Man Faces $52K Fine For Pirating Bambi

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Before you go feeling all sorry for this guy, it wasn't just a few Disney movies and he actually got off cheaper than he would've in the United States. What's the going rate for one song over here? Around $22,000 or thereabout?

A Belgian man risks a fine of 37,714 euros ($52,550) for sharing movies, music and games on a forum. The 39-year-old shared several Disney classics including Bambi, Sleeping Beauty, 101 Dalmatians and The Lion King for his kids, and claims he saw no harm in his activities.
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In total, the father is accused of sharing 253 films, 64 computer games and 22,000 music files, for which BAF demands 37,714 euros ($52,550) in damages. The amount is based on the number of files that were shared, with a music track costing 1 euro and a movie 15 euros.
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The penalty isn't so bad. He'd be somehow owing >$1 billion if he was in the US with that amount of "sharing".
 
Shouldn't the copyright on Bambi be expiring at some point?
 
Kueller said:
Shouldn't the copyright on Bambi be expiring at some point?
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(C)Term&MMCurve.gif
 
Copyright should never exceed 100 years. It was meant to enrich those who contributed to society which benefitted from their work. If it was a corporation making the contribution so be it but 100 years is plenty.
 
Dev1ant said:
The penalty isn't so bad. He'd be somehow owing >$1 billion if he was in the US with that amount of "sharing".
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He'd be in prison for just one of those movies, if he claimed he got it from someone else.
 
It's just a matter of time before this guy would have turned to more serious crime like rape or murder. I'm glad they caught him before something even more tragic occurred.
 
I dont understand how anybody justifies/sympathizes with pirating. Its illegal, its theft, get over it, the fine is deserved
 
VladDracule said:
It grows back :D
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Wait.... so you're okay with things being taken, if it comes back, but oppose things being copied, even though the original never left in the first place and therefore has no gap that might actually cause problems? :confused:
 
Serpent said:
Wait.... so you're okay with things being taken, if it comes back, but oppose things being copied, even though the original never left in the first place and therefore has no gap that might actually cause problems? :confused:
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is blood copyrighted :confused: way off topic now
 
VladDracule said:
I dont understand how anybody justifies/sympathizes with pirating. Its illegal, its theft, get over it, the fine is deserved
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It comes up often here and frankly its about how the Content owners basically abuse the absolutely "Wild West" nature of copyright law (in the US and abroad) and task copyright trolls to go after anyone even slightly abusing or not even guilty of doing so.

When you spend your time suing the dead (this has happened .. more than once) for something they stole when they never owned a computer to begin with it brings into question much of the practice of suing for "possibly sold" copies of something that never sold to begin with.

The lines blur when you are talking sharing. I'm all for being against ANYONE making a profit from stolen content , so that means pirating sites that use abusive ads and merchandise to enrich themselves. But the act of sharing itself is no different than letting your neighbor and/or friend have a copy of a tape/cd of some music you had.

Its not like sharing hasn't been an active part of usage until the Internet came along. If you want to haul in anyone who shared content without permission then in the 80's and 90's I shared stuff with my friends that would net me going to jail for probably the rest of my life and this was before the Internet was something in my home. This was and continues to be a very common practice all over the world. By the judgement of copyright holders every single person that shares even one copy with anyone else is infringing and therefore liable for hundreds of thousands of dollars possibly and that's fucking insane..

The reality is that the judgement's are often far to harsh for the damage caused and even then the damaged cause isn't easily quantifiable. There are even studies to show that piracy at large has little impact on the majority of content shared and that pirates spend more money on legitimate content than non-pirates.

You could for instance instead of fining someone an amount of money many of us do not have and likely won't for decades a smaller sum of money and some jail/probation time. Instead of $52,000 you could do something closer to a fine for the first offense. Then if its a repeat offender you can start imposing fines plus jail time or probation. But right now its more like if you are caught you pay either $5,000 up front to a copyright troll or you bring your case to court and possibly end up owning hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars.

This is makes about as much sense as a shop lifter being sent to jail for 5-10 years for a first offense or owning hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines for a first offense.

Its a much deeper problem then just cut and dry righteousness.
 
Godmachine said:
It comes up often here and frankly its about how the Content owners basically abuse the absolutely "Wild West" nature of copyright law (in the US and abroad) and task copyright trolls to go after anyone even slightly abusing or not even guilty of doing so.

