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.
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.
Yeah, and that word also carries the heavy burden of that statement. I don’t want to be pedantic but the US law states theft is the taking of another person’s personal property with the intent of depriving that person the use of their property. And for patent infringement it is defined as the unlawful use, selling, or copying of a patented invention.
The laws for infringement and theft are different precisely because they come from different reasons. For theft to occur, someone must be deprived of something that they already have.
Infringement on the other hand, can be done without needing to take anything at all from the owner.