British court: copyright infringement is different than theft

Copyright infringement is not like theft. That has a British judge ruled in a case against Newzbin2. This allows copyright owners for infringements on their rights, not all of the income that they are gathered to recover it.

The MPAA, representing the interests of the American film industry represents, and harnessed in the United Kingdom on behalf of its members, usually the major film studios, filed a lawsuit against the usenet indexer Newzbin2, payment processor, Kthxbye Limited and a number of people behind the usenet indexer. The MPAA wanted the revenue to recover that Newzbin2, that in november, its doors closed, its activities have garnered. The British Royal Court of Justice gave the MPAA, however, not the same, as appears from a statement by TorrentFreak, it was noted.

Important is the question of whether infringement on the illegal sale of copyrighted material is similar to theft, as the MPAA stated. According to the court, that is not the case. In the theft of a physical object to lose the owner of the property about it. The copyright owner remains in principle, however, the owner of its copyright, even if someone else without his consent for commercial gain.

The situation is, according to the judges better be regarded as trespassing, which someone onrechtmatigs do with other people’s possessions, but not involving theft. The court compared the practice of Newzbin2 with the sale of goods, including pirated dvds, on somebody else’s territory without the consent of the owner of that territory. In that case the owner of the territory only in exceptional cases, the profits made by the violator with the sale of the goods has brought in to recover it, and certainly not the full income. “I don’t see why the copyright owner, in this, the better off would have to be,” writes the judge in his ruling.

Besides the judge that if copyright owners the full with copyright earned income can be recovered, innovation and creativity are impeded. People would be deterred from pursuing a particular activity ” if there is a small chance that such activity ultimately when copyright infringement is identified. Advance is not always easy to estimate, and because the full income to be claimed and not only the profit, the impact out of proportions.

Newzbin2 was the successor to Newzbin, a popular usenet indexer. Newzbin, the nzb format for references to usenet binaries introduced, lost in 2010, a lawsuit by a number of Hollywood studios was filed. Then closed the site its doors. Newzbin2 emerged some time later from the ashes of Newzbin, but threw in november the towel in the ring. There would be too little participation, indexing did not run smoothly and the servers were unstable, without that there was money for improvement.