When you spend your time suing the dead (this has happened .. more than once) for something they stole when they never owned a computer to begin with it brings into question much of the practice of suing for "possibly sold" copies of something that never sold to begin with.

The lines blur when you are talking sharing. I'm all for being against ANYONE making a profit from stolen content , so that means pirating sites that use abusive ads and merchandise to enrich themselves. But the act of sharing itself is no different than letting your neighbor and/or friend have a copy of a tape/cd of some music you had.

Its not like sharing hasn't been an active part of usage until the Internet came along. If you want to haul in anyone who shared content without permission then in the 80's and 90's I shared stuff with my friends that would net me going to jail for probably the rest of my life and this was before the Internet was something in my home. This was and continues to be a very common practice all over the world. By the judgement of copyright holders every single person that shares even one copy with anyone else is infringing and therefore liable for hundreds of thousands of dollars possibly and that's fucking insane..

The reality is that the judgement's are often far to harsh for the damage caused and even then the damaged cause isn't easily quantifiable. There are even studies to show that piracy at large has little impact on the majority of content shared and that pirates spend more money on legitimate content than non-pirates.

You could for instance instead of fining someone an amount of money many of us do not have and likely won't for decades a smaller sum of money and some jail/probation time. Instead of $52,000 you could do something closer to a fine for the first offense. Then if its a repeat offender you can start imposing fines plus jail time or probation. But right now its more like if you are caught you pay either $5,000 up front to a copyright troll or you bring your case to court and possibly end up owning hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars.

This is makes about as much sense as a shop lifter being sent to jail for 5-10 years for a first offense or owning hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines for a first offense.

Its a much deeper problem then just cut and dry righteousness.
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No, its cut and dry, if you dont want to be put in this type of situation dont download the content. It is black and white no matter how badly you think they are enforcing it
 
VladDracule said:
No, its cut and dry, if you dont want to be put in this type of situation dont download the content. It is black and white no matter how badly you think they are enforcing it
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Sorry but it isn't. How about the first traffic ticket you get you'll owe $250,000 or face 5 years in Federal Prison..

You think that's fair? For speeding?

Piracy doesn't even put anyone in danger like speeding potentially can and yet its punishments are absurdly harsh.
 
Godmachine said:
It comes up often here and frankly its about how the Content owners basically abuse the absolutely "Wild West" nature of copyright law (in the US and abroad) and task copyright trolls to go after anyone even slightly abusing or not even guilty of doing so.

When you spend your time suing the dead (this has happened .. more than once) for something they stole when they never owned a computer to begin with it brings into question much of the practice of suing for "possibly sold" copies of something that never sold to begin with.

The lines blur when you are talking sharing. I'm all for being against ANYONE making a profit from stolen content , so that means pirating sites that use abusive ads and merchandise to enrich themselves. But the act of sharing itself is no different than letting your neighbor and/or friend have a copy of a tape/cd of some music you had.

Its not like sharing hasn't been an active part of usage until the Internet came along. If you want to haul in anyone who shared content without permission then in the 80's and 90's I shared stuff with my friends that would net me going to jail for probably the rest of my life and this was before the Internet was something in my home. This was and continues to be a very common practice all over the world. By the judgement of copyright holders every single person that shares even one copy with anyone else is infringing and therefore liable for hundreds of thousands of dollars possibly and that's fucking insane..

The reality is that the judgement's are often far to harsh for the damage caused and even then the damaged cause isn't easily quantifiable. There are even studies to show that piracy at large has little impact on the majority of content shared and that pirates spend more money on legitimate content than non-pirates.

You could for instance instead of fining someone an amount of money many of us do not have and likely won't for decades a smaller sum of money and some jail/probation time. Instead of $52,000 you could do something closer to a fine for the first offense. Then if its a repeat offender you can start imposing fines plus jail time or probation. But right now its more like if you are caught you pay either $5,000 up front to a copyright troll or you bring your case to court and possibly end up owning hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars.

This is makes about as much sense as a shop lifter being sent to jail for 5-10 years for a first offense or owning hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines for a first offense.

Its a much deeper problem then just cut and dry righteousness.
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In personal file sharing cases... I think it comes down to the laws not adjusting to the times.

The large fees in copyright seems more targeted toward business and or profit based operations. Which make sense, it would suck if they just considered the penalties a "cost of doing business" because they were too low.

