thought: nothing is EVER really right or wrong. The only ABSOLUTE wrong is the way we are hurting our living environment, and our remedial actions could very well be too little too late. But that’s another topic altogether. No one is always 100% right, just that a certain organisation in our little island wishes everyone else to think otherwise. (But of course, they are world class and always right.)
I’m disappointed to hear that all 17 of those who have been issued with the primary-school level lawyer’s letter to have chosen the easy way out. Well, that just became 17*3.5K=59.5K easy money for ODEX, and/or their lawyers. Not that the average family with no or little knowledge about the law can choose any other path to take.
However, I offer one interesting notion, for any future suspects. In this fine city, it is guilty until charged. I think this has become a dangerous mentality that everyone is guilty of. Perhaps it is time to change that, simply by challenging the nature of the evidence produced by ODEX.
- The logs simply show an ATTEMPT to download the file. It does NOT equate to completing the download, nor being capable of playing back the download.
- Unless ODEX can get the ISPs to reconstruct the packets and determine 100% that the suspect has completed the download, then it is more likely that the suspect indeed has the file. I say more likely because it may not have been. Say, first attempt to download starts, but computer crashes halfway through, resulting in a complete corruption of the file. Upon booting up, the BT software erroneously determines that the incomplete download is valid and resumes the second half. End result = corrupted file that can’t be read. Therefore, there must be evidence of the file residing on the suspect’s computer.
- An analogy, however inappropriate it may sound, would be a murder determined to be by say a kitchen knife. Does that make EVERYONE in the island a suspect? Unless the murder weapon is found, the kitchen knife merely remains the most probably weapon.
- Having identified the suspects, there must be evidence that can concretely trace and link the weapon to the suspect, such as a strand of hair, a fingerprint, or something containing the DNA. An eye-witness. Or lastly a confession.
- In this case, if the act of downloading is even a crime, it should only be deemed completed if and when the file is 100% downloaded, and without errors, allowing it to be read back and be useful for its original purpose. So ODEX logs should only be considered as circumstantial evidence, and not DNA. DNA would be reconstruction of the packets into the file itself.
Final read for all interested should be the following:
- COPYRIGHT ACT, DIVISION 2 — INFRINGEMENT OF COPYRIGHT IN WORKS
- COPYRIGHT ACT, DIVISION 3 — ACTS NOT CONSTITUTING INFRINGEMENTS OF COPYRIGHT WORKS, SECTION 39 Back-up copy of computer program, etc
- COPYRIGHT ACT, DIVISION 6 — INFRINGEMENT OF COPYRIGHT IN SUBJECT-MATTER OTHER THAN WORKS
In essence, it seems that it is only an infringement if one “without the licence of the owner of the copyright, (a) sells, lets for hire, or by way of trade offers or exposes for sale or hire, an article; or (b) by way of trade exhibits an article in public, where he knows, or ought reasonably to know, that the making of the article constituted an infringement of the copyright or, in the case of an imported article, the making of the article was carried out without the consent of the owner of the copyright.” and “the distribution of any articles, (a) for the purpose of trade; or (b) for any other purpose to an extent that affects prejudicially the owner of the copyright concerned, shall be taken to be the sale of those articles.”. Downloaders are not doing for sale or hire, so the only question should be the distributing part. So, it is NOT the act of downloading that is an infringement, it is the uploading (I know, some of you have already ascertained that).
So, ODEX’s letter is completely off-tangent and invalid.
The proof that they should and need to produce is a suspect uploading complete and 100% error-free files. So if I name a Word document the same name as one of the offending files, it is an infringement, since their evidence lists filenames?
I hope more educated individuals who read the above posts, who receive the same notice from ODEX make an educated decision - to contest or not to? We need someone to set the precedent. Whatever the outcome, be sure you will get known throughout the anime communities worldwide. And yes, ODEX and the little island’s reputation will continue going down the drain, despite the latter’s attempts to propel itself up. F1, casinos/integrated resorts and whatever not. I don’t even want to mention UNSW.