Yet when placed on an individual the penalties are batshit crazy. As you said its the wild west... the intent of the law is being manipulated.
 
Godmachine said:
Sorry but it isn't. How about the first traffic ticket you get you'll owe $250,000 or face 5 years in Federal Prison..

You think that's fair? For speeding?

Piracy doesn't even put anyone in danger like speeding potentially can and yet its punishments are absurdly harsh.
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As i said the punishment is a different story than the laws themselves. The harsher the penalties that high profile cases like this face, is a deterrent, same as ANY OTHER judgement for any other case. If your afraid of the potential of the fine don't break the damn law, it really is that simple
 
VladDracule said:
As i said the punishment is a different story than the laws themselves. The harsher the penalties that high profile cases like this face, is a deterrent, same as ANY OTHER judgement for any other case. If your afraid of the potential of the fine don't break the damn law, it really is that simple
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Except that it isn't a deterrent AT ALL. Piracy is humming along quite well and growing despite this insane judgements. It hasn't scared people into abandoning piracy and all its done is ruin the lives of those imposed with harsh judgements for sake of public shamming.

Deterrents across many forms of criminality do NOT WORK. Executing inmates doesn't stop potential criminals from committing incredibly awful crimes , drug dealers going to jail for consecutive life sentences does NOT make even a small impact in the sales of drugs across the country. We've wasted almost $1 Trillion dollars on the "War on Drugs" and have we won this war? Nope , in fact we are doing worse then ever according to release figures. The moment you start playing "Whack-a-mole" with the justice system all you do is waste money and solve nothing.

There isn't anything wrong with punishing criminals but there is something wrong with using every potential criminal no matter how small the infraction as an example to everyone else. It simply DOES NOT WORK.
 
VladDracule said:
As i said the punishment is a different story than the laws themselves. The harsher the penalties that high profile cases like this face, is a deterrent, same as ANY OTHER judgement for any other case. If your afraid of the potential of the fine don't break the damn law, it really is that simple
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omg you can't even keep your own thoughts straight. For one you quoted a guy that basically said the punishment didn't fit the crime not that the crime was "legal"...

You now say the punishment is a different story. Then the next sentence you allude to some new punishment system I would suspect goes like this:

Every 1 Millionth speeder, gets balloons, parade and flogged on public TV, recorded for future PSA and after school specials. Hopefully they even further capitalize on the "example", during a Fast and Furious movie commercial. Maybe they could do after school specials too.


The United States legal system is for setting rules and providing socially acceptable punishment. Sure the penalties are deterrents but there should be not be "example" punishments and "normal" punishments. Sure some douche bag may use what ever lee-way they have to make it such. Then guess what? You start getting into mandatory minimums which is stupid as well bloating the system even more.

Your last sentence is a typical get off my lawn, we were here first, right wing rush Limbaugh pointless comment. I am willing to bet you NEVER bitch and complain about paying your taxes, cause its the law you know.

Laws don't get changed unless people talk about it, trying to shut down a conversation with "its against the law quit bitching" just shows your ignorance.
 
dandirk said:
omg you can't even keep your own thoughts straight. For one you quoted a guy that basically said the punishment didn't fit the crime not that the crime was "legal"...

You now say the punishment is a different story. Then the next sentence you allude to some new punishment system I would suspect goes like this:

Every 1 Millionth speeder, gets balloons, parade and flogged on public TV, recorded for future PSA and after school specials. Hopefully they even further capitalize on the "example", during a Fast and Furious movie commercial. Maybe they could do after school specials too.


The United States legal system is for setting rules and providing socially acceptable punishment. Sure the penalties are deterrents but there should be not be "example" punishments and "normal" punishments. Sure some douche bag may use what ever lee-way they have to make it such. Then guess what? You start getting into mandatory minimums which is stupid as well bloating the system even more.

Your last sentence is a typical get off my lawn, we were here first, right wing rush Limbaugh pointless comment. I am willing to bet you NEVER bitch and complain about paying your taxes, cause its the law you know.

Laws don't get changed unless people talk about it, trying to shut down a conversation with "its against the law quit bitching" just shows your ignorance.
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Copyright laws arent going to change whether or not you talk about it. Its the simple truth, the terms of the punishments maybe, but not the laws themselves. Can i bitch about paying taxes? sure, Do I? Sure. Do i break the law by not paying taxes? Absolutely not. You cannot complain about being punished for breaking the law, its absurd that people defend someone who clearly is breaking copyright laws. If he didnt do it, he wouldnt be facing a 50k fine, is that not true?
 
VladDracule said:
I dont understand how anybody justifies/sympathizes with pirating. Its illegal, its theft, get over it, the fine is deserved
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Well then we can only presume that such an upstanding member of society as yourself made sure that all his family members purchased the proper licenses for singing "Happy Birthday to You" or alternatively used a non copyrighted song to celebrate birthdays


PS. Just a heads up, I think you might have misspelled your user name.
 
VladDracule said:
Copyright laws arent going to change whether or not you talk about it. Its the simple truth, the terms of the punishments maybe, but not the laws themselves. Can i bitch about paying taxes? sure, Do I? Sure. Do i break the law by not paying taxes? Absolutely not. You cannot complain about being punished for breaking the law, its absurd that people defend someone who clearly is breaking copyright laws. If he didnt do it, he wouldnt be facing a 50k fine, is that not true?
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FYI by your ridiculous black and white logic Rosa Parks deserved to be arrested also.
 
Neutrino said:
Well then we can only presume that such an upstanding member of society as yourself made sure that all his family members purchased the proper licenses for singing "Happy Birthday to You" or alternatively used a non copyrighted song to celebrate birthdays


PS. Just a heads up, I think you might have misspelled your user name.
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bad example, as you only have to pay royalties if you make a profit by using the song or it is used in another money making area such as in a movie. Nice try though
 
EDIT: black and white view of law and morality is what I meant to say


hate the lack of an edit button here :(
 
Neutrino said:
FYI by your ridiculous black and white logic Rosa Parks deserved to be arrested also.
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Another bad example. Your trying to say the law should change and we should legally be able to steal from somebody. Stating irrelevant facts to the story hold absolutely no water. Theft has always been, and always will be illegal
 
VladDracule said:
Another bad example. Your trying to say the law should change and we should legally be able to steal from somebody. Stating irrelevant facts to the story hold absolutely no water. Theft has always been, and always will be illegal
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You have that wrong, my post was actually insulting your narrow minded view of the law and morality
 
Neutrino said:
You have that wrong, my post was actually insulting your narrow minded view of the law and morality
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My viewpoint has absolutely nothing to do with being narrow minded. Theft is illegal, and always always will be, that i can promise you. Which means stating that if you do not want to be fined for it then dont do it. This has absolutely nothing to do with being narrow minded its stating fact
 
Godmachine said:
Sorry but it isn't. How about the first traffic ticket you get you'll owe $250,000 or face 5 years in Federal Prison..

You think that's fair? For speeding?

Piracy doesn't even put anyone in danger like speeding potentially can and yet its punishments are absurdly harsh.
Click to expand...

You will not go to court for some insane fee for a first time offense. You usually get at least 3 warnings from your ISP before they actually give anyone any information. A better example would be someone who has already gotten a bunch of speeding tickets and continues to rack them up.

There are two main ideas that will cause a huge penalty when it comes to law. 1. If it puts someone in danger and 2. If the action causes financial loss. Money is more important than death it seems these days, hence the high penalty for piracy.

Godmachine said:
Except that it isn't a deterrent AT ALL. Piracy is humming along quite well and growing despite this insane judgements. It hasn't scared people into abandoning piracy and all its done is ruin the lives of those imposed with harsh judgements for sake of public shamming.
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Then don't bitch when you get caught(Not you specifically, but people in general). The punishments are there to see for everyone and if they aren't scared of it then I don't care if they lose all the money they ever made. It was their decision to ignore the consequences.
 
Neutrino said:
As i said I see your vigilance is astounding and can further presume that you made sure all family performances of Happy Birthday to You were performed in a non public venue such as a restaurant.

I mean we wold not want the lawful owners or this song to go unrewarded.
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actually i cant say with 100% confidence that my family has not sang happy birthday out of our home, from my childhood through now. So still, irrelevant.

And your comparison is still bogus and it shows a complete lack of understanding of the my viewpoint. Your taking my premise/feeling one specific instance of copyright law enforcement and applying it to every single aspect/instance of it, which is bogus. I am commenting ONLY on the related article and case. Take the off topic bullshit your trying to push on me elsewhere.
 
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